Mr. Sophistication (pt. i)
reflections on sincerity and directing violence in cinema
The word “sophistication” evolved from the Greek sofistes, meaning “a wise man, master, teacher.” The Greek term later developed a negative connotation, referring to someone who teaches their students for financial compensation as opposed to a genuine philosopher (literally “lover of sophistry”) who does so for the love of the sport. Receiving payment would contradict the inherent generosity of sharing wisdom, so the credibility of the philosopher would suffer. Thus, the sell-out was born.
John Cassavetes was an artist who was frustrated by commercialism stifling creativity, both in his directing work and his acting roles under the direction of others. Perhaps most notoriously, Cassavetes fought with Roman Polanski for much of the shooting of Rosemary’s Baby (1968). Not only did he object to filming a nude scene with costar Mia Farrow, but he also viewed Polanski’s choice of subject matter as an indicator of a rotten personality and a commercial cop-out intended to generate the most revenue for higher-ups. Cassavetes would later declare that the Polanski film is “not art,” comparing it negatively to another film he had recently starred in, Robert Aldrich’s The Dirty Dozen (1967). “[Dozen was] compulsively going forward, trying to make something out of the moment without preordaining the way the outcome is going to be.” The feuding helped the publicity of Rosemary, but Cassavetes left the project with a reputation for being difficult and aggressive. Naturally, this didn’t bode well for his public image as a director.
“As a director, [John Cassavetes] would show up on the set each day full of new ideas, willing to throw out everything that had been written or planned the day before, ready to try anything new and different. As an actor, he would similarly come in each morning bubbling over with an endless stream of ideas for new and better ways to stage or play his role. […]
Cassavetes baited Polanski in a series of interviews with journalists, including one where he told the reporter for Look magazine: ‘You just try to keep alive with Roman or you go under. Ask him why he’s so obsessed by the bloody and the gruesome, behaving like a kid in a candy store.’”
— Ray Carney, Cassavetes on Cassavetes (2001)1
Throughout the 1970s, Cassavetes honed his signature style as a director via the spontaneous kinetic energy between actors as a replacement for crowd-pleasing, traditional plot points. “[Production companies will] put action scenes and production values in, things that don’t have too much to do with the films that we make,” he said hot on the heels of his self-distributed critical success, A Woman Under the Influence (1974), before lamenting that someone in his films needs to be raped or shot in the face for the film to be considered good.
His disdain for violence in film wasn’t a conservative stance so much as a reaction to the exponentially expanding technology and gimmickry required to make one’s art lucrative enough to be picked up. While he does shy away from showing the grittiest details, domestic violence is a recurring theme in most of his films. We don’t see the sexual assault itself, but we witness a man walk a visibly unwell and vulnerable Mabel Longhetti back to her home and coax her into sleeping with him in the first act of Woman. Actress Myrtle Gordon calls her manager for advice and ends up being talked into doing a scene where her fellow lead slaps her in Opening Night (1977), her manager reassuring her that “actresses get slapped, it’s not humiliating.” And Rachel is a Black sex worker dating her controlling and sometimes physically violent white boss Cosmo Vitelli in The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976). Cassavetes dramatizes these relations not to glorify them but to acknowledge the truths of life, which we know to be brutal.
Lo, Bookie was born — and it’s a bit of a mess. There is a distinct disconnect between Cassavetes’ uncompromising vision of what cinema ought to be and the necessary thrills and kills of a gangster flick. He only deigned to make a genre film for the purpose of making a living2, conflicted about whether or not nightclub owner Cosmo Vitelli should even kill the titular Chinese bookie. Ultimately he decided the compulsive gambler would have to carry out the hit he’s been assigned by gangsters to pay off his debts, demonstrating the violent disposability of Asian-American men in 20th century America.
In the penultimate scene, Cosmo must give a pep talk to his disaffected right-hand man, Mr. Sophistication. Cosmo’s collaborator is upset because he faces the brunt of the audience’s booing, whereas the dancers (present for this conversation) “get the applause and all the cheers because they flashed their tits.” Crude, but he’s not wrong — Crazy Horse West might be on the Sunset Strip, but it’s not exactly a bustling joint, simply a labor of love for the cast and crew devising its program and keeping up the property. The crowd only makes a noise that isn’t jeering or merely polite when one of the dancers peppers nudity into the routine or says something salacious, relegating Cosmo and Mr. Sophistication (and by extension, Cassavetes himself) to the role of a sad jester.
I’m not interested in starting fires. I like to feel pain through what really causes pain. I don’t want to frighten people by showing them tragedy. I’ve never seen an exploding helicopter, I’ve never seen anybody go and blow somebody’s head off. So why should I make films about them? But I have seen people destroy themselves in the smallest way. I’ve seen people withdraw. I’ve seen people hide behind political ideas, behind dope, behind the sexual revolution, behind fascism, behind hypocrisy, and I’ve myself done all these things. In our films what we are saying is so gentle. It’s gentleness. We have problems, terrible problems, but our problems are human problems. I like to deal with subjects of divorce, subjects of children being battered. I don’t know – you can say, ‘Please, there is no problem at all, I’m American and I know there’s no problem here, nothing’s ever touched me!’
— John Cassavetes, Cassavetes on Cassavetes (2001)
To answer the burning question asked by the Le Tigre song: Cassavetes wasn’t operating from a place of antifeminism, but a philosophy of filmic sincerity developed independently of feminism. Racism and misogyny are omnipresent in his work about the lives of everyday people, reporting from the belly of the heterosexual beast with the biting tongue of John Waters and other filmmakers who satirize the nuclear family. Instead of irony, Cassavetes chose sincerity as his modus operandi. Despite how much he claimed to loathe audiences, he displays his respect for the viewer’s intelligence by choosing to tell chilling stories so ordinary and specific because, well, life is chilling. Actresses get slapped, Chinese bookies are killed, the machine gets fed, and in return, we get the entertainment we asked for.
Carney, Raymond. Cassavetes on Cassavetes. Faber, 2001.
Woods, Travis, et al. “I Can't Give You Anything But Love: The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976).” Bright Wall/Dark Room, 2 May 2021.