Neville Brand

He served in the US Army during World War II and was the fourth most decorated soldier of the war (Actor Audie Murphy being the first). Lyrics include: "complete control for Cassavetes/if it's not for sale you can't buy it". It should also be pointed out that Brand was a real life hero. Fugazi, a rock music group who shared Cassavetes' independently-minded aesthetic, titled a song after the filmaker on their 1993 In On The Killtaker album. One of the funnier moments was the twin episode in which gruff and dusty Reese has an immaculate and proper lookalike that confounds the other Texas Rangers. Rather, Rowlands reports, the actors would improvise from Cassavetes' scripts during rehersals, then Cassavetes would rewrite scenes based on the improvisations. One of the most heart wrenching scenes on TV showed Brand's character, Reese Bennet, waiting in torment when he realizes he has been stood up by the love of his life. Though Cassavetes allowed and even encouraged his actors to ad lib while filming, only very rarely, she says, were entire scenes filmed as they were being improvised.

Known also for his cowboy roles, he stared in his own TV series, Laredo, with William Smith, Peter Brown, and Claude Akins. Rowlands has stated that the role of improvisation in Cassavetes films has frequently been misunderstood. Many will remember him as Bull Hansom, the prison guard of The Birdman of Alkatraz, and as the antagonistic prisoner in Stalag 17. His son, Nick Cassavetes, followed in his father's footsteps, and made 1997's She's So Lovely from the elder Cassavetes's screenplay, and directed 2004's The Notebook. The characterization caused an outcry from the Italian American community over stereotypes. He was survived by Rowlands, who continued to act, and three children. Of the hundreds of roles he has played, he is probably most well known as Al Capone in the TV show The Untouchables. The intense effort took its toll; an alcoholic, Cassavetes died from cirrhosis of the liver in 1989 at the age of only 59.

However, he played a very romantic lead in the movie Return From the Sea with Jan Sterling and a heartwarming character who was brain damaged and misunderstood in an episode of the TV show Daniel Boone. He played Hoss Cartwright's (Dan Blocker) Uncle Guntur on Bonanza. He lived to make film, and sacrificed his colleagues and himself to the process. I'm a loser.". Cassavetes's personality was overpowering and driven. He played the villain in so many movies, his self-image became affected, culminating in a television interview on TV's Entertainment Tonight show with the actor moving about in agitation repeating, "I'm a loser. Already ill, he was heartbroken that it would be the last film he would do. The worst career move of his life was to kill the Elvis Presley character in Love Me Tender. The movie, racked by incompatible studio and director edits, was, in Cassavetes's words, "a disaster".

Gravel-voiced Neville Brand started his big screen career in D.O.A. as a henchman named Chester. Sadly, Cassavetes's last movie, Big Trouble (1986), was a last-minute project picked up as a favor when a younger director friend peremptorily quit the project. Neville Brand (August 13, 1920 - April 16, 1992) was a television and movie actor. Love Streams (1984) starred Cassavetes as an aging lothario who suffers the overbearing affection of his recently divorced sister. Five Gates To Hell. Cassavetes continued to work through the 1980s, although personal troubles with alcohol were beginning to take their toll. Gloria (1980) is a more conventional thriller starring Rowlands as a mob moll who runs off with a young boy orphaned by the mob and soon to be next. Captains Couragous. Author Christos Tsiolkas said of Bookie that it showed "being a man means knowing gutlessness better than knowing courage, that failure stays with you long after success.".

Tora! Tora! Tora!. Driven by fear and uncertainty, Vitelli deceives friend and foe alike. Charge At Feather River (the first 3-D movie). Ben Gazzara plays Cosmo Vitelli, a small-time strip-club owner with an out-of-control gambling habit, who is convinced by mobsters to commit a murder to pay off his debt. Love Me Tender. The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976) was a movie about the experience of men as much as Influence was about women. Backtrack (a compilation of a few Laredo episodes). Rowlands is an expert collaborator in the story, playing Mabel with subtlety and energy; she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, while Cassavetes was nominated for Best Director.

The Birdman Of Alcatraz. The wife's behavior, while disturbing and disconcerting for those around her, is not obviously dangerous or unstable. Return From The Sea. The characters were nuanced, and the ethical situations were measured in shades of gray. D.O.A.. Peter Falk played her husband, who tries to keep up a facade of normality, but ultimately makes the difficult decision of committing her to a mental institution. A Woman Under the Influence (1974) stars Rowlands as an increasingly eccentric housewife trying to keep her hold on reality.

His two masterpieces of the 1970s, however, were made independently. Another in the 1970s include Minnie and Moskovitz, about a misdirected young woman seeking love, and starring Rowlands again with a small part for Cassavetes's mother, Katherine. They play a trio of men escaping their marriages for minor peccadillos. Husbands (1970) starred Cassavetes himself, with Peter Falk and Ben Gazzara.

He had enough leverage at this point that he could make movies in the studio system, yet retain full creative control. After Faces Cassavetes could concentrate more fully on his directorial work. Faces was a critical and financial success, nominated for two Academy Awards (Best Supporting Actor and Actress). Cassavetes held an unflinching camera on the pettiness and emotional greed of the distancing husband and wife and their lovers, but in the end the pathos of their story gives them an unexpected dignity.

Starring Cassavetes's wife Rowlands, Faces depicted a contemporary suburban marriage in the process of slow disintegration, with the accompanying desperate and degrading sexual improprieties. His next independent film was Faces, which lay down new themes for later work. He didn't just clockwatch as an actor, though; he did masterly work in blockbuster hits of the late 1960s, including World War II epic The Dirty Dozen (1967) — for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor — and Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby (1968). His strategy, brought on by necessity, was to work as an actor in mainstream movies, and channel the funds he made there into his work as a director.

Cassavetes refused to go through the process again. The intervention of the studios, the lack of creative control, and the over-all dumbing down of his work was unbearable. Although the viewership of Shadows in the United States was slight, it did gain attention from the Hollywood studios. Cassavetes directed two movies for Hollywood in the early 1960s — Too Late Blues and A Child is Waiting — but the experience was exasperating. European distributors later released the movie in the United States as an import.

Cassavetes was unable to get American distributors to carry Shadows, so he took it to Europe, where it won the Critics Award at the Venice Film Festival. Cassavetes raised the funds for production from friends and family, as well as listeners to a late-night radio talk show. An improvisation exercise in one workshop inspired the idea for his writing and directorial debut, Shadows (1960). By 1956 Cassavetes had begun teaching method acting in workshops in New York City.

During this time he met and married actress Gena Rowlands, a fellow television actor. His experience working within television's budgetary and schedule limits influenced his later film production style. Cassavetes also acted on television, which was still finding its feet as a medium. By 1953, he was doing small parts in films; he continued to play a James Dean-like "juvenile delinquent" throughout the 1950s.

On graduation in 1950, he continued acting in the theater. He grew up in Long Island and attended Colgate University before moving to the New York Academy of Dramatic Arts. Cassavetes was born in New York City to Greek immigrants. Film critic Ray Carney called him "the father of American independent film".

John Cassavetes (December 9, 1929 - February 3, 1989) was an American actor, screenwriter, and director. Cassavetes created an American form of cinema verite with his innovative camera use, bleak outlook, and emphasis on improvisation. Love Streams (1984). Gloria (1980). The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976).

A Woman Under the Influence (1974). Minnie and Moskowitz (1971). Husbands (1970). Faces (1968).

Shadows (1959).