Ray Carney's writing is so different from most film criticism. It reads so clearly. You won't find any jargon, or fancy-schmancy film-book theories here. He doesn't attempt to explain the films or their characters by offering simplified psychological or sociological understandings. Instead, Carney shows how valuable it is to stay with the complex experiences offered in the films, to allow yourself to let the films teach you something new. Carney argues that all great art can give us new powers of understanding, more perceptive eyes and ears. (I highly recommend you check out his website, Ray Carney on Life and Art, which features his writing about other indie filmmakers, masterwork paintings and American culture.) Carney's deep belief in the importance of art comes through in his writing as the most radical, original and hopeful statements on art that I've ever read. The Films of John Cassavetes: The Adventure of Insecurity has changed the way I now look at all film.

Ray Carney's The Films of John Cassavetes: The Adventure of Insecurity has become my essential viewing guide to Cassavetes' films and it has changed the way I now look at all film.

Carney's writing is so different from most film criticism. It reads so clearly. You won't find any jargon, or fancy-schmancy film-book theories here. He doesn't attempt to explain the films or their characters by offering simplified psychological or sociological understandings. Instead, Carney shows how valuable it is to stay with the complex experiences offered in the films, to allow yourself to let the films teach you something new. Carney argues that all great art can give us new powers of understanding, more perceptive eyes and ears. Carney's deep belief in the importance of art comes through in his writing as the most radical, original and hopeful statements on art that I've ever read. I highly recommend you check out his website (Ray Carney on Life and Art) which features his writing about other indie filmmakers, and American culture.

Those of you who are considering buying this book on Cassavetes and are reading the customer reviews should know that the guy who's written the damning review on this page under the title 'A major league disappointment' does that kind of thing a lot. Really, if you check out other books on Cassavetes and other reviews this person has written you'll see that he sees himself as some kind of guardian of the flame of Cassavetes. In other words, he's a sort of posthumous stalker with a huge grudge against anyone who's written on him. So my honest advice is to ignore his spite and check out the book to make up your own mind about it. Actually the book by Charity was very well reviewed by all the specialist and populist film magazines. It earned four stars in all of them and was rated 'Must By' in Empire magazine. I bought a copy after reading the reviews and found it a thoroughly enjoyable book, informative, witty, caring and intelligent.

Thanks at last to Tom Charity for an informative and thrilling biography of Cassavetes, who for far too long has been embalmed in the turgid prose of Ray Carney. In Charity's terrific book Cassavetes comes to life as imaginative, humorous and human, well-loved by the dozens of collaborators who supply revealing testimony, anecdotes and opinions that pepper Charity's sparkling new biography. It's a great read, lively and fascinating, written with tremendous agility and an affection for the man and his films that's positively contagious. Forget Carney and his sprawling, self-indulgent tomes - this is witty, tender, sharp and superb. Highly recommended to anyone who loves movies.

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Far from being a rush job, Charity's book boasts considerable new research and interviews with most of the important figures in Cassavetes' life (though, sadly not Gena Rowlands, his widow). I spotted a handful of errors, generally minor cultural lapses you might expect from a foreign critic - but, let me emphasise, these are few and far between. Packed with great, sometimes hilarious anecdotes (Cassavetes really rocked!) Charity's book brings JC to life - and the same can be said about Cassavetes' notoriously difficult films, which have rarely been explored with such vivid insight and penetration. As a major bonus, the book comes with fascinating tributes from the likes of Gary Oldman, John Sayles, Jim Jarmusch and Pedro Almodovar, to name but a few. It would be worth buying for these alone - but then it would be worth buying without them too. At last someone has broken Ray Carney's unhealthy critical monopoly on one of America's best - but least understood - film-makers.

I don't believe I've seen more than two of Mazursky's films but I enjoyed his book, especially the juicy chapter on his adventures with the increasingly more bizarre Peter Sellers. This is not a biography, but rather a series of essays about his involvement with different Hollywood people and some chapters about his current life and childhood. Recommended.

An interesting, light and witty Summer read that gives you insight into Mazursky's career and tales of movie production. Mazursky, born in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn started out as an actor (Blackboard Jungle), moved on to be a comedy writer (Danny Kaye, I Love You Alice B Toklas) when acting parts were infrequent, and made his directorial debut with Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice. My favorite scenes in the book? When a young Mazursky catches his zade eating his bubbe's herring on the afternoon of Yom Kippur; when Eisner and Katzenberg ask Mazursky if he thinks that the I.B. Singer story (Enemies, A Love Story) is too Jewish... maybe it can be about the Cambodian Holocaust instead of the WWII one; when Richard Dreyfus pulls out of the Enemies project; and the creation of Down&Out in Beverly Hills.

I loved reading this book, both from the standpoint of appreciating Paul Mazursky the director of many of my favorite films and reveling in Paul Mazursky the no-holds-barred storyteller. But--and, I'm sorry, there is a 'but'---why devote one sentence to the great Art Carney, who Mazursky calls the most pure actor he'd ever worked with, and then not tell the reader WHY he feels that way about Carney? There are no anecdotes to share about Jill Clayburgh or Robin Williams? Come on, Paul, give! This lapse is mostly compensated for by Mazursky's tales of traveling in the "then" Soviet Union and South America, his memories of working for Danny Kaye and his sharing the bitter and the sweet about his family, his friends and the ups and downs of his life. The chapter about Mazursky's relationship with his mother is especially powerful and a reminder that much of the pathos within even his funniest films came honestly to him. So, five stars for what's here---just would've liked to have seen more!

It was with great anticipation that i awaited the arrival of this book, being a great fan of Cassavettes, a man who in my mind is truly a saint. But whilst reading its opening chapter one fine spring evening, and quite content with the sentiments expressed thus far, i couldn't help but feel somewhat cheated, that Carney's ideas weren't surprising or particularly revealing in any way. A rather shocking sentiment given the brutal, challenging, and often heartbreaking nature of the work this man was writing about.

Upon further reading though i realized it was not so much what Carney was trying to say (or what he was neglecting) that bothered me, but rather the way it was written, the way he had chosen to outline his information. The book is about three-hundred pages long, but would only make fifty pages or so of good tight writing. Its prose is extremely repetitive. The problem being he decided to review each movie individually, drawing pretty much the same conclusions for each film (for honestly it could be argued that Cassavettes made the same movie over and over again), when he should have divided his chapters according to theme, and applied the films themselves to his conclusions. As it stands now if you read the chapter on Faces there is no point in reading the one on Love Streams because Carney makes the exact same points in virtually identical language. Extend this through the six films collected in this book and you are in for one exhaustingly boring read.

I would however recommend the new Cassavetes on Cassavetes, also compiled by Carney, but written primarily in John's own voice, as expressed in numerous interviews.

It was with great anticipation that i awaited the arrival of this book, being a loving fan of Cassavettes, a man who in my mind is something of a saint. But whilst reading its opening chapter one fine spring evening, and quite content with the sentiments expressed thus far, i couldn't help but feel somewhat cheated, that Carney's ideas weren't surprising or particularly revealing of the films in any way. A rather shocking sentiment given the brutal, challenging, and often heartbreaking nature of the work this man was writing about.

Upon further reading though i realized it was not so much what Carney was trying to say (or what he was neglecting) that bothered me, but rather the way it was written, the way he had chosen to outline his information. The book is about three-hundred pages long, but would only make fifty pages or so of good tight writing. Its prose is extremely repetitive. The problem being he decided to review each movie individually, drawing pretty much the same conclusions for each film (for honestly it could be argued that Cassavettes made the same movie over and over again), when he should have divided his chapters according to theme, and applying the films themselves to his conclusions. As it stands now if you read the chapter on Faces there is no point in reading the one on Love Streams because Carney makes the exact same points in virtually identical language. Extend this through six films total and you are in for one exhaustingly boring book.

I would however recommend the new Cassavetes on Cassavetes, also by Carney, but written primarily in John's own voice, as expressed in numerous interviews.

I'm not sure what book the reviewer below this read, but I don't know how many times I'd have to read about films that completely re-imagine the way I (and our popular culture) see the world and my own experience before I'd feel "bored" or anything less than inspired and envigorated. In fact, I read this book very often - not just to gain information, like a dictionary or an encyclopedia, giving me facts and figure data I didn't have before, but as mental calethenics, or something like spiritual openess training. This is a much more meaningful and important activity than thematic comparison and contrsating, no matter how technically interesting that is. As the concepts and points of view on the world process thru my brain as I read them off the page, I gain new abilities to understand and see - and this takes work, and often repetition. So I reccomend anyone who reads this book and hopes to gain insight, not just into Cassavetes and his films, but into their own personal attitudes, to keep themselves OPEN, as Cassavetes explicitly did in every frame of film he exposed, and to always give the artist (or author) the benefit of the doubt before passing judgement based on arbitrary ulterior motives (which, naturally, we all have). This isn't easy (especially to the greatly film cultured), but I dare say you'll enjoy this book, and your life, a lot more.