John Cassavettes

I've heard that during the making of this film he was being interviewed on a local new York TV Show and expressed contempt for the film he was making and his desire to make his own films. He wound up promising viewers that he would make a much better movie if they would send him the money to do so. Incredibly, people did and the result was "Shadows" and the beginning of his career as a director.

What interests me is that "Edge of the City seems like an excellent film and just the sort of film and role that an actor ambitious to do quality work would be proud to be in. It gives me an image of Cassavettes being basically uninterested in anybody's work, except as a paycheck and 100% obsessed with his own ideas.

I was amazed to see in his several episodes of "Burke's Law", a show I liked as a kid but which must have seemed like absurd fluff to him. obviously he was just picking up another paycheck. But I'm more amazed that he would look at something like "Edge of the City" as being on the same level as "Burke's Law": just a paycheck. But it appears he must have.




The past is a series of presents. The present is living history we are privileged to witness