Seminal to the world of Seventies maverick moviemaking: Deceased Artiste Gena Rowlands

Gena Rowlands was the very heart of John Cassavetes' cinema. She played other great roles on stage, screen, and on TV, but the six films she made with her first husband (she has had a second husband since 2012) will always be her defining works. 

Wim Wenders has said that she is one of the few actresses who could believably cry on-camera (on the level of Setsuko Hara, from the Ozu films), and she certainly could deliver dialogue like no one else. Of the six films, Woman Under the Influence is rightly considered her best-ever film performance. She physically inhabited the roles Cassavetes created for her, but it was also the dialogue that he wrote for her (which he allowed her to change, since he said she knew her characters better than he did) that lingers so long after the film is over. 

Rowlands in Faces.

Here in Minnie and Moskowitz (1971), Cassavetes has her talk about movies "lying" to their women viewers by presenting ideal men, men that don't exist, and giving women ideas on how to live. True to Cassavetes' style, he cuts the monologue before it properly concludes, but by then the message has been delivered (one that he will toy with himself later in the film — this speech is a "key" to the whole picture and its charming but highly unlikely happy ending).

And again, Gena proved to be (despite all of our love for Gazzara, Falk, Lynn Carlin, Ben Carruthers, and Seymour Cassel) the most essential performer in the most essential Cassavetes films.

 

Woman Under the Influence (1974) is indeed Cassavetes’ masterwork, and despite his pared-down visuals, the reason the film hits so hard is because of the lead performances by Rowlands and Falk. Several scenes in the film linger in the memory, but one that cannot be forgotten is the one where Rowlands’ character Mabel is having a breakdown in front of her family (including her really nasty stepmother, played by Cassavetes’ real-life mother) and her doctor. 

The scene is grueling because of our affection for these characters, but also because Falk’s character thinks he can snap her out of her condition and discovers that isn’t possible. Some viewers have found the scene difficult to sit through, and it is. But it’s the essence of Cassavetes’ art that we live through the happy moments in the characters’ lives and also must go through some of their worst moments. 

This particular clip is just the beginning of the breakdown sequence. I definitely suggest watching the entire movie if you can deal with truly “adult” cinema — having nothing to do with sex and everything to do with maturity.

 

One other moment that is utterly unforgettable from the Cassavetes films starring Rowlands is this bit from Love Streams (1984), in which Rowlands’ psychiatrist is chastising her for her denial that the love between herself and her husband has ended. Seymour Cassel plays the husband; thus Love Streams seems to be a sort-of sequel to Minnie and Moskowitz where the happy ending of the preceding film (“movies set you up,” remember?) is belied by the later unhappiness of the quirky couple. 

The psychiatrist in this scene is intent on getting Rowlands’ character to move on from her dead-end love for her husband. In a perfect Cassavetes blend, his questions seem amusing (telling her to get sex, “I don’t care with whom….”). But her insistence that love is a stream that doesn’t end is heartbreaking for the very reason that we’ve *all* felt that way about someone who no longer felt that way about us. It’s the universality of the characters’ dilemmas in Cassavetes’ films that makes them both so familiar and often somewhat uncomfortable. (But oh so human.)

 

The sequence above is echoed in a later moment in the film — set up as a dream sequence — in which an even more extreme balance is struck between humor and heartbreak, as Rowlands’ character bets her husband and daughter that they will love her again if she can make them laugh. She tries out all kinds of novelty-store comic toys on them, and the husband and daughter do not react. Cassavetes’ cinema of “discomfort” is so emotionally driven that even when it is fantasy-based, it is exceedingly familiar. 

Those are the three scenes that show Rowlands off to best advantage (with the caveat that the clip from Woman above is actually only the early part of what is a much longer, more intense scene). As a bonus I will include a sliver here from my phone interview, presented on the Funhouse TV show, with Rowlands and Seymour Cassel, on the occasion of the first release of Shadows and Faces on home video.

Joan Rivers’ late Sixties “girl talk” daytime show -- and meetings with Jerry Lewis that he claims never took place

Rarely can I spontaneously connect my last two blog entries, but I will do it here, to discuss the “feud” that went on between Jerry Lewis and Joan Rivers a few months ago. In this instance, the juxtaposition of items found on the Internet proves that at least one thing Jerry Lewis said in his initial “salvo” was an outright lie on Jerry’s part (or a big-time memory lapse).

The first shot fired over the bow was the introduction of Rivers’ name when Jerry was being interviewed by Maria Menounos earlier this year on the occasion of an event to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the The Nutty Professor and the requisite DVD re-release of the film. Jerry brings up Rivers as the one person he hates, and he also notes he threatened in a letter to have her beaten up (rather odd thing to admit in public). Note that Jerry claims he never, ever met Joan Rivers in person:

Jerry’s furious remarks (which did come apropos of nothing) were responded to by Joan on Ron Bennington’s “Unmasked” show on Sirius satellite radio. She maintains that the trouble began when she did a guest shot on the telethon (and btw, when I first discovered this clip on Sept. 4, it was titled: "Joan Rivers: Jerry Lewis is a unfunny, stupid asshole"):

You can pick sides in that battle of words from angry old Jewish comedians, but there’s one thing for sure: not only did Joan do the telethon (by her own account), but Jerry met her when he guested on a daytime talk show she hosted at the end of the Sixties, produced by her husband Edgar, called That Show with Joan Rivers. The episode in question is available for free viewing on Hulu at the moment.

That Show (1968-69) was a Virginia Graham-style “girl talk” daytime talk program, in which Rivers had a topic of “interest to women” and a single celebrity guest who would comment on the topic. Jerry appeared on the episode about disciplining children (at that time his NBC variety show had been renewed for a second season).

At the 8:00 mark before the end of the program Jerry tells the audience about the time he spanked his son Gary (who he notes is in Vietnam at that moment). Jerry boasts that he used a western-style belt and “put a couple of welts on him.”

He then goes on to affirm what his youngest (disowned) son revealed in his controversial National Enquirer expose article — that Jerry had intercoms installed in every room of his house so he could hear what family members were saying about him. He notes that he turned on the one in Gary’s bedroom, that he “wanted to hear him cry, wanted him to get it out.” Instead, he heard his wife Patti comfort the boy and Gary told her “Daddy’s the only human being in the world who loves me.”

He further notes, to contradict the children’s behavior expert who is the other guest on the show, that when it comes to spanking and physically disciplining children “You have to start this at 4.” He also notes that he loathes Reform Judaism (this comes up out of the blue, but is in reference to a metaphor about how young people like things “easier”).

Single best Jerry sentence: “My whole emotional fabric was enveloping his whole existence.”

So Jerry met Joan Rivers twice, with the longer example currently available for viewing on the Net. There are 65 episodes of That Show with Joan Rivers sitting on Hulu right now, and the guest roster is what could be expected of a daytime show shot in NYC in the late Sixties: Johnny Carson, Ed Sullivan, James Earl Jones, Marty Allen, Tony Randall, Joan Fontaine, Barbara Walters, Robert Merrill, Mary Travers, Nancy Walker, Phyllis Newman, Earl Wilson, Selma Diamond, Nipsey Russell, Corbett Monica, Morty Gunty, and Funhouse favorite Soupy Sales (often!).

A few of sample topics include [these descriptions were taken off of the Hulu site, I’m not correcting the grammar and spelling]:
—Joan and guests discuss women's hats with celebrity guest, Soupy Sales. 
—Joan and guests discuss catering with celebrity guest, Kitty Carlisle.
—This episode's subject is Men's Shirts with expert guest, Robt. Green. It also has Donald Pleasence on as a celebrity guest.
—This episode's subject is Boating Safety with expert guest, Admi. Joseph McClelland. It also has Barbara Walters on as a celebrity guest.
—This episode's subject is Manners with expert guest, Elizabeth Post. It also has Rocky Graziano on as a celebrity guest.
—Joan and guests discuss men's furs with celebrity guest, Shecky Green.

Three of the more intriguing shows feature Dick Cavett (about plastic surgery!), Shelley Berman (in a drearily-programmed show on gardening!), and this fascinating show with Lily Tomlin, in which two critics are asked to talk about "the stars of tomorrow." 

This episode has Joan talking about what she knew best, show business, and mentioning how few "lady comics" there are. Also, she tells an interesting anecdote about how Woody Allen kept doing the same act word for word, until a critic called him out on it. Lily closes out the episode by doing one of her characters, a freakish cosmetics expert.



One show I had to watch immediately is an episode about perfume featuring Gena Rowlands (whom Joan refers to as “Geena” throughout). For a Cassavetes cultist like myself, hearing Faces referred to on a daytime woman’s chat show is surreal; even more surreal is the fact that Joan had the guest *only* discuss the topic at hand. Rivers wishes Gena good luck at the Oscars, the show having been shot while Rowlands was nominated for Best Actress for Shadows.

Thanks to Steve K. for passing on this discovery. Praise his “whole emotional fabric”!