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We're reviewing John Cassavetes' Opening Night (1977), starring Gena Rowlands, as part of our dive into the Criterion box set of five Cassavetes films. This is a filmmaker some call the father of independent cinema, and we get into why he had to finance his own work, act in other people's movies to bankroll his next project, and watch this one bomb so badly on release that the studio pulled it from theaters.
We talk through the film's play-within-a-play structure, the way Cassavetes shoots actors slipping in and out of character backstage, and the ambiguity at the center of the story: is the young fan who dies early in the film a real ghost haunting Rowlands' character, or a figment of her imagination as she confronts getting older? We land in different places on that question, and we get into why Cassavetes never spells it out for the audience.
We also spend some time on Rowlands herself, tracing one brother's first exposure to her through Gloria back in 1980 without even realizing Cassavetes directed it, and talking about how she and Cassavetes never won a competitive Oscar despite being nominated multiple times between them. Ben Gazzara, Joan Blondell, and a scene-stealing cameo from Peter Falk all come up, along with a tangent on Cassavetes' work with Kubrick-adjacent actors and comparisons to other directors who financed their own films outside the studio system.
Before we get into the review, we also talk about our upcoming trip to San Diego Comic-Con, where we'll have press credentials for the first time. We're already deep into schedule chaos trying to figure out how to cover a five-day, eighty-plus-page event as first-timers, so expect a recap episode when we're back.
If you've been meaning to start exploring Cassavetes and don't know where to begin, we make the case for Opening Night as an entry point, and let you know the whole five-film Criterion box set is currently half off.
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