DepressedBergman@DannyDrinksWine
John Cassavetes on why he is against movies like Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" (1971):
"There’s a difference between being violent and having violent emotions. There’s a difference between anger and the act of shooting somebody in the face. I’ve never known anyone in my life that ever shot anyone in the face. And I’ve seen it on the screen too many times. There’s no morality there, no feeling of anything for anyone. It’s a lie to say that people are violent. There are more good people than there are bad people. To see constant terror builds a nation, builds moviegoers that can only love constant terror. We become used to it, inured to it like doctors knowing they have to be tough. They can’t think of that person with tenderness, but must be dispassionate.
There’s a lot of violence in 'Minnie and Moskowitz' (1971) but violence that I can understand. Violent feelings, but nobody ki!!s anybody or shoots anyone or knifes anybody. Without having seen 'A Clockwork Orange' (1971), I know, because I know the story. I really couldn’t go to see it, because I don’t want to see people ki!! each other. I don’t want to see any more hostility toward one another. I just don’t want to see that reflected any more. I’m tired of violence and dehumanization. I think the artist has a tremendous obligation to bring trust to people. Because the only thing we don’t have time for is ourselves. We can’t live with ourselves if we have no respect for our life and the human condition and the foibles that exist in all of us – then we have no tolerance, we’re all Nazis. We can’t survive with people being that inhuman. It’s impossible.
I look at 'A Clockwork Orange' and ask, why did Stanley make it? Did he make it for anyone in particular? Why did he choose a story like that, in this day and age? For what: to incite a revolution, to stop everything? Maybe that would be OK, if he really believed that, but I don’t believe it. I don’t know why he made it.
The more films are made about insanity, the more fashionable it will become. And, eventually, as we become more and more dehumanized, there will be no answers for anyone. You can’t get any pleasure out of being an animal. There should be a Kubrick who can make that film and show that life can be violent and harsh. But, on the other hand, where are the equalizing forces of happiness? Art films, in stressing the weakness of society, have lost their balance. The majority of people would rather be filled with illusion than disillusion. And we just have to find some way to reflect that. Not just to constantly say, ‘Oh, God, things are wrong and all, and I don’t know what to do about it.’"
('Cassavetes on Cassavetes', edited by Ray Carney, 2001)
