A Star Is Born (Bradley Cooper)

[Pop Trash]

One never has the sense here that one has in Cassavetes films of simply being dropped into a scene and having to try to figure out what's happening, how the characters are related to one another, and how the scene relates to everything that's come before (e.g., the scene in Husbands of the three men berating a female singer). Whether Cooper went to the Actors Studio or some scenes were partially improvised is irrelevant to the final result.

a) there's plenty of drunken discombobulation going on in this version of A Star Is Born, formally brought on by both camerawork and editing and b) I don't think Cassavetes is nearly as radical as you are making him out to be. Faces and A Woman Under the Influence in particular were fairly well seen within what today would be called indie film audience circles. They were both nominated for Academy Awards. I've never been lost watching any of his films. I also think both Cooper and Cassavetes are uninterested in exposition and plot mechanics.

[baby doll]

a) there's plenty of drunken discombobulation going on in this version of A Star Is Born, formally brought on by both camerawork and editing and b) I don't think Cassavetes is nearly as radical as you are making him out to be. Faces and A Woman Under the Influence in particular were fairly well seen within what today would be called indie film audience circles. They were both nominated for Academy Awards. I've never been lost watching any of his films. I also think both Cooper and Cassavetes are uninterested in exposition and plot mechanics.

a) The characters may have been discombobulated (and perhaps the camera as well at times, although I can't think of any examples now), but as a viewer, I never felt that way.

b) Popularity doesn't preclude radical formal procedures. Ozu and Tati are two obvious examples, and while one could argue that Cassavetes isn't quite as radical as those filmmakers, his films begin from a philosophical position antithetical to that expressed in A Star Is Born: Whereas Cooper's film is about staying true to yourself, which implies that everyone has some immutable essence, Cassavetes' characters are in a state of perpetual becoming. (Incidentally, both Faces and A Woman Under the Influence were self-distributed by Cassavetes' own company because no distributor wanted to handle them.)