Unhook the Son

Nick Cassavetes is an intense guy, but would you expect anything less from the son of incandescent actress Gena Rowlands and maverick filmmaker John Cassavetes?

Meeting with a reporter in a Hollywood restaurant, the 37-year-old director orders an egg-white omelet and vegetables and explains that he’s training for a marathon. That means he won’t be smoking for two weeks before the race. For today, however--gotta match?

He’s clearly an old hand at burning the candles at both ends. Still, one wonders where Cassavetes finds the time to maintain his running schedule of 60 miles a week.

His directorial debut, “Unhook the Stars,” opens Wednesday, and he just wrapped his second feature, “She’s De Lovely,” which stars Sean Penn and Robin Wright and is based on a script by Cassavetes’ late father. He’s in pre-production for his third film, “Unless That Someone Is You,” which is based on a script he was working on with his father before his death in 1989. Also in the pipeline with Penn is “The Crowded Room,” based on Daniel Keyes’ book “The Minds of Billy Milligan,” about a man with 24 personalities.

Cassavetes wrote “Unhook the Stars” for his mother, who co-stars in the film with Marisa Tomei, Gerard Depardieu and Jake Lloyd. This story of a widow whose life takes some surprising turns after her children leave home provides Rowlands with the meatiest role she has had in years. Rowlands, of course, collaborated with her late husband from 1963 to 1984 on eight films that were crucially important to America’s then-nascent independent filmmaking community; discussing any of this with their son, however, proves to be a delicate bit of business.

“Are we gonna talk about my parents?” he asks with exasperation. “I don’t have any hang-ups about being the ‘son of,’ because those guys are the greatest, but believe it or not, I had a normal childhood and my relationship with them was of a more personal nature. They never leaned on me about going into the business nor am I obsessed with establishing an identity separate from theirs. My work speaks for itself--it’s either good or it’s not--and what they achieved has nothing to do with what I may or may not achieve.”

Having gotten that off his chest, Cassavetes returns to the subject of “Unhook the Stars,” which was shot early this year in Salt Lake City.

“I shot it there because it has a very American--yet anonymous--look,” Cassavetes says of the film, which was budgeted at $7 million.

“I didn’t want to overtly declare where it takes place, because this isn’t a regional story--the experience central to the film is a universal one, and Gena does a sensational job of telling this woman’s story. Gerard’s wonderful too--he’s a kind man with an understanding of life that allows him to work on unusual levels, and I think he and Gena are a good screen couple. And Jake Lloyd, the little boy in the film, is terrific in that he doesn’t do anything--it’s a relief after seeing so many aggressively cutesy-pie kids on film.”

Critics agree that Lloyd is indeed a remarkable young actor; however, it is inarguably Rowlands’ film.

“I would’ve taken this part regardless of who was directing because this woman is a wonderful character and I obviously identify with aspects of her life,” Rowlands says.

“She’s arrived at a place in life that’s very mysterious, and most of us don’t know quite how to handle it. Some people try to keep repeating what they did, others get depressed and feel life has discarded them. Some people, however, are lucky enough to find another energy to go on, and this is what happens to Mildred--her love of a child triggers the remembrance of an emotion that leads her into an entirely different way of life.”

Of being directed by her son, she says: “I don’t know who Nick turned to for advice on the set, because it wasn’t I. When John and I started working together, people would make jokes about him favoring me, but what you want is a cohesive cast, so John and I never referred to anything except the work when we were on a set--and Nick and I did the same.

“Nick’s set differed from John’s in that Nick stuck to the script and wanted very little improvisation. John was looser about language, especially when he was young, and though he followed the script closer later in his career, even our last production [the 1984 “Lovestreams”] had some totally improvised scenes.

“Anybody who goes into the same profession as his father has to go an extra distance, and this is particularly true of performers’ children,” she adds. “They have to listen to stupid jokes, people either liked their mother or father or didn’t, and a constant comparison goes on. I think Nick has made his peace with all this, though, because he was very close to John and they had a lot of time to talk.”

‘When I was growing up, I was interested in basketball, girls and fast cars--movies were the last thing on my mind,” says Cassavetes, born and raised in New York and the eldest of the family’s three children.

Says Rowlands: “It never entered my mind he’d go into our business, although it should’ve because John shot several films in our house, so our kids couldn’t go brush their teeth without falling over a cable. They loved it too--they knew everybody and the house was always full, so they grew up feeling relaxed with the process of filmmaking.”

Nick Cassavetes’ indifference to film began to change, albeit slowly, when he graduated from North Hollywood High School and moved back east in 1976 to attend Syracuse University as a literature major. Dropping out the following year, he returned to L.A. and got a job at Sears as a janitor.

“I was directionless then,” he says, “and I wound up taking an acting class for no other reason than that I was seeing a girl who wanted to audition for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. I went along with her and, arrogant jerk that I am, decided I can do this.”

He was right, and by 1979 he was making a living as an actor. As for how good he was, he says: “Can I act? Yes. Am I a wonderful actor? No. . . . The reason I stopped acting was because I got tired of working in lousy movies and my wife said, ‘Why don’t you stop complaining and write something?’ So I did.”

In 1989, Cassavetes and his father started writing “Unless That Someone Is You.”

“It’s a dysfunctional love story about two people who are absolutely wrong for each other,” says Cassavetes, a divorced father of two daughters. “We’d only completed 15 pages when he died, so I finished it myself, and it will be the next film I direct.

“There are maybe 50 unproduced scripts of my dad’s around, and ‘She’s De Lovely’ is one of the best of them,” he says of his second film, which he is currently editing and is slated for release in May. “He wrote it for him and Gena to perform, but I have Sean Penn and Robin Wright in the leads. Sean and Robin play an alcoholic couple who are deeply in love but are both nuts. She gets molested, he snaps and winds up spending 10 years in a mental institution, then gets out and goes looking for her.

“By then she’s married to a wonderful guy played by John Travolta--he’s a crew guy from Jersey, a family man who gives his wife everything, and has a great capacity to love--and the film is about what happens to these three people.”

Cassavetes is over the moon about the footage he’s working with.

“There are good actors, then there’s Sean Penn--he’s on another planet and is so smart it’s dangerous,” he says. “And Robin’s every bit his match here--people have been waiting for her to get her breakthrough role, and this is it. She’s beat up for much of the story, so she’s not relying on her beauty, and the performance she gives takes a backseat to nobody.”

Asked what he envisions for himself in the long run, and whether he has any interest in directing a studio film, he whips out his wallet, shows his driver’s license and says, “See the name there? I’m not a studio guy.”