The Killing of a Chinese Bookie

Ok. Let's say you consider yourself no slouch at film appreciation or criticism. Your friends say you MUST watch The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. You watch. And you come away thinking it's mostly a big bowl of bloated, talky, overlong, poorly paced, drearily written, under-acted film verite that, and anyone who stays to the end, deserves a medal. This film strikes me as an movie experiment, where all the actors are given one direction per scene, and then told to ad-lib all 137 minutes or whatever interminable length it runs. I simply do not see any "genius" in this movie whatsoever. But I want to, because I don't want to seem stupid or dense, or artistically ignorant. Since I know I'm neither, then I can only conclude that this is a movie that critics like to use to seem smarter than they are, because no matter how I try, I don't see it. And I'll bet most people who watch it, won't see its merits either. On the plus side, it's got one of the coolest titles in modern film history. A movie with a title that cool deserves a better treatment. And it's also an interesting slice of 1970s Los Angeles life.

It's been said by many that "Chinese Bookie" is the toughest of any Cassavetes films to digest. There are many slow passages (here I'm referring to the 1976 original version), many moments of embarrassing awkwardness, as you are forced to watch extended sequences filled with players who aren't any more talented or skilled than those at your local summer stock production or junior high school play. Yet, it's very difficult not to be compelled by the story, especially as embodied in the character of Cosmo Vitelli, who Ben Gazzara seems to channel effortlessly, as if he were a second, transparent skin. Cosmo is a fascinating character. He owns a rather ratty strip club/cabaret joint on the Sunset Strip that fronts production values and performers of the qualities mentioned earlier, does middling business, and spends nearly every dime he makes "living the high life" or the "the image" of what someone in his profession should espouse. He swills $100 bottles of Champagne, cruises around town in his plush chauffeured Caddy, an entourage of bimbettes in tow, usually to a dive mob-run poker joint that inevitably lands him in massive debt. He would be an easy character to scorn or mock in another film, but not as Gazzara and Cassavetes portray him. Cosmo is proud of his little world and his accomplishments, and further more, could not give a damn if anyone doesn't approve of them. "You have no style," he sneers at gangster Al Ruban early in the film after the thug condescends to him. As weird as it sounds, you have to respect someone like that, even when he finds himself increasingly trapped by circumstances and succumbing to self-doubt. At the end of the picture he says how important it is to "feel comfortable" with oneself and while we don't believe for a second that Cosmo really feels this way, we know he *wants* to. It's a refreshingly human response in a movie that only contains more of the same. It's not a conventional audience pleaser by any means, but if you've watched other Cassavetes pictures and like his candid stream-of-consciousness style, give the 1978 edited version of "Bookie" a watch before you see the original. Cass not only cut half an hour of footage, he did it with (what else?) incredible style and creativity, really tightening the structure of the film as a whole, considerably juicing its already engaging premise. Quite possibly the most overlooked gem from one of the '60s and '70s most commercially under-appreciated directors.

Well, at least Cassavettes was never boring. How many directors can say that? This is the oddest of his films, a strange riff on gangster/noir pictures that starts at the end and takes us right back there. The night club manager, player by Gazzara, has just finished paying for his joint, as he would say. He goes out and loses some money gambling and finds that he has to kill someone in order to pay off his debt. A normal Hollywood film would make the owner an anti-hero, one to pity. This film just lets him be the slime he is. In one scene, he tries to tell a woman that his mother and father didn't love him. She tells him that she doesn't care and he should leave. That is, in some ways, the point. He doesn't have to be a louse and a loser, but he is. Ironically, he gives a speech later about choosing who we are and being comfortable, two things that he has failed at miserably. Like all of Cassavettes' losers, Gazzara is easy to hate. The painful part for the viewer is that we see the pain in their lives too. Most films, even great ones, leave you feeling one way or another about a character, but Cassavettes' films leave you stumped. I guess that that is great, but it is very odd and hard to understand.

I'm a patient man, but this bored me. The characters -- and especially our protagonist -- just wasn't compelling enough to capture my attention for all the long, long scenes that inched out the plot. Still, an interesting look inside the lives of a strip club owner and his girls. Has similar feel to Boogie Nights, but without the energy.

THE KILLING OF A Chinese BOOKIE is John Cassavetes fascinating look into the world of Cosmo Vitelli, owner of the Crazy Horse West, a California strip club. Cosmo, played by Ben Gazzara, owes a fortune in gambling debts, and agrees to commit a murder to payoff the loan. It's a set-up from the get go because the mob never believed he could pull it off, and was hoping that he would be killed, and then they would inherit his club. Cassavetes creates an homage to The French New Wave by employing surreal settings and improvisational dialog to create a Dadaist framework for the tale. Many scenes begin in near blackness, and abruptly, LA sunlight streams into the murky darkness while actors lines ricochet and overlap. The entertainment at the club is not the standard "Bump and Grind", but a strange 'Theater of The Absurd' where Cosmo orchestrates the action, or "he'll throw you out on your ass". Where Martin Scorsese used high energy rock'n'roll to highlight this same gangster demimonde, Cassavetes employs a more idiosyncratic soundtrack to heighten the psychological dimensions of the piece. Ben Gazzara provides an unforgettable portrait of a man grappling with a life that is beyond his ability to control. Also, Seymour Cassel puts in a wonderful performance as a mobbed up club owner. All of Cassavetes's films are noteworthy, and THE KILLING OF A Chinese BOOKIE is one of his finest.

The real beauty of a Cassavetes film is that he is always driven to portray his stories in the most realistic manner possible, warts and all. The majority of mainstream cinema is structured to deliver an escapist experience to the movie-going public because that is likely the primary reason why most people go to the movies; to see, hear and experience escapist fantasy. I do not malign such films, nor do I sneer at the people who enjoy them. Indeed, I enjoy an espionage, horror or sci-fi fantasy as much as the next guy. I even enjoy an occasional melodrama (The Seventh Veil, anybody?). However, when I see a film that deals with the human condition... with everyday people, I much prefer a realistic perspective into their world. After all, mayn't people's lives and situations be compelling enough, if told properly, without escapist gloss and wooden, heavily scripted dialogue? I believe so. This is where Cassavetes shines, and where his influence upon current independent film can most powerfully be recognized. Cassavetes pacing in this film is what probably drove many critics and viewers to criticize it so harshly. It can move at a snail's pace, especially during the painfully mediocre cabaret sequences (the cabaret owner Cosmo Vitelli is sublimely portrayed by long-time Cassavetes cohort Ben Gazzara). To watch the stumbling, off-key stage performances of the emcee and strippers is like torture, especially given the screen time Cassavetes devotes to their antics. The consequence is, however, that we are transported to a very REAL, very pathetic place in reality. Anything glossier or more skillfully choreographed would shatter the truth of what we see. People talk over one another, they mumble, they cease to speak when you expect to hear them... But as mundane as these sequences seem, the fact remains that the story would be all the less compelling, were we to see our anti-hero in flashy sequences that synthetically push the story forward, beyond a natural pace that is apropos to the situation. In the end, you realize that Cosmo (despite his impulsive behavior and seedy lifestyle) is a very real, very likable and very kind human being. He loves, and he is loved. His small entourage of powerless friends love him, and they feel loved. In the final sequence, our hero attains an almost Buddhist-like sense of the inevitability of his fate, the sweetness of the immediate moments of satisfaction that are his last few , his realization that there is, ultimately, nothing to regret except the finite.

One of the most stimulating relaxations I know is simply floating on water. The good thing in living a short walk from the beach is that I get to do this every other day of nearly half the year. It's great at dusk, whereby the sea is not some abstract volume but the specific sensation of upfloat, and the early moon is that rock over there from me. Tangible moments of world, encompassing what the Chinese call the tao. No film even compares to the feeling, certainly no piffle Koyannisqatsi. But a few filmmakers come close to this totality as something felt. Cinema is nothing in a large sense, that is until a certain point where it becomes a most powerful tool for enlightenment. Cassavetes is one of those guys, and knows just how to use it. So I revisited this after many years as part of my Cassavetes series, this time watching the extended version. The shorter one may be tighter, more focused, but I'll always opt for a longer stay in his world. The film is the perfect summer night movie, one to watch with the distant sound of motor noise flowing through open windows. Cassavetes loves the night, the neon signs, the sound of traffic, the hubbub of the nightclub, the brushing of people in close spaces. The film is full of extremely memorable spaces, years later I could recall Cosmo standing in the entrance of his club, the backalley where he's beaten up, the empty highway, the phonebooth in the middle of nowhere, running from the Chinaman's house. Here, Cassavetes stretches two things. The existential noir where desire, not even so much for poker money, the desire it seems to look comfortable in front of people, summons the noir darkness. Usually in a noir, from that point we get some hallucinative fooling with the narration, here completely merged with the flow of things. The murky proposal for the kill in the cramped car, nothing telegraphed. The subtle menace and helplessness around the gangsters. The foreshadowing bang of the flat tire. The inescapable framing where he was the stooge of fate all along. And a more gentle self-reference, where Cosmo, standing for Cassavetes, gambles with money-people and loses. These mafia executives want from him a straightforward movie that ends with a killing, the simplest stuff, which he grudgingly delivers. The starkest contrast from the fancy, lively improvisation going on in his club, that both reflects and ribs at Cassavetes' own stuff. He does it his way of course, with fumbling, confusion and uncertainty. And still succeeds. Only The Long Goodbye rivals it in the crime sweepstakes of the 70s, no doubt inspired by this. Here, because of the adoption of genre with its clear horizon, the tethers are easier than previous Cassavetes films. Oh there is the anxiety, but that is part and parcel of the greater life. More than any of his films though, it achieves that sublime floating sense that encompasses a concrete totality. His camera excites me like no one else's. Antonioni adopts the transcendent position. Tarkovsky the one of flowing mind. Cassavetes adopts the position of tentative coming-into-being, his visual space has a thick and viscous quality, it has time, it has a tangible and floating gravity, all things coming to be and vanishing again in a cosmic vitality. Cosmo, a man of cosmic vitality. All through the gangster stuff, Cosmo keeps worrying about the show and the club. Because the show and the atmosphere around his club are of the soul of this man, the images and living space worth living for—dreamy and spontaneous, scented air, a little sloppy because it is re-discovered each night. But that is as much a role, the entrepreneur, as that of the killer, the gambler, the suave playboy, masks for the night. Not the original face. Deep down I get the sense of a weary joy that runs deeper than happiness, a mono no aware. Something to meditate upon.

John Cassavetes is widely regarded as being the father of American independent film. Using his fees as an actor in films such as "The Killers" (1964) and "Rosemary's Baby" (1968, he funded his own films away from the interference of Hollywood. In this film, Ben Gazzara plays Cosmo Vitelli, a nightclub owner who lives way beyond his means and manages to get into a massive gambling debt with the mob. This leads to the gangsters putting heavy pressure on Cosmo to perform a hit for them in order that he pays back the debt. The film deals with Cosmo's attempts to extricate himself from these proceedings whilst still keeping his integrity, not to mention his life intact. The film can be seen as having parables with Cassavetes own dealings with Hollywood studios and his attempts, not unlike those of the films protagonist to keep his integrity and his artistic vision intact. The film is a classic example of 70's American cinema when the old studio system had collapsed and filmmakers had the freedom to make whatever films they liked no matter how personal or non commercial they might seem. This is a truly great film.

The real world can be at times a bland and ugly place. The world of reality cinema is by nature a mirror image without embellishment. The Director's style is an in your face, life is what it is, and that is as much entertainment you are going to get, so deal with it. So we have a bland and ugly film. Minus any attempt at gloss, except maybe on the lips of the strip-club girls, that the anti hero so respects and loves. This film tries so hard to be Avant Garde that it is painful and embarrassing. The shaky camera, it must be said, is a precursor of things to come with the advent of video, although this is probably an unintentional insight, and only a way of stating, life has no tripods. But the unfinished scenes, the over extended scenes, the off camera action and results of action, the pans that end up nowhere, and the mumbled dialog are too pretentious and do the opposite of the "reality" the Director had in mind. In fact, it only clearly demonstrate that a movie is being made and by a filmmaker that looks like he has yet to enter the first semester of film school. This movie is self-indulgent to the point of narcissism yet it means to be free spirited with an ever penetrating, soul searching gaze outward, irritating when it means to be comforting, and an exercise in the most deceitful of behavior, using the entertainment business, not to entertain but to offend our sensibilities, not with art, but with artlessness. We are like the saps that paid money for the most not sexy, strip club shows ever. It's a calculated rip-off, it is not clever it is a semi-talented movie makers masquerade.

A movie which a friend from a film class in university hated so much she broke up with her boyfriend because he liked it, "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie" became my first Cassavetes film when I watched it this morning. Widely seen as a misfire on release, extremely divisive now, with many regarding it as a self-indulgent experiment of the very worst variety and others as one of the greatest examples of independent American cinema in the 1970's, my take on "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie" is somewhere between the two extremes. It's an admirable film in concept, a sort of gangster movie focused entirely on characters, with very natural dialogue (surprisingly most of it was scripted, I would've guessed it was improvised for the most part) and some interesting visuals, as interesting as Cassavetes could manage with his miniscule budget anyhow. Yet much of the time it doesn't just seem like wanking, it IS wanking. Moreover, for all the hoopla over how formally interesting the movie is it's barely even all that cinematic, seeming more like experimental theater at times. Ben Gazzara is terrific, the saving grace of the film and the only thing which I really cared about while watching it. With a mildly interesting but still amateurish director helming the movie this couldn't be the sort of thing it wants to be. If it is not visually sophisticated, if the visual storytelling is not strong enough, it needs narrative pull from the script. It doesn't have any. Moreover, it's a character piece in which none of the characters are even remotely interesting, unless you're the sort who pats films on the back for daring to portray a character who has a certain occupation as something other than an archetype. Now of course I will get people telling me I'm an absolute moron and can't handle anything slow or lacking in explosions and cleavage, but many times during "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie" I couldn't help but think back to "The Conversation". That's a 'slow' movie not dissimilar to this in some respects. That's also a great movie. This isn't. I think it's pretty easy to explain that as the difference between sophisticated craft and amateurish, occasionally interesting craft. The 1976 cut is a chore to sit through, and I don't think I'll ever bother with the 1978 cut.