The Killing of a Chinese Bookie

 Year:  1976

Director:  John Cassavetes

Screenplay:  John Cassavetes

Starring:  Ben Gazzara, Timothy Agoglia Carey, Seymour Cassel, Azizi Johari

Running Time:  135 minutes (cut to 109 minutes)

Genre:  Drama, thriller

Cosmo Vittelli (Gazzara) owns and operates the sleazy, failing nightclub Crazy Horse West in Los Angeles.  To make matters worse Cosmo owes a large gambling debt to the Mob.  The gangsters order Cosmo to kill a bookmaker, Harold Ling (Soto Joe Hugh).  After some less than gentle persuasion, Cosmo reluctantly accepts his task, but soon finds the hit is much more complex than he had expected.

Writer, director and actor John Cassavetes appeared as an actor in a number of big Hollywood movies such as The Dirty Dozen (1967), for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and most notably a starring role as Mia Farrow's traitorous husband in Rosemary's Baby (1968).  However, he is most influential as a writer and director, and his echo is still felt today in the world of Independent Cinema.  Despite its seemingly conventional thriller plot, in terms of style and approach, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie is anything but conventional.  More a character study than a thriller, the film focuses on the dilemmas and pressures of Cosmo Vittelli, a man whose entire world is this sleazy club, and who puts all of the money he earns back into the club, as well as spending a lot of time and effort writing and directing the cheesy cabaret acts, hosted by the club compere "Mr. Sophistication" (Meade Roberts), even though he knows that the audience only care about seeing naked women.  He also has a severe gambling problem.  To celebrate making his last payment on a previous debt to a loan shark, he immediately goes out on a night on the town and ends up losing everything on poker.  Ben Gazzara, who saw Vittelli as a kind coded version of Cassavetes himself, gives a great performance, giving Vittelli a kind of down-at-heels charm, and a cocktail of hope and despair.  As is common with Cassavetes' work, the film has a loose, documentary style look, filmed guerrilla-style on the streets and in nightclubs, restaurants and homes.  The performances, which include Cassavetes regular Seymour Cassel and veteran gangster movie actor Timothy Carey, have a naturalistic, improvised feel about them.  The film was originally released in 1976 with a running time of 135 minutes, and immediately tanked at the box office, being withdrawn from general release after a week, with even Gazzara stating that it "was too long".  Cassavetes re-released the film in 1978 in a much shortened version of 109 minutes, with scenes drastically rearranged and some new footage.  For a long time this was the only version available, but in 2004 the 109 minute and 135 minute versions were released on DVD, so now you can watch both, should you care to.

The eagle-eyed viewer may notice a familiar face in some of the crowd scenes.  David Bowie sat in on much of the filming, just to watch Cassavetes at work, although he was not involved in the film.  However he can be glimpsed in the audience during some of the nightclub scenes.

Ben Gazzara in The Killing of a Chinese Bookie