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

   

Trees Lounge

Year of Release:  1996
Director:  Steve Buscemi
Screenplay:  Steve Buscemi
Starring:  Steve Buscemi, Chloe Sevigny, Mark Boone Junior, Anthony LaPaglia, Elizabeth Bracco, Seymour Cassel, Carol Kane, Samuel L. Jackson
Running Time:  95 minutes
Genre:  Drama, slice-of-life

In a tough, working-class neighbourhood of New York City, alcoholic Tommy Basilio (Buscemi) is a fixture at the local bar, Trees Lounge.  His girlfriend of eight years has left him for his boss and former best friend, Rob (LaPaglia).  Rob subsequently fired Tommy from his job as a mechanic for stealing money form the till.  In between drinking at the Trees Lounge, Tommy spends his time half-heartedly looking for work, eventually being given an ice-cream truck, following the death of the owner.  He also manages to form a connection with Debbie (Sevigny), the seventeen-year-old niece of a former girlfriend.

This is a downbeat, slice-of-life drama, very much in the John Cassavetes school of gritty realism, and features Cassavetes regular Seymour Cassel.  By and large the film sticks with Tommy, but it also deals with the lives of other Trees Lounge regulars, all of whom seem to lead pretty miserable lives.  Some crucial elements in the film are left ambiguous, not depicted on screen we are left to decide for ourselves what really happened from the often differing versions of events that the characters give us.  Not much happens in the film and, in keeping with the lives these characters lead, there are no real conclusions, despite glimmerings of hope it looks as if they will keep doing the same things over and over again.  This is a strong debut from Buscemi as a writer-director making largely unlikeable characters sympathetic and giving the film a strain of dark comedy.  The film has a strong cast full of recognisable faces from nineties independent movies.  The film's largely plotless nature and slow pace may put off some viewers but it is worth sticking with because it is a well-performed and well-written drama.  Buscemi scripted and directed one other film Animal Factory (2003) and has directed a number of TV episodes, but Trees Lounge really makes me which that he had done more as a writer/director because, on the evidence of this, he could have become a notable filmmaker as well as an actor.     

Steve Buscemi in Trees Lounge