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I can't explain enough how much I loved the films of Ben Gazzara and how great his collaborations with Cassavetes are. This one is a real tragedy.

With the death of Peter Falk last year, looks like all who's left of the Cassavetes' male actors is Seymour Cassel.

Which is funny considering how he always seemed the oldest.

tarpilot wrote: And awful about Gazzara, too. Always a favourite. What I would have given to have been there to witness his shouting match with Pauline Kael.

I'm aware of Cassavetes shouting matches, but I always understood that Gazzara tried to keep thing cool during those moments.

AlexHansen wrote:Ben Gazzara

Very sad news.

knives wrote:

tarpilot wrote:And awful about Gazzara, too. Always a favourite. What I would have given to have been there to witness his shouting match with Pauline Kael.

I'm aware of Cassavetes shouting matches, but I always understood that Gazzara tried to keep thing cool during those moments.

There is one particular instance though where Cassavetes and Gazzara ganged up on her during a festival screening and would constantly berate and tease her. Not to mention the time where Cassavetes apparently stole her shoes and threw them out a taxicab window before a panel at a university.

His comment about not remembering working on They All Laughed is astonishing. So no recollection of Audrey either?

The Elegant Dandy Fop wrote:There is one particular instance though where Cassavetes and Gazzara ganged up on her during a festival screening and would constantly berate and tease her. Not to mention the time where Cassavetes apparently stole her shoes and threw them out a taxicab window before a panel at a university.

Yeah, there's an account in Cassavetes on Cassavetes of some premiere when Gazzara loudly declared to Pauline that she "wasn't a human being" in response to her savaging of Husbands. He was more or less the default peacekeeper on the infamous Cavett appearance, though!

And he died on the same day as Cassavetes. Crazy.

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie is just fantastic - I remember that I was thinking about it just the other day when watching Funny People on television for the first time and thinking to myself that Adam Sandler never got across that heartbreaking quality of someone who needs to perform and put on a show but who just cannot perform to the standards that they are aiming for. The sense of neediness without the talent to fulfill it, or the appreciative audience to praise anything more than the scantily clad girls. Gazzara's character in Chinese Bookie made me feel for his club owner while still presenting a flawed man in a seedy business, as well as making me upset that this guy's dreams were not working out and that he was also actively working to destroy himself too. Yet I still wanted him to in some ways succeed which I suppose in some very problematic ways, he does (despite the film starting at the Cosmo Vitelli's peak and spiralling steadily downwards). However watching Sandler in Funny People just made me wonder why I was even bothering to watch and care about such an idiot destroying himself.

One of the films that Gazzara was in which seems most overlooked is Giuseppe Tornatore's first film The Professor which, as its original title Il camorrista suggests, is set in the same environs as Gomorrah was decades later.

Plus of course he was great as the blind hermit in Dogville!

Zalman King. I can't seem to post a link for some reason, but the AV Club is reporting it.

Posted on the previous page.

Ben, Ben, Ben, Ben, Ben.

Bill Hinzman, who played the seemingly tiny but nonetheless historically colossal part of the first zombie to appear in Night of the Living Dead.

Although unfortunately he was also heavily involved with that 30th anniversary edition of Night which added a lot of poorly integrated 1998-shot footage into Romero's original film, including an 'explanatory' prologue and that first zombie digging himself up. A far better tribute is simply just to continue to celebrate his unforgettable entrance in the original film!

Spanish artist Antoni Tàpies

MichaelB wrote:Bill Hinzman, who played the seemingly tiny but nonetheless historically colossal part of the first zombie to appear in Night of the Living Dead.

Eerily, another Night of the Living Dead alum passed away the same day. Josephine Streiner, who also played a zombie and was the mother of the film's producer and co-star Russell Streiner (Johnny).

This is a sign that the undead are really coming...

"Big Valley" star Peter Breck.

dad1153 wrote:"Big Valley" star Peter Breck.

Not to mention the Shock Corridor star.

And The Beatniks

Whitney Houston.

Another star who threw it all away. Sad...

Just saw that on CNN. Really sad that her talent was wrecked by drugs and her diva attitude.

^^^ Don't forget to lay some of the blame for this on Bobby Brown's feet.

dad1153 wrote:^^^ Don't forget to lay some of the blame for this on Bobby Brown's feet.

True. That is one of the most sick marriages I've ever seen. Two drug addicts depending on each other and raising kids.

On a side note, I remember when a news like this of a music superstar dying would be breaking news on MTV and they'll would have had up to the minute coverage. Now, they are showing Teen Mom 2 instead and have not even put a scroller at the bottom of the screen mentioning the news.