JohnCassavetes Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Over at CHUD, they're reporting that acclaimed actress Gena Rowlands was on television recently and mentioned that "her son was originally going to direct an Iron Man movie...he's now instead thinking of doing Captain America." Rowlands' son -- with legendary actor/director John Cassavetes -- is Nick Cassavetes. Nick doesn't really have any projects of this type on his resume, but he was attached to the awesome-looking Iron Man for quite a while before Jon Favreau took the reigns. Not to suggest that Rowlands is unreliable by any means, but for now just chalk this up as a tasty little rumor.

Nick Cassavetes has a pretty diverse filmography. Like his father, he was an actor before he started directing -- you might remember Nick as Dietrich Hassler in Face/Off -- a movie with some of the greatest character names of all time. He started his directing career with smaller films like Unhook the Stars and the interesting She's So Lovely, with John Travolta and Sean Penn. From there, he jumped to more commercial fare like the decent Denzel Washington flick John Q and the favorite movie of pretty much every female I know -- The Notebook. Most recently, he gave us the kinda ridiculous Alpha Dog, which featured an unintentionally hilarious performance by a fat-suit clad Sharon Stone. So the guy can do a lot of different kinds of material, sure. But do you think he'd be a good choice for Captain America? And we still don't have a cast for the thing -- who do you want to see step into the tights? This guy?

According to a report in Screen Daily this morning, little Zoe Cassavetes is set to join dad John and big brother Nick as a feature film director. With only a single short under her belt, Cassavetes has lined up an impressive cast to star in her debut, including Gena Rowlands (who she gets to call "Mom"), Parker Posey, and French icon Jeanne Moreau. Entitled Broken English, her film explores the life of a woman in her 30s who "is becoming debilitated by a lack of luck in love." (What on earth does that mean? Like, physically crippled? That seems just a little bit dramatic, doesn't it?)

Despite the impressive cast, the movie's budget is less than $2 million. It's being produced by Andrew Fierberg, Christina Weiss Lurie, and Steven Shainberg (Fierberg produced Secretary, which Shainberg directed) for Vox3 Films, a new independent production house based in New York; in order to succeed, Fierberg believes the studio needs to keep all budgets below $2 million, and that $1 million is ideal. If the money to produce a film cannot be raised within a year and a half, however, he sends writers and directors on their ways, so that their ideas don't die for a lack of funds. Though the company has only completed a handful of projects (including Shainberg's forthcoming Fur, which stars Nicole Kidman), they have six in various stages of development, and hope to "build a library of low-budget films" within a few years.