Cast View all

	Ben Gazzara	Cosmo Vittelli
	Timothy Carey	Flo
	Seymour Cassel	Mort Weil
	Robert Phillips	Phil
	Morgan Woodward	The Boss
	John Kullers	The Accountant
	Al Ruban	Marty Reitz
	Azizi Johari	Rachel
	Virginia Carrington	Mama
	Meade Roberts	Mr. Sophistication
	Alice Friedland	Sherry
	Donna Gordon	Margo Donnar
	Haji	Haji
	Carol Warren	Carol
	Kathalina Veniero	Annie
	Yvette Morris	Yvette
	Jack Ackerman	Musical Director
	David Rowlands	Lamarr
	Trisha Pelham	Waitress
	Eddie Shaw	Taxi Driver
	Sonny Aprile	Sonny
	Gene Darcy	Commodore
	Ben Marino	Bartender
	Arlene Allison	Waitress
	Vincent Barbi	Vince

Crew View all

Director	John Cassavetes
Writer	John Cassavetes
Producer	Phil Burton, Al Ruban
Musician	Bo Harwood
Photography	Mitch Breit, Al Ruban

Personal

Notes

Father's Day 2021 gift from Beth

John Cassavetes was a genius, a visionary, and the progenitor of American independent film, but that doesn’t begin to get at the generosity of his art. A former theater actor fascinated by the power of improvisation, Cassavetes brought his search for truth in performance to the screen. The five films in this collection-all of which the director maintained total control over by financing them himself and making them outside the studio system-are electrifying and compassionate creations, populated by all manner of humanity: beatniks, hippies, businessmen, actors, housewives, strippers, club owners, gangsters, children. Cassavetes has often been called an actor’s director, but this body of work-even greater than the sum of its extraordinary parts-shows him to be an audience’s director.


John Cassavetes engages with film noir in his own inimitable style with The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. Ben Gazzara brilliantly portrays a gentleman’s club owner, Cosmo Vitelli, desperately committed to maintaining a facade of suave gentility despite the seediness of his environment and his own unhealthy appetites. When he runs afoul of loan sharks, Cosmo must carry out a terrible crime or lose his way of life. Mesmerizing and idiosyncratic, the film is a provocative examination of masculine identity. It is presented here in two versions: Cassavetes’s original 1976 edit and his 1978 one, nearly thirty minutes shorter.

SPECIAL FEATURES
New, high-definition digital restorations of the 1976 and 1978 versions of the film, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks on the Blu-ray edition
New interview program featuring actor Ben Gazzara and producer Al Ruban
Audio interview with Cassavetes from the 1970s
Stills gallery
Trailer
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
New cover by Lucien S. Y. Yang

Tags

Links