The filmmakers who inspired Steve Buscemi’s directing career: “Unlike any other”
Think about the world’s best actor, and there is a good chance that the name of Steve Buscemi isn’t nearly as close to your mind’s lips as it should be.
Buscemi is perhaps the defining character actor of his generation and is as able to traverse genre and style as he is to deliver classic lines without ever truly stealing the spotlight. His ability to facilitate a movie instead of dominate it is both a blessing and a curse. But it is also the skill that makes him a great director, too.
Taking on two feature films, as well as helming episodes of legendary series like The Sopranos and more, Buscemi is slowly growing into a celebrated filmmaker. But his debut, Trees Lounge, should remain his most adored release.
Released nearly three decades ago, Trees Lounge still feels fresh today. Starring Buscemi as an alcoholic in love with his ex-girlfriend’s niece, the movie was nominated for awards and adored by critics when it was released. The picture has become a little-known gem, delicately balanced between comedy and pathos and, therefore, perfectly crafted to impress your cinephile friends.
As such, Buscemi was asked about his favourite movies and the influences he took into filmmaking when interviewed for the book My First Movie: Twenty Celebrated Directors Talk about Their First Film. He revealed that both John Cassavetes and John Huston were huge influences, while he also announced that working with certain directors also inspired his feature debut as a director.
“Working with people like Jim Jarmusch and Alex Rockwell and seeing how important the visuals were to them, I absolutely picked up on that stuff. One film that I love and that was part of the inspiration for Trees Lounge was the John Huston film, Fat City,” Buscemi revealed. “The other person who was a big influence was John Cassavetes. I had taken a screenwriting course one weekend where this guy tried to give you the basic formula for writing a script.”
Buscemi continued on, revealing that writing was the most difficult part of filmmaking for him. “I didn’t want to write a Hollywood script, but I thought I should at least know the basic rules if I wanted to write something. He said that you should know your beginning, middle and end,” Buscemi revealed. “You should have an outline. You should know what the characters are going to go through, and the rest is just filling in the dialogue. Well, I was just the opposite. I was good at writing dialogue but terrible at story, at plot structure. So I tried to start writing, and I couldn’t. I was just totally blocked.”
Also, while being interviewed for Lowenstein’s book, which was published in 2002, Buscemi revealed that he was incredibly impressed with the improvisational filmmaking style applied by Cassavetes. “I then saw a retrospective of Cassavetes’s work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York,” Buscemi stated. “I had always known who he was, but I thought he was too ‘out there’ for my tastes. But when I saw all his films together, I was inspired because they didn’t seem to have a strict structure. Watching them a few times since, I think they do have a structure, but it’s unlike any other film. The thing people say about his films is that they look improvised.”
Buscemi continued, detailing the fact that Cassavetes’s filmmaking wasn’t all improvised, but the way he worked with his actors made things feel very authentic. “From knowing Seymour Cassel and hearing him talk about it and from reading about Cassavetes, they weren’t all improvised,” he added.
“The first one, Shadows, came out of a series of improvisations, but the rest he wrote. He gave his actors a lot of responsibility, and I’m sure there were improvisations that happened within the scene. But basically, they were working from a script.”
Based on these comments, it feels evident that Trees Lounge would not be the film it is without the work of Cassavetes.
