Jacob Elordi thought he was going crazy until he saw a classic John Cassavetes film.
“I probably made three movies that I thought were pretty bad when I was young, and I had hopes and dreams of being this kind of terrific, ferocious stage actor. So I was pretty not fond of myself at that time,” explained the Australian actor during an event presented by Cartier Cinema Club at Santa Monica’s Aero Theatre on Friday. “And I watched this movie and it was one of the first times that I saw the creative process of an actor sort of fleshed out in detail. The movie made me feel a lot less insane and alone.”
It proved to be such a pivotal experience in his creative life that Elordi handpicked that film — 1977’s Opening Night starring Gena Rowlands as a renowned actress teetering on the edge of a breakdown as she inches closer towards big Broadway opening night — for Friday’s screening, which marked the first stateside Cartier Cinema Club event after the initiative’s launch last month at the Venice Film Festival. The luxury house created the initiative to honor the spirit of cinema while paying tribute to artists who make big-screen work. Cartier ambassador Elordi not only selected the film, he sat for a 30-minute discussion about it alongside Oscar-winning filmmaker Sean Baker and moderator Kim Morgan.
Like Rowlands’ character, Myrtle Gordon, Elordi thought he, too, “was having some form of mental breakdown.” But he was able to exhale once he saw how the storyline played out. Rowlands stars alongside Cassavetes, Ben Gazzara, Joan Blondell, Paul Stewart, Zohra Lampert and others.
“This movie showed me that what was actually happening was hopefully the artistic process, the process of creating to a character. You can’t just learn the lines and say the lines. It showed me all the stuff that was going on inside that I thought was sort of my body and mind breaking down [but] was actually a part of the acting process,” explained the Oscar nominated Frankenstein star.
Elordi revealed that he watched Opening Night last week in preparation for today’s event, and he had some similar thoughts to those from his first watch, notably because he’s about to start another new movie shortly that has thrown him for a loop. (Though he didn’t name the project, he’s due to start shooting Ari Aster’s Scapegoat alongside Scarlett Johansson, Jude Law, Ella Purnell and Caleb Landry Jones.)
“I’m getting ready to do a movie now and I’ve been kind of throwing myself on the floor and wondering, should I just drink a lot of vodka? Or should I smash a window? What do I need to do to get to this point?” he wondered aloud. “And me re-watching the film now after making over 10 movies or something like that, again, it invited me back into the creative process and what it means. You can be searching for a character and not know that you’re searching for it. It starts happening in your toes and your knees and your chest. And that’s why I picked this movie because it always makes me feel less crazy and more like I’m actually a part of a process of filmmaking that’s been happening for a long time.”
Morgan, a screenwriter known for work on Nightmare Alley directed by her husband Guillermo del Toro, then asked Elordi if that’s because he’s so absorbed by Rowlands performance. He is and was. “Yeah. I mean the amount of times that I just want to throw myself on the floor and cry and scream and tell the director to go fuck themselves and just drink and drink and drink. It makes me feel a lot less alone as an actor.”
That said, Elordi drew laughs when he said that he had no clue how Rowlands’ pulled off any of her scenes on the big screen, particularly the ones where she was really throwing herself around and acting under the influence. “I don’t know how you do that and not look like a ham because everything she does is so big and so expressive, but it’s all completely contained in truth inside her. I’ve watched that scene so many times. You can spin around in circles until you’re dizzy, you can get drunk, you can do all kinds of things, but I don’t know how she does that. I don’t know how she does anything. She’s a genius.”
Baker then weighed on on Cassavetes’ filmography and how inspired he is by the entirety of his work.
“You get asked often as an independent filmmaker, ‘What is your favorite Cassavetes?’ And it really depends on the day because, first off, they’re all masterpieces. They deal with very personal, universal issues and struggles that we all go through. So it really depends on where you are in your life,” he explained. “It’s where I am in my life and that’s how I gravitates towards a certain title. I said Husbands back in the day because I think that was my guy film. Then when I started exploring genre cinema, I was more drawn towards The Killing of a Chinese Bookie.”
Later, when he started working more with actors and honing his craft as a filmmaker, Baker then leaned more toward A Woman Under the Influence and Opening Night, he said. “I can go on forever about him. He’s basically the godfather of U.S. indie cinema and had really just in many ways I think showed us how to do it.”
Morgan closed the conversation by asking both Elordi and Baker if they take inspiration from the many risks Cassavetes took throughout his career.
“I think all artists should take risks,” said the Anora auteur in answering first. “Obviously he did throughout his entire career, which may be hurt in the moment. He was always ahead of his time, but it also proves one very important thing — that cream rises. We’re here 50 years later talking about this film and celebrating this film? That proves that taking risks, staying true to your own, not compromising, and making art that’s a little unsafe is worth it.”
Baker’s words generated an enthusiastic round of applause.
“[Cassavetes] said something like, ‘I’d love to be part of the studio system and have my rent paid and my family good, but I just can’t do it. I’d love to, but I just can’t do it.’ And that’s my favorite thing about these movies. There was no other story he could have told. It made him too ferocious and angry or upset. There was no other way that he could have made movies,” Elordi added in closing. “In movies now, we need a lot of that. Something that you can’t deny, something that you have to do, no matter if it sends you broke, hungry, tired, jobless, you’ve got to make that movie that you have to make. And that’s exactly what we do.”