Since his death in 1989, John Cassavetes has become increasingly renowned as a cinematic hero -- a renegade loner who fought the Hollywood system, steering his own creative course in a career spanning thirty years. Having already established himself as an actor, he struck out as a filmmaker in 1959 with Shadows and proceeded to build a formidable body of work, including such classics as Faces, A Woman Under the Influence, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, and G1oria.

Cassavetes on Cassavetes is the autobiography he never lived to write. A triumph of research, eleven years in the making, the book recounts an extraordinary saga: three decades of film history, chronicling the rise of the American independent movement as it was lived by one of its pioneers. Gathering his own interviews with Cassavetes (conducted during the last ten years of the director's life) alongside discussions with artists who worked with him (including Peter Falk, Ben Gazzara, Gena Rowlands, and Jon Voight), Ray Carney presents the great filmmaker in his own words -- frank, uncompromising, humane, and passionate about life and art.