Sitting in the sweltering lobby of a Bowery hotel, the 69-year-old star of the low-budget indie movie ‘Home Sweet Hoboken” – a film set in New Jersey and helmed by a Japanese director – is about to go in front of the camera when a shirtless young white guy with big muscles and abundant tattoos comes up and grabs his hand.
‘Ben Gazzara!” he says in a strong Brooklyn accent. ‘I’ve been a fan of yours (MD+IT)all my life(MD-IT).”
The hardcore hometown fans of this tough New York native never forgot him, not even during his long sojourn in Italy in the 1980s. But now Hollywood, at least young independent Hollywood, has rediscovered the veteran actor.
Since the Coen brothers’ ‘The Big Lebowski” in 1998, Gazzara has worked on seven movies, and this summer he has a key role as a Brooklyn neighborhood boss in Spike Lee’s much-awaited ‘Summer of Sam.”
Jack Palance and Martin Landau both enjoyed similar senior comebacks in character roles. But Gazzara’s resurrection is boosted by an aura of coolness that dates back to his 1970s collaborations with John Cassavetes and Peter Bogdanovich (‘They All Laughed”).
It is an aura that feeds off Gazzara’s image as a talent who turned down big-deal parts in favor of ‘art” – and which has kept his reputation high despite having played few lead roles in truly great movies.
A member of the Actors Studio, he starred in the first Broadway production (by Elia Kazan) of Tennessee Williams’ ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” in 1955. His film career began with Otto Preminger’s famed 1959 ‘Anatomy of a Murder,” in which he played opposite Jimmy Stewart. (His character was Lt. Manion, the soldier accused of the killing of his wife’s alleged rapist.)
Since then, Gazzara has been in some 81 big- and small-screen movies. Some were good; some, like the disastrous ‘Inchon,” were awful. Most were somewhere in between. But in all of them, Gazzara made the most of a glowering, even menacing presence.
In the mid-’60s he moved to L.A. to star in the TV series ‘Run for Your Life.” And in 1969 he made ‘Husbands,” his first film with his close friend Cassavetes.
It was followed by ‘The Killing of a Chinese Bookie” and ‘Opening Night,” both highly regarded by those who deem Cassavetes a great American talent.
But American movie offers dried up for Gazzara in the early ’80s, and he moved to Italy, where he found plenty of work and where, he says, ‘I fell in love with the lifestyle.”
‘Some of the pictures were first-class, like ‘Tales of Ordinary Madness,’ and ‘Il Camorrista.’ That was by the kid [Giuseppe Tornatore] who did ‘Cinema Paradiso,’ but ‘Camorrista’ is a much better film. I’d put it against any gangster picture ever made.”
Language was not a problem in Italy (where he and his wife still have a home). Gazzara’s parents were first-generation immigrants from Sicily who never spoke a word of English. They lived in a tough tenement on 29th street between First and Second avenues.
‘It was all cold-water flats, half Irish and half Italian.” He went to Stuyvesant High School and spent a couple of years studying engineering at City College before going to the New School to study theater.
According to Gazzara, his American comeback ‘started with David Mamet calling me for ‘The Spanish Prisoner.’ Then the kid [Vincent Gallo] called for ‘Buffalo ’66.’ Todd Solondz called me for ‘Happiness.’ Spike phoned me for ‘Summer of Sam.’ He was in Italy, directing an evening of singers. So we met in Modena and talked about his project.”
Gazzara praises the authenticity of the Italian-American milieu in Lee’s movie. ‘He must have grown up in an Italian neighborhood!” And he likes the way Lee – an actor himself – doesn’t get in the way of his players. ‘Quite frankly, many directors don’t like actors at all.”
Although young American filmmakers often venerate the chaotic-looking movies directed by Cassavetes, Gazzara insists that Cassavetes’ movies were ‘not as improvized as people think they were. They were highly rehearsed and highly scripted. I hate improvization that sounds like improvization.”
Gazzara likes the character roles he’s been getting. (‘ ‘The Spanish Prisoner,’ ‘Happiness,’ ‘Buffalo ’66,’ ‘Summer of Sam’ – I must have good taste because they’re all good pictures.”) And, because he doesn’t have to be on the set for the whole film, ‘You try to steal the picture in three weeks.”
And he likes working on small independent films for young directors, like his present project, which he says is ‘really off the beaten track.”
For his part,’Home Sweet Hoboken” writer-director Yoshifumi Hosoya is thrilled to have his cast led by the star of ‘The Bridge at Remagen” and is suitably impressed by Gazzara’s quiet, easy professionalism.
For Gazzara, working here again after a decade and a half abroad has another advantage: ‘I don’t know who anybody is. That precludes jealousy. Sitting at Spago in L.A. I asked my agent who’s that? He said, ‘That is getting $12 million a picture.’ He pointed at a billboard and said, ‘That’s making $14 million a picture.’ And you know, it felt wonderful not knowing who they were. Ignorance really is bliss.”