A proud strip club owner (Ben Gazzara) is forced to come to terms with himself as a man, when his gambling addiction gets him in hot water with the mob, who offer him only one alternative.
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For much of John Cassavetes directorial career, "genre" was a dirty word. Though funded by acting in stuff like Rosemary's Baby and The Dirty Dozen, Cassavetes actively avoided including things like guns and gangsters in his directorial output. He wanted to tell human stories about real people. It wasn't until he befriended a young Martin Scorsese that he came to realize that these things didn't have to be mutually exclusive.
For my money, The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie is the greatest film ever made about the sacrifices one must make in order to succeed in the arts. It says it all! Through the power of allegory, Cassavetes is able to stand up for all the independents out there and by using a character like Cosmo Vittelli as our stand-in, he is able to proclaim that all forms of personal expression are valid, no matter how silly they might appear to the outside world. This was John Cassavetes' poison pen letter to the "gangsters" who hold the purse-strings and make us jump through hoops, and of course the handwriting is impeccable.
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