A Tribute to John Cazale

What is it called when you have thought about something one day and then later that week the same subject that you were thinking of reappears somewhere else, making you realise that you thought about that earlier. It’s not deja vue, because that’s just in the mind. This actually happened to me this week. Last weekend I was downloading the movie Dog Day Afternoon, and I just thought about Pacino’s co-star, John Cazale, and remembered reading about him on IMDB some time ago and discovering he died in 1978 of lung cancer. This morning I was using my guests bathroom (as my main one is being painted), and found that my last guest had left a copy of the latest British GQ magazine (Simon Cowell front cover). So I took it downstairs to read it, only to stumble across a story about non other, John Cazale. Wow, I thought, I was just thinking about him earlier in the week. Freaky. It was a sign though. I’m a firm believer that everything happens for a reason.

Anyway, the story was about the short, but ultra successful film career that is being paid tribute in a soon-to-be released documentary about Cazale titled, I Knew It Was You: Rediscovering John Cazale. Most people know him best as Fredo in the Godfather movies. But what is so special about this guy? He only made 5 movies in his short career, all supporting roles which added up to a little over an hour. But his skill at being a character actor, mostly sad, troubled characters, made him the envy of his peers and the ultimate for most directors. His friends and co-actors such as Pacino, DeNiro and Streep all say they learnt more about acting from Cazale than anybody else. Sure he only made 5 movies, but everyone of those movies were nominated for Best Picture Oscars, and each of them is considered the finest, most important films of all time- The Godfather (1972), The Conversation (1974), The Godfather Part II (1974), Dog Day Afternoon (1975) and The Deer Hunter (1978). They also hauled over 40 Oscar nominations in total. He didn’t really have the beauty or demeanor worthy of being a leading man, but apparently he still dated some of the most beautiful women in the world. The guy just had it. His girlfriend for the rest of his life was Meryl Streep who was at his bedside during his final moments. I will be scanning the QC article and posting it for those who can’t get a copy.

Speaking about character actors and/or bit players, there a few more actors that we see in just about every film. We know their faces, we recognize that they’ve been in other big films, but they don’t have major parts and we don’t know their names. I’ll mention a few here then you can add more as you wish and I’ll make a list in my Movies page. I like to call this segment: Hey, It’s THAT Guy!

The most famous one (for me anyway) is James Rebhorn.