“People have got to learn to be dopey without the dope.”
— John Cassavetes

Full Excerpt:
“I hate the Hollywood idea of saying, ‘We’re going to make this film, and it’s going to be about a junkie, it’s going to be about a guy who takes pot.’ Because they know that there’s a great mass of people out there who are drug-oriented.

It’s a drug-oriented society that we live in. It would be pretty dishonest of me to make a drug-oriented picture when I don’t dig drugs. Because then I would be a commercial son of a b!tch.

But I can understand why people take dope. I don’t think it can be cured by saying it’s wrong, by saying to your children, ‘Don’t do this.’ For people to stop, you have to give them a different way, a better way. People have got to learn to be dopey without the dope.”

Editor’s Note:
Cassavetes’ reply to criticisms that his title characters were ‘bourgeois’ and that contemporary ‘realities’ like drug-taking were left out.
(Cassavetes on Cassavetes, Edited by Ray Carney)

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