Today while Googling for John Cassavetes – something I do quite regularly just as a reminder that filmmaking is art – I found this 1982 short film by American filmmaker Tamar Simon Hoffs. At the time, she was a student at UCLA and needed an actor for her lead role. Cassavetes decided to do a favor for her because Ben Gazzara’s daughter was producing the film. So he gave the filmmaker 24 hours of his time and they made this charming and excellent short film about a recording industry guy getting a really good haircut. It’s a great film because it doesn’t try hard. It just watches a man get happy because of where he is and who he is talking to.

What a magnificent thing for an artist to do – to share his time helping a student make a film. I think that’s great.