So explains Gena Rowlands in 1984’s Love Streams. She’s not-so-firmly holding onto sanity when she says it. I love Love Streams.

Another quote from the film:

Everyone in the world is very screwed up.

A new print of Love Streams—it’s a new print made from a kind of junky old print, which is maybe the best way to reproduce Cassavetes films—is playing now at Northwest Film Forum. I suggest going to see it tonight, because tonight’s showing will be introduced by Richard Jensen (Clear Cut Press) and Calvin Johnson (K Records) and followed by a contentious debate. From Suggests:

I think we can all agree that Gena Rowlands is the greatest actress currently living. I think we can also agree that she’s better than all the dead ones.¹ Love Streams has been described as John Cassavetes at his worst, but I really don’t see that argument. Rowlands pulling up at her brother’s house in a taxi full of goats and miniature horses? Rowlands trying to get Seymour Cassel to laugh by backflipping fully clothed into a swimming pool? What more do you want, people? After the screening, there will be a debate about this movie’s merits. There will also be free beer.

At the press screening—attended by me and one other person, who I think was a local blogger—Michael Seiwerath, the executive director of NWFF, introduced the film thusly: “I hate this film. This is the most divisive film we’ve ever played at Northwest Film Forum. Half the staff loves it, half the staff hates it.”

Here are some other opinions:

Nick Vroman, NWFF’s communication’s director:

I think Love Streams in incredible. I’ve been a huge fan of it for years.

Josh Feit, Stranger news editor:

It’s the worst film ever made.

Annie Wagner, Stranger film editor (who saw it once, long ago, she thinks):

Honestly, I don’t remember it at all.

Seiwerath again, not-quite-backpedaling:

Gena Rowlands is fucking brilliant in the film and above reproach. But Love Streams is a failure. If you hate Cassavetes, it reinforces everything wrong with him. First of all, Cassavetes, who is a great actor, is horrible in the movie. He’s miscast, and he knows it. John Voight was supposed to play the Cassavetes part, but his involvement fell through, which totally shows. Cassavetes’s acting is transparent. You can see right through it. He’s not convincing in the least. The biggest disaster of the movie is, of course, the opening sequence, the bar sequence—you’ve got this horrible singer in bad 80s clothing, she can’t sing, she’s not sexy, and of course the good things about Cassavetes’s films is the cinéma verité feel of them, they could be gritty and cheap but that’s fine, but for this bar scene, it’s painfully clear that they built the bar for the shoot, and the walls are so flimsy that they shake when someone goes to grab a bottle. It has none of the joy or camp of a good low-budget film. It doesn’t work. It takes you out of the film. It’s just a failure. Failure is the operative word of the whole film. It’s a John Cassavetes failure. Which is fine, he’s an uneven director. Some curators I’ve talked to say it’s the best film he ever made, which is an absurd statement in the face of A Woman Under the Influence. And Seymour Cassel is just stumbing around saying his lines, and he’s completely eclispsed by Gena Rowlands, to the point that he becomes invisible. Maybe during A Woman Under the Influence Cassavetes was drinking red wine and during Love Streams he was drinking NyQuil.

Rich Jensen:

It’s packed with complicated, messy, irresponsible characters that relish their sins, that laugh at things that aren’t funny, that dress and drink like grown-ups, and just keep going and going, colliding and colliding with each other. So, it’s just a farce, littered with children and a manic energy that overcomes any plot and keeps pausing to be seduced by astonishing music. Yes, it’s about love. I think it’s the right-shaped thing for capturing what love is like.

You really shouldn’t miss it. The movie is impossible to find as it is, and this version NWFF is showing has about 20 minutes extra than the version released theatrically in 1984. Northwest Film Forum is at 1515 12th Ave. The relevant phone number is 267-5380. The hour this occurs is 7 pm. The amount it will cost you is $5 or $8, depending on whether you’re a member of the organization. I’ll be wearing a necktie…

[¹This sentence was edited out of Stranger Suggests for space reasons, not because it isn’t true.]