Page "A Woman Under the Influence" Paragraph 4

Upon completion of the film, Cassavetes was unable to find a distributor, so he personally called theater owners and asked them to run the film.

According to college student Jeff Lipsky, who was hired to help distribute the film, " It was the first time in the history of motion pictures that an independent film was distributed without the use of a nationwide system of sub-distributors.

" It was booked into art houses and shown on college campuses, where Cassavetes and Falk discussed it with the audience.

It was shown at the San Sebastián Film Festival, where Rowlands was named Best Actress and Cassavetes won the Silver Shell Award for Best Director, and the New York Film Festival, where it captured the attention of film critics like Rex Reed.

When Richard Dreyfuss appeared on The Mike Douglas Show with Peter Falk, he described the film as " the most incredible, disturbing, scary, brilliant, dark, sad, depressing movie " and added, " I went crazy.

I went home and vomited ," which prompted curious audiences to seek out the film capable of making Dreyfuss ill.