The Killing of a Chinese Bookie is a wry self-portrait of the artist as a struggling theater manager. Ben Gazzara plays Cosmo Vitelli, a nightclub owner and director of its sleazy stage shows who, against all odds, fights for his artistic and commercial independence. In debt and pressured by the mob (which wants to foreclose on his property), Cosmo is ordered to execute a Chinese gangster in order to pay off his gambling debts. In The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, Cassavetes brilliantly plays with and against crime-genre conventions and, in the process, offers up a biting critique of the role of capitalism in art. A critical and commercial failure when it was released in 1976, Cassavetes re-edited the film and reissued it in 1978 in a shortened version to similarly poor response. Tonight’s presentation is the rarely seen full-length version.