“Another depressing movie for the depression,” Abel Ferrara cracked, after a screening of his 1992 film Bad Lieutenant at Anthology Film Archives on Saturday night. The screening was held to raise money for Cinema Nolita, an indie video store on the verge of having to shut down for lack of funds (they’re having another benefit tonight, a concert featuring The Virgins and a DJ set by Animal Collective). Ferrara, who lives in the neighborhood and is a regular patron of the store, turned the the post-movie Q & A into an angry but resigned meditation on the ways in which New York, indie film and the world have changed in nearly two decades, to get us from the point where someone like Ferrara could make a film on the streets of New York, to the point where someone like Ferarra may soon be unable to rent a film on the streets of New York.
“Watching this film, it’s kind of sad,” Ferrara said. “At that time, there was some kind of indie film scene going on, and we could make a film and get it distributed. Why that indie film industry isn’t there [now] is caught up in the changing times.”
Several times during the evening Ferrara grumbled over the compromises involved in getting his upcoming 50 Cent-starring Jekyl & Hyde adaptation off the ground. “We’re just trying to get the movie made, and now every movie’s being made in Grand Rapids, Michigan, even if it’s set in Liberia. I’ve never been to Grand Rapids, but they’re bending over to give movies cash [via tax incentives].”
“I don’t know if we could have made [Bad Lieutenant] in Grand Rapids,” Ferrara said, pausing to laugh to himself. “But in this day and age, if you get money to do a movie, you’re gonna go to Mars.”
In response to the leaked promo trailer for Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant remake, some people are claiming the film doesn’t look like a Herzog work at all. This is surprising, especially since the scene with the old ladies reminds us of the Aguirre act-at-gunpoint legend. Plus, ever since we heard the news of this “reimagining” we thought it was too befitting for Herzog to rework Abel Ferrara. However, that had more to do with the idea that both filmmakers are batshit crazy, not that their films are really that similar.
Still, wouldn’t it be more exciting to see Herzog take on something even less appropriate for his style and taste? Inspired by the Twitter meme #wernerherzogremake, which began yesterday in connection with the Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans promo, we’ve selected ten films we’d love to see Herzog redo just to see what his warped perspective would bring to these stories. While most of them are slightly tied to something he’s made in the past, each is still a completely unlikely project for Herzog to take on. But hopefully he’ll only see such implausibility as a challenge and actually go with one of our suggestions. …Read more
This has been quite the week for me to wish Nicolas Cage still made good movies. Besides crying over the fact that his latest sci-fi action thriller involving disaster prophesy was #1 at the box office despite being panned by critics, some of my unrelated experiences over the past seven days have coincidentally included the following: watching Wild at Heartfor the first time; learning from locals that Moonstruckwas partly shot in my neighborhood; discussing, at a party, not only the merits of The Rock, but also its qualifications for inclusion in the Criterion catalog. I’m now thinking I should stay home tonight and watch a marathon of Raising Arizona, Face/Offand Adaptation.
Or, maybe I can just lay back and think about how Disney’s The Sorcerer’s Apprenticeis going to be Cage’s return to quality. I know, I know, those of you who didn’t stop reading at my profession of love for The Rock are now wondering if I’m crazy. “Certainly this movie is going to be terrible,” you’re saying to yourself (as you plan your derisive comment). And besides, Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant“remake” shall be his next good film. Well, maybe, but after seeing the new production photos from Apprentice circulating the net (originating at JustJared), I’m prophesizing that the Fantasia-inspired film will be the Moonstruck to Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans‘ Raising Arizona, or the Face/Off to Lieutenant’s Con Air, or the Adaptation to Lieutenant’s Windtalkers. Perhaps I am soiling my reputation by confessing my overextending appreciation of Cage’s career, but you have to respect a guy who allows himself to look and be so ridiculous for his art.
The rest of the film blogosphere’s responses to the photos after the jump:
Hell hath no fury like Abel Ferrara underpaid for his intellectual property. In an lengthy interview with Nick Dawson for the FILMMAKER Blog (pegged to the long-awaited US first run of Ferrara’s 2005 film Mary, which starts at Anthology Film Archives on Friday), the filmmaker has more complaints about the Nicolas Cage-starring, Werner Herzog-directed remake ofBad Lieutenant. The big problem seems to be that rather than offer Ferrara and his crew a big (or, biggish), Ed Pressman and the producers of the remake simply paid Ferrara “twenty grand” and shut him out. My favorite quotes from the interview, taken out of context:
Yesterday, MEAN Magazine released (or, sent out a press release about) their latest viral video, a “remake” of Bad Lieutenant starring SNL’s Bill Hader (”Eat your heart out, Werner Herzog,” reads the explanatory title card.) It’s okay. The best part is Hader’s final, weepy line, “I’m such a bad lieutenant!”
But more interesting is a MEAN video that I missed, the above “Emma Stone in Busby Berkeley 2.0.” With Stone (Jonah Hill’s love interest from Superbad) wearing a vintage bathing suit and staring coquettishly at the camera amidst digital kaleodoscopic chaos, it’s less Busby Berkely than a retro-porn spin on Esther Williams. But it’s pretty!
Andrew Sarris may be one of the most influential American film critics, but here’s a claim, located within his recent review of In Search of a Midnight Kiss, that may not hold up to some of his better-remembered theories: “Even when we confront 40-year-old virgins of either gender, movies refuse to show them compensating for the lack of a sexual partner. There is lasting shame involved in this spectacle.”
Not to ever, ever profess superiority over Sarris, but I’ve nonetheless compiled today’s list as a way of proving the man wrong. There are actually tons and tons of masturbation scenes found in non-porn movies, from the low brow to the high brow, from as indirect as the boy wizard playing with his wand under the covers in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkabanto as direct as the non-simulated masturbation in Michael Winterbottom’s 9 Songs and John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus(which would probably feature my #1 pick, from the sound of it, if I ever bothered to see it).
The following 10 films are some of the most memorable masturbation scenes, excluding any movies that might be considered examples of, in Sarris’ words, “the fringe exploitation genres” (I’ve even gone so far as to leave out mainstream horror like The Exorcist, considering it’s crucifix masturbation is far from the self-pleasuring moments Sarris is clearly interested in). Oh, and I’ve attempted to chart these films artistically from lowbrow to high.
All together now, in our best Werner Herzog voice: “Don’t call it a reeeemaaaaake!” But whatever it is, Val Kilmer and Xzibit have joined the cast of Bad Lieutenant.
Timothy M. Gray’s midyear assessment of the Oscar race finds a lot of ways to say “no one knows anything.” The uncertainty is causing such a frenzy that we’re apparently considering handing out Oscars to Hamlet 2 and (maybe even worse) The Visitor. Please, Toronto, deliver us from this crisis!
Speaking of: Spike Lee’s Miracle at St. Anna and the Michael Cera/Kat Dennings romantic dramedy Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist have been added to the TIFF lineup.
Now that we know, courtesy of Stu at Defamer, that Werner Herzog’s remake of Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenantis not so much a remake as it is like a new entry into a franchise, a la the James Bond movies, we at SpoutBlog wonder what other ’90s indie favorites could be continued with similar yet “completely different” installments.
I remember back in the day thinking that Clerksshould be a franchise, each film focusing on a different crappy job experience, but now that Clerks IIhas come and gone, that idea will likely never be realized. Of course, the concept of sequels unrelated to the original aren’t new — just look at any sequel title substituting the number 2 (or II) with the word Too. But nevertheless, here’s a few suggestions for other crazy foreign auteurs to take into consideration:
Kids- Looking back, Larry Clark’s then-shocking debut is pretty tame. Nowadays you see teens doing worse things on commercial television. So, how about someone makes another Kids movie every decade or so to expose us to the latest generation of teenagers and how appallingly different they are from the previous generation. It would be like Apted’s Up documentaries, except it wouldn’t follow the same people. …Read more
Paramount doesn’t seem to be completely shutting down indie arm Paramount Vantage––they don’t seem to have given up on producing smaller-ticket prestige films, unlike Warner Brothers––but they are “folding the marketing, distribution and physical production departments of Paramount Vantage into the larger studio,” and eliminating three jobs in the process.
Legendary 70s exploitation filmI Spit On Your Graveis getting a remake. The producer of the remake cites the continuing meaninglessness of the rating system as the remake’s commercial imperative: “After seeing what was done with an R rating on films like ‘Saw’ and ‘Hostel,’ we think we can modernize this story, be competitive with what this marketplace expects and not have to aim for an NC-17 or X rating.”
Independently produced films are expected to “dominate activity in the late summer and early fall,” as SAG continues to issue waivers to producers not affiliated with studios as strike talks drag on. Also: Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenanthas a July 8 start date!
Brian DePalma will make a film about The Boston Strangler. Yawn.
“Did everybody see the film?” Abel Ferrara cried at the jump of the Cannes press conference for Chelsea on the Rocks, compulsively putting on and pulling off a pair of black wraparound sunglasses, sipping on a can of Budweiser. Several journalists coughed in response. Said Ferrara: “What is this, avian flu? Everybody cough, yeah. We got a Howard Hughes complex as it is.”
The press conference as a whole was a woozy, half-sickly, half-populated affair…maybe typical of anything involving Ferrara meeting journalists, but definitely emblematic of the Festival itself at this point. But! But! Ferrara twice talked about Werner Herzog’s alleged Nicolas Cage-starring remake of his Bad Lieutenant––once in response to a question from a reporter, and once just because he apparently felt like he needed to vent.
You know how sometimes, things happen and you can’t really believe they’re happening, and you wonder if maybe you’re in a dream, or if maybe the universe folded in on itself and you got caught in some kind of warp in space and time that allows things to happen that wouldn’t be allowed on an ordinary plane? Um. Werner Herzog is remaking Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant. With Nicolas Cage in the Harvey Keitel role.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
filmcouch-114
Hell hath no fury like 
Now that we know, 
Paramount doesn’t seem to be completely 
