Old MCN Blogs
David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Monday, May 8th, 2006 - Comments Off on Willing and Abel: Surreal Sketches From Ferrara's Late-Night Tribeca Hoedown
Be Sociable, Share!

Willing and Abel: Surreal Sketches From Ferrara's Late-Night Tribeca Hoedown


As desperately as I tried to drag Ma and Pa Reeler to the New York premiere of Abel Ferrara’s Mary, my vacationing parents just were not going for the midnight-in-Tribeca vibe I was selling. But that is where my readers come in–at least that is where this reader comes in, one of the few who seem to have braved the late-night allegorical waters at Tribeca’s “secret screening” as Saturday (and the festival itself) bled to death into Sunday:

Last night was nothing if not memorable. There was an appropriate mania to the whole affair, not without the frustrations of chaotic experience- but nonetheless amusing. … (T)he screening (took place) in one of the theaters to the soundtrack of an impromptu party on the other side of Tribeca Clubhouse. … How often do you get to see Abel Ferrara haphazardly lapping the room to the beat of 80s bubblegum? All this before you are unleashed to claim an intimate seat in a compromised theater, knowing that it may be your only chance to see Mary in any venue other than your living room. How many directors interrupt the introduction to their film by pacing through the unfilled seats screaming about the Catholic church’s boycott of The DaVinci Code? And when was the last time your trepidation towards a film was completely undone upon viewing it?

Despite the distractions of circumstance, I actually enjoyed the film. … I guess I’m a sucker for meta; it’s satisfying to see one filmmaker so brazenly approach another’s controversy. Also to watch “La Binoche” playing with the idea of a saintly actress or Matthew Modine channeling Ferrera (original choice Vincent Gallo would probably have been better but…). Whitaker is hammy, but in a cool kind of way, while support from French chameleon Marion Cotillard is a nice touch. And shockingly, I actually thought Heather Graham wasn’t an embarrassing addition to the ensemble. Another shock: the film’s academic inflections; Elaine Pagels delivers more exposition than any of the actors.

I don’t mean to sound reverential here–I just mean to express that the movie’s weaknesses are no match for its surprises. … The only bigger surprise than the fact that I really like Mary is that Abel Ferrara is still alive. … I found him to be cartoonish, confounding, and charming. I do not feel that the myspace secret screening, squeezed into Tribeca, was what he or the film deserved.

Seriously, I cannot imagine how even the most self-referential, poorly attended abortion of a film could sink the tragicomedy of “Abel Ferrara haphazardly lapping the room to the beat of 80s bubblegum,” but that probably just proves the limits of my imagination. That said, I think we all owe this valiant soul a round of applause for taking one for the team and for jamming a period at the end of this particular death sentence. I am now looking forward to revisiting what really matters: Old-school NYC classics like the austere critic Roger Friedman inaccurately attributing Twister to Wolfgang Petersen.
See? We are back to normal already.

Be Sociable, Share!

Comments Off on Willing and Abel: Surreal Sketches From Ferrara's Late-Night Tribeca Hoedown

Comments are closed.

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon