If you want my best Harvey Keitel imitation, it inevitably starts with a hunch, a lean into an imaginary window of a car with two party girls in it, and the grunting…. arrrrrrrrr….. unnnnnnnn… ahhhhhhh… and of course, the quick motion of the hand moving in sync with a tightening musculature.
I don
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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
Thanks for that mental image…twice.
MS. 45 is ripe for a remaking. Not a “good” remaking, mind you…
Total agreement, Dave, especially about Abel’s future outlook. The 1:1 comparison to Abel/Harvey will kill. He’s not going to do full frontal, shoot up or hang with a naked nun – not in the way it’s been done – so it will be beaten up for being tame. Unless they take a totally radical approach, like a Herzog fauxdoc, it’s not going to work as a straight drama.
I don’t think I even need to tell you how much BAD LIEUTENANT *OWNS YOUR ASS*, but… oops, I just did.
ABEL FERRARA IS KING… Ms. 45, Driller Killer, Fear City, and King of New York are BEYOND AWESOME, with THE LT representing his absolute masterpiece. Too bad every DVD and video version has eliminated the ASS-OWNING SCHOOLY D track that played throughout.
As others have already noted elsewhere, Ferrara is perhaps even more obsessed than Scorsese with Catholicism, and Herzog I assume is decidedly not… which ought to make for an interesting jumping-off point.
I can’t believe D-Po just backhandedly dissed one of the most distinctive and adventurous American actors of his (or any) age by writing off Cage’s work as indulgent.
ew dave, some of us are trying to eat!
i feel sorry for nic; i think it was noah who mentioned this remake in an earlier thread and it got me to thinkin about nic and his career, so i watched my dvd of the brilliant ‘raising arizona’ last night for the squillionth time to marvel at cage’s turn as H I… how did it come to this for nic c? has he gone a bit doolally with all this ‘ghost rider’, ‘wicker man’ and other remakes crap, or is it a case of taking what he can get?
Who knows, maybe Cage will return to his wild man, bug-eating days for this one. But you know, his choices have been erratic almost from the beginning, alternating the mainstream and the artsy, the brilliant and the dumb. Sure, Ghost Rider and Wicker Man are egregious, but he was superb in Adaptation and World Trade Center, which were also quite recent.
DP, that Keitel impersonation isn’t complete without shouting “Show me with your mouth! Show me!” beforehand. A very horrifying scene in a horrifying film. Keitel went places most actors wouldn’t dare in that film, and there’s no way Cage will even come close to approaching it.
When Ferrara was promoting THE ADDICTION, he was sporting a ragged-brim BAD LT hat. I asked him something specific about Harvey and the girls, and he started his low giggle of a laugh. “Heh, heh. Heh, heh. The LT was rockin’ it then!” Not quite in the league of Herzog’s reflections in BURDEN OF DREAMS that could equally apply to working with Nu-Minimum: “Nature here is vile and base. I wouldn’t see anything erotical here. I would see fornication and asphyxiation and choking and fighting for survival… Of course, there’s a lot of misery. But it is the same misery that is all around us. The trees here are in misery, and the birds are in misery. I don’t think they sing. They just screech in pain. It’s an unfinished country. It’s still prehistorical… It’s like a curse weighing on an entire landscape. And whoever… goes too deep into this has his share of this curse. So we are cursed with what we are doing here. It’s a land that God, if he exists has – has created in anger. It is the harmony of… overwhelming and collective murder. And we in comparison to the articulate vileness and baseness and obscenity of all this jungle we only sound and look like badly pronounced and half-finished sentences out of a stupid suburban novel, a cheap novel. We have to become humble in front of this overwhelming misery and overwhelming fornication… overwhelming growth and overwhelming lack of order. Even the stars up here in the sky look like a mess… I say this all full of admiration for the jungle. It is not that I hate it, I love it. I love it very much. But I love it against my better judgment.”
Love him.
[Herzog recalls that during the making of Fitzcarraldo, local Indians came to him with an offer to kill Kinski for him] “I needed Kinski for a few more shots, so I turned them down. I have always regretted that I lost that opportunity.”
The only Ferrara film I’ve seen is King of New York and it sucked balls. I figured Ferrara was just a pretentious douchebag so I didn’t watch anything else he’s done. Maybe I’ll check out Bad Lieutenant to be fair.
By complete coincidence, however, I just watched Aguirre, The Wrath of God for the first time, and it was fucking amazing.
that’s true, yancy… but don’t all decent thespians have hit and miss roles; from the page to the screen is such a big creative leap, sometimes it goes to plan and sometimes it goes to custard, often through no fault of the actors.
i think cage is terrific in ‘adaptation’ and even ‘matchstick men’ for that matter (though many people seem to find him irritating and ott in his role, but i really like that movie) but those films seem like so long ago for nic…i was just wondering if his hollywood star is fading and he’s trying to revive his career somehow with these seemingly insipid choices, or he’s just gone off on a tangent.
i haven’t seen ‘world trade center’ but it’s on cable here next week so i’ll check it out.
Bartholomew, it won’t be too hard to find, either. The cover features Keitel standing completely starkers with only the title giving him any modesty. Charming, really.
BAD LIEUTENANT MOTHERFUCKER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
FIRST OFF, KING OF NEW YORK *FUCKING PWNS YOUR FUCKING ASS*, so whoever said it sucked CAN GET THE FUCKING BOZACK. KING OF NEW YORK IS FUCKING AWESOME AND HARDCORE, so I’m so sorry some WEAK-ASS ROD isn’t FUCKING DOWN enough to ROLL WITH THE KING.
WALKEN. CARUSO. FISHBURNE. SNIPES. Congratulations, you just GOT YOUR ASS OWNED.
BUT NOW ON TO THE LIEUTENANT.
Inspired by all this remake news, I just YEP YEP rewatched it in its entirety this very night for the first time in a few years, and IT OWNS THE FUCK OUT OF EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE.
THE LIEUTENANT FUCKING OWNS/
It fucking RULES when he gets all FUCKED UP and shit and OWNS PEOPLE… true to the spirit of the movie, I GOT CRUNK while watching it, fucking knocking one back every time THE LT. did something AWESOME or fucking OWNED someone. THE LIEUTENANT is fucking AWESOME…
The only flaw I could see 16 years on is that the Catholic guilt stuff no longer has much personal resonance for me, so the ending kind of fell flat this time…. Like, YEAH, ok, do the nun a solid and let them get away, but FUCK why did he have to give them THE MONEY, too? That was some bullshit and he should have let them go but still kept PARTYING AND GETTING FUCKED UP with AWESOME HOT MODEL CHICKS.
YES. THE LIEUTENANT. Fucking HILARIOUS how he has total disdain for his bullshit family life, swearing at his annoying kids, and best of all, the wife doesn’t even rate a line of dialogue. AWESOME. Instead he’s ROLLING with ZOE, who OWNS FUCKING ALL in this movie and in MS. 45.
FUCKING *MASTERPIECE*.
Good thing NIC CAGE IS ONE OF THE BEST ACTORS EVER and will OWN THIS SHIT, but seriously, KEITEL is on par with like Brando, Pacino, Bogart, De Niro, Nicholson and O’Toole in the pantheon of perfect performances in this thing.
“Ferrara is perhaps even more obsessed than Scorsese with Catholicism, and Herzog I assume is decidedly not… which ought to make for an interesting jumping-off point.”
Agree and disagree. Bad Lieutenant is indeed very much a dark spiritual journey and the Catholicism is in no way incidental to it. It is about redemption through God. Period. That’s not me projecting…that’s what it’s about.
What bothers me is the quote that they promise to bring on the “filth”. The “filth” of BL is not the point. It is not a sexy film. It is not Sin City. It is an extreme portrait of a man in a moral crisis. The primary crime of the rape of the nun is central to illustrating who he is. With a few life turns…he could have been the rapist.
To have a remake that does not include a spiritual journey is to miss the point entirely. If the journey is not religious but secular, then the film is not different than any of the countless stories of redemption that we have seen for decades.
Indeed, the Catholic or religious aspect of BL is what distinguishes it from the rest of these types of films. I love Herzog and Cage but hope they do not miss the point.
Isn’t Ferrara the guy who went on Conan O’Brien so stoned that he couldn’t carry on a conversation? At one point Conan turned to the camera and said, “Is it just me, or…?”
BAD LIEUTENANT was corporal punishment.
Thank you! I’m here all week!
Cadavra, as bad puns go, that was “major,” even though there was a “colonel” of truth in it.
Yep, still a MASTERPIECE.
Especially that part where THE LT swears at his annoying kids, dropping F-bombs and shit. AWESOME.
LIEUTENANT KNOWS HOW TO PARTY.
Thanks, Yancy, though I do most of my best work in “private.”
I’d rather see a remake of DANGEROUS GAMES.