Please Tell Me I Am Hallucinating

Anyone who was around in the early days of this blog might remember this post, in which I stated my love and admiration for Abel Ferrara's beautifully bold 1992 masterpiece Bad Lieutenant, a movie in my eyes which is among the finest in all of American cinema. The film, which started out from an original script by Zoe Lund (something that isn't mentioned enough), remains one of the most memorable theatrical theater experiences I have ever had and one of the most spiritually enlightning works of art I have ever seen...comparable to Pasolini's The Gospel According To Saint Matthew (yea, I think Ferrara's film is that good.)
This morning I saw the news that Nicolas Cage was planning on remaking the film and I have to admit that disgust was the first thing that crossed my mind. Cage was at one point one of my favorite American actors. He was bold, original and daring but since his award winning turn in Leaving Las Vegas (another one of my favorite films) he has become a bit like Rod Stewart after 1977...a disappointing commercial property with only flashes of what made him great. I figured this latest remake news (wasn't the raping of The Wicker Man enough?) was just another in a long line of disappointing choices in Cage's career and nothing more.
Imagine my surprise though when I saw that it was none other than the great Werner Herzog set to direct the remake...and to be honest it made the news even more disappointing. I could deal with someone like a Brett Ratner signed on to do it as that is expected, but Werner Herzog? Seriously, I wish someone would slap me and tell me I was having a nightmare. I love Herzog and he has made some of my favorite films but the idea of someone touching the final collaboration between Ferrara and Lund just makes me sick.
I really hope this film falls through and doesn't happen. If it does I hope it fails and I don't like to wish ill on any production, especially one by Werner Herzog but I just can't stomach this. With Zoe Lund gone, Harvey Keitel stuck in straight to video hell and Abel Ferrara not able to get American distribution for his newest films (not to mention the fact that the theatrical version of Bad Lieutenant is unavailable in the States), the idea for this remake seems as spiritually bankrupt as the Bad Lieutenant himself was in the beginning of Abel's film.
I've seen nearly every film Werner Herzog has ever made and Anchor Bay's two box sets of his work occupy a special place in my collection but I will not see this film if it happens. The original work by Abel Ferrara is perfect and totally untouchable in my eyes...I just can't bear to see it tampered with anymore.

Abel Vs. Werner (I'm in Abel's Corner All The Way)

Well here's the bloody poster for Werner Herzog's remake of Abel Ferarra's Bad Lieutenant that popped up at Cannes recently. Also here are links to a couple of articles, one is an interview with Herzog that makes want to see this film even less than I did before (I can't decide which is worse, the fact that he claims to not know who Ferrara is or that he is probably pretending he doesn't) and the other contains the first quotes from a justifiably angry Ferrara on the proposed remake.

Much more interesting sounding than Herzog's sure to be spiritually bankrupt film is Ferrara's newest, Chelsea on the Rocks (Ferrara is pictured above with Bijou Phillips on the set). Information on this return to his home town by the King Of New York can be read here and here, I can't wait to see it and I hope it actually gets some American distribution.

Overlooked Classics: Bad Lieutenant

Louisville, Kentucky's once proud Vogue Theater stands deserted now. Its doors closed for cine maniacs in late 1998 but the memories that it gave many of us will always exist. It was open for more than sixty years for the best foreign, arthouse, classic and independent films the world had to offer. The flickering light of the projector at one time offered for Louisville everyone from Monica Vitti in Red Desert to Bridget Fonda in Bodies Rest and Motion...hell, even Iggy Pop played played a show there. That's all over now though, while the marquee has been resurrected, rumor has it a series of shops will open inside and it will eventually become unrecognizable for us that remember.
I have many memories involving the Vogue including midnight movies and getting pulled over for speeding trying to make a screening of Casablanca. Many memories but one film I saw there stands out as my most memorable.
1992 saw Abel Ferrara un-leashing, on an unexpecting public, his most stunning tale of sin and redemption, the Zoe Lund scripted Bad Lieutenant. I'll never forget the first time I saw the poster advertising it's coming at the Vogue with a nude Harvey Keitel pictured under Abel Ferrara's name, which seemed to blaze. This wasn't just a film being announced, it seemed more like a war being proclaimed.
I was lucky enough to see the Final Ferrara-Lund collaboration the way it should be seen, in a darkened theater, completely uncut, original score intact witnessing more walk outs than I had ever seen before or since. The film that's available now isn't the one I saw, the available dvd is missing a major character in Schooly D's incendiary "Signifying Rapper". The song, which played such a major role, has been removed due to a silly and damaging lawsuit by Jimmy Page over a riff(I ask you who stole more riffs than Jimmy Page?). Only those who saw it in a theater or are lucky enough to have the very out of print original VHS have seen the film as it should be seen.
While the film contains one of the greatest of all performances with Harvey Keitel's shocking turn and stands as one of Ferrara's best works it is the story that the much missed Zoe Lund came up with that's the real star. The script might be co-credited to Victor Argo, Paul Calderon and Ferrara but it belongs to Zoe. I think she fashioned not only one of the great scripts ever but a major piece of spiritually enlightening literature. It's this spirituality and Lund's notion that even the most far gone and evil of characters can find redemption that sent people running out of the Vogue that night, not the graphic nudity, language or violence.
I would say that the theater was over half full at the start of the film but there were only a handful of us left by the end. I know that we all felt a bit transformed walking out after those closing credits, we all had a feeling that only a handful of the greatest films could have given us.
I've never seen a film that asked as much of it's audience as that one did. While many people left during the moments you might expect, the raping of the nun and Keitel pulling over the teenage girls, it was Jesus Christ appearing to Keitel's ravaged unnamed character that caused the most problems. I remember very clearly wanting to yell at a couple walking out that this is just the kind of man Jesus would indeed reach out to.
I doubt if I will ever have quite as visceral an experience with another film and another theater again. Abel Ferrara has made many great films since and he is still obsessed with getting the idea across that no man, no matter how far gone, is completely lost. Not since Pasolini has a director made so many confrontational and profoundly spiritual works.
Harvey Keitel has never bettered Bad Lieutenant and he remains America's great lost actor buried in a sea of direct to video junk.
We lost Zoe Lund in April of 1999, ironically just a few months after The Vogue Theater closed it's doors for the last time. I remember watching her ghostly shadow whispering to Keitel, "We gotta eat away at ourselves. We gotta eat our legs to get the energy to walk. We gotta come, so we can go. We gotta suck ourselves off. We gotta eat away at ourselves til there's nothing left but appetite. We give, and give and give crazy. Cause a gift that makes sense ain't worth it. Jesus said seventy times seven. No one will ever understand why..."
I saw many films after Bad Lieutenant at the Vogue but somehow for me it was the last strip of film that its projectors light shined through. Somehow even in its deserted, sad state that film is still showing and a few of us are still left inside.