Bad Lieutenant Remake: Abel Ferrara Says, ‘Don’t Count On It.’ (Flix99.com)
Bad Lieutenant Remake: Abel Ferrara Says, ‘Don’t Count On It.’
Also, he may or may not be remaking THE SEARCHERS, possibly as some kind of revenge.
“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.
First, Farrara tagged a comment about the remake on to his answer to a question about working outside the Hollywood system. “As far as remakes go, Harvey [Weinstein? Not mentioned in this Variety story in connection to the project. Keitel, who starred in the original? Hmmmm….] begged me not to say anything mean, or stupid. [pause] But I wish these people die in Hell. I hope they’re all in the same streetcar, and it blows up.”
Later, a different journalist mentioned the remake in the run-up to answering a different question, and Ferrara interrupted.
“It hasn’t been remade yet.”
“But it will be,” the reporter said.
Ferrara shook his head before putting it in his hands. “Don’t count on it.”
Other highlights of the session: When asked to explain “the difference between New York and Los Angeles intellectually speaking,” Dennis Hopper responded, “New York is speed, Los Angeles is qualudes.” Then, this exchange between Hopper and Ferrara:
“I’m about to do a big Hollywood film,” Ferrara says, laughing.
“Yeah, me too!” Dennis Hopper is also laughing.
“We’re fighting over the same job,” says Ferrara. They’re cracking up now.
Hopper: “Yeah, they’re really knocking down our doors!”
“We’re gonna remake John Ford’s The Searchers,” Ferrara says, now seeming serious. Then he and Hopper crack up again. “Who’s gonna play the Indians? Are there any comanches left, or are they all dealing cards?”
Ferrara continues, this time without laughter. “I’m as Hollywood as it comes, and I grew up in Peekskill. It doesn’t matter where the movies are made. I used to say it’s about getting the movies made, and getting them distributed, but I’ve given up on the second half of that.”
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Cannes Diary: The Spotlight and Its Disappointments
Filmmakers Philippe Garrel and Kelly Reichardt are subjecting their new films to an unusually bright spotlight at Cannes. Can the movies handle it?
Who would have thought, in 2006, when Old Joy spent a year slowly gathering critical steam after having been all but ignored at Sundance, that Kelly Reichardt’s next film would occasion an item in PEOPLE Magazine? “Michelle Williams Dazzles at Cannes Film Festival,” goes the headline of the story by Brenda Rodriguez. Last night’s Wendy & Lucy red carpet was the first that the actress walked since the death of former partner Heath Ledger, and for the tabloids that’s a major hook. Looking down from the balcony last night at the Debussy, it was a trip to watch the Chanel-clad former Dawson’s Creek star stand on the stage at one end of a line that included Reichardt, Old Joy/Wendy & Lucy producer Anish Savjani, and filmmaker/Wendy & Lucy producer and co-star Larry Fessenden.
When a film this small gets thrust under a spotlight this bright, you worry that the movie itself will be overwhelmed. I do hope this unlikely attention helps Wendy & Lucy get seen, but coming in with high expectations(Old Joy was one of my favorite films of its year), I was a bit underwhelmed.
Here, as in Old Joy, Reichardt is concerned with a “normal” person’s collision with life on the margins of society. Williams plays Wendy, a young woman driving with her dog Lucy to Alaska to try to find work at a canning factory. When the film begins, she’s low on cash but at least she has a plan, and her run-in around a bonfire with an apparent bunch of hippie vagrants (including Joy star Will Oldham) suggests that permanent rootlessness is not part of it. But Wendy’s car breaks down before she can get out of town, and over a series of days one thing goes wrong after another, ultimately forcing Wendy to abandon all plans in order to survive.
Anti-costumed as an unassuming hipster (short brown hair, sneakers, hoodie), Williams slips seamlessly into Reichardt’s familiar naturalism, to the point where even when the story requires hysterics, they seem real. And the bleakness of the film’s suburban Pacific Northwest locations effectively heightens Wendy’s increasing anxiety and hopelessness. But there was a hypnotic quality to Old Joy that’s missing here, sparked by the central relationship’s constantly complex combination of tension, melancholy, and frustration, set in a climate of transcendent beauty. Wendy & Lucy has the bleak, but it never explores the light. It hits its single tone perfectly, but it’s still a single tone.
Philippe Garrel’s La Frontière de l’aube may be falling to a similar fate, of high expectations that are ultimately unreachable. This is the first Garrel film to make it to Cannes since 1983, and his presence here was apparently not welcome. As you know, I think the movie is great; many, many people do not, The premiere crowd gave the virtually de rigueur standing ovation, but the press screening ended with boos. Variety trashed it, with Leslie Felperin’s brashly dismissive review teaching us that using the word “bitch” to describe a female protagonist is apparently compatible with the publication’s patented Slanguage. It’s that old double-edged sword: if all goes well, a festival like Cannes can be the platform of an independent filmmaker’s dreams, but a single press screening-gone-bad can make for a crippling comedown.
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Instant Access: Pussycat Dolls Movie Awards Rehearsal’s In Full Swing!
Pyro! Press Clippings! Platforms! Pussycats! Yes, PCD’s rehearsal is in full swing, as the girls perfect their footwork for tomorrow night’s performance of “When I Grow Up.” Without giving too much away, let’s just say there’s whole lot of, well, everything going on at the moment, as the Dolls descend staircases, pirhouette on raised platforms, and […]
Pyro! Press Clippings! Platforms! Pussycats!
Yes, PCD’s rehearsal is in full swing, as the girls perfect their footwork for tomorrow night’s performance of “When I Grow Up.”
Without giving too much away, let’s just say there’s whole lot of, well, everything going on at the moment, as the Dolls descend staircases, pirhouette on raised platforms, and duck licks of flame, all while massive video screens burst with images of diamonds, tabloid headlines and, uh, hearts (it is PCD after all). Dolls mastermind Robin Antin watches on with her army of choreographers.
Oh, and there’s even a bevy of surprise guests who descend from the ceiling at performance’s end, but I’m not allowed to say just who they are … At least, not yet.
(Check out photos of the Pussycat Dolls dress rehearsal here!)
The MTV Movie Awards will air live on MTV on Sunday at 8 p.m. ET, with MTV News’ “Coming Attractions” preshow kicking the evening off at 7:30 p.m. ET! Meanwhile, stay tuned to the MTV Movies Blog and MovieAwards.MTV.com.
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