Abel Ferrara is relaxed when he sits down at the crowded Spazio Cinema, the forum of the festival in Locarno. The man responsible for masterpieces like ‘Bad Lieutenant’, ‘The King of New York’ and ‘Snake Eyes’ is quite popular amogst the festival’s visitors.
The night before het confirmed his reputation as the Master Provocateur when he received the Pardo d’onore on the stage of the Piazza Grande in the pouring rain giving a jamsession, Ferrara on acoustic guitar, to a cranky audience. After the second tune it was quite obvious Abel should stick to his day job, being an auteur of cinema. Sections of the crowd who just want to see a blockbuster in a big square began booing. After the third tune the boo’s got louder. Artistic director Olivier Pรจre and the mayor of Locarno were nervously hovering around Ferrara urging him to maybe stop this concert. Ferrara’s two bandmembers clearly affected by the hostile atmosphere stopped playing. How did Ferrara react? In the best possible way. He played one more long tune, solo, with a big grin on his face. The harder they boo’d,, the more he had a good time.
Today he looks like he’s not having a great time, he looks tired, not interested in questions. But after the first question he turns into the storyteller everybody came for.
His description of the filmdirector’s status in the USA is hilarious. ‘ A conversation like this, with you people all about me the director, lemme tell you, that wouldn’t happen in back in the States. Americans don’t give a fuck about directors. In Hollywood a director is like a necessary evil, someone slowing down the factory. But hey, I’m an American myself. I’m the same. I’m interested in movies, not so much in the guy who made them.’
The intellectual tone of the interviewer is bugging Ferrara a bit. When asked about why he started out with porn (9 Lives of a Wet Pussy) to then progress to horror (The Driller Killer), he answers ‘Hey dude, I just wanted to make movies back in the day. And that’s what the american public wanted in those days, porn ans slasherfilms like the “Texas Chainsaww Massacre’ a personal favourite of mine, Spielberg likes that one to he once told me. They cost close to nothing, but made huge profits so I could be free in the future to make more personal movies, nothing more man’
After the next question Abel’s really getting into his swing. “Why didn’t you stay in Hollywood after Body Snatchers in 1993?’ The answer is exemplary for the relationship between Ferrara en The Company Town like he calls it. ‘I was never asked to stay’ The interviewer:’But Body Snatchers is wonderful movie.’ Ferrara:’ Yeah well, at the expense of my own mental sanity”
Tinseltown and the excentric New Yorker, they’ll never see eye to eye. When talking about Warner Brothers he referrs to the people there as gangsters. “They take you to L.A after, ’Bad Lieutenant’ and say ‘Ok, you’re a big hit, we don’t know why, but you can make us some money. Out here you just direct and shut up. You got nothing to do with the money. On how it’s spend and why, is that clear?’ A few months later Body Snatchers is 4 million dollars over budget, and I’m being summoned to this acquablue pants and white shoes wearing westcoast gangster’s office. First thing he says to me is ‘You’re going to take that phone over there and call him to tell him he can go to the Jersey coast.’ I have no idea wat this guy is talking about. Again ‘You’re going to call him and tell your New York buddy that he can go shoot at the Jersey coast.’ Now I get it. This mobster wants me to call Spike Lee , because he’s working on Malcolm X, 5 million over budget, to tell him he can’t shoot in Mekka where he was planning to go. And I’m from New York too, so I should call him. Then he says ‘And by the way, where is my 4 million dollars’ I’m telling you, that cat made me feel like I was going to end up in a trunk that night. Spike, Oliver (Stone) and me were the tree New Yorkers at Warner Brothers during that period. The didn’t go after Spike that much because he has even more connections to the press then they do. And Oliver was so succesful, working on JFK at the time, that he didn’t care and could call them bloodsucking motherfucking vampires without too many consequenses. When I left the office he yelled he would never hire someone from New York again”
‘But they’re in trouble now. This is like the third or fourth time time they are trying to shove this 3D shit down our throats again. In the fifties it was their reaction to television. Now they’re panicking again because of the internet. I see kids on the subway in New York watching movies on their phones. 3D, a movie already is 3D! Why should I wear those silly glasses. My brain is creative, I can imagine the things on the screen have depth. What do they want, people running out of the theatre because the train is moving towards them? Come on, man!’
The audience is responding well, Ferrara notices and begins targeting the moderator ‘A journalist once described you as catholic anarchist, what do you think about that?’ No man, I’m a reborn buddhist’ replies Ferrara making the poor man wish he never asked that question. ‘I was raised in a strict catholic way by nuns’ he surprisingly serious continues, ‘and when the religion is in you it’s hard to get it out.’ Ferrara’s films are charged, like another Italian American director’s films, with catholic symbolism. When asked what movie he had like to have made he didn’t, Scorsese’s answer left little to the imagination “Without a doubt, ‘Bad Lieutenant’
Ferrara’s characters are often people with problems like addiction an loneliness living on the outskirts of society. “Why is everbody on drugs in your movies, do you find that interesting?’ asks the moderator. When answering Ferrara’s face shows he thinks this is by far the most stupid question the guy has asked this afternoon, “I just make movies about what I see in real life’
If you read a little about Ferrara, three words keep popping up. Compassion, forgiveness and redemption. Everybody keeps writing down what he just read, I once read that I’m the King of Redemption. I don’t even know what that word means, do you know ?’ he asks the audience. Two people respond. One makes a joke about it, the other gives a deep, farfetched definition, which Ferrara dismisses under loud acclaim of the audience.
One of the questions of the public involves the ‘Bad Lieutenant film’ Werner herzog recently made. But this guy is on the German’s side ‘Is it true you started the media war against Herzog and the movie, not even having seen the movie, just because it had the same title?’ Ferrara is a bit upset and counters “ Hey man, that film is made with the blood, sweat and tears of my crew, Harvey Keitel and me. First those gangsters went to Harvey a few years ago telling him they wanted to turn it into a tv series. Harvey was interested and asked why I wasn’t at the meet. ‘No, Abel is in a hospital somewhere in Switzerland. The funny thing is, this here festival is my first visit to Switzerland ever. It struck Harvey as odd because the night before he just had dinner with me. Harvey is loyal. They offered him a lot of money but he didn’t cave in, The only thing that could made him do it if I was on board as well. I’m just annoyed because it took so much of me to get ‘Bad Lieutenant” made anyhow. ‘What the cop takes the drugs? What kinda movie you’re trying to make? Every studio thought I was crazy. But I did it, and we delivered. Ok, they offer Nicolas Cage 2 million dollars, who’s always in need of money, I don’t know where he all spends it. But I like Nic, he’s an actor, I know where he’s coming from. I don’t even have a grudge against Herzog. That man never sees other people’s movies. I really believe he never even actually saw the original. I don’t believe he was lying about that. Why should he, they offer him a million bucks and he jumps. There’s nothing wrong with that, he’s just an European wanting to make films and money. And now he thinks he’s got beef with me, he don’t want that. No, I got a problem with those gangsters. Ok, you don’t want ma as a director, because I’m difficult and from New York, no problem, fine! But not to hire not one of my boys, my crew, who created the original ‘Bad Lieutenant’, that shit don’t fly. But they got what they wanted now. A stupid Company Town movie.”
“So you don’t live in L.A anymore, you still live in New York?’ ‘No, I moved to Rome a few years ago. I live in the neighbourhood next to the Vatican. The neighbourhood with the highest concentration of atheists in the world. None of my neighbours believes in God. Come to think of it, Rome is like a Company Town too. Religion is business, so no one really believes.
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