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Scorsese honors DeNiro at Kennedy Center awards

December 29th, 2009 by Scott Marks

Marty and the gang got together Sunday night at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to pay omaggioto Bobby D. The Prefecture of the Pontifical House on Elizabeth Street offered His benediction before turning the proceedings over to Meryl Streep, Harvey Keitel, Sharon Stone and Edward Norton. What’s the matter? Joe Pesky couldn’t get his runty ass off the golf course long enough to pagare il suo rispetto? Disonorante…

See how Mr. Bobby Big Shot looks perched in the loges with the rest of the sweepstakes winners, Mel Brooks, Bruce Springsteen, Grace Bumbry and Dave Brubek, Is it me or is DeNiro looking a little like Robert Young in his Marcus Welby period? All he does is sit and laugh, which is pretty much what he’s been doing on screen (and all the way to the bank) for the past fifteen years.

Excuse me. What’s with those rainbow things they got hanging around their necks? They look like gay suspenders, for Christ’s sake.

And, Bob, tell me why. Why the f@*% do you have to go all the way to Washington for you to sit next to the Opera chick with the dog cone?

I’m sure Keitel first met DeNiro “on a street like this” paper mache tenement mock-up. What’s with the shitty set: a hot dog cart and a garbage can! And Ben Stiller shows up and does shtick. Look how they honor Him. Like a bum. Like a trash man.

Don’t turn it off until you see Norton’s spot on impression of Lord DeNiro.

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15 Minutes with Werner Herzog

November 25th, 2009 by Scott Marks

Nicolas Cage and Werner Herzog on the set of \

Nicolas Cage and Werner Herzog on the set of “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.”

It is probably not a good idea to invite directors Werner Herzog and Abel Ferrera to the same cocktail party. It seems the latter was none too pleased when the great German filmmaker announced that he was going to borrow the title from Ferrara’s “The Bad Lieutenant” and make a version all his own.

In a June 2008 interview in The Guardian, Ferrera, co-author and director of the first “The Bad Lieutenant,” likened Herzog’s version to being robbed and said the mere thought of remaking his film left him with “a horrible feeling.” He asked how Nicolas Cage “can even have the nerve to play Harvey Keitel” and called Herzog’s screenwriter William Finkelstein “an idiot.” Just to make sure his point was well taken, he proclaimed that those who participated in the remake “should all die in hell.”

“That’s show business,” Herzog joked when asked about Ferrera’s tantrum.

By now the once excitable visionary has learned to take things in stride. In “Fitzcarraldo” he managed to move a 340 ton steamship over a mountain with a bulldozer and without any special effects (unless you count the offscreen pyrotechnics that ensued between the director and his star Klaus Kinski). Wishing Herzog dead is like shooting spitballs at a battleship.

“Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” marks Werner Herzog’s 55th time in the director’s chair and probably the only time one of his films has opened wide at a multiplex near you. It’s a crazed cop film that stands on its own and has little to do with the Ferrara version. Nicolas Cage, who hasn’t been this good since “Apadtation,” plays a Big Easy detective investigating the murder of five Senegalese immigrants. He’s bad from the get-go and gets progressively worse after an on duty accident forces him to seek the cauterizing comfort of prescription drugs. The doc prescribed them and he misused them and watching Cage’s spiraling descent into drugs, gambling and madness proves to be one of this year’s funniest movies.

While the Ferrera version, in which Harvey Keitel investigates the rape of a young nun, has its share of nasty guffaws, I’m not sure it’s right to categorize it as even a comic drama. Herzog’s account is a balls out black comedy. Both films have their merits and if you are looking for some dark laughs during a holiday movie season that is as bleak as any on record this is easily the most satisfying mainstream adult movie currently playing.

We spoke with Werner Herzog about how film has changed during his near 50 year career, drug induced reptiles, Scorsese’s Jesus vs. Gibson’s Jesus and whether or not anything in his “Bad Lieutenant” remains Abel-bodied.

Scott Marks: I’m sure that you get a lot of people that tell you, “Oh, Mr. Herzog, I’ve seen all of your movies.” Well, I haven’t, but I’ve seen a good 70% of them and it’s safe to say that you’ve made my life as a filmgoer a whole helluva lot darker.

Werner Herzog (Laughing.): Well, then you must be in your 60’s and I no longer want to torture you.

If it is torture it’s invariably to my delight. At times, outsiders seem to have a better grasp of American culture than Americans do. Do you feel that having an ocean of separation helps you to make a truly objective film about America?

(Laughing) Oh, for God’s sake nobody will ever make an objective movie about America. No. I am just following my instincts and my fascinations. I live in your country as a guest and I wouldn’t live here if I fundamentally didn’t like your country. I do a film like “Bad Lieutenant” as a friend who has been allowed as a guest in the country.

Do you remember the first film that you ever saw?

Yes I do, but I don’t remember the name of it. It was very lousy and I didn’t enjoy it. Until then, and that was when I was 11, I didn’t know that cinema even existed.

When was the first time you realized that the actors didn’t make up the dialog as they went along?

I don’t recall, but I saw a film with a mistake in it where they recycled the same shot. I got suspicious and had the feeling that I should have a closer look at how a film is being made.

So it was a mistake of cinema that brought about your awakening?

It was just a careless recycling of a shot. Yes.

Why is it important that “Bad Lieutenant” takes place in New Orleans during the aftermath of hurricane Katrina?

Well, I think that’s where the film should be. It was written originally for New York, but I think New Orleans is a much better place.

I’m a bit puzzled over the significance of the reptiles in the movie. What’s going on with the snake, the iguanas and the dead alligator on the side of the road?

Remain puzzled! (Laughing) They’re so demented! Don’t fight to find the real answer, just enjoy them.

I’ll take your word for it. At the beginning of the film while McDonagh (Nicolas Cage) is still a good lieutenant, at least comparatively speaking, he dives into a flooded jail cell to save a prisoner.

Before he does so he wages bets with how long it’s going to take for the prisoner to drown with plenty of dark humor. He’s never really a good lieutenant.

Still, comparatively speaking he’s a pussycat at that point in the film.

Well, yes. He gets more violent, more debased and more dysfunctional, but because he’s like that he’s the one that solves the crime!

Any other director would have probably put a camera underwater and showed him banging his back against a desk or something. I really admire the fact that you didn’t dwell over how McDonagh injured himself. Was that your decision or was it in the script?

Of course, no, no! It was mine. The film was written for New York originally and it started out in a subway station where the Lieutenant rescues a suicidal man who jumps down to the tracks of an incoming train. I thought, number one there is no subway in New Orleans and number two, it’s too heartless.

It’s also too clichéd. How many times has that scene played itself out on network teledramas?

Yeah, yeah. Sure. Let’s face it. That was a very good screenplay with real fine dialog.

You have been working as a director consistently since 1962 and now find yourself working with a first time screenwriter. Do you feel that the script by William Finkelstein reflects…

He’s not a first-time screenwriter. Come on. Let’s face it, he worked for decades writing screenplays, but I think it was mostly for television.

Right. This was his first time writing a theatrical feature.

It doesn’t really matter.

Did that affect the way you approached bringing the script to the screen?

No, no. He’s such a good writer. In fact he’s such a character that I cast him in the movie and he’s very convincing as a gangster as well.

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