Abel Ferrara

Started by MacGuffin, May 19, 2006, 01:07:13 PM

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MacGuffin

Last Crew Gearing Up
Ferrara's King of New York prequel.

Variety reports that The Last Crew, writer-director Abel Ferrara's long-gestating prequel to his 1990 gangland cult classic King of New York, is finally slated to go before cameras next month in New York City.

Michael Pitt (The Dreamers) will star as the youthful Frank White, portrayed in King of New York by Christopher Walken. Mark Wahlberg was once rumored to be up for the role.

The Last Crew is budgeted at $10 million. The story recalls Frank White's rise to power in the 1970s. Check out this review of an older draft of the script.

The indie production commences principal photography on June 9.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

Split Infinitive

So... I've never seen a Ferrara movie.  I've considered seeing Bad Lieutenant and King of New York, but his reputation for downbeat ugliness always steered me clear.  Is he someone worth taking the time to check out, or can I keep his films in the lower third of my Netflix queue where they've been for the last year?  He's intriguing... I'm just not usually in the mood to sit through a film bearing the descriptions of most of his.
Please don't correct me. It makes me sick.

soixante

Bad Lt. and King of NY are well worth seeing.  Bad Lt. is a rather intense film, but if you are a fan of Harvey Keitel, it is essential viewing.  He is brilliant.

Ms. 45, a low-budget film he did in 1981, is worth a look, too.

Ferrara's films tend to be downbeat, but sometimes life is downbeat.
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Split Infinitive

Quote from: soixante on May 20, 2006, 02:58:28 AM
Bad Lt. and King of NY are well worth seeing.  Bad Lt. is a rather intense film, but if you are a fan of Harvey Keitel, it is essential viewing.  He is brilliant.

Ms. 45, a low-budget film he did in 1981, is worth a look, too.

Ferrara's films tend to be downbeat, but sometimes life is downbeat.
That's the problem -- I'm almost never in the mood for a resolutely downbeat picture (at least, I might not be by the time the film arrives from Netflix).  During the summer, though, I'm usually more inclined to watch something that will depress me, because the cheerfulness of the season balances me out.

Thank you for the recommendations.  I'll probably start with King of New York, but that'll be a month or two at least.
Please don't correct me. It makes me sick.

modage

well i hated bad lieutenant, if that balances things out. 
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

MacGuffin

For Christ's Sake: IFC Films Picks Up Ferrara's 'Mary'

The Reeler hears this afternoon that IFC Films has picked up rights to Abel Ferrara's long-languishing Mary. Featuring Juliette Binoche as an actress transformed by her portrayal of Mary Magdalene, you might recall the film earning its recent local buzz via co-star Matthew Modine's late-night phone calls to Cindy Adams and a particularly spirited Ferrara appearance at this year's Tribeca Film Festival. It probably bears mentioning Mary won a Special Jury Prize at Venice in 2005 as well, and the pick-up coincides with the upcoming Sarajevo Film Festival's plans to honor Ferrara and Béla Tarr with career retrospectives.

No word yet on a release date, and the details do not specify whether or not IFC will be releasing via its First Take day-and-date arm. Look for those specifics eventually as official announcements are made this week.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

MacGuffin

Dafoe, Hoskins, Modine ready to tell "Tales"
Source: Hollywood Reporter

Willem Dafoe, Bob Hoskins and Matthew Modine are set to star in writer-director Abel Ferrara's "Go Go Tales," a screwball comedy that has taken a circuitous path to production.

Dafoe will play the owner of a New York go-go dancing club whose brother and financial backer (Modine) threatens to pull the plug on his business. The owner and his accountant (Hoskins) face a bumpy night as the strippers threaten to strike. Ferrara's longtime pal, Italian actress/filmmaker Asia Argento, will play a small role as one of the dancers.

Ferrara originally was slated to begin principal photography on the project in January 2005, but after distribution rights for several territories were presold, the production never got off the ground. According to a statement from Bellatrix Media, which is producing the project, Italian state film organization Istituto Luce and producer Gam Film filed suit against the director, who then filed a counterclaim against them. The parties settled out of court, with the screenplay rights and Ferrara's services turning over to Bellatrix, owned by Swiss entrepreneur Massimo Gatti.

Principal photography began Monday in Rome and moves to New York in January. Ferrara's credits include "Bad Lieutenant" and "The Funeral"
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

MacGuffin

Ferrara returns to Bad Lieutenant territory
Source: Guardian Unlimited

Bronx-born director Abel Ferrara is preparing to begin shooting his $4m (£2m) Italian film noir in Naples. Based on Giuseppe Farrandino's novel Pericle il Nero, the project is said to mark a return to the dark tone of his 1992 cult hit Bad Lieutenant. Casting is under way. Ferrara has just wrapped shooting in Rome on the screwball comedy Go-Go Tales with Bob Hoskins, Willem Dafoe, and Asia Argento.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

MacGuffin

SCRIPTLAND: Bringing back 'Bad Lieutenant'
Producer Edward R. Pressman hopes to reinvent the grim 1992 indie drama. But will what jolted audiences in 1992 work now?
Source: Los Angeles Times

Hide your stash -- the Lieutenant is headed back out on the streets. And he's just as bad as you remember him. If not worse.

When writer-director Abel Ferrara's "Bad Lieutenant" was released in 1992, the grim drama that starred Harvey Keitel as the most spiritually anguished, nakedly self-destructive cop in New York City polarized viewers and left a scorching mark in independent film. It was nominated for best feature at the Film Independent's Spirit Awards, and Keitel's legendary raw performance won him the Spirit for best male lead and a slot in the unofficial acting hall of fame.
 
Veteran producer Edward R. Pressman ("Badlands," "American Psycho"), who developed and produced the first movie, is poised to revisit the Lieutenant and "try to reinvent the film in a way that would be relevant again," as he puts it. So earlier this year one of his co-producers, Stephen Belafonte (the new Mr. Scary Spice), brought in Billy Finkelstein, a Flushing, Queens-bred TV writer whose deep cops-and-criminals résumé is a hit list of street cred: "L.A. Law," "Murder One," "Law & Order" and "NYPD Blue."

The new version -- with a working title of "Bad Lieutenant '08" -- is less a sequel or a prequel than an attempt to take the raw material of the original film and weave it into 21st century, post- 9/11 New York. In the draft I have, dated July 24, 2007, Finkelstein provides the Lieutenant with a small amount of addiction back story, the event that prompts his promotion from sergeant and the drug-related murder of five Senegalese illegal immigrants to pursue.

He has also given his tortured protagonist, who went nameless in the first film, a name: Terence McDonough. Meanwhile, the familiar relentless tear of reckless drug-taking, gambling, stealing and sex continues unabated.

The original film was rated NC-17 -- a rating that was still new and provocative at the time -- and justifiably, given not just its sexual violence, drug abuse and nudity, but also its punishing emotional brutality. The question is: What will the Bad Lieutenant do with more money and looser standards to play with? And is it possible to have the same effect?

"We have to factor in the passage of time and what's happened in the interim," says Finkelstein, who has yet to write in an updated nod to Keitel's full-frontal, drug-addled glory. "I don't know that the same sorts of things that caused us to sit up and take notice 15 years ago are necessarily gonna have the same effect now."

Pressman has discussed the new version with Ferrara and Keitel, although neither is attached to the project. But neither Pressman nor Finkelstein seems particularly worried about criticism from purist fans of the cult film. (Pressman is trying a similar reinvention with the Stephen Schiff-scripted "Money Never Sleeps," a revisiting of the iconic '80s master of the universe Gordon Gekko from Oliver Stone's "Wall Street.")

"These things have to stand on their own two feet," says Finkelstein, who's currently finishing up a second draft. "Listen, how many movies have been made about Jesse James and Eliot Ness? There are certain characters that are part of our literature and they will be revisited -- that's just the nature of it. There's a difference between appreciating something and putting it in amber."
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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Ravi

Is that the quickest original-to-remake window ever?

modage

Quote from: Ravi on August 29, 2007, 11:40:26 AM
Is that the quickest original-to-remake window ever?
not counting foreign movies remade in the US (and vice versa)?
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

matt35mm

I like the idea.  Of course they could easily screw this up, but I can definitely see the potential for a movie like this to use a character and a basic, raw idea and plug it into our time.  The best way for this to work is for it to be less of a re-make than a companion piece of sorts, working along with the first movie to reveal something about the past and the time that we live in now.  I like the way that it's "pitched" in the article, as weaving the raw material into this moment in time.  What's different, what isn't?  Let's really take a look at it.

I HOPE that's where they're going, because it doesn't sound like people are exactly clamoring for a re-make of Bad Lieutenant, so I can't imagine that anyone thinks this is where the big bucks are gonna be.

Pubrick

under the paving stones.

MacGuffin

Ferrara to transform 'Jekyll'
Forest Whitaker, 50 Cent to star in redo
Source: Variety

Abel Ferrara is taking another walk on the wild side with a re-imagining of Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," which will be contemporized and titled "Jekyll and Hyde."

Forest Whitaker and Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson are attached to play the lead roles in the classic tale about a doctor who invents a potion that unleashes his violent alter ego.

Glasshouse Pictures' Brett Walsh and Cheetah Vision Films' Randall Emmett are producing; Luc Roeg, Michael Robinson and Andrew Orr are exec producing for U.K. production banner Independent.

Sean Walsh, Bonnie Timmermann and Chris Lighty also receive exec producer credits.

Independent is handling international sales on the project, which will begin lensing in late summer.

"The combination of such formidable talent in front of and behind the camera will turn this wonderful gothic story into a modern classic for a whole new generation," said Roeg.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

SiliasRuby

Yeah baby yeah....Not one but two, TWO films of Jekyl and Hyde coming soon.
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