Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

Started by MacGuffin, May 13, 2008, 06:11:43 PM

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matt35mm

Hmm, it's playing right now (as in as I'm typing this) at the Venice Film Festival, which is maybe about an hour or two away from where I am right now (Bologna).  But clearly, I wasn't excited enough to go.  Plus I just found out right now.

The Road played yesterday.  Nothing that I particularly wanted to see is playing tomorrow and I leave Italy the day after that.  So no Venice Film Fest for me!

MacGuffin

No redemption for this 'Bad Lieutenant'

VENICE, Italy - German director Werner Herzog says his "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans," starring Nicolas Cage as a drug-addicted homicide detective and Eva Mendes as his prostitute girlfriend, has nothing to do with Abel Ferrara's 1992 cult classic starring Harvey Keitel. He hasn't even seen it.

"There is no relationship, because I never saw it. But I am convincingly told that they have nothing to do with each other," Herzog told reporters on Friday at the Venice Film Festival where the movie made its premiere.

"I hope that Abel Ferrara will see my film, which he has not seen. And I hope I will see his film soon. I am sure we will meet soon with a bottle of whiskey between us."

That could happen sooner than he thinks: Ferrara is showing a film "Napoli, Napoli, Napoli" out of competition in Venice.

A brutal murder of a family of illegal immigrants drives Herzog's "Bad Lieutenant," but the movie defies any conventional plot line. It's more than a murder story, and doesn't want to be an expose of corruption. Herzog said the title came with the project, and he couldn't change it, but that he did rewrite substantial parts of the screenplay.

"To me it's a fairy tale, a warped fairy tale, but a fairy tale," Mendes said.

Cage's iguana-hallucinating homicide detective Lt. Terence McDonagh walks seemingly unscathed through potential disasters of his own making, always tempting fate to catch him. He is addicted to painkillers to treat a chronic back injury picked up while rescuing a prisoner from the rising waters of Hurricane Katrina, and will do anything to get his fix: shake down colleagues working in the property room, youths coming out of clubs and a college football star whose stats he can recite.

Playing a drug haze was much a much different process for Cage than when he played an alcoholic in "Leaving Las Vegas." For that film "I would have a couple of drinks for the prescribed scene, see how it would feel and put it in the movie," he said.

"I hadn't had a drink for five years, or anything," when it came time to shoot "Bad Lieutenant," Cage said. "It occurred to me that this was going to be more of an impressionist kind of landscape where I was going to try to look at the landscape of something that happened to me 20 years ago and try to recall that in my sober mind."

For Cage, one clear underlying difference between his bad lieutenant and Keitel's is the latter's search for redemption, Cage said.

"The movie (Abel) made, which is excellent, but it is very much a Judeo-Christian program where the character is loaded with Catholic guilt and redemption. Terrence has no guilt. It is not about that," Cage said. "I did not choose to approach the film with the idea I was portraying evil in anyway. You can ask me if he is a good cop, a bad cop, I won't answer. He just is."

In one of the best lines of the film, filled with black humor, Cage tells a drug kingpin who has just shot a hit man coming to settle a score with Cage's lieutenant: "Shoot him again. His soul is still dancing." Cajun music exults as the "soul" breakdances.

"It is a very dark humor," Herzog said. "It is so dark it becomes hilarious."

Herzog acknowledges the film was initially set in New Orleans for the tax breaks, but said he immediately jumped at the chance.

"New Orleans has something very, very strange. You sense the collapse, but not just the physical collapse, also the collapse of civility," Herzog said. "We shot at one street intersection and the next night two people were shot at this intersection. So you always had the thought, yes, there are always dangers."

Cage called New Orleans "really the biggest character of the film. More so than my character, or Eva's character."

"It is a potent genus loci, which is a very spiritual kind of energy that I wanted to embrace and put in the movie," Cage said.

"Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans" is competing for the Golden Lion, which will be awarded Sept. 12.
"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

The Beatles know Jesus Christ has returned to Earth and is in Los Angeles.

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There was a FISH in the perkalater!!!

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Stefen

Falling in love is the greatest joy in life. Followed closely by sneaking into a gated community late at night and firing a gun into the air.

Gamblour.

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polkablues

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diggler

would've been better if it was just a straight photograph.
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MacGuffin

"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

polkablues

My house, my rules, my coffee

Stefen

Falling in love is the greatest joy in life. Followed closely by sneaking into a gated community late at night and firing a gun into the air.

polkablues

I'm going to be on vacation the rest of this week, so in the meantime if brockly wants to do some more, or if anyone else wants to try their hand at it, please do so.  Just post your results in the respective threads, and modage can add them on to the tumblr blog.  The fact that these are starting to get noticed is potentially great for this board.  If we end up getting a couple cool new members out of it, then it was totally worth it.
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modage

Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

Neil

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Gold Trumpet

Polka, can I use one of these posters for a facebook profile pic? I want my friends to see these and have a quick link to the website to check them out.

polkablues

Absolutely, go for it.  Spread the word!
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