Posts Tagged ‘Abel Ferrara’

The Gladiator

Saturday, May 16th, 2009

tn_thegladiatorTHE GLADIATOR is another movie I found on VHS by accident while browsing the video store. It’s a car vigilante TV movie, so I was surprised to find it with the Abel Ferrara movies. Yes, the director of KING OF NEW YORK and BAD LIEUTENANT also did a TV movie starring Ken Wahl and guest starring cheeseball ’80s top 40 DJ Rick Dees as his obnoxious boss. From about ‘85 until ‘88 Ferrara mostly worked in TV, doing some episodes of MIAMI VICE and CRIME STORY, plus this one in ‘86. Seemed like something I should investigate.

Wahl plays Rick Benton, a stoic car mechanic working for Dees’s specialty car business. The only people in his life are his kid brother who he raised (Brian Robbins, director of NORBIT), his Vietnam buddy who works at the junkyard, and a customer he’s starting to date, talk radio host Nancy Allen. He works for rich people but chugs along in the kind of lower middle class existence not usually depicted casually in a TV movie. A couple nice touches I noticed: they eat on paper plates, and they wrap gifts with the Sunday funnies. You ever notice how presents on TV and movies are usually perfectly wrapped with shiny bows and sometimes even lids that just lift off? I could never pull that off. The Sunday funnies is more relatable. Good one Ferrara. (more…)

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Bad Lieutenant

Tuesday, January 29th, 2008

A guy I know told me a funny anecdote about renting this in the early ’90s when he was a teenager. He said he got it at a tiny little mom and pop store in a suburb of Seattle. You don’t really see stores like that now but they used to be around, especially in the ’80s, before Blockbuster and Hollywood were everywhere. This one had a nice old man who ran it (the pop) and when this kid and his little sister brought up BAD LIEUTENANT the old man got excited. “My niece is in this movie!” he says.

“Really?”

“Yeah! Watch for the scene where he pulls over the two teenage girls. She’s one of the girls!”

So, of course, if you’ve seen the movie you will remember the scene where Harvey forces one girl to show him her ass and the other one to pretend she’s sucking a dick as he stands there jerking off and repeating “you ever had a guy’s cock in your mouth? You ever have a guy’s cock in your mouth?” over and over again. Well, don’t worry, one of those actresses has a proud uncle.

That’s right man, that Harvey Keitel is one bad lieutenant. I’m not talking about a baaaaadass lieutenant. I’m talking about a coke snorting, crack smoking, heroin shooting, hard drinking, walking around naked, money stealing, lying, gambling addicted, n-word using, jerking off in front of some teenage girls he pulled over, spying on a naked rape victim, law enforcement sonofabitch. That would be a more accurate title but it’s too long to fit on a marquee and gives away pretty much 95% of what happens in the movie. (more…)

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King of New York

Saturday, January 1st, 2005

In this movie Christopher Walken plays Frank White who is the King of New York. He is not literally a king but actually some sort of crime boss of New York. He’s fresh out of the joint and unlike certain heroic individuals who choose to turn their life around and follow a path of Positivity, making the world a better place through art and culture, he decides to be king of new york. But he says he’s gonna build a hospital so that makes it okay.

The director is Abel Ferrara, an asshole director who I sort of like. I mean I never met the guy obviously but he’s one of those greaseballs like Vincent Gallo where, before you even see an interview with the guy, you just get the feeling he’s an asshole. In his movie DRILLER KILLER I didn’t even realize he was the star (he used a pseudonym) and I kept thinking this star really thinks he’s hot shit, it’s not just the character. What a fuckin asshole. But then I listened to the commentary track and heard Ferrara say the same exact thing about himself. So I had to like him.

Plus, some assholes are talented and I think Ferrara is, at least sometimes. He makes gritty, raw movies, alot of them bad, some of them good. His commentary tracks are always funny and even on a movie like this, maybe the best he’ll ever make, he makes fun of it like it’s some corny slasher movie. Here he makes a crime saga but he doesn’t have Hollywood germs tainting his blood so he makes it serious and brutal and unformulaic. You could argue that he’s one of these pretentious New York underground art type assholes, and that that’s not necessarily better than being a corny Hollywood asshole. True, but I prefer the New York asshole for making KING OF NEW YORK. Especially a macho guy like Ferrara. (more…)

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‘R Xmas

Saturday, January 1st, 2005

The two strongest feelings I have about Abel Ferrara’s latest are “that was pretty good” and “what the hell?” I will cover these two feelings in order.

This is the story of Christmas for a rich couple in New York in 1993. We see them videotaping their young daughter’s private school Christmas play, trying to get her the most in demand Christmas toy, and that kind of business. Then they put her to bed, some fellas come over and they start filling up baggies of cocaine.

So the idea I guess is that drug kingpins aren’t that much different from any of the other rich fucks in new york. I mean you pretty much like these people. They really do care about their daughter and want to make her happy, even if they think they have to do it by buying shit. They have lots of old ladies sitting around the house and they hug and kiss them alot. When it comes down to it, their family life really is more important to them than their drug empire, although they don’t know how to live like a regular working class individual. And one thing that’s refreshing is that other than the fact that he sells drugs, the husband never shows a dark side. You never see him being ruthless. He doesn’t only SEEM charming and innocent, but have a furious anger hidden beneath. As far as we see, he’s just a sweet, romantic guy. Come to think of it, this guy is BETTER than the other rich fucks in new york, if a little superficial.

The plot turns out to be about the husband getting kidnapped and held for ransom, and how the wife tries to find enough money even though most of their organization went to Puerto Rico for Christmas. The wife turns out to be the strongest character in the movie and it’s interesting to watch her try to handle the crisis, and how the family members try to support her the same way a normal family would handle a normal crisis. (more…)

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