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Nothing wrote:So is Herzog in town yet?

Filmmaker: What are your feelings about Werner Herzog doing his version of Bad Lieutenant?

Ferrara: He can die in hell. I hate these people – they suck. A, he don't know me, couldn't pick me out of a line-up. B, I'm chasing windmills. Well, I'd rather chase windmills than steal other people's ideas. It's lame. I can't believe Nic Cage is trying to play that part. I mean, if the kid needed the money...

An insider on the new Bad Lieutenant team, responding to the Abel Ferrara item posted earlier this morning, explains it all: "The whole reason the film was made was because [executive producer] Avi Lerner got hold of the rights, which he bought from Ed Pressman for an undisclosed sum. And he went out and pre-sold the film in ten countries for $30 million, or an average of $3 million per country.

"Lerner funded the film for $20 million, and pocketed $10 million for himself. Nic Cage, who likes New Orleans and owns a home there, took a substantial pay cut -- only about $2 million -- because he wanted to work with [director] Werner Herzog, who probably got his first decent payday check out of this deal. William Finklestein's script wasn't good but Herzog upgraded it considerably. Lerner didn't even look at the script."

MyNameCriterionForum wrote:1. I find it suspicious at best, reprehensible at worst, that Herzog claimed to not know anything about the original film (if I am remembering this incorrectly, please say so). I suppose you could chalk that up to his impressive manipulation of his own image, but for someone as talented and learned as Herzog, it seems disingenuous.

Antoine Doinel wrote:Apparently, Herzog thinks Bad Lieutenant is franchise material.

Speaking at a London press conference for his new movie Knowing (released today in cinemas, March 25), the actor said he was looking forward to working with director Werner Herzog and described the idea of reviving the Bad Lieutenant as “so audacious I couldn’t resist”.

His next film, currently being edited, is a sort of non-sequel sequel to Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant, starring Nicolas Cage and Eva Mendes. Herzog, with admirable perversity, has never seen Ferrara's original and never plans to. He was approached by producer Ed Pressman, who owned the rights to the Bad Lieutenant title and wanted to reuse it. Herzog hopes his film will be "a new kind of film noir, which always seems to make sense in certain dire situations like now". Why take the project on at all? "I was assured [by the producers] that this was not related to another film of a similar name. I told them, 'If you swear on the heads of your children.' I also had hints from Nicolas Cage that he wouldn't sign unless he knew I was directing, which is a good way to start a film."

The film was shot in New Orleans, hence Herzog's subtitle - Port of Call New Orleans. "The producers were adamant about New Orleans because of tax incentives. It appealed to me because, after Katrina, you were in a situation where civil life came to a breakdown. Not merely because the hurricane caused a lot of material destruction, but it also created a collapse of civility - looting and, by the way, the police were heavily involved in that, too. This basic situation I found fascinating - way beyond the tax incentives, of course."

MyNameCriterionForum wrote:Haha, dig the patented "Twirling Kinski Entrance" at :40

MyNameCriterionForum wrote:Thing is, Cage could never frighten me like Keitel did... OTOH, I didn't realize Kilmer was in this, maybe he'd have been better in the title role.