The elegant angst and ethereal romanticism that linger in the atmosphere of the Chelsea Hotel make it the perfect place to interview legendary filmmaker-cum-infidel Abel Ferrara. Like some modern-day Roman gladiator pushing his way through an angry Coliseum crowd after a brutal and violent loss, Ferrara seems less to arrive for our interview than he does to beat the odds of making it through the front door.
Drenched in sweat, Ferrara is all manic energy as he darts back and forth across the hotel apartment-room in jeans and black sneakers, stopping only to swig from his brown bottle in a bag or to quickly and compulsively slick back his damp silver hair. His eyes are squinted and his posture is off kilter, with one shoulder angled higher than the other -- like a hunchback. "Turn the tape recorder on, you know, so I can start talking," he says, leaning deliberately into a chair for a brief pause. He does not sit down once during our entire interview, as if constant movement somehow helps to maintain his internal coherence.
Best known for grit-and-gut anti-Catholic existentialist allegories like Bad Lieutenant, King of New York and The Funeral, Ferrara, 56, is one of the truest, most steadfast independent filmmakers working today. Apart from one dip into the studio pool (a remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers for Warner Brothers in 1993), and despite a notoriously hedonistic, self-indulgent lifestyle, Ferrara is still making movies the way he wants to make them. And most of the time, they're pretty stunning.
In July, Ferrara was in New York for a special screening of King of New York (to which he is currently at work on a prequel) at Lincoln Center, fresh off the heels of premiering his new film Go Go Tales at Cannes. The film, which tells the story of one rough night at Ray Ruby's Paradise Lounge, and stars Willem Dafoe, Matthew Modine and Asia Argento, also screens this month at the New York Film Festival.
Rebecca Carroll: What was it like seeing King of New York at Lincoln Center?
Abel Ferrara: It was nice they found the print! That's the first part. And then, it's also nice to come back to New York -- we've been in Rome.
RC: But what was it like to revisit the film in that particular way?
AF: You know, that film had a very troubled life in theaters. It became a cult film after its theatrical release -- on videocassette. So to see it in the movie theater with a full house that isn't made up of my mother and grandmother, to see people really digging it... My favorite expression, and I didn't come up with it, is that every empty seat is a knife in the heart of a director. I mean, it's not so dramatic, but it could be.
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