I can only imagine that improbable meeting between Herzong and Ferrara... they would trade harsh remarks (probably insults on Ferrara´s part) at first only to become pacified later on over an excellent Italian dinner... and "in vino veritas" Ferrara would go so far as to petting Herzog´s iguanas, LOL!
VENICE, Italy Nicolas Cage and Eva Mendes brought Hollywood to Venice on Friday with Werner Herzog's action-packed "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans."
Screening out of competition at the Venice film festival, the cop flick set in the Big Easy has nothing to do with Abel Ferrara's 1992 cult thriller "Bad Lieutenant" set in New York, Herzog insisted.
Nevertheless his fast-moving, zany non-remake involves a police lieutenant investigating homicides who is addicted to drugs and gambling.
Cage's performance of his deranged character is at times hilarious and so credible that Herzog said he had to be reassured that he was not snorting the real thing.
The German director of "Grizzly Man" (2005) encouraged Cage and Mendes, who played a high-class call girl and the lieutenant's girlfriend, to go off-script.
Cage obliged with an over-the-top, gun-brandishing screaming session at a nursing home while trying to squeeze information from an elderly lady.
Herzog goes in for some improvisation himself, introducing a pair of iguanas to suggest Cage hallucinating while spaced out on drugs.
"I always like to cast animals in my films, and iguanas are so stupid and bizarre I just love them," he said. "I don't know why I did it. But they are the best moments in the film."
Herzog, asked at a news conference whether he had cut a deal with Ferrara for a remake, insisted again on Friday that he had never met Ferrara or seen the film.
"I hear he's here, I hope he sees my film and that we can meet," Herzog said. "We should meet up soon over a bottle of whisky."
When Ferrara learned of the project he told the Guardian online that Herzog and company "should all die in hell."
Ferrara also has a film out of competition at the festival, "Napoli, Napoli, Napoli," a documentary on the southern Italian city.
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"Hell begins on the day when God grants us a clear vision of all that we might have achieved, of all the gifts which we have wasted, of all that we might have done which we did not do" ~~Gian Carlo Menotti~~
