For a film involving a drug-dealing cop who has frequent hallucinations involving iguanas, Tuesday morning's press conference for Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans was an oddly sedate event. Despite the presence of Nicolas Cage, arguably one of Hollywood's more gonzo performers, and director Werner Herzog, the Teutonic force behind some of this past decade's more outrageous projects, both behaved like true professionals, albeit slightly dull ones at first.
"Werner is just a joy to work with. When he's got the shot, he's got it," said Cage, looking relaxed and refreshed in a dark blazer as he traded compliments with the director. "It was a very happy marriage working on this."
Once the discussion turned to the title of the film, though, the conversation became a bit more animated. While the crime-drama is technically a remake of the 1992 Abel Ferrara film starring Harvey Keitel, Herzog insisted his film is a franchise in name only.
"I battled against the title from the first moment on, but I was not in a position to prevail," said Herzog, who is also in town to promote the TIFF entry My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done. "I can live with it, I have no problem with it at all. The title is probably a mistake, but so be it."
Although Ferrara's film is a deeply serious meditation on corruption and Catholic guilt, Port of Call New Orleans is a decidedly more comedic project. The film, which takes place in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, follows Cage's police officer as he investigates a multiple homicide while dealing with local gangsters, his prostitute girlfriend and, of course, several hallucinatory reptiles.
"Werner loves his iguanas," Cage said, recalling a battle with producers to keep the reptiles in the film. "If he couldn't have three minutes of iguana time, he was very concerned."
Interrupted Herzog: "If that scene was cut out, I would have stopped making films."
While Cage briefly rhapsodized about his love of New Orleans (often obliquely referring to a "very mysterious epiphany" he had there while filming his directorial debut, Sonny), the actor was otherwise divorced from his truly outré performance. "You can't take it too seriously," Cage said.
Before the event rapped up, though, Herzog couldn't resist revealing the tip of his notoriously sharp tongue. When asked about his scathing statement in the film's press notes, which more or less calls critics "losers," the director didn't mince words: "The so-called film studies [crowd], academia, tries to find points of reference in everything ... squeezing the life out of film like a white towel.... It's against the culture of imagination."
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans premieres Tuesday Sept. 15 at 6 p.m. at Ryerson, and also screens Thursday Sept. 17, 2:30 p.m. at the Elgin, and Saturday, Sept. 19, 7:30 p.m. at AMC 6.
