Herzog vs Ferrara at the Venice Film Festival
“It was shaping up to be the film festival’s equivalent of a pub brawl, a bloody showdown between two notorious loose cannons of world cinema. In the red corner: Abel Ferrara, the New York director of the original Bad Lieutenant. In the blue: German film-maker Werner Herzog, who had the temerity to remake it. . . .
On learning of Herzog’s decision to remake his controversial 1992 drama as a New Orleans cop thriller starring Nicolas Cage, Ferrara expressed the wish that the makers of the new version should all “die in hell”.The Oscar-winning director of Grizzly Man and Aguirre, the Wrath of God promptly shot back, saying that he had never even heard of Ferrara, let alone sat down to watch his movie. He repeated this claim again yesterday. “I don’t know who he is,” Herzog said. “But we will meet soon. I hope that he will see my film while he is here. . . .
Ferrara’s film cast Harvey Keitel as a degenerate Catholic cop who finds a form of redemption after investigating an assault on a nun. By contrast, Herzog’s remake jettisons the Catholicism and is lighter in tone. . . .”
More at The Guardian