Someone made a good observation the other day and we can’t remember where we read it (we scoured the two sources where we thought it came from Time Out New York and the A/V Club, no luck) and to paraphrase, it went something like this: with cantankerous filmmaker Abel Ferrara constantly cranking out films and adding to his eclectic body of work, it’s a bit of a surprise the risk-taker doesn’t come up snake eyes more often.
It’s true and in fact he seems to be more well known these days for arguing with Werner Herzog. But Ferrara is essentially in perpetual film production or preparation yet how many classics does he have under his belt other than, “Bad Lieutenant,” “King of New York” and “Mary” (and no one saw the latter aside from critics)? And how many of his movies — many of them of B-movie quality despite the perennial appearance of Christopher Walken who will seemingly appear in anything for the director — do people actually see? Many of his films come and go and are often times only shown in New York (see his most recent documentary “Chelsea On The Rocks,” his portrait of Manhattan’s bohemian hotspot the Chelsea Hotel that’s in very limited release).
So we’d like to make something once more with real teeth, but in rather surprising, and deeply sad news, Abel Ferrara has just begun filming in Michigan on a Wesley Snipes action thriller titled, “Game of Death,” from Voltage Pictures (“The Hurt Locker”). Snipes will play a convicted tax cheat a bodyguard trying to defend a hospitalized diplomat from assassination. The film, which marks the first teaming of the pair since “King of New York,” and sounds like it will most likely be found on the bottom shelf of your local video store (assuming your local video store still exists) sometime next year. We have no idea what Ferrara’s doing on this, but we hope it pays well… or we at least hope and pray there’s some substance to it. But action thriller? That does not sound like Ferrara territory (if you’re thinking about the action in “Kings Of New York,” you’ve got that movie all wrong).
In terms of awaiting Ferrara genius (which is a bit like waiting for Godot these days), perhaps we’ll have to patiently wait for “Jekyll and Hyde,” his modern re-imagining of the original Robert Louis Stevenson story that will star Forest Whitaker and 50 Cent. No shit, seriously, we didn’t make that mindblower up. Will that one ever actually happen? Fingers fucking crossed. Also, what happened to his so-called, “King Of New York” sequel?
While we’re at it, Ferrara’s 2007 stripclub film, “Go Go Tales,” starring Asia Argento screened at Cannes that year, but failed to ever receive U.S. distribution. Anyone have a bootleg of this thing they want to send us?