BOMB 113/Fall 2010
Abel Ferrara. Photo by Susan Shacter© 1995.
12 midnight, July 27, 1995. Deadly serious., dead on target, with a keen nose for the perversity of human nature, Abel Ferrara’s films plunge right into the most extreme forms, the icy rivers of anti-social behavior. No feet of clay there. Rape in Ms. 45 (1981). Drug trafficking in King of New York (1990). Gang warfare in China Girl (1987). Serial killings in Fear City (1984). Yet his often delirious portrayals of murder and mayhem are tempered with irony and a sense of balance—not so much the scales of justice as the law of the jungle. Violent crime breeding the violence of retribution. In the past Ferrara’s films have had a tantalizing ambiguity—they’ve come on as powerful moral parables while conveying the seductiveness of evil—the devil gets an awful lot of good lines.
Ferrara’s latest film, The Addiction, opening in New York this October, and written, like almost all the others, by Nick St. John, seems to mark a turning point. Structured as a vampire movie, with Lili Taylor in the lead, it brilliantly portrays the pure horror, the wasting torments of addiction per se.
This interview was done late at night over the phone while Ferrara was deep in the throes of pre-production on The Funeral, a gangster film set in 1935. Casting was still in progress while we talked.
(Interview)