Hanging With Abel
Posted in Apple, NYC on September 29th, 2007 by William Speruzzi
I went to see Abel Ferrara hold court last night at the Apple Soho store to hear him speak about “how Final Cut Pro helped him get the upcoming Go Go Tales to the screen.” Sorry Apple but your little website blurb can’t contain this man. It’s the day after and I still don’t know if he ever used Final Cut Pro.
He was dressed to the nines in a tux ready to run off and see the opening night screening of The Darjeeling Limited at the New York Film Festival. I would have joined him but my measly Lincoln Center Film Society individual membership didn’t have enough pull to get me that ticket — I’m still waiting for my tickets to come in the mail. Still waiting…
The truth is it’s hard to convey what it’s like to be around the man. He’s a combination of, well, damn I can’t even come up with an amalgamation. Abel’s an original let’s put it that way. You could tell he was a little nervous talking about the technology. He spoke of how he cut this film by using two Avids [like I said, I thought this was an Apple event?] side by side and compared and contrasted the versions the closer they got to completion. That’s a new workflow to me. Interesting.
Once Abel felt a little loose by opening up questions to the audience he had his forum. It’s both heartbreaking and endearing to hear him speak about his films because you know so much has gone wrong with them in the past. Financing and distribution woes have taken their toll on his body of work and yet he perseveres like a stand-up comedian whose been batted around the club scene for too long.
He spoke of how all of his core group of collaborators all dropped off one by one in the last decade. I can imagine money had a lot to do with this and if you watch A Short Film About The Long Career of Abel Ferrara on the King of New York DVD you’ll see my point. The long rumored break-up of Ferrara with his number one guy and close friend, screenwriter Nicholas St. John, came down to this — “he had to get out, he couldn’t take the business anymore.”
As the alloted hour wound down Abel took a call on his cell phone, the man had somewhere to be — to see the new Anderson film but more importantly to hit up some of the philanthropist in the Lincoln Center audience for some cheech for his next project. All I know is we could have hung around and talked with him all night which he would have been more than happy to oblige. I still wanted to ask him about the recent news of the Bad Lieutenant remake/update/reimagining. Maybe next time.
Go Go Tales will be at the New York Film Festival October 5th and 7th.
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