Bronx-born Abel Ferrara, 54, is among the upper echelon of American directors—so unique that he can only secure financing overseas. Americans don't like such risky artists. Although his Bad Lieutenant (1992) was a considerable art-house success, and his Ms. 45 (1981) and King of New York (1990) have each earned the title "cult classic," his last four films, including the new Mary, have struggled to find distribution in their own country. Mary tells the story of an actress (Juliette Binoche) playing and becoming obsessed with Mary Magdalene and a film director (Matthew Modine) who casts himself as Jesus. The film may have hit a timing jackpot with the current Da Vinci Code frenzy.
Some writers have speculated that the Matthew Modine filmmaker character in Mary is a cross between you and Mel Gibson.
He's playing a director. Matty has already directed films. I don't know if he knows Mel. I don't know Mel. We had fun with the character. We called him "Tony Ray-Ban." Don't give a fuck about nobody. He's directed a movie about Jesus and he cast himself. He's being crucified with a pair of sunglasses.
Is it cathartic for you to explore subversive religious issues?
The thing about Mary is about the findings of the Gnostic Gospels, which were alternatives to the four or five gospels that everyone knows. They were discovered in 1945. That's basically what's running through the Da Vinci Code. The church said, "This is the news, and this is the only thing that's gonna be written or taught." I was brought up in a very heavy-duty Catholic school. It's incredible when you start reading through the alternate stories. With Mary we were looking at the treatment of women through the last 2,000 years, historically and through the character of Mary Magdalene.
'R Xmas (2001) did not receive an American distributor either, but I think it's one of your best films. How did the idea of doing a holiday film come about?
You make a movie; you gotta follow your vision. Sure it's about Christmas and family, but they're selling heroin. Are there any white people in the movie? No. At that point you get the vibe you're going to do some business in Guatemala, but not in Atlanta. But there are so many venues out there.
You worked with Zoe Lund (a.k.a. Zoe Tamerlis) as an actress in Ms. 45 (1981) and as a screenwriter on Bad Lieutenant (1992). How did she come to write Bad Lieutenant?
Nicky (Nicholas St. John) wasn't into Bad Lieutenant, so Zoe wrote it. She wrote the first draft of New Rose Hotel. Zoe would write 10-20 pages just to warm up. Here are these people writing a script, working on them for a year, and she turned in her draft, 240 pages on legal paper. I read the script, I'd just turn the page and hope I'd see more white than black, but with her, there was no white at all. She wrote in eye-chart print, top to bottom, edge to edge. She killed that project in its tracks. When she writes you have to look up every 10 words. You have to read with a dictionary. I don't know if anybody could have got through the thing. The chick was too much. But with Bad Lieutenant I stayed on top of her.
Cat Chaser (1989) was released in a truncated, edited version here in the U.S.—is there any chance of ever seeing a complete version?
There's a tape that's around that we like to show of my version. I didn't have final cut at that time. I made the ultimate sin of leaving a film before it's done, but I woulda killed somebody. They were intent on destroying that film, and they did. Elmore Leonard is like the Mark Twain of today. The one line they kept from Elmore: "What kind of writing gets the most money? Ransom notes." There's a lotta lines like that, and that's the only one that survived. Here we got the greatest writer in the world who's actually trying to make these changes everybody wants. I said, "How can you put up with this?" And he said, "I'm doing a book about Hollywood and I'm researching."