03/05/2019
Abel Ferrara on Finding Light in the Darkness, NYC Post-9/11, and the Realities of the Film Industry
Q: I love The Projectionist’s before-and-after between archival material and what you recently shot. Some locations really shift, while others just don’t.
A: The fact that they’re there. These movie theaters were there. They’re present, like churches. You walk around Rome, the churches are all there. You walk around here, there are none. There’s a movie theater disguised as a hotel here; you wouldn’t even see it. With those shots of 42nd, they were movie theaters after another. He’s still holding out; there are movie theaters. Those kids we were talking to in the movie, they’re going to movies. For them, it hasn’t changed from when I was a kid in the Bronx. We’d go to see The Blob, House on Haunted Hill—we waited for those movies. We waited all summer long for some of those fu***ng movies. It’s not like it’s a gone experience. There are kids that want to get out of the house, be with their friends, rumble it up in the theaters.
When I was talking about the 9/11 thing… one of the greatest moments of being in New York, because I was just here with De Niro talking at the lunch he gave, they had that festival because of what happened, and it was like a desire, a need. Robert stepped up and did that. I mean, this city really came together. The tragedy was a shock, but people came together as natives, as, “Okay, we’ve got to get s**t straight.” There was a great feeling about that and that feeling went away quick. Then it became, I don’t know, an excuse for a land grab. I don’t know why it changed so drastically. I also had opportunities to shoot in Europe because most of our films, one way or another, were financed partially, completely, by foreign entities. Our films play in other countries.
The Film Stage | 2 May 2019 | by Nick Newman
Our wide-ranging interview with the director, who has a number of projects to unveil this year–but don’t call him prolific.