Werner Her-ZING!

I never know how to deal with the rage that people feel toward directors who want to remake one of their favorite movies ("But it's a classic!") is being remade. I didn't think it was necessary to remake The Taking of Pelham 123, but I'm looking forward to seeing what Ridley Scott can do with the material.

In 1992, Abel Ferrera made a film called Bad Lieutenant starring Harvey Keitel about...you guessed it...a crooked cop. Fairly significant praise has been heaped onto the film and Ferrera, by proxy, and it's probably one of the fifty best crime movies made after 1973 (the start of the Scorsese crime film era). It's nowhere near as good as The Killing of a Chinese Bookie or Goodfellas, but, all things considered, Ferrera is pretty talented.

This year, Werner Herzog, who is roughly...5000 times the filmmaker that Ferrera is, decided to loosely remake Bad Lieutenant.

Ferrera was mad.
He was incensed.

He is quoted as saying this:

I wish these people die in hell. I hope they're all in the same streetcar, and it blows up.


Werner Herzog's response?
Let him fight the windmills, like Don Quixote.

I guess it seems insane that the guy who made King of New York is implying that Herzog is a whore. Herzog, the guy who schlepped a film crew through a Peruvian rain forest just to be authentic. Twice. Ferrara should be proud that a filmmaker as visionary as Herzog is even thinking of taking his story and remaking it. Ferrara can tell Herzog to die in hell when he makes a movie that's as good as the first 3 minutes of Aguirre, Wrath of God.


And that's what I have to say to the people who hate remakes.
Go to Spain and chase your goddamn windmills.