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For the first three decades of his career, Abel Ferrara was a seminal New York filmmaker whose gritty tales of furious pariahs, addicts, and rebels made Martin Scorsese’s “Mean Streets” look like “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.” But Ferrara fled New York after 9/11 and found a new life abroad. On a recent evening in Rome, he stood on the porch of his home, thousands of miles from the city that put him on the map, and contemplated his history of battling for final cut.
“You can’t paint a mustache on a Mona Lisa just because you fucking buy it,” he said, wearing a pair of scruffy headphones as he stared into a Skype session on his laptop. His leathery features and wisps of long white hair gleamed against a shadowy backdrop. “You dig what I mean? I’m working in my own language.”
With Ferrara, meaning can be an elusive thing.
“You can’t paint a mustache on a Mona Lisa just because you fucking buy it,” he said, wearing a pair of scruffy headphones as he stared into a Skype session on his laptop. His leathery features and wisps of long white hair gleamed against a shadowy backdrop. “You dig what I mean? I’m working in my own language.”
With Ferrara, meaning can be an elusive thing.
- 4/27/2019
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
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