Bad Lieutenant
Short description
Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant follows a New York City police lieutenant who is deeply corrupt and dependent on drugs and gambling. Buried in debt and living without restraint, he seizes on the case of a young nun who has been assaulted in a church, hoping the investigation will bring him money or some kind of redemption. The nun's response to what happened to her unsettles him and forces him to confront the direction his life has taken.
Harvey Keitel plays the lieutenant, heading a cast that also includes Peggy Gormley as his wife and Stella Keitel as his daughter. Zoë Lund co-wrote the screenplay with Ferrara, and Edward R. Pressman and Mary Kane produced. The film was released in November 1992 and runs 96 minutes.
It was Ferrara's fifth feature as director, arriving between King of New York and Body of Strangers: Body Snatchers. Made for about 1 million dollars and earning roughly 2 million worldwide, it returned a modest profit. On IMDb it holds 7 out of 10 from around 52,000 votes, and on TMDB 7 out of 10 from about 991 votes, while a critics' rating stands at 7.4 out of 10 from 53 reviews, placing critical and audience assessments close together.
What's left behind the scenes
- Abel Ferrara once recounted that for him the entire film boiled down to a scene in which a police officer robs an electronics store, leaves the scene, and then receives a report of the electronics store robbery. He returns to the scene as a law enforcement officer (and no one recognizes him as the robber), questions those present, leaves the store, and throws away the witness statements. However, this scene was never actually filmed.
- To a certain extent, the film's plot was inspired by the case of the actual rape of two nuns in New York. As shown in the film, rumors circulated around the city that a reward was offered for the capture of the rapists. Bo Dietl served in the police and arrested the rapists, and he also plays a detective in this film. Currently, Dietl is known as the author of several bestsellers.
- Like other directors of low-budget films, Abel Ferrara generally did not bother obtaining permission to film. The scene in which Harvey Keitel's character walks through a nightclub was actually filmed in a nightclub without asking the administration's permission.
- The role of the main character was intended for Christopher Walken, who had already worked with Abel Ferrara in the thriller "King of New York" (1989). According to Ferrara, the film was originally planned as a comedy. As an example, he always cited the scene in which the main character stops a car with teenage girls – how Walken would have played it, and how Harvey Keitel changed and played it. Walken would have had the girls dancing on the dawn streets, with the girls dressed in his gun belt and hat, and the radio in the car playing loudly. Keitel played this scene completely differently.
- When Harvey Keitel began to read the script for the first time, he threw it away after just 15 minutes, declaring it "nonsense." Then he sat down to read again, read the rape scenes, and changed his initial opinion.
- The film's set designer, Charles M. Lagola, ordered the church altar and other surfaces to be covered with sheets of plastic, and then instructed his subordinates to draw graffiti and various obscenities on the plastic.
- Many scenes and lines were invented on the fly. Initially, the script fit on 65 pages, which would have resulted in a film slightly longer than an hour. According to producer Randy Sabusawa, the opportunities for improvisation were enormous. According to the screenwriters, it was not easy to work on, because Abel Ferrara did not stick to the script, constantly changing it right in the middle of filming a scene.
- Christopher Walken refused to act in the film because of a scene in which Jesus Christ appears to the lieutenant in a church. According to Walken, “the image of Jesus is invoked too often.”
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