Director: Abel Ferrara
Writer: Nicholas St. John
Cinematography: Ken Kelsch
Editor: Anthony Redman
Music: Joe Delia
Notable Cast: Harvey Keitel, Madonna, James Russo, Nancy Ferrara, Victor Argo, Richard Belzer, Leonard L. Thomas, Bill Pope, Werner Herzog, Glenn Plummer, Christina Fulton
It was a cold, gray day when my friend and I trudged to the Greenwich Movie Theater on 7th Avenue in the West Village to see Abel Ferrara’s follow up to the great Bad Lieutenant. Starring Harvey Keitel, Madonna, and James Russo (LOVE!), it seemed to promise a sort of spiritual sequel to Lieutenant, only this time it’d be Bad Director (not bad in that he can’t direct, but that he’s a bad person, ha).
Perhaps there’s something to seeing an Abel Ferrara film in the very neighborhoods he travels in, but I seem to always watch his films with famous people. Spike Lee was at my showing of Bad Lieutenant at the Angelika. And who was at Dangerous Game? None other than the great John Waters himself, and he was with a friend that to this day my buddy swears was uber producer, Mace Neufeld. If anyone would know, it’d be my buddy, Altos.
So yeah, we saw this flick just a few rows behind John Waters and Mace Neufeld, who, I must say, seemed to enjoy themselves immensely. Either the movie is very accurate and their laughs were knowing, or it was wildly off and their laughs were mocking. I believe it was the former, but who the fuck knows?
One thing I do know is that in 1993, there may not have been a bigger star in the world than Madonna. She was everywhere. And why the fuck not? She’s one of the greatest musicians to ever live. The way her music morphed over the years, always keeping up with the trends while never betraying her core style, was incredible. Album after album in the 90’s was a banger.
This culminated with the fucking imminently listenable “dance club” album, Confessions on a Dance Floor.
Crafted as one long track with no breaks, it’s hypnotic, and every song is great, which you never find. Sadly, she fell off after this, musically, and never regained that magic. It happens. And now, because of all her plastic surgery, she looks positively monstrous (this is… The Substance!). But for a time, she was the hottest shit on the planet.
And this hot shit was a fan of Bad Lieutenant, and wanted to work with Ferrara on his next project. Madonna’s acting career had been spotty until then, starring mostly in forgettably shitty 80’s rom-coms. Then the 90’s hit, and she worked with Warren Beatty and Woody Allen in succession, before starring in the hit film, A League of Their Own (I remember the porn knockoff, A League of Their Moan. Fucking hilarious).
She could do whatever she wanted, and she wanted Ferrara. How fucking amazing is that? Love Madonna. Her presence greased the skids for Ferrara’s film within a film, Snake Eyes, soon to be retitled, Dangerous Game (terrible title, but so is Snake Eyes), giving us one of Ferrara’s best, yet somewhat inscrutable, works.
A true swan song to Ferrara’s “Hollywood” era, which skewers while illuminating that hell pit of an industry, featuring some of the best acting and dialogue I’ve ever seen, even if it doesn’t necessarily all come together in the end.
The 1ST 5 of Bad Lieutenant was legendary. Let’s see what Ferrara did with the 1ST 5 Minutes here and see if it compares.
1ST 5 MINUTES
In. Media. Fucking. Res! Right after the iconic MGM logo (how fucking nuts is it this was a studio picture? Wild shit), we immediately cut to a shot of Harvey Keitel, with page boy haircut, sitting with his wife and young son, about to eat a spaghetti dinner, with classical music playing in the background. Keitel shaves some parmesan onto everybody’s spaghetti.
Already loving this.
The wife asks if he ate on the plane, to which Keitel says he hates plane food. She hopes this tastes better, almost as if she is unsure of her cooking skills, to which Keitel assures her it’s going to be delicious. “I bet you this tastes so good, I’m not gonna believe it.” He takes a mouthful of spaghetti and immediately makes a face to his son like the food is disgusting and pretends he’s about to spit it out, before busting into laughter and joyfully eating the food.
His wife hits him on the arm, pointedly asks him if he’d prefer a steak.
Incredible moment between them here where he tells her, quite seriously, that it’s delicious. She says thank you in an off-hand way, and he leans into her, again repeats how delicious it is to assuage her hurt feelings. Amazing. Very real relationship shit. As someone married who goofs around like Keitel does here, I’ve sometimes gotten myself into similar situations.
This is extremely sophisticated writing.
Cut to Keitel and the wife engaged in sex, missionary style. Notable because the wife is played by Abel Ferrara’s real-life wife at the time, Nancy. Pretty wild to have your wife, naked, getting fucked on location in front of a film crew. I guess this goes toward explaining why they later divorced, much like the director Keitel plays here.
One of the amazing things about this film is the complete blur between actual reality, the reality of the film, and the reality of the film within the film.
Keitel then walks around his young son’s bedroom at night as the boy sleeps soundly. Goes over to the bed, leans down, and whispers, “Don’t forget me, kid. I’m your daddy.” He really emphasizes the “I’m your daddy” part. It’s SO good, nearly my Favorite Line in the film. And one I use with my kids all the time, which they always think is weird (but won’t once I show them this film when they’re older).
Same with the spaghetti bit at the beginning. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve done that to my wife or my mother in the wake of this film. Good shit. Always kills.
Keitel leaves his brownstone at night, it’s cold and blustery, with snow lining the pavement as he walks toward and past the camera. YES! Such a perfect “NYC in winter” moment.
Cut to the opening credits, dope, big white block letters on a black screen, as we hear in the background Keitel asking someone if they’d sing a song for the new movie they’re going into production on. The person starts singing the 1934 ballad, Blue Moon, in a sort of foreign accent, a cappella. It’s great, really catchy and weird and perfect.
We then cut to an interlaced image, a CU of Harvey Keitel in a hotel room, a subtitle tells us this footage is from the L.A. Rehearsals for the film they’re about to embark upon, The Mother of Mirrors.
Keitel, playing director Eddie Israel, explains the basic plot as a couple on the outs because of sex, drugs and a recent conversion to Christianity by the wife.
Love the use of video here as a contrast to the film images. Lends a certain rawness to the proceedings. And hearing Keitel opine and philosophize on the film they’re making and marriage in general is fantastic, as these rehearsal segments end up peppered throughout the film, to great effect, each with their own little thought provoking ruminations on life.
And that does it for the 1ST 5 Minutes of Dangerous Game. Absolutely nothing here to make me take this off or think I’m not in for a great, down and dirty, Ferrara classic. Hollywood’s bad boy himself making a film about not only Hollywood but his own experience there, using this film and these characters as a proxy?
Sign me the fuck up!
The rest of the flick
Ferrara does not disappoint. It’s a weird flick, in that it has many classic, enduring scenes and lines and shots and moments, but it still doesn’t quite gel the way you’d want it to, on an emotional level. Word is the original edit was 4 hours long, and was a lot more about a love triangle between Russo, Keitel and Madonna, but turned into something else in the cutting room.
When watching the film, you can kind of tell something is off, but it is also one of the film’s charms.
We’ll break it down by character, in order of importance, both to the film and to my personal enjoyment, though those seem to conflate and converge.
I hate the whole “well, this is the best films of all-time list, but this other list, these are my favorite films of all time, not necessarily the best, but my favorite” bullshit. No, art is subjective, my favorite films ARE the best films of all time, TO ME! And I am the only one who experiences the movie the way I do, just as you are the only one who experiences it the way you do.
What do you want from me?
James Russo. Jimmy motherfucking Russo. Word is Ferrara was going to cast him as Jimmy Jump in King of New York, but for whatever reason, it ended up going to Laurence Fishburne in what turned out to be an iconic performance. But the thought of Russo doing Jimmy Jump as a wigger is fucking hilarious and I am DYING to visit the alternate dimension where that film was the reality. Like, holy shit, imagine Russo saying, “Where’s my soda?” or “Take it or leave it? I’ll take it!” or “Nobody rides for free, motherfucker! HAHAHAHAHAHA!”
Unreal. Would’ve changed the whole picture.
I must confess I have yet to see China Girl, which is the other Ferrara flick to feature Russo. As an aside, I have a tendency to do that, “save” movies from big directors, so I always have a new film from them to watch if I am so inclined. I’ve never seen Barry Lyndon, for instance. How great is it I have a new Kubrick film in the hopper, ready to go? That’s good shit.
Here, Russo plays Francis “Frank” Burns (no idea if this was a nod to M*A*S*H or what), a talented, but volatile actor with a raging drug and booze addiction, cast to play the lead in Eddie Israel’s new film, opposite Madonna’s Sarah Jennings, a popular TV actress making her rocky transition to cinema (no one respects her as a film actor). How funny is it that used to be a thing? Back when I was a kid, it was very rare to see movie actors on TV or TV actors in movies. But now it’s so commonplace as to not even be commented upon.
Streamers kill everything.
And speaking of killing, Russo kills it in this movie. KILLS. IT. He’s so good in this, a career making star turn, that is, if anyone in Hollywood had any fucking taste (like Elias Koteas in Crash, Hollywood had no idea what to do with Russo. Thankfully, Kevin Costner grokked to Russo’s shit and cast him in various projects, to great effect).
Russo is fucking dynamite here in a role that really takes him to the depths of hell. It’s clear Frank Burns is an actor’s actor, a guy who both eschews method bullshit while obviously blurring the line between his character and his reality. As Sarah says at one point, he can’t act, because he needs to actually do whatever it is he’s doing on screen. He needs to drink to play a drunk. He needs to do drugs to play a druggie. He needs to fuck to… well…
But that’s what makes Burns such a raw, visceral performer, the likes of which Eddie Israel salivates over.
Russo and Keitel really fucking go at it in this picture and it leads to some of the best dialogue in the film, including my Favorite Line. Burns cuts a scene midway through, says Sarah sucks as an actress, Eddie comes in, comforts Sarah, says she was great in the scene, which makes Burns flip out, leading to Eddie throwing him off the set.
It’s great.
Burns storms off to his trailer, where two of his hangers on are partying. Eddie comes in to the trailer to talk with Burns, and has to get physical with the asshole entitled chick there who won’t leave so they can talk. I gotta tell you, this rings so fucking true. The friends of big actors think they are such hot shit, as if they have talent like the famous actor.
Nothing got me going when I was in L.A. quite like those pieces of rancid dog shit.
Maybe that’s why Elias Koteas came to my mind while writing this (not “top of mind,” what the fuck is that phrase? Why does everyone say it now? Insane), as one night in NYC, I had the pleasure of hanging in a small group that included him for a few hours.
It was a wild night, he’s a super nice guy, down to Earth, no airs, super chill, makes eye contact, jokes around.
Love Koteas.
A real mensch.
I can’t say the same for his fat, ugly, guido friend… some nobody loser dressed in all black like a fucking moron, who, get this, wouldn’t shake my fucking hand! He looked at my hand and then looked off like he was some hot shit. Holy fuck, what a piece of fucking garbage! Can you believe that shit? It unfortunately took Koteas down a few notches as well… how the fuck could he hang with this douchebag?
Back to my Favorite Line, after Eddie throws the friends out, he gets into a huge argument with Burns, how Burns isn’t giving him what he needs in the film. Burns is apoplectic, he feels he’s giving Eddie everything, but Sarah sucks. In reality, the film they’re making isn’t working, which is what’s leading to all this tension, but in the course of Eddie admonishing Burns to dig deep for this performance, we get the classic line, “Either do more coke, or more booze, or do less! But you gotta give me what I need!”
Amazing, fucking amazing. As soon as I heard that in the theater, I lit up, I knew right away it was a classic, but there’s so many in this movie.
I love the scene where Burns and Sarah have just fucked, and they’re in bed next to each other, and Burns gets a call from Eddie, who’s been watching the rushes, says Sarah looks great. Burns teases Sarah by saying to Eddie, “Look, we both know she’s a fucking whore and she can’t act.” Hilarious.
Later in the scene, she comments how he didn’t fuck her, he fucked the girl in the script. Confused, Burns just keeps repeating, “I fucked who? I fucked who? I fucked the girl in the script?” Russo’s delivery of those lines is next level. His accent is perfect.
After Sarah leaves, he heads to another room in his place where some hot Hollywood party girl with pumped up blowjob lips is waiting to give Burns some drugs she’s procured. But she’s super pissed about Sarah. Withholds the drugs for a beat to fuck with Burns, until he just grabs her hard by the back of her hair and repeatedly says, “Gimme it. Gimme it. GIMME IT!”
Russo nails every scene he is in, it’s just a shame the film was not up to the game he brought. And the same could be said for Madonna, who easily gives the best performance of her career, though it is admittedly a low bar. She’s great as Sarah Jennings. Definitely enjoying her Hollywood lifestyle, very easy and casual with the sex, but she actually seems nice. She’s not twisted and dark like Burns, or even Eddie, as it is soon revealed. She plays the different layers of reality within this film expertly.
It's a great “behind the scenes” type of film. It very accurately and very realistically portrays what life is like on a movie set. And because of the fealty to reality, the movie can meander, the movie can bore. I don’t know about you, but being on a movie set can be incredibly mind numbing a lot of the time.
It just is.
Long stretches where lighting is being fixed, or some wardrobe snafu needs to be remedied… whatever. One scene, Madonna’s head is in a sink and they can’t get the shot right, and she starts flipping out and Eddie has to soothe her. It’s very, very realistic. It’s just not that interesting. Too much of the film ends up like that. As a doc it would work brilliantly, but as drama it can be kind of… inert.
Harvey Keitel, much like Madonna and Russo, gives a good go of it, brings his all. He’s fantastic as a sort of Ferrara stand in. I love all the rehearsal video segments. His soliloquies are amazing. If the film Eddie was making was half as good as Eddie talks, he’d have something. I love when he’s talking and it just cuts to a CU of Madonna in dork glasses, head on hand, listening to him, or Russo sitting and staring off as Keitel goes on and on. It’s definitely one of the best things about the film.
My Favorite Shot is during filming of a particularly intense scene between Burns and Sarah, played in near total darkness, the music is tense, and then the camera suddenly whip pans over to Eddie in the shadows, only his face visible, bathed in red as he stares intently at the scene he is filming, totally keyed in. It’s fantastic.
One of my favorite scenes, but not THE favorite, is when Eddie and Sarah are having drinks with another woman and none other than Richard fucking Belzer (RIP, brutha)! I fucking love Richard Belzer, even if he was a shitlib. I won’t hold it against him. I love all his JFK stuff, LOVE the whole thing with Hulk Hogan, and just his comedy in general.
Very smart guy.
No idea if this scene was played as written or improvised, but Belzer nails his one scene, and is hilarious. A true highlight of the film.
Very Hollywood.
Very L.A.
The movie takes a turn once Eddie and Sarah have slept together. While it means nothing to her, to him it provokes an existential crisis in his marriage, despite, by his own admission, there being hundreds of girls like Sarah over the years. Something about her put it over the top.
How amazing is the scene after they’ve slept together, Madonna leaves, then a knock at the door moments later. “You changed your mind?” Eddie says, as he opens the hotel room door to his wife and kid who have surprised him with a visit! He’s beside himself as his wife is hugging and kissing him right after he had had sex with Sarah! Who knows what kind of fluids are on his face as his wife is all over him. It’s excruciating to watch. Excruciating.
So well done.
He quickly excuses himself by saying he was on a call and goes to the bedroom to tidy up the bed and erase any signs of Sarah’s carnal presence. Eddie’s panic is palpable. Keitel plays the scene perfectly. When he returns, he makes a beeline for his son and picks him up, he’s missed the kid, but more likely needs a human shield against his wife’s amorous advances.
They sit on the couch and Eddie asks him if he’s been a good boy. The kid replies in the affirmative and Eddie says, “Why?” I love that moment. Same with the next scene of Keitel reading a bedtime story about Hermes and the souls of the dead to the kid. Fantastic shit. Hilarious.
All the stuff with Nancy Ferrara in Los Angeles is great. Love the lunch date they have at a friend’s house, where Eddie is off by himself, on a chaise lounge, totally disconnected from his family. The sprawl of Los Angeles in the background, ready to swallow him whole.
In one sequence, they drive around Los Angeles as they talk and wind up on Laurel Canyon. I appreciate when Ferrara shoots this scene, he has the car actually turn from Sunset onto Laurel. So many times directors cheat geography.
Not here.
They park the car at the top of the Hills and have sex in the backseat, very awkward, especially once they are done. Eddie gets out of the car and smokes a cigarette as he looks out at the lights of Hollywood.
Maddie gets out of the car, remarks he didn’t cum. He turns to face her, they share a deep silent exchange between each other. Which turns into an argument!
YES!
Only people who have been in long term relationships can understand how something like this could lead to a fight and a sense that something is wrong with the marriage. With the connection.
What fantastic writing here. Very sophisticated.
And something I couldn’t fully appreciate as an 18 year old. But now, near 50, married with two kids… I get it.
Eventually Maddie’s father dies, and she’s forced to go back to NY. Eddie goes back to work. And starts taking his frustrations out on Sarah while filming… or is he? Is this just Eddie’s method to get great performances out of his actors?
Probably a little bit of both, which is why the “commercial piece of shit” scene is my Favorite Scene in the whole movie. It’s so good. Look at this (peep Vic Argo as the cinematographer. Hilarious with that fucking ascot).
Eddie returns to NY for the funeral. He goes into his son’s room, who is sleeping, and just stares at him, then lays next to him quietly, doesn’t wake him. Fantastic moment here that really hits once you know what comes next.
Namely, Eddie confessing all his affairs to his wife (on the morning of her father’s funeral!), to which she naturally flips out (Nancy Ferrara’s acting here is not great, to be honest.)
He returns to L.A., his downward spiral accelerates as the film he is making collides with his personal life in a true “mother of mirrors” fashion. Eddie is the character in the film he’s been making. He is the mirror image of the Russo character in the film within the film.
As Burns says, “I NEED THESE THINGS!” So too, does Eddie. He needs the booze, he needs the drugs, he needs the women, without them he can’t function, but with them he ends up dead, lying face down on the bathroom floor, like in Eddie’s last scene (though whether he is in fact dead or not is ambiguous.)
I love how during his hallucinations, his wife shows up, very calm and matter of fact, to deliver a devastating monologue: “If you think duplicity is so admirable in a person, I want you to teach our son how to lie. If you think drugs and alcohol are so wonderful, then I want you to go out and buy some for our son. If you think infidelity is such a virtue in a person, then I want you to bring one of your girlfriends over here and fuck her in front of your son, that’s all I want from you, Eddie, because a boy should learn from his father.”
Goddamn, that goes incredibly fucking hard.
And then that last shot of Keitel, laying on the bathroom floor, vomit streaming down the side of the toilet… it really got a big laugh out of John Waters a few rows ahead of me. In fact, he and Mace seemed to positively enjoy the fuck out of themselves throughout. Perhaps, in the end, that is the film’s greatest endorsement.
If anyone knows about making gonzo movies at the fringes, it’s John Waters.
The One Sheet
Eh. Not terrible, but not very good. I’ve seen worse. I love the film, flaws and all, but this poster just doesn’t do it for me. At all.
Now this is more like it! I love this one sheet, not only for the imagery, but the use of the original title. This is good shit. Wish I could get one of these bad boys for my wall.
And that does it for Dangerous Game. A film that Keitel himself admitted to me in person didn’t really work. Again, knowing that the initial cut was 4 hours long goes some way toward explaining his stance. I honestly don’t think they knew what kind of movie they were really making until the edit.
I would DIE to see that original cut, though I guarantee it’d take a few sittings to get through. As it is, the film we got has some of the most amazing shit I have ever seen, wrapped up in a not so amazing package.
It’s weird.
It’s a weird flick.
Equal parts mesmerizing and anesthetizing (I think I may have dozed off in the theater, not sure), but it’s certainly unique.
And very, very Ferrara.
See you in two rehearsals…