Flicked Off: Alex Pareene and Natasha Vargas-Cooper on 'The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New...

Flicked Off: Alex Pareene and Natasha Vargas-Cooper on ‘The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans’

by Natasha Vargas-Cooper

Natasha: Pareene!

Alex: Natasha!

Natasha: Can we talk about the motherf’ing Bad Lieutenant??

Alex: Yes. Yes we can.

Natasha: Pareene, tell me why this is a great movie.

Alex: Well. I think, first of all, that it is indeed about a Bad Lieutenant. I think that while Abel Ferrara’s original movie was about a bad person who happens to be a Lieutenant, Nic Cage, in this film, was just not ever very good at being a Lieutenant. And I admired that, making a police procedural where none of the policing is ever very competent.

Natasha: Have you ever been to New Orleans where this movie was filmed?

Alex: Yes! Pre-Katrina. I was not “of age,” and also it was a school trip, but one night I got ridiculously high behind our hotel and totally freaked out for about 4 hours, so I could relate to this film.

Natasha: I was there post-Katrina. And it was like… hmmm… what’s a kind way to put this? Coastal Indonesia circa July, 2005?

Alex: Yes. I think Herzog’s camera was basically like “fuck you, America, look at this shit.”

Natasha: So one of the things I appreciated was finding a context of New-Lawlessness. Cause, I mean, really, could he have done it New York the way Ferrera did? I mean, you’re from Brooklyn, you tell me?

Alex: Well there have been a lot of shootings recently in my neighborhood, recently-one of the most recent was apparently because of a 40-cent wing special at the Atlantic Center mall! But there is not really any sense of lawlessness at all, like things basically seem to be In Control, and the violence and death is nicely pushed to the periphery in Bloomberg’s New York.

Natasha: You guys are so lucky to have such a great Mayor-King.

Alex: I know, I am thankful every morning. What did you think of Val Kilmer?

Natasha: ENJOYABLE! Also I think it was a smart choice to use Kilmer and Cage and make ’em both look sweaty and bloated. They both looked used and cadaverous.

Alex: Ha it was a smart “choice” to make Val Kilmer look bloated indeed.

Natasha: What did you think of him??

Alex: What I loved was, you know how in The Departed how Marky Mark just sorta disappears 2/3rds of the way through, and you don’t even really notice because so much other shit is going on and Rolling Stones songs are playing and dangerous father figures are corrupting our heroes and then at the end, BAM, there he is, Marky Mark suddenly ends the movie, and you are like, SHIT. In this movie Val Kilmer disappears and- [SPOILERS DELETED].

Natasha: Which left you unsatisfied or DELIGHTED?

Alex: I was definitely delighted. Because if our hero was going to face a reckoning I would rather have it be at the hands of reptiles or sea creatures instead of, like, a GOOD lieutenant.

Natasha: Can we talk about the THRILLING use of creatures this movie?

Alex: Yes!

Natasha: Like, perhaps some of the most gasping-for-air moments involved slow lingering shots of animals!

Alex: I mean, the reptiles seemed generally to be laughing at the humans. An alligator caused the car wreck, the snake was totally digging the flooded jail cell…

Natasha: They seemed to heighten the drama of every scene in a way that I’m really not used to in movies. I think that’s what was so gripping: this otherworldly emotion would come on screen from just watching a waddling lizard wander through the scene. Like, people in audience clapped for them! WE WERE MOVED!

Alex: Yes! Totally. I think we are supposed to be relating to the iguanas. They are sort of witnessing this bizarre comedy of human ineptitude along with us in the audience. And they seem to find it just as funny.

Natasha: Oh my god, those wise, bluesy, Iguanas. The Beta Fish that just stupidly floats in its cup, per Herzog, gets that we are all going through some comedic toil, even if we don’t?

Alex: Nic holds the little cup up so we see his face distorted through the little fish’s water bowl.The film is totally from the POV of little creatures.

Natasha: Let’s talk about the best creature: Nic.

Alex: Ha. About Nic, can I say, that while the things he said and did were not necessarily always the sorts of things I have witnessed people saying and doing while on The Drugs, he did sort of occasionally start walking and talking like Paul Giamatti playing Nixon, and that was awesome.

Natasha: The flat paralyzed cheek thing! Where you talk like your molars are sewn together!

Alex: The bravura shouting and hysterically laughing bits were def what you paid to see, but just the way he stood and constantly gritted his teeth was both hysterical and also: totally true.

Natasha: Like, honestly, how many times have we seen the Junkie. And yet Cage brought the whole crazy toolkit of mania he has. Alex, why should people who are wary about Cage open their hearts to him for this movie?

Alex: I think some reviewer somewhere mentioned this but Nic Cage’s character in this movie was Terence McDonagh and Nic Cage’s character in the similarly epochal Raising Arizona was H.I. McDonagh And there is no one who is wary of Cage in THAT movie. If there is I don’t want to know about it frankly!

Natasha: Like, Cage has some kind of fire he turns on when the set is right and it’s like a fucking roman candle. But I’m not sure what it is. A good script? The threat of losing his Bavarian castle?

Alex: Well in a movie like GHOST RIDER, which I Iove but which I understand that others would not love, Cage is still making these Actorly Choices that make him crazy compelling to watch, like he decided that his character would constantly eat jelly beans and listen to the Carpenters, instead of “being an alcoholic” like the script called for. So he doesn’t necessarily even need a Script or Director-he can also completely sleepwalk through something like Bangkok Dangerous, which I will NOT rep for, because it is boring, but even that is rare. And this is not a Bavarian Castle movie! National Treasure II is a Bavarian Castle movie. Maybe he just needs to make fewer Bavarian Castle movies and give up on his beloved Bavarian Castle!

Natasha: These are choices we must all grapple with, Alex. WHO ARE WE TO JUDGE CAGE LEST WE GIVE UP OWN BAVO-CASTLE?

Alex: The saddest thing to me is that Nic sold his COMIC COLLECTION. Because that is surely more important to him than a castle. He named his son Kal-el! Someone put him in 2012 2: 2013 so he can buy his back issues of Punisher back!

Natasha: My one gripe with this movie: Eva Mendez in no way has the skin of a woman who has been sodomized and smoking crank all week.

Alex: Haha NO.

Natasha: Loveless anal sex and rock cocaine does not leave one’s skin rosy and honey colored. She needed some chest acne or some shit.

Alex: I think she is playing one of those Hollywood “High Class Escorts” whose only sign of the rough life they lead is a painted on black eye in one scene, and that eye is quickly avenged.

Natasha: Naturally!

Alex: And like the one time she is threatened with actually having to go through with what an actual prostitute does for a living it is a TERRIFYING prospect, that someone would do that to lovely Eva Mendes!

Natasha: Alex, why should people go to their local cineplex and patron this film?

Alex: A) It has the single funniest reference to Stroszek that you will see ALL YEAR

B) Nic Cage has no sideburns

C) Nic Cage threatens and insults old ladies.

Natasha: Generally when Cage is given sideburns is when we are forced to conceive of him as some kind of bad ass right?

Alex: Yes, I think sideburned/long haired Nic Cage is usually playing a badass criminal.

Natasha: But none of this is kitsch. Like, gritty is a term that’s thrown around, but I feel like we’ve returned to 1999 levels, a-la-Leaving-Las-Vegas-levels, of realism and despair and comedy?

Alex: It is gritty in the literal sense, in that it feels filthy and abrasive. And it is also hysterical, and not unintentionally so.

Natasha: Why is that?

Alex: Because of the iguanas, again! I think the only logical response to the depths of damaged depravity we are seeing before us is to laugh at the foul state of mankind and its institutions. I mean when your hero appears out of nowhere in a nursing home threatening old ladies while OMINOUSLY SHAVING in a doorway, all because he lost his key witness in a Biloxi casino, I think you are supposed to laugh.

Natasha Vargas-Cooper and Alex Pareene have a lot of respect for Fitzcarraldo.