I never apologize for anything in life. The only thing I’m sorry about is putting a curse on Roger Ebert’s colon. If a fat pig like Roger Ebert doesn’t like my movie then I’m sorry for him. -- Vincent Gallo

I live in Little Italy, where a cast of characters right out of central casting gathers on corners to shoot the shit. Everybody knows everybody, and the stories told assure everyone that New York still exists. Every so often, a stickball game breaks out. In the second part of my sit down with my neighbor Abel Ferrara, he touches on neighborhood character Vincent Gallo. I recall a story Vincent told as he held court to a group of us one summer day on the corner of Mott and Prince streets. We saw Vincent approaching and someone said, "Should I stay, or get caught in an hour long tirade?" We all stayed after a few hey's and whatcha-been-doing's, Vincent told us a tale about the time he put a curse on Roger Ebert, after the critic had given Gallo¹s unfinished movie The Brown Bunny a bad review. Gallo wished cancer on Ebert, and shortly after it actually came to pass.

"With...every idol a let down it gets you down." – Bryan Ferry/Roxy Music

People who run great clubs meet them all. The public sees celebrities in two dimensions: a paparazzi snapshot leaving a boutique, or a couple lines in Page Six. Club people see them in living color. Warts and all. I’ve been impressed with few, bored by many, disappointed often, and sometimes even disgusted. Some became my friends and some still awe me. I met Abel through my friend Nicky D. Frank White's headquarters in King of New York was The World, a club I ran. I've seen the movie a hundred times. The scene on the subway, where he’s almost mugged, the look on Frank White’s face as he leaves the joint, Lawrence Fishburne in Popeye's, are as real as anything I’ve ever seen in film. I'm in awe of Abel Ferrara. Over the years, we’ve met in my neighborhood, or somewhere on the street, and I’ve always been shocked that he recognized me. I was very nervous doing this interview. [See part 2 of the interview as well.]

Werner Herzog is a bad mother. Not in the way that Andrea Yates is a bad mother, but more like Samuel L. Jackson. Here’s a guy—and we’re not even going to include his daredevil filmography—who has the audacity to remake a cult classic and claim to have never seen a movie by the director who made it. He actually claims to not know who the director is. When it was announced that Herzog would be remaking the Harvey Keitel crime drama Bad Lieutenant with Nicholas Cage in the lead, people didn’t believe it. Well, it’s going down, and Abel Ferrara, the original film’s director, is peeved. Last month at Cannes, he vented on the issue, saying, “I wish these people die in Hell. I hope they’re all in the same streetcar, and it blows up.” What about everyone is else on that streetcar? Is Abel Ferrara summoning the death of innocents, just so his movie won’t get remade? Grim.