They say you should never meet your heroes, but I’d say otherwise. In 2007, I quit my job at the video store to work on a documentary about the Chelsea Hotel directed by the legendary and infamous Abel Ferrara. The story goes that Abel was interviewed as a subject for the project initially, but mid-interview declared that he was the director now. Amazingly, everyone seemed on board, and that was that. He’d been living in Italy for a few years, was in town to present Go Go Tales at the New York Film Festival, and looking to extend his stay. The producers booked him a room in the Chelsea, and all of a sudden he was living here again and making a new movie. At the time, I had little-to-no experience working on feature film sets, and to say I was thrown into the eye of the tornado would be a gross understatement. I was in my twenties and he was in his fifties, yet I’d never known anyone who worked as hard, partied as hard, or had as many ideas (that were actually seen through to completion) as this guy. It was a 24/7 job, running around the hotel at all hours meeting with every type of weirdo, and I loved it.

After Chelsea on the Rocks premiered at Cannes in 2008, Abel stayed on in New York, moving downtown above an Italian restaurant in Little Italy, and I was upgraded from his assistant to producer. We had a tiny office with a Mac Pro tower that we got free from the Apple store, a La-Z-Boy, and a big screen TV that played only sports (it was the feed to the bar downstairs). From that space we worked on a slew of feature films, shorts, web series, and off-the-wall obscurities, including a documentary about the Feast of San Gennaro, Mulberry St. (2010). I learned way more in this ultra chaotic and highly productive environment than I did in the entirety of my time at NYU, and in the midst of it all somehow made my first feature (which Abel generously executive produced), 2011’s Happy Life. Around 2014, he moved back to Italy, got sober, and started a new chapter in his life and career. I’ve been fortunate to still work with him off and on in the years since. Whenever he comes to town, whether to shoot a documentary on a local arthouse theater, as with The Projectionist (2019); to be celebrated with a complete retrospective in the elite halls of MoMA; or to throw his own endearingly ramshackle festival of his own films, his collaborators’ films, and his fave cult classics, as he did in 2021, you know you’re in for something personal, all-consuming, and potentially explosive. And that at some point he will likely play a Dylan-esque cover of Schoolly D’s “Just Another Killer.”

It goes without saying that Abel’s most iconic films King of New York (1990) and Bad Lieutenant (1992) are absolute canon, and that Christopher Walken’s and Harvey Keitel’s respective performances in them are unrivaled. But what truly impresses, in a career with over 30 features to his credit, is the sheer volume of low-key classics Abel’s amassed. He’s been going full force, pedal to the metal, since the ’70s, and openly mocks the concept of ever slowing down.

I had the pleasure of Zooming with him, upon his return from Venice where he’d just premiered his latest film Padre Pio (2022) starring Shia LaBeouf. Unsurprisingly, there was a lot to catch up on.

MICHAEL M. BILANDIC: Okay, what’s up? We’re recording.

ABEL FERRARA: What’s happening? Yeah, I was just doing an interview with Béatrice Dalle. You know that chick, the French actress?

MB: Of course. She’s in my favorite film of yours, The Blackout (1997).

AF: Yeah, right. Okay, that crazy chick. They’re here doing a thing on Pasolini, so we did this interview.

MB: She’s making a movie about Pasolini?

AF: Yeah, she’s searching all over. You know, she has this little French crew. They went through the whole deal—where he was born, and where he was this…. I just talked some crazy shit to her for five minutes.

MB: Where are you right now?

AF: I’m in Rome.

MB: You in your apartment?

AF: Yeah. Yeah. [Flips camera phone around to tour apartment.] You’ve never been?

MB: I’ve never been there.

AF: It’s like Tommaso (2019)! This is like Tommaso. Can you see it or is it too dark?

MB: It’s a funny thing. I feel like I have been to your place, though, because you’ve shot it so much. I love how you’ve integrated your apartments and neighborhoods throughout the years into your work; from The Driller Killer (1979) to Chelsea on the Rocks (2008) to Mulberry St. (2010) to Piazza Vittorio (2017). And, of course, Tommaso. If you were to shoot a movie in your apartment today, what would it be? What’s the vibe like over there right now?

AF: [Opens another mineral water bottle.] Yeah, I played it out. I mean, how many Tommaso’s can we make? Hello, my life is interesting [self-mocking voice]. You know, the relationship with Cristina [Chiriac] is interesting but I don’t know if we should do another movie about it.

MB: You were talking about Tommaso 2 for a period.

AF: Yeah, now we’re on to 3. We’re gonna skip 2.

MB: I was just walking through San Gennaro earlier while they were setting up, and having these flashbacks to Mulberry St.

AF: Well, what’s the Feast like now?

MB: I saw Joey Reynolds, the radio host, in an apron selling cheesecakes. I saw the “Cannoli King,” Baby John. A lot of familiar faces. The big drama this year is they’re not allowed to sell anything Godfather-related.

AF: Is someone suing them for that? Well, it was only that one maniac who like co-opted the whole thing, selling tapes, remember that maniac?

MB: Yeah. They’re saying it’s a bad influence on the culture, I think.

AF: Is Coppola suing them or is it like an anti-mob thing?

MB: It’s anti-mob. They don’t want that connotation.

AF: That’s really fucking crazy.

MB: But then you still have, you know, meatball-eating contests and cannoli-eating contests, so it’s clear—

AF: Well, cannoli-eating contests and Godfather are two different things. I thought they didn’t make no more cannolis?! Remember when they came in and busted everybody because it was like the trans fat, remember that night? They came down, cops and everybody, the news station, and they shut down all the cannoli stands because of trans fat in the cannoli!

MB: That was Bloomberg’s big agenda.

AF: Yeah, it was like trans fat; no French fries. Is that gone, now? There’s no trans fat in Manhattan? Like the Pooper Scooper Law; one day you step in it, then the next—here there is no Pooper Scooper Law, so it’s like New York 20 years ago, dogshit all over the place. It’s disgusting sometimes.