Bad Lieutenant

Bad Lieutenant (1992)

Timing: 1:36 (96 min)

7.022/10
821

7.091/10
13653

7/10
52000

All about film

Video 12

Photo 28

Actors and characters

Release date

1992-11-20

Country

United States

Production

Pressman Film, Bad Lt. Productions

Genre

Crime, Drama

Budget

$1 000 000

Revenue

$2 019 469

Website

Director

Abel Ferrara

Actors

Harvey Keitel, Brian McElroy, Frankie Acciarito, Peggy Gormley, Stella Keitel, Dana Dee, Victor Argo, Paul Calderon, Leonard L. Thomas, Anthony Ruggiero
All actors and roles (10)

Scenario

Producer

Edward R. Pressman, Mary Kane, Patrick Wachsberger, Ronna B. Wallace

Operator

Ken Kelsch

Composer

Joe Delia

Artist

David Weller

Audition

Meredith Jacobson Marciano, Kimba Hills

Editing

Anthony Redman, Peter Pastorelli
All team (114)

• 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.”