Abel Ferrara was not one of those who truly had an unshakable belief in the magical value of words. For him, the language of the eight billion souls that inhabit this planet is given through images. A concept learned from Alfred Hitchcock, not an expert on life and art, but that’s it. So the fact that a “Memoir” arrived in bookstores, a term he preferred to his well-worn autobiography, was news. However, if you explore it, you realize that the narrative is not a classical narrative, but is constructed according to the needs of a film (here we propose a quote from it, about the beginning and first film of 9 Lives). And the title Scene (The Ship of Theseus, 240 pages, 22 euros) becomes very relevant to the character of Abel, to the director of many famous films (The Bad Lieutenant, Brothers, Go Go Tales, Mary and so on, up to the last one, Padre Pio), to the author himself.
A film that unfolds. Page after page, we find ourselves faced with a man free from all veils, without shame and without words who is as cultured and wordy as a celebrity built in a laboratory but who suits him best, as the king of independent cinema. And in the same tone as a friend confiding in a secret he tells of a life – his own – which in reality is a thousand lives. Grandpa’s exodus from Sarno Bells to New York. A family seeking its fortune, which he represents is the third generation. Childhood and adolescence in the Bronx (where he was born in 1951). The scope of bookies is small. Sex. Drug. Cinema that started since its debut with a pornographic film whose success was poor. Wedding. His three daughters. Redemption, found in Italy to which he returned, without knowing that he was following a path opposite to that of his grandfather Abel who also inherited his name.
And right in the homeland of his family he received salvation and deliverance from alcohol and drug addiction and today he is a devout family man, a convinced Buddhist, attached to Cristina who gave him
handed over his daughter Anna, who was born among thousands of sighs in traffic jams near the Vatican, shortly after arriving at the hospital. A tale that was a little interesting and a little steamy, the kind he liked. This is how he told us.
