Reviews By Request: King of New York (1990, Abel Ferrara)

Paul Clark — Fri, 29 May 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Once again, thanks to Scott Tobias from the Onion AV Club for recommending this film, which he previously selected for his weekly column “The New Cult Canon.”

One of Christopher Walken’s greatest assets as an actor is his unpredictability. Watching Walken onscreen, it’s hard to tell how he’s going to deliver even the most mundane bit of dialogue, much less predict how his characters will behave under pressure. But while Walken’s off-kilter presence has garnered him a sizable cult following, it’s easy to overlook what a fascinating actor he can be in more complex roles. In many of his character roles, Walken has fun with his image, but he’s not afraid to play it straight when the part calls for it. Abel Ferrara’s King of New York is one of those parts, and consequently one of his best performances.

Frank White, the crime lord Walken plays in King of New York, is one of the most frightening criminals I’ve ever seen in a movie, due in large part to the unpredictability that Walken brings to the role. From the first time we meet Frank, he seems to be capable of anything, which gives him an edge in his criminal endeavors. Most of his competition sticks to hard and fast traditions, the most important being that the bigwigs keep their hands clean while the foot soldiers fight the wars. Frank has no use for such traditions- when he needs someone killed, he’d just as soon do it himself. There are many possibilities as to why Frank would do this, but I think it’s because he wants people to think he’s the baddest, scariest man in New York. And when he follows the killing of a rival gang leader by inviting his underlings to join his gang, it sends a very specific message- if you’re crazy enough to follow a guy who does this, I want you on my side.

Consequently, many of Frank’s foot soldiers are as volatile as he is- and some even share his flair for the theatrical, as when one storms into a hotel room shootout screaming, “room service, motherfuckers!” In addition, Frank’s gang could be called “post-racial”- whereas Frank’s rivals generally adhere to ethnic boundaries, such concerns are beneath Frank. Most of his underlings are African-American- two of his most prominent foot soldiers are played by Laurence (then Larry) Fishburne and Giancarlo Esposito- but Steve Buscemi also turns up as Frank’s in-house drug tester. And Frank’s own ethnicity- just look at his name- allows him an entry in legitimate society that would be more limited to other criminals of his stature.

It’s this air of near-legitimacy that rankles the NYPD, especially a trio of cops played by David Caruso, Wesley Snipes, and Victor Argo. Whereas the power of the city’s other top criminals is relatively contained to the underworld, Frank hobnobs with New York’s elite, turning up at black-tie parties and charity events. “He’s a movie star,” says Caruso, who bemoans the fact that Frank is running roughshod over the city while he and his partners are only bringing in a modest policeman’s salary. But how to stop him? Caruso and Snipes determine that in order to catch Frank, they need to be as crazy as he is. It isn’t until it’s too late (when Frank crashes one cop’s funeral to kill another one) that that discover that crazy isn’t enough- one must also be lucky.

Argo’s Roy Bishop is the one exception to the film’s cycle of brutality- the one “good cop” who sticks to his principles and hopes to bring Frank in not by sneaking around but by nuts-and-bolts police work. We see him sitting at home in front of his computer, sifting through police files in an attempt to make a case. Throughout the film, Ferrara contrasts Roy’s steadfast adherence to old-fashioned morality with Frank’s more slippery kind of ethics, and Frank understandably sees Roy as his biggest threat. I found it interesting to see Argo, who usually played wiseguys, playing the closest thing this film has to a steady moral compass.

King of New York is one of the bleakest crime movies I’ve ever seen, with one scene of unsparing violence after another. But it’s stylish enough that it’s anything but a slog- like GoodFellas and Scarface before it, it’s amassed a considerable cult, even serving as an inspiration for the late Notorious B.I.G. I’ve only seen a handful of Ferrara films to date, but one thing that’s impressed me about them is how stylish his films can be despite their budgetary limitations. In King of New York, Ferrara uses the low budget to his advantage, setting scenes in scruffy back-alleys and abandoned buildings to give the film a grittier feel than most movies of its kind. I also liked that Frank’s home isn’t an expansive estate but a suite at the Plaza, which combines a location in the heart of New York (perfect for shots of him overlooking the city) with a kind of rented luxury that says everything about the mystique Frank wants to create for himself.

At the center of it all is the enigma of Frank White. Throughout the film Ferrara and Walken invite us to ask the question, what drives this man? Late in the film, he confronts Roy in his apartment and tells him that he considers himself a businessman rather than a criminal, and states that “I never killed anybody that didn’t deserve it.” But how to reconcile that with the charge he seems to get from his power? Or for that matter, what of his efforts to save a children’s hospital in a poor neighborhood? One thing’s for sure- he’s hooked on his sense of power. When he says he wants to run for mayor, everyone laughs until Frank tells them he’s serious. Is he? Who are we to question him?

Who's Gonna Fill These Jeans? Jamal Woolard as Notorious B.I.G.

Phil Nugent — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Jamal Woolard, who plays Notorious B.I.G. in the upcoming biopic Notorious, is known for his own rap career under the name Gravy, though it's been pointed out here and there that he is also known as "the guy who got shot in the ass near radio station Hot 97 in 2006 but went upstairs and gave an interview on the Funkmaster Flex show anyway." In a 2006 New Yorker piece, Ben McGrath described Woolard as "an enormous man—well over six feet, and more than three hundred pounds—with a caboose to match", and gave him a chance to explain what happened. He and his entourage were heading for the station for a scheduled on-air interview when, "after I got a sandwich and came out of the store—da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da!...The only thing I remember is falling, and knowing that I’m shot—just don’t know where. It’s not like, when you get shot, ‘Oh, I got shot here.’ Nah. You know you hit, so your mind frame is—you pumped, your adrenaline is going. I reach my hand over, and I see I’m bleeding. I didn’t see the hole. I can’t see behind my ass.” A lesser man would have been sufficiently overcome with curiosity to seek out a mirror, but Woolard went right upstairs and did the interview. He didn't mention that he'd been shot, and nobody appeared to guess; Joell Ortiz, who participated with him in an on-air freestyle session, recalled that he "seemed relaxed up there, and he killed it when called on to rhyme,” “Nobody knew what the situation was," Gravy explained to McGrath, "because I didn’t want it to be known. I was there to do my job, so I did my job. Now, to people it looks like ‘Well, you got shot. And you still went in there and did your job?’ Like, O.K., let’s put the shoe on the other foot. What was I supposed to tell a powerful influence like Flex, at Hot 97? ‘You know what, Flex? I’m sorry, man. I can’t do the show. I was standing downstairs—got shot in the ass.’" Unfortunately, when he finished up and came downstairs, he was met by a bunch of cops, who'd been summoned to the scene by people who'd heard the gunshots and couldn't figure out why, with all those shell casings on the sidewalk, there weren't any bodies anywhere. Woolard was taken to the hospital, where someone who'd labored long and hard to get a medical degree found that the bullet had passed cleanly through his flesh and was jostling around in his shoe.

The incident got poor Gravy banned from Hot 97, which has a strict policy of discouraging talent from shooting or getting shot in the vicinity of the station. Fortunately, as McGrath notes in a brief follow-up piece, this bump in the road to musical success gave him an excuse to take up acting, at a time when a role to which he might seem uniquely well-suited happened to be on the market. Woolard was chosen from among thousands of appplicants who turned out at an open audition last year, though there are now rumors that he had the role in the bag the whole time and the auditions were just intended as a publicity stunt. Voletta Wallace, the mother of the actual Christopher Wallace, A.K.A. Notorious B.I.G., is one of the film's producers, and she is said to have exclaimed, "That's my son" upon first laying eyes on Wollard--a great biopic moment if ever there was one. In the movie, she is played by Angela Bassett; after shooting a scene where she was required to slap the taste out of her movie son's mouth, Woolard testified through his swollen cheeks, “She’s for real. Can’t be faking that. It could affect sales.” Real is hard work. McGrath writes that "Woolard spent five months in 'Biggie boot camp,' taking acting lessons, studying choreography, and even receiving voice training at Juilliard. Woolard is diabetic, and the long days were physically draining. At one point, he lost his double chin, and had to eat his way back into the role. 'Now I’m at three hundred and five,' he said, attacking a plate of chicken and rice like an offensive lineman at a training table. 'Doing what I got to do. He said that he was thinking about going on a diet after shooting wrapped, to create a “whole new identity” in time for his comeback. “So when the film comes out and I hit that red carpet, I’m all Rocky and ripped up, and people just be, like, What the fuck?'"

The Screengrab : notorious b.i.g.

Reviews By Request: King of New York (1990, Abel Ferrara)

Who's Gonna Fill These Jeans? Jamal Woolard as Notorious B.I.G.