Cinema’s wildest and wiliest animal, Werner Herzog, has recently flirted with domestic respectability — casting Batman Christian Bale in his manic war movie Rescue Dawn, and winning some of the best reviews of his career for his bear-bites-man documentary Grizzly Man. So when he cast National Treasure’s Nicolas Cage to star in his in-name-only remake of Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant, well, we worried. We should have known better. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, opening tomorrow, is as unbridled as anything he’s ever done: a madcap, madhouse trip that reminded us of Cage’s many deeply bizarre talents. Since Cage’s corrupt cop gulps down so many pills and snorts so many lines that he begins to see iguanas, we invited Herzog over to New York’s office to talk about our exclusive clip of these iguanas.
