Figuring out how to spend the last hours on Earth before death, and coming to terms with the idea that mortality is something everyone must face in life, puts the value of life high on many people’s priority lists. The concept of struggling to find peace before an inevitable death is at the foreground of the new fantasy sci-fi drama ‘4:44 Last Day on Earth,’ which was directed and written by Abel Ferrara and is now playing in select theaters.
‘4:44 Last Day on Earth’ follows a seemingly mismatched couple, the successful actor Cisco (played by Willem Dafoe) and the insecure painter Skye (portrayed by Shanyn Leigh), as they’re dealing with their last day on Earth together. Like the rest of the world, the two have come to accept that due to irrevocable circumstances that scientists can’t reverse, including extensive global warming, the world is coming to an end. The entire human race will succumb to death the following morning at 4:44, as Cisco and Skye are still struggling with their relationship and the seemingly broken bonds with those closest to them.
Ferrara took the time to participate in a roundtable interview at New York City’s Regency Hotel. The filmmaker discussed, among other things, why he incorporated modern technology so heavily into the film’s storyline, the casting process and why he thinks the world continuously talks about the end of days.
Question (Q): ‘4:44 Last Day on Earth’ is not only about the end of the world, but also how the Internet has captured our society. How did you incorporate that into the film?
Abel Ferrara (AF): I think it’s a modern way of life. With Skype, I don’t know why it’s taken so long to catch up in movies. It’s just how you communicate. Everybody’s got their technology.
My pictures on my phone are amazing. I had a Blackberry and a T-Mobile, and it was a great phone. The past two years, though, my pictures weren’t great. Now I have an awesome camera, but I can’t make a call. It’s AT&T, and I can’t make a phone call. But I can make a beautiful movie on my camera, and can film on the street.
Q: Have we come to the end of the world in communication?
AF: Maybe the beginning of the world. It’s so changed. I’m 60-years-old, and I remember when I needed to wait home to get a phone call, I’m from before the answering machine. The fact is that you can now live your life and be in constant communication. I can call and see anybody I want in the world and connect.
I have an Internet site, AbelFerrara.com that’s translated into Chinese. It’s funny, our films have become more verbal as our audience becomes more international.
Q: Why do you suppose that is?
AF: I don’t know why. I remember Hitchock saying, you could make a movie, he was talking about ‘Psycho,’ and they scream just as loudly in Australia as they do in Tokyo and Paris. They’re screaming to the language of the cinema. They’re not screaming to the language of what’s being said.
Q: You used Skype for the relationships in the film. Why did you use it so heavily for the characters to communicate?
AF: Why weren’t they face-to-face on their last day on Earth? That makes a good point about their relationships, like Cisco’s relationship with his daughter and ex-wife. Skye’s relationship with her mother, they were in two different cities. In situations like that, it’s the people you don’t see, who define your life, and who you call and don’t call, when you have X amount of hours left in your life.
Q: What process did you use to choose the iconic figures, like with the clips of Al Gore, Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama?
AF: You said it, because they’re iconic for a reason. The Dalai Lama, there isn’t a word that doesn’t come out of his mouth that doesn’t make me sit up straight.
Q: There’s a lot of talk about consciousness, what’s real, what’s not real. Why did you decide to have them talk about those particular subjects on their last day on Earth?
AF: I don’t think it matters that it’s their last day on Earth. In Buddhism, the act of dying isn’t, oh, I’m going to die now. Growing up as a Christian, death isn’t a subject for Americans to be speaking about. But as a Buddhist, it makes so much sense. We all know everyone’s going to die. Some of us sooner than others. I can’t believe I’m on Earth this long. So I think it’s more about the life, and how to live the life.
I think when when there’s not a lot of time, you’re going to focus on people who make a lot of sense. you’re not going to take a chance on someone who doesn’t make sense. You listen for awhile, and say, this person’s full of sh*t. The Dalai Lama’s not full of sh*t in my book, and neither is the great philosopher, Joseph Campbell.
Q: This movie’s success relies on the casting of the characters. Did that help you in the casting process?
AF: That’s part of the aspiration. It’s like a love poem, and a film I’m dedicating to Shanyn. She’s also part of the writing, because I was writing it, and she was living with me. Willem also has a relationship with a woman much younger than he is. She’s Italian, and her name is Giada (Colagrande). She’s an Italian director, and we’re all friends.
Q: How did you get Pat Kiernan, the national newscaster, involved in the project?
AF: Well, we tried to do it with our own actors, and (we said) forget it. It comes back to my documentary work. If you’re going to need a journalist in a movie, you’ll get an actor, and he’ll be fine on one level. On another level, when we had them do it, they have a system, and I give them notes. But it was night and day (between the actors and real newscasters), we just couldn’t make that happen (with the actors) on the level I wanted it.
Plus, when you bring real people into a movie, it’s a fine line, sometimes you have to be careful, when that person is real. Sometimes it brings you out of the movie, and sometimes it brings you into the movie.
Q: How do you feel your work in documentaries informs your work as an artist?
AF: It’s with the actors, I think. When you work with real people, the level of bullsh*t isn’t there. How you arrive at situations, and how you let the camera run, is different. You learn something different from every film. Every film is a different experience.
With my documentaries, like ‘Napoli, Napoli, Napoli’ and ‘Chelsea on the Rocks,’ we filmed reenactments. I found that to get to the truth, you almost need fiction. Just because someone’s speaking, and the camera’s on and it’s a documentary, doesn’t mean you’re getting the real deal.
Q: Is the story about the end of the world particularly timely right now?
AF: I think the 2012 thing really puts a stamp on it. Look at what happened in New York last May, this is going to be the end of the earth, on May 21, 2011. That was wildfire. On that day, every single person I knew was talking about that. What was it about that day that made everyone talk about it?
Theoretically, everyday when you go to sleep can be your last day. There’s the volcano in Iceland, tsunamis, the earthquake in Chili, that literally pushed the Earth off its axis.
Q: For the special effects, why did you choose the green haze for when the world was ending?
AF: It’s not computer generated. It was such a striking image, and such a natural image. I don’t know what the world will look like if the ozone deteriorated completely. But it looked good enough to me, and you have to make a choice.
Q: Are you watching other documentaries and films that are dealing with this issue, of the end of days?
AF: I’m watching what I watch, I haven’t noticed any more than usual. Feature film-wise, yes. I liked Lars von Trier’s film (‘Melancholia’), I thought it was interesting. It’s funny, it’s so much like our film, at least the idea is identical. (laughs) I didn’t know he was doing it.
It shows you that a lot of your ideas that you think are yours may not be yours. Creativity may come from as much as having your antenna up as listening to your heart.
Q: How have your feelings about death and inevitability changed over your life and career?
AF: Of course they change throughout your life. As you’re getting older, you have more experiences to balance and look back on. You realize a lot of what you thought you knew you really don’t know.
Written by: Karen Benardello
