“Welcome to New York” — Abel Ferrara’s movie starring Gérard Depardieu as a character inspired by Dominique Strauss-Kahn — won’t be released in New York.
In fact, the director’s cut seen in Europe won’t be released at all in the US — and Ferrara is crying censorship.
“My film says ‘no means no’ and ‘violence to women is not an option,’” Ferrara told me. “Their film says, ‘this is an innocent man being harassed by the NYPD.’ It lets DSK off the hook.”
The mercurial director of “King of New York” and “Bad Lieutenant” claims Wild Bunch, the French distributing company that produced the film, have violated his right to the final cut, and butchered his critically acclaimed movie to be less-damning of DSK.
The crucial scene where DSK is depicted as raping hotel maid Nafissatou Diallo is now edited as a flashback — a dream the maid has.
Ferrara is calling for a boycott of the film when IFC opens it in a theater in Los Angeles and releases it online.
Ben Brafman, who represented DSK in the New York case, said, “I am pleased that the film will not be released in New York. The case against DSK was dismissed for good reason and accordingly, we do not need a film that is a work of fiction reminding people about a crime that was never committed.”
Wild Bunch and IFC deny they buckled to pressure from Strauss-Kahn and his lawyers to whitewash the story. They say Ferrara simply refused to edit the movie so that it could qualify for an R rating.
“We offered Mr. Ferrara an opportunity to edit his own R-rated version of the film at our expense, but he did not respond,” IFC said in a statement.
But Ferrara scoffed, “I’ve had final cut for 30 years. I wouldn’t make a movie without final cut. And I don’t make R-rated movies. I’m certainly not going to make an R-rated movie about DSK.”
The movie depicts DSK as a sex addict, but Depardieu told reporters in Cannes, where it premiered last May, “It’s not porno at all. To be porno, you have to see the big d–k.”