Most filmmakers see piracy as a scourge on their livelihood. Abel Ferrara has what one might call a more pluralistic mindset: “The only thing you need to see them is the internet. Go find the torrents. That’s my big distributor.” And though I have paid to see many of them in theaters or at home, his claim that “they’re all on there” bears, especially among completists, a big asterisk: Cat Chaser. Ferrara’s 1989 Elmore Leonard adaptation can be (legally) found (rather) easily, but the only version granted public access runs half the length of what was once intended; anything like a director’s cut is owned by Anthology Film Archives, where it screened in 2014, again during a Museum of Modern Art retrospective in 2019, and never since.
But, exercising what few powers I possess, I’ve programmed the three-hour cut of Cat Chaser to show at the Roxy Cinema on Sunday, November 30, with thanks to Ferrara and Anthology approving the effort. The film, while lesser-seen and rarely discussed among Ferrara acolytes, marked a turning point. But you’d have to do some digging to figure that out; even in his recent memoir Scene, he writes about the experience vis-à-vis the nice dinners and sizable paycheck a studio job afforded him, and only elsewhere said that losing a film in editing ensured he’d fiercely insist upon final cut for the remainder of his career. As Cat Chaser represents something like a what-if in one of American movies’ great careers, November 30’s screening is the chance to gander at it from an odd angle.
Tickets are now on-sale. We look forward to discovering it with you.