Werner Herzog has cajones. He'll do anything he wants and he don't give a damn what you think. He's like your uncle who shows up falling down drunk at your family reunion -- and still commands respect from your older sister's fancy stock broker boyfriend. He can be in the dodgiest part of Los Angeles doing an interview with the BBC, get shot by random sniper fire and carry on talking like nothing happened. Some would call him a pimp. The getting-shot experience, he told Conan O'Brian last night, he found exhilarating. Whatever does it for ya, buddy. If Germans were into middle names, Herzog's might just be gall.

So, without breaking character, last month at Cannes Herzog announced his next project would be a liberal remake of The Bad Lieutenant -- the cult film in which Harvey Keitel plays a dirty, rotten, well, bad cop -- starring Nicholas Cage. Herzog claims it's not really a remake or even an homage. Apart from sharing the same name, there seems to be little connection with the original. In fact, he claims to know nothing of director Abel Ferrara, telling Defamer he doesn't know the first thing about the man -- and apparently doesn't want to.

But I don't feel like doing an homage to Abel Ferrara because I don't know what he did — I've never seen a film by him. I have no idea who he is. Is he Italian? Is he French? Who is he?

Ferrara's thoughts? "I wish these people die in Hell. I hope they’re all in the same streetcar, and it blows up." Nice. Who needs Klaus Kinski when you've got a jilted has-been director to grapple with?