I was grouching and grumbling about Quentin Tarantino‘s choices for the best films of the last 16 years (i.e., since ’93). Lost in Translation, for example. Then he explained why The Matrix no longer holds the second-place slot on his list due to the what-happened? effect of Reloaded and Revolutions. And I began to smile like I haven’t smiled in several days.

Whoever cut this Werner Herzog interview about Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans has as much editing expertise as yours truly, which is to say next to none. Movie City Indie‘s Ray Pride posted it this morning. Sorry for the Vimeo. If John Cusack and other occasionally mercenary actors do a straight paycheck movie now and then, so can Werner Herzog.

BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS – Werner Herzog Interview from Millennium Films on Vimeo.

Where is the transcendent theme or “lift” element in George Hickenlooper‘s Casino Jack, a drama about oily wheeler-dealer Jack Abramoff (Kevin Spacey)? What I mean is that a film about a scumbag has to do more than say “what a scumbag!” I could answer my own question since I have a copy of Norman Snider’s script, but I’ve been too much of a lazy-ass to read it.

Some light has been shed by George Rush & Joanna Molloy, who’ve read the script. But all they’re saying is that “some of its real-life characters” — George Bush, Karl Rove, Tom DeLay, former U.S. Congressman Bob Ney — “have cause for concern.” In other words, scumbag plural.

What I want and expect from this film — especially with the sardonic Spacey in the lead — is perverse black comedy.

“I’m of the persuasion that budget constraints are very, very good for creativity,” Mad Men auteur Matthew Weiner tells Vanity Fair‘s Bruce Handy. “I think people having unlimited amounts of money makes you really lazy. And I will be quoted on that, believe it or not.”

Mad Men‘s creative honcho Matthew Weiner

I’ve been saying this for years. The more money spent on a film, the more needlessly grandiose and overbearing it tends to be. Obviously not always. That Gone With the Wind shot of the dead and dying in Atlanta surely cost a load of dough, but it was worth every penny. Ditto the mothership arrival in Close Encounters, the chariot race sequence in Ben-Hur, and hundreds of others in this vein. Big money has been creatively well spent in the past, and will be again.

But having less of the stuff to throw around does tend to inspire better films. Case in point: Martin Scorsese‘s The Last Temptation of Christ (a classic made on the cheap) vs. Marty’s Gangs of New York (problems galore despite — or because of? — a massive budget). If I was a studio chief I’d have a framed motto on the wall behind my desk saying “Do it for less or take a hike.”

The problem with Weiner’s less-is-more approach is that it doesn’t necessarily work in a dollars-and-sense way outside of the cable TV realm. Because the Eloi don’t respond to creativity per se. They want dumb-ass CG, high-concept spectacle, monsters and robots, stuff blown up, pants pulled down, guys vomiting in Vegas, etc. They really don’t seem interested in responding to much else. So you can’t make profitable Eloi movies with less money — you need more. And there’s the leak in the boat.

In this morning’s Mad Men vs. Woodstock piece, N.Y. Times columnist Frank Rich quotes Vanity Fair‘s Bruce Handy: “As in Hitchcock, the Mad Men characters are unaware of shocks that the audience knows all too well lie ahead, whether they be the Kennedy assassination and women’s lib or long sideburns and the lasting influence of Doyle Dane Bernbach’s witty, self-deprecating ‘lemon’ ad for Volkswagen.”

“What we don’t know,” Rich comments, “is how the characters will be rocked by these changes. But we’re reasonably certain it won’t be pretty. That’s where the drama is, and it’s tense.

“In the world of television, Mad Men is notorious for drawing great press and modest audiences. This could be the season when the viewers catch up, in part because the show is catching up to the level of anxiety we feel in 2009. In the first two seasons, the series was promoted with the slogan ‘Where the Truth Lies.’ This year, it’s ‘The World’s Gone Mad.’ The ad hyping the season premiere depicts the impeccably dressed Don Draper, the agency executive played by Jon Hamm, sitting in his office calmly smoking a Lucky Strike as floodwater rises to his waist.

“To be underwater — well, many Americans know what that’s like right now. But we are also at that 1963-like pivot point of our history, with a new young president unlike any we’ve seen before, and with the promise of a new frontier whose boundaries are a mystery. Something is happening here, as Bob Dylan framed this mood the last time around, but you don’t know what it is. We feel Don Draper’s disorientation as his once rock-solid ’50s America starts to be swept away. We recognize his fear that the world could go mad.”