Anatomy of a Scene's Manatomy: Harvel Keitel Goes Hog Wild in Abel Ferrara's 'Bad Lieutenant'

Throughout cinema history, there have been some iconic nude scenes that have transcended the bounds of the films in which they appeared. Our new column Anatomy of a Scene's Manatomy will take an in-depth look at these scenes, their history, their deeper meanings, and their legacy. This week, Harvey Keitel carves a new path for his career by showing his dick in Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant!

Harvey Keitel certainly wasn't the first actor to show his dick on screen and he didn't wait until the 1990s to start showing his dick, but if there was a dick in an independent movie in the 1990s, odds are people would assume it was attached to Keitel. While never as respected or lauded as his contemporaries like Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Gene Hackman, or Dustin Hoffman, Keitel forged his own path through the 80s and into the 90s that found him turning up in supporting roles in films as varied as The Last Temptation of Christ, Thelma Louise, and Sister Act. Unlike those aforementioned actors, he was also rarely called upon to carry a film, often being an integral part of the ensemble rather than the leading man.

Director Abel Ferrara made a splash in the 80s with down and dirty exploitation flicks like The Driller Killer, Ms. 45, and King of New York, always operating outside the mainstream world. Even as independent cinema lurched toward the mainstream, his films remained contented outsiders in 90s, starting with his 1992 film Bad Lieutenant. The film was controversial from the minute it was announced, thanks in no small part to its confrontational plot which kicked off with the sexual assault of a nun and only got worse from there. It's the kind of film that even the more adventurous actors of the time would have passed on as soon as they heard the plot, but that's yet another thing that separated Keitel from those actors.

Keitel's obsession, if one could call it that, with showing his penis on film actually goes all the way back to the 1960s when he and Martin Scorsese collaborated on their mutual feature film debut, Who's That Knocking at My Door. His dick also made a cameo in the 1978 flick Fingers, before heading back into his pants for the duration of the 80s. When the 90s rolled around and Ferrara was getting ready to embark on Bad Lieutenant, he was set to reunite with his King of New York star Christopher Walken in the lead role. Three weeks before production started, however, Walken dropped out determining that he wasn't right for the role.

Though they had never worked together previously, Ferrara and Keitel's career paths seemed to be zigging and zagging out of one another's purview, and though Keitel initially hated the script, he was won over by Ferrara's insistence that much of it would be rewritten on the fly while shooting. Ferrara also knew that Keitel was likely the only actor of his stature to consider showing his dick on screen again, since he clearly had no qualms with doing so throughout his early career. This would give Ferrara's film that added edge that would tip* the film over into the realm of the truly controversial, since male full frontal nudity was still relatively taboo at the time.

The scene in question comes fairly in the film, just eleven minutes in, before the assault that sets the plot into motion. While Johnny Ace's "Pledging My Love" plays on the radio—a song that is also, interestingly, used in Scorsese's Mean Streets, also starring Keitel—the actor's unnamed titled character shoots heroin and drinks with a pair of frisky ladies, one of whom is played by the film's co-writer Zoë Lund. Keitel slow dances shirtless with the other woman (Victoria Bastel), before eventually ditching his pants altogether and whimpering while striking a pose somewhere between a baby penguin discovering he can't fly and Christ on the cross...

In and of itself, the scene is not entirely shocking, particularly when viewed in the year 2020. It's totally devoid of sexual context, which is a big plus in terms of appeasing the MPAA, but in 1992, it most certainly knocked off the wigs of many MPAA members. The film also came out mere months after Keitel starred in the family friendly smash hit Sister Act, yet another reason it ruffled feathers amongst the general public at the time. People apparently weren't ready to see that guy who tried to kill Whoopi Goldberg preening around in the buff.

However, along with the aforementioned Sister Act and Reservoir Dogs, the film secured Keitel's leading man status in 1992, pushing him toward similarly adventurous roles that would allow him to flaunt his frankfurter on screen. The following year, he and his dick were back with a vengeance in Jane Campion's The Piano, and he headlined another Abel Ferrara flick, Dangerous Game, opposite Madonna. He'd only show his penis in one more movie, 1995's Ulysses' Gaze, but his reputation for being that actor who always shows his dick was cemented long before that movie saw release.

Is it unfair to burden Keitel with such a legacy? Is that really all he's known for is showing his dick? Of course not, but it just goes to show how rare it was for an A-list actor to whip it out in a movie during that time period. It's still a fairly rare occurrence, mostly reserved for raunchy comedies or super intense NC-17 dramas, but every big name actor who feels comfortable enough to take that leap on screen has Keitel to thank for blazing that particular trail. Join us again next week when we take a look at one such example of that phenomenon when Viggo Mortensen goes fully nude for a brutal bathhouse brawl in David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises.

Catch up with our other editions of Anatomy of a Scene's Manatomy...

Two of History's Manliest Men Wrestle Naked in Women in Love

Ewan McGregor Has Got It, Flaunts It in Velvet Goldmine

A Pair of Stars are Born in Y Tu Mamá También

*no pun intended