Friday Free for All is the time of the week I reserve for all the things I really wanted to post that might not be strictly movie-related. So please, do not ask me “Dude, how is this movie related?” Or I will punch you. Send your tips to lance@filmdrunk.com, but only if they don’t suck.

Today’s Friday Free for All clip is an iguana that farts in the bath tub.  I mean really, that’s about all you need to know.  If you’re not interested in seeing that, I don’t know what to tell you, man.  I consider this an important scientific discovery.  For one thing, I suppose I could’ve assumed it, but I never knew that iguanas farted.  Not only that, but the iguana actually lifts one leg as he lets one go, just like I’ve always done.  Incredible!  It’s proof of evolution.  Lifting one leg to cut a fart is literally ingrained in our reptilian brain.  Before we even became amoebas, we were probably all just amino acids bathing in a pre-cambrian primordial stew, lifting one leg to fart on each other.  God himself probably lifted one universe-sized leg and farted the very building blocks of life into a hadean sea.

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The minute I told friends I loved Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, they asked, “You mean because it’s good or because it’s a train wreck?”

The truth is, I don’t really know.  Imagine The Wire as written by Shane Black.  It rides the line between brilliant and brilliantly terrible so well, all I know is that I loved every minute of it and I couldn’t turn away*.  Like rock n’ roll, there’s something about a movie being almost bad that makes it infinitely better.

Now, before I get to my wholehearted recommendation, (and a wholehearted recommendation is what this is, in case you wanted to save yourself the trouble of reading the rest), I feel I should first clarify that if the crowd at the screening I attended is at all representative, a lot of people will not like this movie.  But I believe I can provide a handy guide to the type of person who will or won’t.  I illustrate by way of a story:  Last week for Halloween, I dressed in a giant penguin suit with a fake mustache, an outfit I thought was pretty self-explanatory.  And yet, a significant number of people came up to me throughout the night to ask, “What are you supposed to be?”

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(“I CAN HAZ WHEEZBURGER?“)

In a recent Edmonton Sun article, insane director Werner Herzog claims his Bad Lieutenant movie would’ve had FAR LESS IGUANA if not for NICOLAS CAGE.

Said reptile is a coked-up hallucination that sings “Release Me” (actually the voice of bluesman Johnny Adams), for the benefit of drug-addicted New Orleans police detective Terence McDonagh (played by Cage). Not originally in the script, it was one of those weird flourishes that makes Herzog Herzog.

“Werner was very devoted to his iguanas,” Cage said dryly at a TIFF news conference yesterday. “We had a midway wrap party and Werner was at the bar, very unsettled, because he might not get the three minutes of iguana time he needed, and he said he might never make another movie again. I thought that would really be a shame.”

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