Cat Chaser
Cat Chaser is a 1989 American heist film directed by Abel Ferrara and starring Peter Weller and Kelly McGillis, based on the 1982 novel of the same name by Elmore Leonard. It was adapted from the novel by Leonard and James Borelli.
A three-hour raw cut of Cat Chaser was screened at Anthology Film Archives in New York City in the summer of 2014. Ferrara, Weller and others involved have expressed unhappiness with the released version, particularly with the added omniscient narration..
Plot
George Moran is a former Marine and veteran of the Dominican Republic intervention who now runs a small beachfront motel in Miami. While searching for a Dominican woman named Luci Palma who saved his life in 1965, he begins a relationship with Mary DeBoya, the wealthy, unhappy wife of a sadistic former Dominican general. Moran gets involved in a plot by fellow military veteran Nolen Tyner and a former New York policeman, Jiggs Scully, to rip off the general. Moran must elude a number of double-crosses as he and Mary attempt to gain her freedom plus $2 million of the general's money.Cast
- Peter Weller as George Moran
- Kelly McGillis as Mary DeBoya
- Charles Durning as "Jiggs" Scully
- Frederic Forrest as Nolen Tyner
- Tomás Milián as Andres DeBoya
- Maria M. Ruperto as Luci Palma
- Juan Fernández de Alarcon as Rafi
Production
Filming was not a happy experience for McGillis, who didn't make another major film afterwards for almost a decade. She said in 2001: "It was the most hateful experience of my life, and I said, if this is what acting is going to be, I will not do it. On the last day of shooting, I said to Abel 'Are you done with me?' He said, 'Yeah.' I walked in my trailer and shaved my head. I said 'Screw you, I never want to act again.'"
In a 2015 oral history of the making of Cat Chaser, written by Sam Weisberg of Hidden Films, Peter Weller and various crew members acknowledged that Weller and McGillis openly clashed during filming; Weller maintained that he never found out the reason for it. Several crew members confirmed that McGillis stormed off the set after shooting a love scene with Weller, but they differed on the exact cause of her outburst.
Abel Ferrara felt that the rape scene was too physical, so he wanted to have a body double shoot it. According to Ferrara, Kelly McGillis was very upset when she learned she wouldn't be shooting the scene. He said that McGillis accused him of replacing her because he didn't think she was beautiful enough. Eventually, McGillis and Ferrara worked out the scene in a way that she could film it herself. Ferrara claims that the actress essentially wrote the scene herself.