Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Syphilis! Yellow fever! Leprosy!

Faux-celebrity douches take note: if you’re going to do a feud, do it properly. Ideally, go into the jungle and duke it out until you’re actually in a position to kill each other.

That’s what Werner Herzog, the legendary German director, and Klaus Kinski, his leading man and chief tormentor, did in the early 1980s, when they headed deep into the Peruvian jungle to film Fitzcarraldo, a film about a music loving dreamer who tries to haul a steamboat over an Amazonian mountain.

Fitzcarraldo, like pretty much every film the two made together, involved death threats and screaming and allegations from both sides of psychosis and torment. Herzog, as you might imagine, was typically the more measured of the two, but he could still bring it: as you’ll read after the jump, he eventually said that he should have had Kinski killed when he had the chance.

Kinski, for his part, in his white-hot (and eventually recalled) autobiography, Kinski Uncut, said of Herzog: ‘He should catch the plague! Syphilis! Yellow fever! Leprosy! It’s no use; the more I wish him the most gruesome deaths, the more he haunts me.’

Years later, Herzog, speaking in My Best Fiend, his documentary on his relationship with Kinski, took up his right of reply:

‘Kinski’s fits can partly be explained by his egocentric character. Egocentric is perhaps not the right word; he was an outright egomaniac. Whenever there was a serious accident, it became a big problem because, all of a sudden, he was no longer the center of attention. He was no longer important.

[On the set of Fitzcarraldo], a lumberman was bitten by a snake while cutting a tree. This was the most dangerous snake of all. It only takes a few minutes before cardiac arrest occurs. He dropped the saw and thought about it for five seconds and then he grabbed his saw again and cut off his foot. It saved his life, because the camp and serum was 20 minutes away. When that happened, I knew Kinski would start raving with some trifling excuse, because now he was just a marginal figure.

…In another incident, a plane crashed, which was bringing people here. Luckily, they all survived, but some were seriously injured. Kinski saw that he was no longer in demand. So, he threw a fit, because his coffee was only lukewarm that morning. For hours he screamed at me, that close to my face. Incredible. I didn’t know how to calm him down, and then I had an inspiration. I went to my hut, where, for months I had hidden a piece of chocolate. We would almost have killed one another for something like that. I went back to him, going right into his face and ate the chocolate. All of a sudden he was quiet. This was utterly beyond him.

Kinski’s raving fits strained things with our Indian extras. They were Machiguengas, these two here, and a lot of Campas, too. Normally, they speak very softly and physical contacts are gentle. They were afraid. They would sit huddled together, whispering.

Towards the end of shooting, the Indians offered to kill Kinski for me. They said: “Shall we kill him for you?” And I said: “No, for God’s sake! I still need him for shooting. Leave him to me!”

I declined, at the time, but they were dead serious. They would have killed him, undoubtedly, if I had wanted it. I at once regretted that I held the Indians back from their purpose…’

(via clusterflock/Kottke/Newsweek)

Recently

• • Life During Wartime
  • In the midst of terrible illnesses and tropical holidays came MIFF, that most trusty staple of the antipodean winter. First up was Life During Wartime, Todd Solondz's sequel of sorts to morbid and wonderful Happiness (1998). There's more.
• • It's Time To Agree On Some Things
  • Why do we fight for gay marriage instead of ending nuclear proliferation? Sam Harris, a neuroscientist and one of the world's bravest critics on exoteric religious nuttery, talks about how we might agree on all things moral, and the profound difference this would make. There's more.
• • A Man and a Unicorn, Alone on a Mountain Top
  • A unicorn shares a drink with a lone camper on the top of a mountain. Then the booze runs out. There's more.
• • Four Records From The (Almost) Canon
  • Four remarkable, little-heard records from two depressed Kiwis, a deep listening scholar, some truly radical post-punkers and a couple of Arizona desert rats. There's more.
• • Hetfield vs. Science
  • In 2009, Hetfield the metal singer met Songsmith the digital accompaniment program. Here's what happened. There's more.
• • Recent Spam, Reviewed
  • I receive lots of comments on this blog. Ninety-nine per cent of them are from robots. Here I take a closer look at eight of them. There's more.