The Wrath of Klaus Kinski: Kinski, who died in 1991, premiered at the An Interview with Werner Herzog Cannes Film Festival this spring. by A.G. Basoli in Cineaste Echoing the beginning of Kinski's By the time Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski autobiography, My Best Fiend opens with an teamed up for the filming of Aguirre: The Wrath incident that occurred, during Kinski's tour of of God, Kinski had appeared in scores of films Germany with a one-man show in which he and Herzog, with five features behind him at the played Jesus. The location is the age of twenty-eight, was one of the most Deutschlandhalle in Berlin, capacity twenty promising directors of New German Cinema. thousand, in the early Seventies. A tight close-up The role of Aguirre, the mad sixteenth-century of a wild-eyed Kinski widens to reveal him alone Conquistador leading a splinter group of rebels on a stage, glaring into the dark auditorium. to self- destruction while searching the Amazon Someone in the audience just heckled him and for the fabled El Dorado, had appealed to he's trying to locate the voice. Suddenly a man is Kinski enough to brave the prospect of two next to him and reaches for the microphone. grueling months of filming on location in the Kinski pushes him away and a fight ensues. Peruvian jungle. Kinski thunders on: "I am not the Jesus of the official church tolerated by those in power. I am After weeks of drifting down the Amazon on a not your superstar." The heckler finally gains the raft, wearing heavy period costumes in the microphone: "I doubt that Jesus was like Kinski. sweltering heat, with little food or drinking water Jesus was a patient man, he didn't say 'shut up' on account of Herzog's alleged hell-bent quest to those who contradicted him!" Kinski wrangles for authenticity, Kinski's already feisty the mike away from him and declares that he will disposition turned lethal and he threatened to not continue until this "miserable jerk" leaves; quit the production. "You can't do it," replied then he walks away in great, angry strides, Herzog, who was filming on a tight budget that throwing microphone and tripod off the stage. allowed little room for mistakes, let alone starting over with a new leading man. "I told Using this footage out of context, unexplained, him I had a rifle," Herzog explained, "and he My Best Fiend succeeds in creepily establishing would only make it as far as the next bend in the the tone of Kinski's madness, and then proceeds river before he had eight bullets in his head-the to expose Herzog's peculiar brand of lunacy. ninth would be for me." "Whoever heard of a Through a tightly woven tapestry of remarkable pistol or rifle with nine bullets," Kinski archival footage, excerpts from the feature films, commented about the incident in his interviews and personal recollections, Herzog autobiography-but the pact was sealed. Kinski chronicles the pivotal points of their completed the film and Aguirre went on to collaboration-from a thirteen-year-old Herzog's become Herzog's first international hit. first encounter with Kinski, to their early fights on the set of Aguirre, his plans to burn down The unlikely allegiance forged by the two men Kinski's house with him in it, their reconciliation on the location of their first film together at the Telluride Film Festival, and the incidents spawned a creative relationship which lasted during the making of Fitzcarraldo. over fifteen years and produced four more extraordinary films, regarded by many as "Kinski seriously thought that I was crazy. Of Herzog's masterpieces, including Nosferatu the course I am not-not 'clinically,' at least-but he Vampyre (a remake of Murnau's classic), was right in that I was perhaps too choleric," Woyzeck, and Fitzcarraldo. But the storm never concedes Herzog, although some might argue abated: over the years their fights became that hauling a ship over a mountain from one legendary and in his outrageous autobiography, tributary to another-the central metaphor of Kinski Uncut (Viking Penguin, 1996), Kinski Fitzcarraldo and an enterprise that delayed the repeatedly lambasted Herzog with interminable, completion of the film by four years-is a dead blistering tirades: "Herzog is a miserable, hateful, giveaway in matters of insanity. When everyone malevolent, avaricious, money-hungry, nasty, else deserted him, however, Kinski stood by sadistic, treacherous, cowardly creep," he wrote. Herzog. The film was eventually completed and "He doesn't care about anyone or anything won the Director's Prize at Cannes in 1982. except his wretched career as a so-called As if Herzog himself were addressing the jeers filmmaker Herzog doesn't have the foggiest and accusations of an unseen spectator, My Best inkling on how to make movies!" Fiend seems to waver between a harangue and a Of course, Herzog's own version of the plea, often portraying Kinski as the culprit rather relationship (including an intriguing explanation than the subject of the documentary. But when for Kinski's vituperative comments) was bound Herzog resists the urge to play the impoverished to follow at some point, and My Best Fiend, his but visionary filmmaker victimized by a feature-length documentary on the late Klaus megalomaniac prima donna, an ineffable sense of loss seeps through. Kinski becomes the an apotheosis of Klaus Kinski. I'm sure he recipient of a rueful and formidable homage would have liked the film. made all the more poignant by Herzog's Cineaste: What was your technique for dealing reluctant appreciation of his belligerent muse with his tantrums? and by his struggle to defer to a powerful bond that shaped both his filmmaking career and, as Herzog: There was no technique involved. Here he puts it, his destiny. is this man, Kinski, and you have to put him on the screen. You have to take all his rage, all his My Best Fiend will be released this fall by New intensity, all his demonic qualities, and make Yorker Films and is set for a U.S. premiere at them productive for the screen. That was the the Telluride Film Festival and a New York task and there was no time for learning. I had to theatrical opening at the Film Forum on master the situation from day one, from the first November 3rd.-A.G. Basoli day of shooting Aguirre. On set you have no Cineaste: What motivated you to make a choice. I had to be strong enough to shape him documentary about Klaus Kinski now? and force him to the utmost, beyond the limits of what is normally required for the shooting of Werner Herzog: The time was right. I couldn't a film. But he would push me equally-to the have made it five, six, or seven years ago. I limit. It was not permissible to take even a little always had the feeling that I should round the step back from his level of intensity and films up, that something was missing-like the professionalism. And, of course, he literally chain was missing a link. There's something would have been ready to die with me, if I had mysterious about time. All the turbulence, all the died on the ship in the rapids. He would have turmoil, has somehow settled. My perspective sunk in the ship with me, and vice versa. But I has shifted and that's why the film has humor in cannot deny that there were moments, which it, and people laugh. Of course, some of it is were dangerous, when we could have killed each very bizarre. I see it myself and I can face it, other. now, with calm humor and a certain serenity-but only because time has passed. Cineaste: In the film you alluded to the fact that he "wasted" himself in your films-you used that Cineaste: In the film you chose to ignore word "wasted." Kinski's background, personal life, psychological make-up-how he became Klaus Kinski. Why? Herzog: Yes, he was empty and destroyed to a degree that he needed a long time to get back on Herzog: It never interested me. I never wanted his feet, and for me it was similar. I needed some to make an encyclopedic film on Klaus Kinski. It time to lick my wounds. The only exception was was always evident to me that it should be my Nosferatu and Woyzeck, when we had only a Klaus Kinski, that's why I have this extra, whom hiatus of five days in between shooting. We did I met at the airport, carry a sign that says it back to back and, of course, it was a great "Herzog's Kinski." My intention at the beginning strain on him in particular, and on me as well, was to call the film "Herzog's Kinski" but I think but so what. My Best Fiend is a better title. The film is as much about me as it is about him, about our Cineaste: How heavy a toll was it for you? strange relationship. Which is the reason why, Herzog: Nobody should be interested in the for example Nastassja Kinski is not in the film price one has to pay to work with extraordinary and Pola Kinski isn't in it, either. I believe his people. The film is the only thing that matters. character becomes somewhat evident of course as seen through my eyes and through his deeds. Cineaste: There is a moment in the film-when you are both at Telluride-when the affection Cineaste: How did you choose the footage and between you two is palpable. the people you interviewed? It seemed as if his female costars had only good things to say about Herzog: Thank God that moment exists on film, him. because the media do not believe me. He was always labeled as the Bösewicht of film-the Herzog: I could easily have found hundreds of villain! And I tried in interviews, say after female partners who would have told the most Fitzcarraldo or Aguirre, to put across that side of atrocious stories of what a permanent pestilence Klaus Kinski. Nobody would ever print a word he was on set. But that would have been a stupid of that. He was grandiose and very generous. and easy game. I didn't want it. I see him One time I said to him, "Klaus, you look so differently now. Not that I can claim he was a elegant, what is it?" I looked at him and I said, good man-he was not. He was demonic, evil, but "Ah, it's the jacket," and he said, "Oh, Yves he was wonderful at the same time. Gracious Saint Laurent made this for me and I got it and full of humor and warmth. Not only yesterday in Paris." I said, "This is a wonderful through the choice of witnesses, but of the jacket," and he ripped it off his shoulder and footage as well, I wanted to create an homage, threw it on me and said, "Now take it. It's Cineaste: Would you say, then, that your fiction yours." He would give away his car in a split films with him were documentaries about second-because he felt like giving me his car. Of Kinski, as well? course, I gave it back to him later. Herzog: If you use the term 'documentary' with Cineaste: But you kept the jacket. very wide margins, yes. And, of course, Fitzcarraldo-moving a ship of that size over a Herzog: I still have it and I still wear it once in a mountain is a deed that bears a certain affinity while. It's a little bit short, his arms were a little with him, but only would take place in a bit shorter than mine, but I like it the better documentary. The line between documentary because of that. and fiction film is obviously blurred for me. Cineaste: Would you both have been lesser They bear such an affinity to each other that I human beings had your encounter not taken can't really distinguish that easily. place? Cineaste: What role does the German tradition Herzog: I cannot answer because he was part of play in your esthetics? my life and I was part of Kinski's life. Of course Herzog: I grew up in Bavaria. My first language there was life before Kinski and in between was Bavarian and my own father could not Kinski-in between the films I made with him. I understand what I was saying when I spoke in made Kaspar Hauser, Stroszek with Bruno S., Bavarian to him and he needed my mother to and Land of Silence and Darkness and, of translate. I had to painfully learn to speak Hoch course, there was life after Kinski. I met him for Deutsch [High German] in high school later on, the first time when I was thirteen. The film because I was ridiculed for my dialect. I have to explains the chain of events. say, with a rather primitive metaphor, that the We lived in the same pensione. The owner of only other person capable of making this place had picked him up from the street, Fitzcarraldo would have been King Ludwig II. literally, and given him a room and food for free He was quintessentially Bavarian. It's not easy to and did his laundry. He entered this place like a define it but when I name him and you look at tornado, a force of nature, and it didn't take him the castles, there's a kind of dreaminess and one minute to destroy and lay waste to all the exuberance of fantasies that is specifically furniture. It was strange because I remember Bavarian and Austrian. There's an affinity, and it that everybody was immediately scared of is certainly distinct from the Teutonic German Kinski. I was the only one who was not scared. I culture and imagination. was astonished. I looked at him as if an Cineaste: Now you live in San Francisco? extraterrestrial had just landed, or a tornado had just struck. The way you watch a natural disaster, Herzog: Yes, but that shouldn't worry you. I sometimes with strange amazement. That is the never left my Bavarian culture. Nor has Aguirre feeling I remember. left its culture, it's a Bavarian film. And Fitzcarraldo is a Bavarian film. Strangely enough Of course, he didn't remember me, I was a child I function very easily in the jungle, in the at the time, and the next time we met it was for Amazons, or in the Sahara Desert. Aguirre. As a private person and a filmmaker, I think it was a necessary collaboration, that the Cineaste: Would you talk a little about your two of us found each other. There was a certain Lessons of Darkness, which is the title of one of inevitability about it-it was destiny. Though the your films and of your manifesto. ancient Greeks would use this term with Herzog: Lessons of Darkness fits in very well necessary caution. with my manifesto, in what I define as ecstatic Cineaste: Were there any similarities between truth. We have seen fifteen second film clips of Kinski and Bruno S.? fires in Kuwait hundreds of times on CNN and that is the accountants' truth. But in this film, Herzog: Both of them had an enormous more visibly than in others, I was searching for presence on screen, a presence and intensity that something different, for something beyond that, is almost unprecedented in cinema. Kinski was for an epic, ecstatic truth. Lessons of Darkness not an actor-I wouldn't call him an artist either, is a fine example for me to use in order to clarify nor am I. Of course, he mastered the techniques what I mean by the terms in my manifesto-of of being an actor, the technique of speech, of what distinguishes the accountant's truth, what understanding the presence of light and of the constitutes fact, and what constitutes the camera, the choreography of camera and of inherent truth of images in cinema and, of bodily movements. Bruno S. didn't have that and course, in poetry so had to be taught. But at the core of Klaus Kinski was not his existence as an actor-he was Cineaste: Why issue a formulation against something beyond that and apart from it. cinéma-vérité now? Herzog: It's not something sudden. Since my in the big Hollywood action or special-effects earliest filmmaking days I have preached that I movie. would like to be one of the gravediggers of Cineaste: Is your manifesto in opposition, or cinéma vérité. But it was not so clearly better, in response to Lars Von Trier's Dogma? articulated. Only after some intensive years of 'documentary' filmmaking could I better Herzog: No, they're after something completely articulate what I meant. I did so finally in the different. manifesto that I wrote in anger-after a sleepless night, because I was too jet-lagged to sleep. I Cineaste: Would you ever consider doing a had a feeling it should be written down. Dogma film? It was very strange because it was a night when I Herzog: No, it would reduce my possibilities and had just traveled for thirty hours from my subjects. I could not do Aguirre, for Guatemala to Catania, in Sicily. I went straight example, because a historical film in costume is from shooting a film in Guatemala to a rehearsal not permitted. Music would not be permissible of The Magic Flute. I couldn't sleep and then, and I love to work with music. So, no, certainly when it was finally time, after forty-five hours, to not, but I have respect for what they postulate go to bed, I couldn't sleep. I turned on the TV and I do believe, even though it reduces a lot of and again found the same thing on Italian TV as possibilities, that it is at least an answer. It on Austrian, Dutch, Canadian, and U.S. TV. doesn't make filmmaking more democratic as Documentaries are always the same sort of they say, but it brings down the apparatus to its boring, uninspired stuff. So I tried to force essential size. I wish that Dogma had been a myself to sleep but I couldn't and I turned the manifesto that had more substance as far as, let's TV on again. There was a porno film on and I say, storytelling. But I think as reduced and stark had the feeling, yes, even though it's just a as it is, it's a step that is quite interesting. physical performance, it comes closer to what I Cineaste: Do you feel that the new millennium is call truth. It was more truthful than those urging filmmakers to define new ways of making documentaries. I couldn't fall asleep, so I got up movies with manifestos, declarations, and so on? at three o'clock in the morning and, in this anger of not being able to sleep and seeing all these Herzog: No. Who cares about the millennium? things on TV, I wrote down the manifesto, in It's an artificial date! Even the church doesn't fifteen minutes. Not to exaggerate, but the fact is know when Jesus was born. I think it's obvious it contains, in a very condensed form everything that in the cinema new ways have to be found en that has angered and moved me over many route all the time. years. Cineaste: Last year two films, Celebration and http://zakka.dk/euroscreenwriters/interviews/ Idiots, were shown at Cannes that were based on werner_herzog.htm Dogma '95, a manifesto written by Lars Von Trier. Are you familiar with Dogma? Herzog: I've seen it very recently for the first time. For me it's a little uninspired because it's a technical cookbook on what to use and what not to use. But I think the basic aim of this manifesto is very necessary, seeing how much cinema has been overwhelmed by special effects and technicalities and a huge apparatus that has reduced the real life that is possible in movies. It's very strange because this year I acted in a film by a very young American filmmaker, Harmony Korine, who made his movie, Julien: Donkey Boy, according to the rules of Dogma. I played his crazed father in a dysfunctional, white-trash family. He wanted me very badly in this film as his father. For him it was important to have me in the film because he sees me as some sort of predecessor to Dogma, for the reduced technical apparatus-not as reduced as the Dogma postulates, but essential, physical, direct cinema, with all the possibilities of all the exuberance and vitality of life in it. It's very telling that you do not find this quality anymore