Kinski continually wreacked havoc on the set of Aguirre with his psychotic screaming fits. Irritated that cast and crew were making too much noise while playing cards during a break, he fired a gun at a hut, blowing the top joint off an extra’s finger. At one point he threatened to abandon the production when Herzog refused to fire a technician he hated. Says Herzog: “I went up to him and said, ‘You can’t do this.’ I told him I had a rifle and that he’d only make it as far as the first bend before he had eight bullets in his head — the ninth one would be for me.” Kinski returned to the set.

Most directors would refuse to work with such a maniac again, but no one loves a challenge more than Herzog. He ended up hiring the German actor to star in four more of his films, including Fitzcarraldo, a film about an Irishman who becomes obsessed with building an opera house in the jungles of Peru. The film employed hundreds of Peruvian Indians. Near the end of production, the locals offered to solve the Kinski problem. Herzog: “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!'”

In 1999 Herzog produced a documentary about their tormented relationship. It’s called Klaus Kinski – My Best Fiend. Says the director, “People think we had a love-hate relationship. Well, I did not love him, nor did I hate him. We had mutual respect for each other, even as we both planned each other’s murder.”

To give you a sense of Kinski’s madness, here are some of his thoughts on the director: “Herzog is a miserable, hateful, malevolent, avaricious, money-hungry, nasty, sadistic, treacherous, cowardly creep…he should be thrown alive to the crocodiles! An anaconda should strangle him slowly! A poisonous spider should sting him and paralyze his lungs! The most venomous serpent should bite him and make his brain explode! No panther claws should rip open his throat — that would be much too good for him! Huge red ants should piss into his lying eyes and gobble up his balls and his guts! 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.” (I actually think some of these sentiments may have been intended as satire. But then, I wouldn’t bet money on it.)

Well, I, for one, am extremely grateful that Werner Herzog continues to haunt. I adore his movies, and encourage film connoisseurs to discover his work, starting with his masterpiece, Fitzcarraldo.

So, are you wondering about Klaus’s karma? Of his three children — actress  Nastassja among them — only his son Nikolai attended his funeral in 1991.

Here’s the trailer of My Best Fiend:

© Dana Spiardi, Sept 5, 2013

The guys who run the local video store must hate me. The other day I brought back The Usual Suspects, its entrails crumpled, shredded and hanging from the cassette due to excessive play-pause-slow-motion-rewind-search action during scenes featuring the sexy, sultry and talented-as-all-getout Benicio Del Toro. It’s been said that I really know my way around a multi-function remote, but my fascination with his awesome Fred Fenster character really just drove me into freeze-frame frenzy.  I hoped to placate said store owners by finally forking over $19.95 for my own copy that I could rough-house through my four-head VCR to my heart’s content.

Yet, I don’t think my act of contrition did much to numb their recollection of another tape I deflowered just one week before — Swimming with Sharks, featuring one of BDT’s finest lazy lisps.  At least I was more careful when I rented Big Top PeeWee to see my hero’s underrated performance as Duke, the Dog-Faced Boy. (I would have been embarrassed to return that one in shambles.The shop clerks would have surely assumed I’d lost my composure watching Paul Reubens — the very master of remote-control hand-ballet. )

With Benicio’s wickedly handsome presence adding the often-small but spiciest ingredient to four movies in the last year or so, I think there isn’t one of us out there who wouldn’t drink this man’s bathwater in a minute if given the chance.  He is one damn lusty creature.  But his greatest turn-on is his straight-from-the-soul talent– his seemingly effortless ability to create characters that get under our skin and remind us that weird can be wonderful.

If this man could take the risk of twitching and slurring his way through the make-or-break role-of-a-lifetime part of Suspect’s Fred Fenster, and steal every scene doing it, then we too can find the nerve to mumble our own message to the world — no matter how unintelligible or irreverent it may seem on the surface.  And that’s really what it’s all about.

Now I just heard the disturbing rumor that my Puerto Rico-born, Pennsylvania-bred farm boy honey just might be cozying up to some very Hollywood folk.  Could it be that our favorite chameleon is growing restless playing delightfully offbeat second-banana characters in well-crafted fringe movies like Sharks, Suspects, and Basquiat?  Are his famous ever-morphing eyebrows set to go on strike from being repeatedly plucked and then plumped to achieve the perfect squirrely/sneery look that so defines a true screen oddball?  Might he consider becoming yet another silly light-comedy leading man or a gun-toting action hero?

Well, Benicio of the Bull, don’t be too quick to trade in the kooky charisma of your slushy, sensational speech splatter to join the ranks of The Usual Actors.  You deserve roles that can and do, in Fred Fenster’s now-classic words, “flip us — flip us for real.”

Editor’s note: Dana Spiardi is Pittsburgh-based freelance writer/producer and a former atomic energy propagandist.  Though she no longer visits nuclear plants, she experiences meltdowns right at home.