My Best Fiend (1999) Movie Script

First,

cast the beam out of thine own eye

and then the mote from mine.

Jesus takes off his shirt.

And lets others speak.

He kneels before the first one,

washing his dusty feet

with his shirt.

I am not the Jesus

of the official Church,

who the police, bankers,

judges, hangmen, officers,

church bosses, politicians,

and other powerful people, tolerate.

I am not your superstar.

Shut up so that you can hear

what I'm saying.

Come up here, bigmouth!

I am not a great speaker,

but maybe some of you seek Christ.

But I don't think this is Him.

Because Christ was tolerant,

and if someone contradicted Him,

He would not tell them to shut up.

No, He didn't say shut up!

He took a whip

and smacked their ugly faces!

That's what He did,

you stupid pig!

And if only one of you

wants to hear me,

he has to wait

until this fucking scum has left!

If I may quote:

"Thou shalt recognize them

by their works."

That's what counts.

Munich, 3 Elisabeth street

How do you do, Mr. Herzog?

Herr Von der Recke, nice to meet you.

I hope you are prepared

for this invasion.

Yes, we are.

You do know that this apartment

has a very special meaning for me.

As a 13-year-old schoolboy,

I used to live here

with my mother

and my two brothers.

This was a small, rather shabby

boarding house,

now restored, of course.

That was in the '50s?

In the "50s.

ll was just 13 years old.

The odd thing was that I lived here

with Klaus Kinski for three months.

- Oh, really?

- It was a chain of coincidences.

The owner of the boarding house,

Klara Rieth,

an elderly lady of 65

with wildly-dyed orange hair

had a soft spot for starving artists

as she herself had come

from a family of artists.

Kinski had been living nearby

in an attic, without furniture --

just bare beams, and everything

covered knee-high with dead leaves.

He posed as a starving artist

and walked around stark-naked.

When the postman rang,

Kinski rustled through his leaves,

stark-naked, and signed.

Where was that?

Somewhere nearby.

But he wore clothes

when he lived here, I hope?

Yes, but from the very first moment,

he terrorized everyone.

There were eight parties living here.

He locked himself

into the bathroom...

The bath is over there.

- Wasn't there a door there?

- Yes, it led to the bathroom.

- May we?

- Yes, go ahead.

It was...

This room to the left was bigger.

We enlarged the bathroom.

That's where we used to live,

my mother and the three boys.

The four of us

in just one single room.

There were bunks.

We were rather poor,

and my mother tried somehow

to take part

in the economic miracle

but got left behind.

This bath was smaller because

our room reached up to here.

Kinski had locked himself

in this bathroom

for two days and two nights,

for 48 hours.

In his maniacal fury, he smashed

everything to smithereens.

The bathtub, the toilet bowl -

everything.

You could sift it

through a tennis racket.

It was really incredible.

I never thought it possible

that someone could rave for 48 hours.

They called the police in the end,

but they left him in peace.

He was put up there,

in a tiny staff room.

- May 1?

- Please, go ahead.

It was completely different then.

There was a long corridor.

And here there were

one, two, three small rooms.

Yes.

And here must have been

a wall and an entrance.

The corridor went along here.

And this here was Kinski's room.

There was only room for a bed

and a small night table.

And that was his window

looking onto the backyard.

One day, Kinski took a huge

running start down the corridor.

While we were eating,

I heard a strange noise,

and then, in an explosion,

the door came off its hinges

crashing into the room.

He must have jumped against it

at full speed,

and now he stood there,

flailing wildly,

completely hysterical,

snow-white in the face.

He was foaming at the mouth,

and he moved like this.

Something came floating down

like leaves...

It was his shirts.

And his screams

were incredibly shrill.

He could actually break

wine glasses with his voice.

And three octaves too high,

he screamed,

"Klara! You pig!"

The thing was, she hadn't ironed

his shirt collars neatly enough.

Klara had him living here for free,

fed him, and did his laundry.

One day a theatre critic

had been invited for dinner.

He hinted

at having watched a play

in which Kinski had a small roll.

He would mention him

as outstanding and extraordinary.

At once, Kinski threw two hot potatoes

and the cutlery into his face.

He jumped up and screamed,

“1 was not excellent!

I was not extraordinary!

1 was monumental!

I was epochal!”

All this made a very

deep impression on me then.

And that I would work with him later

and make five feature films,

you would never have thought that.

No, that was never on my horizon

at the time.

It was beyond

my furthest thoughts.

Did he ever have any training

as an actor while he was here?

He was self-taught.

At times, you could hear him

in his closet, for 10 hours non-stop,

doing his voice

and speaking-exercises.

It was absolutely incredible.

He pretended to be a genius

who had fallen straight from heaven

and who had obtained his gift

by the grace of God.

In reality, it was incredible

how much he trained himself.

At that time,

during his poetry recitals,

he still had this artificial

theatre intonation of the "50s,

a kind of a snorting snarl.

He mastered it to perfection.

And this is where ll lived with him,

and so I knew what to expect

if I was to work with him.

In quicklime,

in saltpeter, blazing phosphorous,

in the urine of a donkey in heat,

in snakes' poison, old hags' spittle,

in dog shit,

and in foul bath-water,

in wolf's milk, gall of oxen,

and flooded latrines.

In this juice,

thou shalt stew the slanderers.

In a tomcat's brain

who ceased to fish,

in the foam that dribbles

from the teeth of rabid dogs,

mixed with monkey's piss,

in bristles from a hedgehog torn,

in a rain barrel where vermin crawl,

perished rats and the festering slime

of toad-stools,

glowing at night

in horses' snot and in hot goo.

In this juice,

shall the slanderers stew...

Peru, the train tracks along

the Urubamba River...

Kinski's and my river of destiny,

so to speak.

I wanted to retrace

some of our steps.

The first film we did together

was "Aguirre, the Wrath of God",

which started here.

It was my sixth film,

and I was 28 at the time.

I had sent Kinski my screenplay.

Two nights later, at 3:00 a.m.,

I was awakened by the phone.

At first, I couldn't figure out

what was going on.

All I heard were inarticulate screams

at the other end of the line.

It was Kinski.

After about half an hour,

I could filter out from his screams,

that he was ecstatic

about the screenplay

and wanted to be Aguirre.

The shooting of "Aguirre" was faced

with two pressing problems.

One was the budget.

AGUIRRE,

THE WRATH OF GOD

Today, it is inconceivable

that we made the film

with only $370,000.

No one was interested

in financing it, and what's more...

no one even wanted to see the film

for years.

Kinski was the next problem.

At the time, he had just cut short

a Jesus tour.

He had appeared in huge arenas,

in the Sportpalast in Berlin,

and the audience merely wanted

to watch him rave.

He was laughed at, had terrible fits,

and raved and screamed,

and arrived here at our location

as a derided, misunderstood Jesus.

He had wholly identified with his role

and continued to live on in it.

Often, it was difficult to talk to him

because he answered like Jesus.

In his earlier phase,

you could watch him

in similar self-stylizations.

As Francois Villon,

the poor, vagrant poet.

Then as Dostoyevsky's idiot,

and later in his life, as Paganini.

What is more, he had been

fascinated by the screenplay,

which had a different beginning

from the finished film.

In the script, there was a scene

on a glacier

at an altitude of 17,000 feet.

A huge procession of altitude-sick

pigs advances towards you.

Only later would you realize

that this was part of a Spanish army

of adventurers,

accompanied by 800 or a 1,000

Indian auxiliaries.

All this was cut from the script.

Nevertheless, even though

I tried to talk him out of it,

Kinski arrived with half a ton

of alpine equipment.

He brought tents, sleeping bags,

crampons, and ice axes.

He badly wanted to expose himself

to wild nature,

but he had some rather insipid

ideas about it.

Mosquitos were not allowed

in his jungle, neither was rain.

After establishing him in his tent,

it started to rain,

and he got wet.

So, he immediately had

one of his raving fits

during the first night.

The next day, we built a roof

of palm leaves above his tent.

Still discomforted, he moved

into the hotel of Machu Picchu.

At the time, there was only

one hotel with eight rooms.

There was nothing here either

except for a single hut

where I used to sleep.

A native Indian woman lived there.

A hunch-backed dwarf

with nine children.

She also had 100-150 guinea-pigs,

which were there to eat.

At night they crawled all over me,

and that was uncomfortable.

So, 1 moved in with the Indians.

450 Indians from the highlands

from an altitude of 15,000 feet,

who stayed in this big barn.

In a radius of about 100 miles,

no possibility to find shelter existed.

I slept in there with them.

The last two days before shooting

started were rather chaotic.

I tried to establish some order

and worked straight

for two days and nights.

Before going to sleep at dawn,

for one hour, I told them,

"Wake me up

when you take off in the train.”

But they forgot.

I had been forgotten,

and in a white-hot panic

I realized the train was taking off.

I was fully dressed,

apart from my shoes.

I ran after the departing train,

200 yards barefoot,

across broken stone.

With bleeding feet,

I barely reached a step and got on.

That was perhaps the most important

shooting day in my life.

When I finally arrived up here,

there was a dense fog.

Everything was clouded over

and it was pouring rain.

You could only see

as far as 100 feet.

The mountain back there was

completely enshrouded in clouds.

You couldn't see anything

except gray clouds.

There was indescribable chaos.

On top of that, there was

a big problem with Kinski.

There were two things.

First, he realized he would only be

a dot in the landscape

and not the center of attention.

He wanted to act in close-up

with a grim face,

leading the entire army.

I explained to him that he wasn't yet

the leader of this expedition,

for that was Gonzalo Pizarro.

And it was very difficult

because Kinski simply wasn't

the center of attention in this scene.

Secondly, our concept of landscape

differed profoundly.

He wanted the shot to embrace

all of scenic Machu Picchu,

including the peak,

just like a Hollywood-style movie,

with the landscape

as a beautiful backdrop

exploited for the scene.

Commercials work that way.

Postcards look like that.

But I wanted an ecstatic detail

of that landscape

where all the drama, passion,

and human pathos became visible.

He just didn't understand this,

but for me, it was something crucial.

A landscape

with almost human qualities.

Kinski replied that the only

fascinating landscape on this earth

was the human face.

After that,

ll removed him from this shot.

I also had the feeling

that this scene without any faces

would stick in the spectators' minds

for a long time.

Kinski raved

about my being a megalomaniac.

I answered him back,

"That makes two of us!”

Finally, at 11 am,,

everything opened up,

and here, on the right-hand side,

very strangely,

the clouds stayed put,

and to the left, they parted,

and then the file of people

came down.

While we were shooting,

I had a very profound feeling

as if the grace of God

was with this film and with me.

As if I were witnessing

something extraordinary

which I would never see again.

I can say that on this day I definitely

came to know my own destiny.

2,000 feet below Machu Picchu,

the Urubamba flows

around the Inka Site

and the rocky peak nearby.

During the dry season,

the boulders are in the open,

but the water can rise rapidly here

by 40 feet.

This is what the same place

looks like at high water.

It seemed to me like a metaphor

for our turbulent relationship.

If you want someone to be agitated,

let him be agitated!

Fucking shoot!

Let's shoot this shit!

The camera won't roll now.

It's an insult!

You have to beg me!

Even David Lean did that,

and Brecht, too.

You will do it as well, my dear!

- I will not.

- We shall see!

- I will not do it.

- We shall see!

I couldn't care less

what Brecht and David Lean did.

What was the reason

for inflicting this on myself?

At age 15, I had seen Kinski

in the anti-war film

"Children, Mothers and a General.”

He plays a lieutenant

who leads schoolboys to the front.

Maximilian Schell also plays

a small part.

He falls in love

and wants to desert.

Kinski will have him shot for that

the next morning.

Don't be afraid.

I haven't seen a girl in three years.

Hey, you! Go away!

The bastard.

Are you coming?

I will wait outside, okay?

Do me this favor, please.

The mothers of the boys

and the soldiers

go to sleep for a few hours.

Kinski is awakened at daybreak,

and the way he wakes up

will forever stay in my memory.

Yes, we have to leave.

This one moment, repeated here,

impressed me so profoundly

that later, it was a decisive factor

in my professional life.

Yes, we have to leave.

Let's go, people!

Now!

Strange how memory

can magnify something like that.

The following scene,

where he orders

Maximilian Schell to be shot,

seems much more

impressive to me today.

Now!

Will he be shot?

It's outrageous, you can't do this!

You have to listen to him, at least.

We beg you.

But it's murder!

It can't be decided like that!

Lately, it can.

Go on!

Lima, the airport.

On the traces of the past,

I met Justo Gonzalez,

who works here as a tour guide

and has been waiting for me.

He was one of the Spanish soldiers

from Aguirre's expedition.

We hadn't seen each other

for more than 25 years.

February, 22.

We are suffering terrible hardship.

Most of the men have fever

and hallucinate.

Hardly anybody can still stand.

Justo Gonzales drank my ink,

thinking it was medicine.

I can't write any more.

We are drifting in circles.

Here, at the left of the picture,

Justo Gonzalez, then in the role

of a Spanish adventurer,

exhausted by fever.

In all scenes of the movie,

Kinski had

an intense aggressiveness,

being at the same time

cold-blooded and calculating.

In one of the scenes,

we attacked an Indian village

which we burnt down.

Kinski assaulted the extras who were

distracted by the food they found.

He flailed wildly at us

and hit my head with his sword.

Luckily, my iron helmet protected me.

He hit so hard that I suffered

a considerable wound on my head.

I didn't lose consciousness,

but I suffered massive bleeding.

And without your helmet,

what would have happened?

Without the helmet,

he could have killed me.

He would have split my skull.

He was precise

in aiming at my helmet,

but he was always impulsive,

aggressive, out of control.

He was hitting everyone.

And afterwards?

Afterwards, this scar remained.

It's still visible today.

That same night, after shooting,

we extras were relaxing.

We drank a little and played cards.

Klaus Kinski became irate

and aggressive over this.

Apparently, he wanted to show

that he was a tough guy,

and with his Winchester,

he shot three bullets into our hut.

We were 45 men

cramped together in there,

and he wounded one of us.

He shot off his fingertip.

There was so much blood

that I was afraid that the man

was hit in the body,

but it was only the middle finger.

The extra's name was Araos.

The trajectory of the bullets

did they penetrate the roof

diagonally from above

and then into the floor?

No, he shot straight

through the wall.

He hated everybody.

He was impulsive,

unpredictable, half-mad.

He was not quite normal.

Aggressive.

A diabolical character.

He always went around armed.

One day you threatened him

with death.

You couldn't take it any longer

when he wanted to walk out

before the end of shooting.

A lot of scenes were still missing.

And how many sacrifices

had we made?

A few days journey

from Machu Picchu,

down the Urubamba river.

Here, at the rapids of the Pongo,

we shot parts of "Fitzcarraldo”.

During the dry season,

with the water at its lowest level,

this is quite harmless.

Kinski was a peculiar mixture

of physical cowardice and courage.

A wasp nearby could cause him

to scream for his mosquito net

and for a doctor with a syringe.

I will never forget one moment,

and that was right here in the Pongo.

We had managed to drag

our huge ship up to here,

inch by inch,

against the current.

The water rises 30 feet higher here,

and then all hell breaks loose.

Both to the right and left, we had

fastened 60 steel cables to the rock

so that the boat was able

to pull itself up with the winches.

All that took about 11 days

just to pull the boat

half a mile into these rapids.

Then something unexpected

happened.

The water rose another 6 feet,

and the 14 steel cables,

each with a diameter of 3 inches,

were torn up with a single jerk.

That was good.

Watch out.

Good timing.

The boat capsized,

laying almost horizontally

in the water.

More bizarre, there was a pregnant

woman on board, the cook's wife,

and the cook.

The cook, in mortal fear,

looking for something vertical,

jumped on half a pig.

He clutched it

and went swinging on this pig.

Later on, he had to endure

some jokes about this, of course.

Kinski knew about this incident.

We did some shooting here,

without any crew on board,

and the boat was hurled

into the rocks with such an impact

that the keel was wrapped

around itself

like the lid of a sardine tin.

The anchor had penetrated

the thick metal wall.

Everyone knew it,

including Kinski.

I then thought we should shoot

with a couple of cameras on board.

We had six volunteers,

and suddenly Kinski said,

"If you go on board,

I'm coming with you.

If you sink, I shall sink, too."”

Look, you can stop it again...

At the beginning.

This is a real gramophone needle?

No, that's a normal sewing needle.

It's not playing any music.

- Paul.

- Yes?

- Good luck.

- Okay.

- Take care.

- You too.

If you fall off, I'll catch you.

What happened?

Pongo!

We're drifting through the Pongo!

While we were shooting,

one of the impacts was so violent

that I remember seeing the lens

shooting out of the camera.

It flew off,

and the cameraman,

Thomas Mauch --

I tried holding him.

He flew 25 or 30 feet

through the air with me.

The camera weighs about 40 pounds.

He held it on his shoulder.

It hit the deck so hard

that his hand was split apart

between these two fingers.

What a pity, Klaus...

What a pity, Klaus, that you ran away

before the boat struck.

But that was the idea!

I'm not an idiot!

This lens here flew off.

That was the ideal!

The rock came even closer.

I ran back screaming,

"The engine!"

Then came the impact,

and you flew.

Perfect timing.

There were moments, too,

when Kinski instinctively knew

that he went too far.

And in moments like that,

he was a coward, thank God.

There was an incident

at Rio Nanay

which was the last phase

of the shooting of "Aguirre".

As so often,

he didn't know his lines,

and he would look for a victim.

Suddenly, he screamed like mad,

"You pig!”,

meaning the assistant cameraman.

"He grinned!”

And I was supposed to fire him

at once.

Of course I wouldn't fire him,

or else the whole team would leave.

He suddenly packed his things

in dead earnest,

resolved to leave our location,

packing everything in a speedboat.

I knew he had broken

30, 40, 50 contracts before this.

Only shortly before

he had broken up a tour.

He ruined theatre engagements,

and I knew he was leaving for good.

I went up to him, very composed.

By the way, I was not armed.

Later on, he tried to change

things around to save face.

I went up to him and said,

"You can't do this.

The movie is more important

than our personal emotions,

even more important

than our persons,

and this can't be permitted.

This simply will not be."”

He said, "No, I'm leaving now".

And I told him that I had a rifle,

and by the time

he'd reach the next bend,

there'd be eight bullets in his head,

and the ninth one would be mine.

He instinctively knew

that this wasn't a joke anymore.

He screamed for the police

like a madman.

However, the next police station

was at least 300 miles away.

The press later wrote that I directed

him from behind the camera

with a loaded rifle.

Of course, this wasn't true,

but he was very disciplined

during the last days of shooting.

The beast had been

domesticated after all

and was pressed into shape

so that his true madness and energy

were contained

within the frame of a screen image.

I thank his cowardice

and his instincts

for a magnificent ending

of "Aguirre".

When we reach the sea,

we'll build a bigger boat,

and we'll sail north and take Trinidad

away from the Spanish Crown.

From there, we'll go on

and take Mexico from Cortez.

What a great betrayal that will be.

We will then control

all of New Spain,

and we will stage history

as others stage plays.

1, the Wrath of God,

will marry my own daughter,

and with her

found the purest dynasty

ever known to man.

Together,

we will rule

the whole of this continent.

We will endure.

I am the Wrath of God.

Who else is with me?

1 was with him.

Kinski and I complemented

each other in a strange way.

I think he needed me

just as much as I needed him.

Only in public,

he could never admit it.

It bothered him very much.

In his autobiography,

which is highly fictitious,

he describes me, our relationship.

I'll read some of it.

He speaks of Herzog's "derangement,

insolence, impudence, brutality,

dimwittedness, megalomania,

lack of talent,”

and it goes on like that.

He continuous, "Any elaboration

would be a waste of time."

Nevertheless, page after page,

he comes back to me,

almost like an obsessive compulsion.

In some passages of this book,

ll Kind of had a hand in them.

I helped him to invent

particularly vile expletives.

He lived near here,

a little higher up,

and we often walked along here.

Sometimes we sat

on a wooden bench,

looking over the landscape,

or we sat by this tree,

musing, and he said,

"Werner, nobody will read this book

if ll don't write bad stuff about you.

If I wrote that we get along well

together, nobody would buy it.

The scum only wants to hear

about the dirt all the time."

ll came with a dictionary and we tried

to find even fouler expressions.

He did use some of them,

and we often laughed about it.

Yet, a lot of these outbreaks

of hatred were certainly authentic.

And this applies to both of us.

Nevertheless,

we worked together again.

"Woyzeck" was shot

in the small Czech town of Telc.

Eva Mattes was Kinski's partner

in the role of Marie.

She was one of the few women

who had anything good to say

about Kinski.

There, under those arches,

we shot quite a lot.

And on the square out there, too.

Kinski had arrived exhausted

from the shooting of "Nosferatu”.

We had only five days in between.

He was able to grow some stubbles.

And he was in a peculiar, fragile,

and sensitive mood.

How would you describe him?

He was different with you.

Yes, that kind of exhaustion can

stimulate you to reach rare heights.

He was a very professional actor,

the most professional

I have ever known.

And he certainly exploited

this fragility you just mentioned,

which is almost like a gift

for Woyzeck,

if you bring it with you

in such a moment of exhaustion.

I respected him totally,

but it was mutual.

I was anxiously looking forward

to working with him

because I knew him to be

a mad actor.

I got to know him as a powerhouse

that you just had to plug into.

Do you know how long it has been,

Marie?

Two years this Whitsuntide.

And do you know how long it will be?

I have to go and prepare supper.

You two weren't merely actors.

That's right.

There was a strong intuition.

He was a terribly intuitive actor.

And ll am the same.

There is a scene in "Woyzeck"

where Woyzeck says to Marie,

"You have such a beautiful mouth

and no blister on it."

The next day, I had a white blister

in the middle of my lip.

Never before in my life did I have

a blister on my lip and never after.

He saw it the following day

and made some vulgar jokes about it.

But the whole thing was very strange.

There was a great intensity

between us,

or rather, he had it, and I had it.

And I can't describe it any further.

The situation in the film

is the following:

Marie has an affair

with a drum major.

And Woyzeck,

drifting towards insanity,

has reason to be suspicious.

This scene, like almost everything

in "Woyzeck",

was filmed in a single take

without a cut.

It's still you.

Indeed.

No, I can't see it.

You look so strange, Franz.

I'm scared.

I see nothing.

One should see it,

one should be able to grab it

with his fists!

What is it, Franz?

You're insane!

A lot of people walk the street, right?

You talk to anyone,

what do I care?

Did he stand here?

There, yes?

There?

Did he do this?

I wish I would have been him!

Him! I can't forbid people

to walk the street

and tell them to leave

their mouth at home!

Leave the lips at home...

They're so beautiful,

it would be a shame.

But the wasps like to land on them.

And which wasp has stung you?

A sin, so full and wide.

It stinks,

fit to smoke the angels

out of heaven.

You have a red mouth, Marie,

and not a blister on it.

- Franz, your fever is talking!

- I saw him!

You can see a lot with two good eyes

and the sun shining!

Did he stand here?

Like that? Like that?

When the day is long

and the world old,

a lot of people can be

in one place or another.

Hit me, Franz!

I'd rather have a knife in my body

than your hand on me!

No.

There should be a sign on her.

Every man is an abyss.

You get dizzy looking in.

Innocence, there's a mark on you.

Do I know?

Who does know?

I didn't know him, privately,

so to speak,

but the little that was revealed

during shooting

was very friendly.

On the last day of shooting,

we took a group photo of the team.

I was sad that shooting was over.

Yes, you cried.

I left early because I couldn't

keep from sobbing.

All of a sudden,

I heard steps behind me,

and someone said,

"Wait a moment.”

It was Kinski.

He took me in his arms,

and he said,

"Eva, I know exactly how you feel."”

That was so wonderful.

It did me a lot of good.

I really needed that,

and he was there.

He went to the hotel with me,

holding me the entire time,

and he simply knew.

When I got to Cannes,

I received, I guess erroneously...

No, you deserved it!

...this award.

I received it and not Klaus.

I went to him and said,

"Well, what do you think

about my getting this award?"

And he said, "Eva, I think only

of that walk we took together

from the location to the hotel,

when you cried so."

That was great.

He was sitting in the audience,

applauding me,

and he said, "Finally you're wearing

a gorgeous dress!"

I had told him beforehand.

If they do give an award,

it would have to be a joint one,

for him, as well.

And he said,

“1 don't care about that scum!

Why should I receive an award?

I know that I'm a genius'"

And on and on.

I said, "We all know that.

You never need to get an award.

It just compromises you

and drags you to the same level

of the media, this whole circus.”

That did him a lot of good.

He was very loving with me then.

He kissed me on the mouth

and held me for a long time

and was all broken up

and very deeply touched.

There were quite a few

moments like that between us.

It's always difficult to explain

that he also had

great human warmth

which abruptly could

turn into rage

of unimaginable proportions.

You won't tell me

whether ll can scream or not!

You can lick my ass!

I'm going to smack your face!

What?

- You can count on it!

- Go ahead.

- You can count on it!

- Go ahead. Just try it.

- Mouth off, I'll kick your ass!

- Just try it.

This quarrel here,

filmed as an aside,

was with our capable production

manager, Walter Saxer.

By some rare chance,

I was not the brunt of it this time.

I don't give a shit about

your jerking off with your friendship!

We need a photographer,

do you understand?!

Go on with your shit!

The cause was trivial,

and I didn't bother to interfere,

because Kinski, compared

with his previous outbreaks,

seemed rather mild.

Take care of your own things!

You have enough to do!

1 simply continued setting up

for the next scene.

- Fine, you won't get anymore.

- Pig's slop's what it is!

- You don't have to eat it.

- You fucking idiot!

- You don't have to eat it.

- What are you saying?!

Eat what you want.

Worse than prison!

Don't tell me what to eat!

- None for you.

- He's mad!

He's mad!

Take this piece of shit away!

No more for you.

You can eat your own shit.

A lunatic, belongs in an asylum!

A madman! He's mad, an idiot!

He's mad.

You should be locked up

because you're not normal anymore.

Idiot.

I'm not done with you yet,

you stupid pig.

How can you let such an asshole

run your production?

You don't exist for me!

You better behave

like a human being here.

This is outrageous.

It's unbelievable.

Lick my ass, man!

We're making a movie!

We'll send you to the place

you belong, you idiot!

Don't touch me!

You bother me!

These ravings were frightening

and a real problem for the Indians

who solve their conflicts

in a totally different manner.

You're so stupid that you're not aware

of the consequences.

I don't care about your consequences.

You don't fucking care

about anything!

You don't fucking care

about the people!

I don't care

about your fucking tantrums.

You don't fucking care

about the people!

Nobody can eat this pig food!

Nobody can be so stupid!

Don't eat it.

You have to be an asshole to do it!

You don't have to eat it.

Do you understand?

I'm leaving!

This is outrageous!

"You don't have to eat it,"” he says.

- It's unbelievable.

- Come on, let's drop it.

Tell him to shut up.

Come on, just leave it alone,

you two.

Walter, you too.

It's not normal, you idiot!

Every day!

One of you should have the nerve

to stop this.

Let's start shooting.

We need more preparation.

I'd like to rehearse again.

All right, Klaus, I'd like to show you

what I have in mind.

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,

one of the chiefs came to me

and said,

"You probably realized

that we were afraid,

but not for one moment

were we scared

of that screaming madman,

shouting his head off.”

They were actually afraid of me

because I was so quiet.

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.

Once, a lumberman was bitten

by a snake while cutting a tree.

This only happened once

in three years,

with hundreds of woodcutters

in the jungle

who always worked barefoot

with their chain saws.

The snakes naturally flee

from the smell of gasoline

and the noise.

Suddenly, this chuchupe

struck the man twice.

This was the most dangerous snake

of all.

Normally, it only takes a few minutes

before cardiac arrest occurs.

He dropped the saw and thought

about it for five seconds.

Then he grabbed the 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 six people here.

Luckily, they all survived,

but some were seriously injured.

There were confusing reports

on the radio, completely garbled,

and 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.

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!"

ll 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 ] held

the Indians back from their purpose.

The proposal to do away with Kinski

came from this Chief.

The rage the Indians felt

toward Kinski

was exploited for this scene.

Kinski maintained

that he felt close to the Indians,

but this wasn't true.

He wanted to pretend that

he was close to "Nature's Children”,

and thus to "Mother Nature”.

Between Kinski and me,

there was an unbridgeable gap.

This had to do

with his feeling for nature.

He stylized himself

as the "Natural Man".

I believe that everything he said

about the jungle

was mainly posing.

He declared

everything around here erotic,

but he never went near it.

He stayed in a camp for months,

but never set foot in the jungle.

Once he penetrated it

for about 100 feet

where a fallen tree lay.

Of course, the photographer

had to go with him,

taking hundreds of photos

of him tenderly embracing

and copulating with this tree.

Poses and paraphernalia

were what mattered to him.

His alpine gear was more important

than the mountains themselves.

His camouflage combat fatigues

tailored by Yves Saint Laurent

were much more important

than any jungle.

In this regard, Kinski was endowed

with a fair share of natural stupidity.

The difference in our views became

most apparent during "Fitzcarraldo”.

Strangely enough, we reached

some kind of tacit understanding

which even extended to his ravings.

Sometimes he had an awareness

that he needed to produce a fit.

I often provoked him,

making a remark

so that he would explode.

I knew he would then

continue screaming for 1.5 hours.

White foam would appear

at the corners of his mouth

until he had emptied himself out.

At such moments, Aguirre's madness

would break through.

I knew there had to be a very quiet,

very dangerous tone now.

Kinski saw it differently.

He wanted Aguirre to start raving,

declaring himself to be

the great traitor and Wrath of God.

Deep down, he did understand me,

and hoped I would provoke him

so he would throw his tantrum first,

and then we could shoot the scene.

I'm the great traitor.

There must be no other.

Anyone even thinking of deserting

will be cut up into 198 pieces.

The pieces will be trampled

and the remains used

for painting walls.

If you take a grain of corn

or a drop of water

more than the ration,

you'll be locked up for 155 years.

If I, Aguirre, want the birds

to drop dead from the trees,

they will drop dead from the trees.

I am the Wrath of God.

The earth I pass

will see me and tremble.

Who follows me and the river

will win untold riches.

Whoever deserts...

Kinski sometimes seriously believed

that I was mad.

This isn't true of course.

I am quite sane --

clinically sane, so to speak.

Nevertheless, he might have been

referring to something in particular.

Together, we were

like two critical masses

which result in a dangerous mixture

when they come into contact.

Something that became

highly explosive.

I was never out of my senses

but perhaps just very angry.

One day I seriously planned

to firebomb him in his house.

This was prevented only

by the vigilance

of his Alsatian shepherd.

But although we kept our distance,

we'd seek out one another again

at the right time.

We met at the Telluride

Film Festival in Colorado.

At that time, we had already made

three films together.

We hadn't seen each other

for some time

and were looking forward

to our meeting,

although I had just shortly before

given up my plan to murder him.

Nosferatu, Phantom of the Night

You must excuse my rude entrance.

I am Count Dracula.

I know of you.

I read Jonathan's diary.

Since he has been with you,

he is ruined.

He won't die.

Yes, he will.

Dying is cruelty to the unsuspecting.

But death isn't everything.

It is more cruel

not to be able to die.

I wish I could partake of the love

between you and Jonathan.

Nothing in this world,

not even God, can touch that.

It won't change,

even if he never recognizes me again.

I could change everything.

Will you come to me and be my ally?

There'd be salvation

for your husband...

and for me.

The absence of love

is the most abject pain.

Salvation comes

from ourselves alone.

You may rest assured

that even the unthinkable

will not deter me.

Every gray hair on my head

I call Kinski.

Yes, I miss him.

Now and then, I do miss him.

Not always, but there are moments

when he is very much alive for me.

He created a climate

of unconditional professionalism.

He used to complain

about the lighting

and demanded changes.

I can remember that vividly

when shooting at the post office

in Iquitos.

He noticed that something

wasn't quite as it should be,

and he asked for a mirror,

as always.

And as always, he was right.

He never maintained something

was wrong, when it wasn't.

Even with 25 people on the set,

he sensed when somebody

in the back was whispering.

Yes, the raving fit

would follow without fail.

It was almost an animal presence

that he had.

I learned something special

from him, from his physicality.

I later called it the Kinski spiral,

meaning an appearance

from behind the camera.

If you enter the scene from the side,

showing your profile,

and then face the camera,

there is no tension.

He developed something.

Standing next to the tripod,

he would twist his leg around,

and this way, his body had to spiral

itself organically into the picture.

If you were the camera, he would

position himself right next to it

and twist into frame.

This created a mysterious,

disturbing tension.

Play something for the men.

He did spiral just like that,

I can remember, up on that platform

when we were filming

simultaneously from a helicopter.

He did it up on that platform,

and that was very dangerous...

...because it was well over

120 feet up in the treetops.

Everything was swaying

and they hoisted us up there.

I can hardly believe it.

There! There is the Ucayali.

The river above

the Pongo das Mortes is ours.

So, we're building a train tunnel.

No, we'll drag the ship

over the mountain!

The bare-asses will help.

How will you do it?

Just as the cow

jumped over the moon.

We often understood one another

without words,

almost like animals.

And the closeness became such

that we almost changed roles.

When we started, Jason Robards

was Fitzcarraldo,

and Mick Jagger played his sidekick.

And as we started to film,

Jason became so ill that we had

to fly him out to the United States.

And the doctors

wouldn't permit him to return.

This church remains closed

until the town has its opera house.

I want the opera house.

I want my opera house!

I want an opera house!

This church will stay closed

until this town has an opera!

I will build my opera house!

I will build an opera!

I want to have an opera!

I want my opera house.

I knew that if I didn't get him,

I'd have to change

body and role with him.

Then I'd have to be Fitzcarraldo.

I thank God on my knees

that I didn't have to

and that Kinski did it.

We had a blessed one

working there,

and I am truly glad.

I met him in New York,

and he was just great.

I was devastated, and he opened

a bottle of champagne and said,

"I knew it, Werner.

I knew I would be Fitzcarraldo.

I am Fitzcarraldo,

and you're not going to be him

because I'm much better than you."

Of course he was right.

But when I brought him to this site,

he saw how steep the terrain was.

His heart sank,

and he thought,

"For God's sake, this can't be done."

He saw it at once.

Our task was to heave

an Amazon steamboat bit by bit

across that thing there.

Do you see the red cliff there?

Yes, I see it.

That must be it.

Good. We can't go much further,

or we'll run aground on a sandbank.

The slope looks insignificant,

but it's my destiny.

Strangely enough, he later became

the strongest negative force

which worked to break up

the project, or at least change it.

When the river was swollen,

and I was sitting in my hut,

gazing at the river, which kept

rising and rising, all day long.

Suddenly there was a delegation

which had been sent by Kinski.

They arrived with tea and said,

"Let's be calm now.

Let's think about

what we can do now."

I said, "What do you mean?

I am the only one who is calm here."

Kinski wanted to protect me

from my own madness.

It was clear that Kinski,

the strongest force,

had now also abandoned me.

Everyone had left me,

and the loneliness

that lasted for weeks was difficult,

maybe the most difficult.

There was no longer anybody

on my side who believed in the film.

Nobody. Not a single one.

Only when the boat started to move,

which was an incredible,

mechanical, kinetic effort,

Kinski saw a chance

to put enthusiasm and energy

into the story.

Although I felt

a certain disappointment

that he didn't fully participate

until this point,

I held on to one thing.

With all the films we did together,

the only thing that counted was

what you would see on the screen.

Pull harder!

I can't believe it, it works!

It works.

- It works!

Careful!

For a really big boat,

my money won't be enough.

You'll make it.

This here, I remember very well...

A photo you took which served

as a model for a painting.

This was the moment when he saw

the painting for the first time.

You can see how we had

relaxed moments with one another.

But his mood changed

completely here.

Suddenly, something in the picture

didn't suit him anymore,

and he exploded and started

screaming like a berserk.

Yes, that happened

from one second to the next.

He had this capacity for becoming

a totally different person.

This polarity manifested itself

again and again.

Yes.

This became our poster.

Nobody believed at first

that we heaved the boat

across the mountain.

You have furnished the proof,

and the movie does it as well.

Yes, here's the evidence

in black and white, and on paper.

It is a great metaphor --

for what, I don't know to this day,

but I know it's a great metaphor.

Here, "Cobra Verde", the end.

This is where you show Kinski

how to walk in this scene.

In front of this crippled man, yes.

He had polio as a child,

and you cast him in the film.

You used to act things out for Klaus,

beautifully.

We often changed parts.

I could have played this role as well.

You would have also been

a good Fitzcarraldo.

That's what you are, in reality.

I truly like this very much.

It happened

because he must have sensed

the presence of your camera.

He also just wanted

to let you have it, didn't he?

There you are, directing the army

of 800 women, Amazon warriors.

Yes, like a shepherd dog, as usual,

without megaphone or loudspeaker.

Always running.

Kinski was very physical, too,

but differently.

He drew everyone,

and I held them together.

That's what you do,

and you have done it with bravado.

We complemented each other well

because I kept the herd together,

and he attracted it magnetically.

You can see it in this picture here.

This is him as the leader

of the rebellion against the King,

with this incredible,

crazed energy he possessed.

They took the sacred python

from the temple! Go back!

Nobody passes alive!

In my country, I was a snake!

Out of my way!

No! No!

Stay back!

His wives will strangle him now.

This scene, where slave trader

Cobra Verde tries to flee and dies,

was the last day of shooting

that we had together.

Kinski was completely

beyond control.

He already identified himself

with the role in his own project,

"Paganini,”

and brought with him into my film

an unpleasant climate,

something offensive

that was alien to me.

Kinski had insisted for years

that I should direct "Paganini”,

but I always declined because

I considered his script unfilmable.

He finally made the film alone.

1 didn't want to continue

our collaboration.

We parted ways.

In 1991, he died in his home,

north of San Francisco.

He had spent himself.

It was as if

he had burned himself out.

He had put so much intensity

into this scene,

that, from this alone,

he had emptied himself out.

This should have been filmed

at the start of shooting.

In any case, he had spent himself.

He burned away like a comet.

Afterwards, he was ashes.

This is what I sensed,

and he himself

said something similar.

He said, "We can go no further.

I am no more."

Sometimes I want

to put my arm around him again,

but I guess I only dream of this

because I've seen it in old footage.

We are friends,

we joke with one another

as if it had always been that way.

No, He didn't say shut up!

He took a whip

and smacked their ugly faces!

That's what He did,

you stupid pig!

And yet, we belonged together.

We were ready

to go down together.

I see us back in the jungle,

together in a boat.

The whole world belongs to us.

But Klaus seems to want to fly away.

Shouldn't I have noticed

that it was his soul

that wanted to flutter away?

Then I see him with a butterfly,

softly, delicately.

The little creature

doesn't want to leave him

and is so unafraid

that sometimes it seems to me

that Klaus himself

turns into a butterfly.

Everything that weighed on us

is gone.

And even though my mind

revolts against it,

something deep inside tells me

this is the way

I'd like to keep him in my memory.

My Best Fiend (1999) - full transcript