Five Before Chaos

Jeeeezus, I don’t show my face for a few days around here and y’all keep coming back anyways. Seriously, what’s wrong with you people?

All kidding aside, it might be a bit light around here in the coming weeks,as I’m in crunch time with grad school, got the wedding, the Dem Convention, and am finishing up the house addition as well as putting on a deck. It’s endless, I tells ya. Endless. But I appreciate you all coming here, I really do.

Speaking of the Dem Convention, you’ve probably heard by now that Obama’s giving his acceptance speech in a football stadium, ensuring I will get absolutely no good photographs from the event. Rumor has it that John McCain is considering something similar, but so far, the only thing he can come up with is some little-league field with a few bleachers.

And now, some random madness of marginal interest for you, in the form of the late German actor Klaus Kinski. Kinski was an enormously talented, but rather insane artist.  I first saw him in the numerous spaghetti westerns he starred in in the 60’s but he had quite the career apart form that. He did some rather fine films with German director Werner Herzog, such as Aguirre, the Wrath of God, where he played an insanely intense and evil conquistador.

What was strange about Kinski is that he’d act in some seriously artistic endeavors, and then turn around and act in a Z-grade film, just collecting a paycheck, unabashedly. Rumour has it that Steven Spielberg approached him to have a part in Raiders of the Lost Ark. He declined, saying something along the lines that nobody would be interested in that film, and then went on to act in Venom, a horrendous cinematic pile of shit about a guy that kills people with snakes. But it paid more than Raiders.

And he was a megalomaniac, prone to batshit insane temper tantrums at the drop of a hat, as you can see in this clip from Werner Herzog’s Klaus Kinski: My Best Fiend, his documentary about their turbulent relationship, in which the both of them had actually plotted to kill each other.  This was some footage from the filming of Fitzcarraldo:

The Indians in the film that he’s stressing out actually approached Herzog afterward and offered to kill Kinksi.  Good times. Kinski was definitely an enigma, an incredibly talented, unabashed prick, but if you’re a fan of Eurocinema, he’s unavoidable.  Somehow I supsect this is the first blog post in the history of blogdom that mentions Kinski and Obama in the same post.

Bookmark to:

Hide Sites

Tags: barack obama, John McCain, Klaus kinski