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Sunday, Nov 22, 2009
Klaus Kinski played the messianic monster, consumed by an epic lust and a taste for violence. His screen roles were pretty weird, too.
Apr 22, 2004 | I had a friend who had a friend who dated Klaus Kinski for a while, toward the end of his life. She had a common name, something like Amanda.
Amanda would hide from Klaus, periodically, at my friend's house. He would call. "AHMAHNDA," his voice would moan, spookily, on the other end of the phone.
"She's not here," my friend would say, as Amanda cringed in silence.
"Vhere is AHMAHNDA?! I vant AMAHNDA," he would demand insanely, as if this normal young woman was the only thing stopping him from plummeting into the infernal chasm.
He'd fuck you on a pile of corpses but he'd never shake your hand, because of the germs. If ego is what makes men miserable, then he was surely one of the most miserable men of all time. There is a line in Nicholas Roeg's "Performance" where Anita Pallenberg is referring to Mick Jagger's character, a has-been. She says of him, "He lost his demon." Klaus never lost his -- he appeared to just keep collecting them. They devoured him and took a heavy toll on anyone close to him.
"I am like a wild animal born in captivity, in a zoo. But where a beast would have claws, I have talent," Kinski said, and his talent mauled many. But, like any great beast, his bright, untamed power was awe-inspiring.
In 1926 in Sopot, Poland, Niskolaus Gunther Nakszynki was born to a wretchedly poor family; young Klaus habitually stole food. When times got too rough, his mother would send him to a nightmarish children's home. During World War II, at age 16, he was drafted into the German army and spent 16 months in a British POW camp.
Perhaps due to these early deprivations, money shot through his hands as he indulged every whim like each day was his last -- so he constantly needed more. He made over 250 films during his career, and turned down over 1,000 with such notable directors as Fellini, Visconti and Pasolini because they weren't paying enough, electing instead to make movies with such colorful titles as "The Strange Tale of Minnesota Stinky," "Naughty Cheerleader," "The Creature With the Blue Hand" and my favorite, "Rendezvous With Dishonor."
His autobiography, "Kinski Uncut" (a title that famously refers to his uncircumcised unit), while an international bestseller, was derided for being absurdly raunchy -- Klaus takes it upon himself to graphically describe dozens of vaginas of his acquaintance. Content notwithstanding, he writes gorgeously and grippingly, with the blazing language of a decadent poet, and always provides fascinating views on situations that he screwed up through his pathological behaviors. "Uncut" is, for all its smut and overindulgence, one of the most compelling autobiographies ever written, and it should be required reading for anyone considering being an actor.
Werner Herzog called it "a work of fiction," but he could hardly be counted on to give an unbiased opinion -- much of the book is a wildly hateful character assassination of Herzog. Regardless of whether or not all the facts were based in reality, the book is precious because Kinski is so scorchingly honest about his impressionistic interpretation of his life -- his confessions, his innermost torments, and how his oversize feelings color-saturated his world.
