I’ve decided that Klaus Kinski is my hero in life. The guy rocks! I was surfing the web yesterday and on a fluke I typed in his name. You would not believe the shitstorm of completely insane information that came flowing out of my computer. The guy lived a life that is so far removed from anything that I can comprehend that it is simply impossible to make any sense of it. But it’s not like he lived in the middle ages or anything like that, he lived in modern times! He died about ten years ago and I bet he’s angrily wrestling with decomposition right as we speak.

Anything related to Klaus Kinski makes me smile and laugh kind of half crazy laughter. The guy was nuts. He was certifiably nuts. He spent time in a mental institution and everything. But get this, he was also a famous actor! Maybe the most famous actor to ever come out of Germany! It is so fucking hilarious to watch his movies because it is completely obvious to anybody with eyes that Kinski is completely insane. He prowls around inside the image, seemingly apart from the guidance of the script and everything, and it really seems like the other actors are terrified of the guy. They kind of lean backwards every time he gets close. I’d be leaning back too! He was fucking INSANE!

I don’t really know all that much about Kinski’s life. He wrote a biography called (get this) “All I need is love” (god that cracks me up) that was subsequently removed from production for legal reasons (it kind of had to be, because it was written by Klaus Kinski). But the minimal amount of information I have on him is just too funny to have been made up.

As a young man, Kinski was hanging out in Germany during World War 2, but rather than be all gung-ho Nazi or anything like that, he just ran around in fields and yelled at American fighter planes to shoot him!

HAHA! That fucking rocks! That’s so far from reality that I can’t believe it. But all you have to do is watch a Kinski movie for two seconds and you know that’s exactly what that guy would have done. He’s awesome!

Anyway, he eventually got captured after living on the street for a while and spent the rest of the war in a British POW camp. Later, he got into film and appears in Dr. Zhivago and For a Few Dollars More. The guy’s in a CLINT EASTWOOD movie!

But Kinski really came into his own when he partnered up with equally crazy (well not really, nobody is as crazy as Kinski, not Malcovich not anybody) director Werner Herzog. The two of them absolutely hated each other, or at least Kinski hated Herzog, but later Herzog made a documentary or something about Kinski called “My Best Friend: Klaus Kinski.”

You know, maybe it is just the combination of the parts we have here. You have German heritage, which frankly just doesn’t have a reputation for being highly poetic or creative. Add, insanity and an intense desire for artistic expression and what do you have? Klaus Kinski!

Anyway, there is this story on the web about when the two of them were filming “Aguirre: the Wrath of God” in the jungles of Peru (I live in Peru by the way). Kinski went absolutely nuts and there is this famous legend about how Herzog had to direct Kinski with one hand and hold a gun on him with the other. There is this totally great piece of writing that Kinski did about how this story is bullshit and he was the only one who had a gun.

Seriously, I stumbled upon this little diary entry by Kinski, and the guy is a brilliant writer. It is just a perfect little piece of writing. I’ll have to find the link. He goes on and on about how he wanted to Kill Herzog and how getting eaten by a panther was too good for him and how he needed to have bacteria feed on his eyes and make them explode. It was the type of stuff I could write, but I’d have to stop and think about it, but somehow as you read this little piece by Kinski you get the impression that he could just rattle it off without even stopping for a breath. What a genius. God he was fucking NUTS!

HA HA!

Anyway according to Kinski, Herzog said he had a gun with nine bullets and that he was going to use eight of the bullets on Kinski and the last would be for himself (probably an appropriate ratio of how many bullets it would take to kill Kinski versus anybody else who had ever lived). Anyway, Kinski’s response was that Herzog was full of shit because they didn’t make a gun that had nine bullets. Can you imagine the insane logic going on there? Ok, somebody says to you they have a gun and they’re going to kill you and you’re reaction isn’t to be afraid or anything like that, you’re reaction is to say the other person is full of shit because they don’t make a gun with nine bullets? Jesus Christ is that fucking INSANE! How do you respond to somebody like that? I don’t have any damn idea. That’s probably why I like Kinski so much, because I have absolutely no idea how you could deal with a person like that. I’m totally at a loss. I can’t figure out how he thinks.

He sure is funny though....Jesus.

There are all these stories about how Kinski would just go nuts. He’d see somebody on the horizon or something and just start yelling and screaming at them like a monkey defending his territory and tell them not to come any closer. The next day he’d see them and he wouldn’t even mention it.

HA! I wish I could get away with acting like that.

GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME YOU BASTARD! GETTING EATEN BY A PANTHER IS TOO GOOD FOR YOU!

What do you say to somebody like that? Nothing, there’s nothing you can say. He’s fucking NUTSSSSSS!

There was this other story where Kinski was mad at a different director because the guy was filming a scene in an insane asylum, but he wasn’t using a real insane asylum, he was using a studio with actors. Kinski was all pissed off because he prefers realism so he went to the director and demanded, “Why didn’t we go to a real insane asylum to film this.” The director looked at Kinski and responded, “I wanted to, but I thought if I brought you into a real insane asylum, they’d never let you out.” Kinski started laughing like a maniac and called the director a bastard. Now the hilarious part of this story is that it is obvious that the director was being entirely serious and Kinski thought he was only joking.

God, that’s just awesome!

The guy somehow lived a crazy life that didn’t conform to a single rule of civilization and there were absolutely no consequences for him. That Rocks!

Go out tonight and rent “Aguirre: the Wrath of God.” It isn’t likely to be a movie you are really going to enjoy, in fact, it’s one of those movies you feel kind of proud of yourself for having sat through. It is sort of like a marathon, it is going to wear out your mind. But I guarantee you, you won’t need anybody to point out who crazy Klaus Kinski is. He’ll be the one in the middle of the screen who looks like he just accidentally wandered onto the set and who all the other actors are trying to get away from. The end result of seeing “Aguirre: the Wrath of God” is that five years afterwards, after your mind has had time to download and process the sheer insanity of that movie, you’ll just stop whatever you are doing and burst out laughing. It is a completely inexplicable phenomenon, but it is a great belly laugh that you’ll never forget, and you’ll be a Klaus Kinski fan from then to your dying day.

Rent “Aguirre” tonight, you might be desperately in need of a laugh five years from now.

The End

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