Apocalypse on the set, p.11
Apocalypse on the Set, page 11
The unhinged Kinski seemed to have an insufferable temper that could barely be contained by his own skin. Herzog once said that every gray hair on his head is named Kinski. The actor offered his response in kind. In his autobiography, All I Need Is Love, Kinski claimed that Herzog “doesn’t care about anyone or anything except his wretched career as a so-called film-maker. Driven by a pathological addiction to sensationalism, he creates the most senseless difficulties and dangers, risking other people’s safety and even their lives—just so he can eventually say that he, Herzog, has beaten seemingly unbeatable odds.”15 This is an unexpected denouncement from an actor who worked so tirelessly with Herzog on so many difficult films, the most difficult of which may have been Fitzcarraldo. However, as Herzog’s films so consistently reveal, there is more below the surface. Kinski also wrote, “Herzog is a miserable, hateful, malevolent, avaricious, money-hungry, nasty, sadistic, treacherous, cowardly creep.”16 Yet, Herzog eventually revealed that he helped Kinski write those dismissive rants simply to sell more copies of the autobiography, to better serve those readers who are hungry only for scornful prose. “A rumor cannot be eliminated by truth,” the director explained. “You can only kill it by an even wilder rumor.”17
Perhaps it is because of these kinds of embellishments that Herzog has stated, “I do not make films or features. My films are something else.” With regard to fiction and nonfiction, he said, “I do not see the borderline. It’s very blurred and things in my films are partially staged.”18 Occasionally lines are provided to the real-life characters of his films. In The White Diamond, a stoic villager in Guyana is perched at the edge of a dramatic and inspiring waterfall. In the interview, he conjures the sentiment, “I cannot hear what you say for the thunder that you are.” Such a poetic declaration seems more fitting for one of Herzog’s operas or narrative films and, indeed, the line actually came from Cobra Verde, one of his own fictional films.
Whether presenting his films as fact or fiction, Herzog says, “In both cases, I am a storyteller.”19 This statement seems peculiar for a man whose career has been so dedicated to the genre of documentaries, though Herzog prefers not to call them that. “Facts do not interest me much. Facts are for accountants. Truth creates illumination.”20 In response to critics who have questioned the practice of directing the actions of his nonfiction subjects, Herzog has explained that people sometimes have to become actors to better play themselves. While the real events and people of his documentaries are sometimes embellished, it is interesting to note that the events of his fictional narrative Fitzcarraldo were brutally realized without the cinematic effects that any other director would have surely required. “The studio wanted it to be a plastic miniature boat pulled over a garden hill, but I said we will pull a real ship over a real mountain, and it will be a grandiose event in a magnificent opera. I wanted the audience to be able to trust their eyes.”21
It simply did not occur to a man like Herzog that moving a boat over a mountain is nearly impossible; he seemed to accept the task with the same nonchalance that one might take in just typing the words on the page. Herzog’s cavalier style of filmmaking could only have been acquired organically, without knowing how filmmaking is supposed to be, but rather how he wants it to be. “I personally don’t believe in the kind of film schools you find all over the world,” he explained.22 “I never worked as another filmmaker’s assistant and I never had any formal training.”23 Perhaps this is why he defies any classification and refuses to follow so many established Hollywood filmmaking practices. This is not in spite of the Hollywood system, but instead is the result of learning to work with the minimum and allowing the ideas and characters, whether fictional or real, to be the centerpiece of the production. This minimalist approach has baffled some, like those who worked on his film Rescue Dawn, a retelling of an American pilot’s escape from a Vietnamese prison camp. The first assistant director lamented, “For a man of his age, it’s a very … raw talent. It’s more like an eighteen-year-old running into the forest.”24
For Herzog, however, the basic approach to storytelling is a way to shed all the unnecessary aspects of production. He claimed that to produce a film, one only needs a car, a phone and a typewriter, a fitting arsenal for someone whose self-taught profession began by reading a fifteen-page entry on filmmaking in the encyclopedia. The simplicity of his method is more fitting for a man who works on modest productions. Even his demeanor and tone hardly match the galvanized persona many attribute to the eccentric German director.
One can only wonder how Herzog has maintained such a calm exterior amid the crushing difficulties he has faced in filmmaking. Perhaps it is the toll of time that leaves him weathered and worn, like the immovable isthmus conquered in Fitzcarraldo. Or perhaps this peaceful soul is half of a duality that came into existence as a result of joining the sane and insane, Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski.
The Good Soldier of Cinema
The single most brutal force in the punishing South American location of Fitzcarraldo was not a mountain or the heat, but rather a man: Klaus Kinski. Herzog’s first memory of the actor was watching him perform in the film Children, Mother, and the General. It was a simple yet unforgettable scene for Herzog, in which Kinski, playing a soldier, is asleep with his head down on a table, and then is suddenly awakened. “The way he wakes up will forever stay in my memory,”25 Herzog recalled. “It was a decisive factor in my professional life.” Despite this past fascination, Kinski was not an original cast member in Fitzcarraldo. American actor Jason Robards was slated to play the lead, with a young Mick Jagger cast as the sidekick Wilbur. The film found its original inspiration in a real rubber baron, Carlos Fermin Fitzcarrald, who attempted a similar feat of crossing a large tract of land with a boat, though he had the foresight to use a much smaller craft and to dismantle it first. “There’s really very little known about this authentic figure,” Herzog said. “He was a rubber baron in this area, very average. It’s the stupid, uninteresting story of a man who exploited a vast area. And once he moved a boat over an isthmus. That’s about all.”26
Before Herzog had even settled upon this real character as an inspiration for the film, his earliest motivation to tell the story came during a drive along the Brittany coast. He came across a commune beside the Gulf of Morbihan called Carnac, where vast rows of large stones stand perfectly straight. There are over 3,000 of these prehistoric menhirs, a lasting creation of the pre-Celtic people of the area. Those who have grown up around them are familiar with the popular legend that they are the remnants of a Roman legion turned to stone by the sorcerer Merlin. The rocks extend for miles like carefully sown rows of crops, some weighing hundreds of tons. When Herzog discovered that there was no definitive scientific answer for how these formations were created under the primitive conditions of the Neolithic period, he became intrigued with the challenge of working out in his mind how it could have been achieved. He mapped out a process by which he believed the stones could be moved and made to stand straight using a series of ditches, ramps, ropes and levers. This very type of problem-solving and engineering would later be critical to the equally anguishing task of pulling a boat over a mountain. However, Herzog would have far fewer than the 2,000 men he calculated would be needed to realize a configuration like what he saw that night on the Brittany coast.
It is questionable if the first serious turn for the worse in the production of the film was Robards’s departure or the subsequent decision to replace him with Kinski. After only six weeks of shooting, Robards fell ill with amoebic dysentery and had no choice but to return home to the states for recovery, with no hope of rejoining the picture. That six-week span represented 40 percent of what was to be the completed film. The frenetic search for a solution to this problem worsened when Mick Jagger, who supposedly helped Herzog write the script, was forced to abandon the project as well due to previous commitments with the Rolling Stones. The two actors likely didn’t miss the rugged lifestyle to which they had to adapt, living in tents without electricity or any means of communication other than weekly trips to Equitos to receive mail and telexes. Robards’s agent, Clifford Stevens, pointed to these conditions as an explanation of the actor’s illness. “It was a hardship condition right in the jungle, on the Amazon River bank,” he said. “It was unhygienic. The place was rife with insects and mosquitoes.”27 For Herzog, the loss of Mick Jagger was an enormous setback in the film. He believed the musician had such a unique and singular talent as an actor that his role could not be recast, only eliminated entirely. “Losing Mick was, I think, the biggest loss I have ever experienced as a film director.”28
While nearly half of the film had been shot, the entire production had already consumed more time than any completed film would require. Herzog had worked painstakingly for over three years in the preproduction phase, building the ships as well as a camp equipped to host the 6,000 extras and crew members employed for the film. Now, he was left without any lead actors. After such turmoil in shooting the first half of the film, he was only just ready to begin, but not before a replacement for the lead role could be found.
This person, of course, would be Kinski, a perfect fit, albeit with a decidedly imperfect temperament. It is difficult to imagine anyone else in a role that required braving the unforgiving jungle, performing a profoundly bedeviled character and surviving the ferocity of indigenous tribes. Born in 1926, Kinski grew up in poverty in Poland. While living in Berlin, he was drafted into the military toward the end of World War II. He shortly abandoned his rank, a fitting precedent for a man whom Herzog has claimed left an endless path of broken contracts during his film career. He found a home in the regional theaters in Berlin, occasionally performing one-man shows. He began acting in films in 1948, and by 1960, he acted in at least one film each year for the rest of his career.
It is unclear where the irksome tyrant he often portrays ends and where the real Kinski begins. His bizarre offscreen behavior seemed to promote the caricature he cultivated for himself, but was it real, or was it the remnants of his fictional personas? Excerpts from his autobiography seem to reveal that he had a greater understanding of how others viewed his complicated personality than most people assumed. Some passages intentionally indulge the reader in curiously malicious high jinks. “Once when I was asleep I pissed on my sister because I dreamed she was a tree,” he wrote. In another section, he admitted, “I believe there is no stench that I haven’t stunk of.”29
In a review of the autobiography, Alex Ross wrote that while reading the work, “it becomes an interesting game to guess at the real feelings behind this Kinski-esque character called Kinski.”30 Of course, we know from Herzog’s own admission that much of Kinski’s anger toward him was for show. One can only assume Kinski returned the favor by writing equally fictitious rants about himself. Whether the man Kinski is everything we see, or just a kaleidoscopic representation of all his roles, he was a natural fit to play Fitzcarraldo. Herzog briefly nurtured the notion of playing the lead role himself if all other options proved unsuccessful, so when offered the role, Kinski accepted with bravado. Over a bottle of champagne with Herzog in a New York City hotel, Kinski proclaimed, “I knew it, Werner! I knew I would be Fitzcarraldo! You are not going to play the part because I am much better than you.”31 One problem had been solved, and several more appeared to take its place.
The natural environment of the location was challenging enough without the equally dangerous human elements that threatened the safety of the cast and crew. It was soon discovered that the region where they would be shooting was the epicenter of an escalating border war between Peru and Ecuador. “Has bad luck taken up residence with us? I feel a kind of aimless gratitude for every nondescript day that passes without some disaster. The sound of woodcutting echoes from far off through the jungle. The river, now quiet, is withdrawing more and more into itself,” Herzog wrote.32 Herzog and his crew had to navigate strategically around the various camps of soldiers. To further complicate the dynamics, there were several oil companies that had opportunistically seized on oil fields, building pipelines throughout the territory of the indigenous Indian population. Herzog took the precaution of requesting permission from the locals before setting up camp, but this seemed to do little for the PR of the film. Herzog believed that many media outlets had unfairly targeted his project. “The media forgot all about the war and the oil because we had real media appeal for them.”33 But Herzog defended his practices. “A human rights group sent a commission down to the area and concluded that there had not been one single violation. I had the feeling the wilder and more bizarre the legends were, the faster they would wither away, and this is what happened. After about two years of being criminalized by the press, the whole thing just faded away.”34
Without question the political situation was unstable. Writer Brad Prager explored the situation faced by the production team, explaining, “The Peruvian government had been encouraging settlers to move into the jungle, and lumber and oil interests were also encroaching on that part of the forest, all of which ‘made the Aguaruna Indians see every stranger as a threat.’ Although Herzog reached an agreement with the local Aguarunas, who were willing to work with him, a newly-established tribal council decided to set itself at odds with the film’s production. According to Herzog, the council ‘was merely trying to make a name for itself’ by blaming them for having built an oil pipeline and ‘generally being responsible for the military presence.’”35 These problems were man-made, and thus were only half of the struggle for Herzog and the crew amid a forbidding jungle.
Before an attempt could be made to hoist the boat, they had to clear the thick terrain of vines and brush to provide a smooth surface for the ship to drag across. Much of this was done by hand with machetes and chainsaws. One particularly brutal event took place during this phase of the production. As Herzog described, “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 chainsaws…. Suddenly this chuchupe struck the man twice. This was the most dangerous snake of all. 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 twenty minutes away.”36
While Herzog has asserted many times that the element of danger in the process of his filmmaking was eliminated as much as possible, it is doubtless that a story as dramatic as this would conjure terrifying possibilities. The director has maintained, “I am a professional person. Others would not do what I do, but I am trying to be the good soldier of cinema.”37 Given Herzog’s adherence to reality, it is no surprise that the making of this film is explored more frequently than the narrative of the picture. While the result of his efforts is a fictional tale, Fitzcarraldo is a film that could have only been realized through experiencing it head-on, as if the process of filmmaking is the real pursuit, and the final cut a mere by-product. For a man who has spoken frequently of the “ecstatic truth,” one can only assume that the production means as much as the premiere. Perhaps Fitzcarraldo, more than any of his other films, is the best example of how the process has come to overshadow the story. Herzog must have had some intimation of this truth prior to embarking on such an adventure, given his decision to commission Les Blank to make a documentary film of this brutal undertaking, which was ultimately a four-year struggle.
Only Ashes Left of Me
By joining the film well into production, Kinski had already avoided significant difficulties. Earlier, one of the crew camps had become the target of a hostile attack by armed Indians. The crew fled the camp, traveling down river as their rustic living quarters burned to the ground. The task of finding a new shooting location involved analyzing aerial shots with the assistance of pilots and geographers familiar with the area. “Apparently things are looking very good, except that the whole situation might collapse from one moment to the next,” wrote Herzog early in the production.38 The challenge that faced him was so unique that it truly required a review of nearly all of the jungle before the right conditions were found. The story called for Fitzcarraldo to traverse a narrow section of land where two rivers bend in toward each other, nearly touching. This isthmus had to consist of a small mountain over which Herzog and his crew could drag a steamboat. The distance and slope of the land could not be too inconsequential or too great. For this reason the camp—the civilization they knew—was a distant outpost from where they would shoot much of the film.
