William R. Katovsky: Klaus Kinski's FINAL INTERVIEW A PERSONAL TRIBUTE Seite 6/6 From the universal to the particular, he ranged seamlessly. He started talking about how stupid most directors are. "They want you to do a hundred takes. One should be enough. They should know what they want before they shoot a scene. But they are all so stupid that they don't know if a scene works or not. So they shoot it over and over again. When I did Doctor Zhivago, I was paid to work for four months. All I had was a small scene as a soldier in the train. I did it once. The director David Lean wanted to know if I wanted to do It over again. I told him no. So I got paid four months for working one day." He went on to say that he turned down offers to work with Fellini, Pasolini, Ken Russell, Steven Spielberg, and many others. Either the money wasn't great enough, or he had little respect for their talent. "I make movies for money," and if they were trash films or Spaghetti Westerns, then at least he knew he wasn't being exploited by some pretentious auteur with "art" on his mind. In a Playboy Interview, he once noted, "So I sell myself, for the highest price. Exactly like a prostitute. There is no difference." I wanted to ask him about Werner Herzog. I wanted to know why he continued working with a director whom he despised and loathed so much that when he came to California to visit him, Klaus met him in Sausalito so "the asshole wouldn't find out where he lived." But my question needed to be couched in an elliptical, roundabout fashion, or else I risked offending Klaus. So I mentioned that I really liked the way FitzarraIdo had been filmed, especially the sunrise scene of the steamboat being lugged over the hill. "I filmed that scene," he shouted. "It was my shot. Herzog was always sleeping late. I had to wake him up earlier and drag him out of his sleeping bag so he could catch the dawn and mist on film. I told him where to station his camera. I told him where to point it. He was a lazy Idiot." I sensed he was ready to discuss Paganini. Which he was. Herzog and company were in the past. Paganini was his future. He explained the complicated legal maneuvering that had prevented the film's distribution in the United States. In Europe, however, the film was popularly received. He talked about how audiences reacted favorably to his crowning achievement, a film he shot in less than six months on a six million dollar budget. He was the proudest of his ability to authentically re-create the era in which Paganini lived and performed. Concert halls were illuminated solely by candlelight. Eighteenth-century castles in Sicily were rented out. "I would make a personal visit to these old single women who still lived in these castles and tell them that I had to use their castle for my film. I would've slept with them if that's what it took." He cast his own son Nanhoi in the movie. I asked him if Nastassja had a role. His face went blank at the mention of her name. All color leeched right out. Softly, as if to himself, and not to me across the table, he said, "I wanted her to be my wife in the movie, but her husband said no. She's the mother of two children. She needed to take care of them." "She's a great actress," I interjected. "Yes, yes," he said distractedly, as if looking for something or someone far off in the distance. "She's one of a kind. She has a beautiful aura, a glow. A woman like her is only born every few centuries." Klaus went back to discussing Paganini. We explored the possibility of having a private screening in San Francisco. Better yet, we would try renting out the War Memorial Opera House or Davies Symphony Hall. After all, he had managed to take over the Paris Opera House for one evening and invite 1,000 guests. "Everyone was so confused by the invitation; they thought they had to pay. I said, ,No, It's free.'" "What about after San Francisco?" I asked. "Why not in other cities?" "Yes! Perfect!" he exclaimed. "We will show Paganini in opera houses all over the country. Fuck my Italian distributors. America will finally get to see my film." He was joyous at finding a way to circumvent his Italian nemeses. His glee was contagious. I would support his newest quest. Years seemed to miraculously slough off his face as he continued talking. I was transfixed by the force of energy that kept rolling toward me. He reached out and clasped my right hand with his right hand, and he held it there, in that warm mano a mano Mediterranean way. It felt as if he were sending a current in my direction, a Promethean exchange. He was so happy. There is simply no other way to describe his emotional state. After lunch, we walked out to his Jeep. His dog Apollo was tethered in the back from both sides of the vehicle. "If he's only held down on one side," Klaus explained, "he would find a way to break free." I petted Apollo's giant head; his long ears were standing straight up. "We must talk in two days about our future plans," he said, as we swapped goodbyes. "We have so much to do. We can't let this opportunity slip away." As he drove off, I looked down in my workbag where I kept my tape recorder. I had purposely kept it switched off during our three-hour lunch. How could I? Then again, how could a tinny recording do justice to the sheer magic, the alchemy of Klaus? My life - in ways I couldn't even begin to predict - had been forever changed and charged. When I found out two weeks later that he had died of a heart attack in his sleep, another one of his Marin friends, the Lagunitas postmaster said to me, "Klaus had that effect on people. He doesn't get close to many people. But of those he does, he sort of takes over you. He chooses you as a friend; you don't choose him." During those two weeks, his last two weeks alive, we talked on the phone almost every morning. Sometimes our conversations would last for an hour; other times only ten minutes. He always wanted me to call him at eight in the morning. He had arranged for the Dolby Laboratory in San Francisco to host a private screening of Paganini for FRISKO. The screening was scheduled for December 2. On the morning of his sudden death, November 22, we discussed the screening and who to invite. He was also bubbling with boyish pleasure since he had just received a fax from Poland that said they wanted to publish his Paganini book. "You must come over to my cabin so we can go over my color slides of Paganini," he insisted. We tentatively agreed to meet that weekend. Very few people, I later learned, were ever invited to his house. The night I found out he died, I listened to my Shlumo Mintz Deutsche Grammophone recording of Paganini's Caprices. The soulful, troubling, achingly vivid sound of the violin's eery wall unnerved me. I began to cry, for a man I hardly knew. © 1992 by William R. Katovsky and Frisko Magazine

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