Marcelle Clements: KLAUS KINSKI & THE THING Is this man of strange and explosive power really the world's greatest actor?" Seite 8/10 The night I arrived, we'd had a conversation while driving in from the airport and at a Vietnamese restaurant, though it had been, in my view, somewhat desultory and without a tape recorder. That was before I understood that all of our conversations would be desultory and most would be without a tape recorder. But overnight, Kinski thought of some of the subjects we had discussed, and it came to his mind, he told me the next day, that this "thing" should be the subject of my article about him. We were speaking on the phone. It was one of those days when he had called to say he couldn't see me. However, he then proceeded to talk with me on the phone for about four hours. I know it was four hours, because I was turning over my third 90-minute tape when I realized my tape recorder wasn't working. Afterward, I tried to write what he had told me when he'd started explaining this thing to me. He had given me examples, images that he thought I would grasp. The "thing" was comparable, by analogy, to the power of kung fu, he had told me. He had mentioned Bruce Lee, for example, and how it is possible to observe that the concentration, the energy that the kung-fu artist taps into begins long before the point of impact and continues afterward. He talked with me also about how this thing that enables you to create is the thing that makes you suffer, suffer so much that you hate your fate, which has driven you to it, because it is not a choice. You start doing it and then you cannot stop, and the more you do it, the more it makes you suffer. And you cannot get rid of it once you have felt lt. You cannot kill it, no matter how much you hate it for making you suffer. You try to kill it, but it is like the snake with 100 heads; there is always another head. It was the best single explanation he ever gave me. I knew this, even then, after we hung up and I played the tape back and listened to the droning buzz of the faulty connection that had drowned out most of his words. I knew I would never get this from him again and that I couldn't even ask him. He had already told me how he felt when a director asked him for another take when he had already, according to his judgement or his instinct, done the take. "Those assholes!" he had expostulated. "ASSHOLES! Do you ask a car crash for another take? Do you ask a volcano for another take? Do you ask the storm for another take?" But none of this was much consolation to me the day I satin my uncannily ugly California motel room, staring at the tape that had only the buzz on it. Well, I thought, I can't ask him to do another take, but maybe I can get him to repeat some of those things. You see, I still hadn't completely gotten it: There would never be any repetition. The next day, however, I was in high spirits, despite a harrowing ride on the highway, when I finally reached the little town where he'd given me an appointment. "From there, we will go to the ocean," he had announced on the phone that morning. He had seemed in a better mood, too. Fortunately, I had allotted two hours for what I'd been told was a half-hour ride, so I was a few minutes early despite all the time taken by my seemingly endless wandering through the incomprehensible maze of California roads, not the least part of which had been spent going around in circles because of those infuriating RIGHT LANE MUST TURN RIGHT / LEFT LANE MUST TURN LEFT signs. I had sometimes attempted to tell myself, "Must? Fuck you!" like Kinski; but whenever I tried it, other drivers would honk at me, even when it had nothing to do with them, from across an intersection. That taught me a thing or two about how people will react when you don't follow the rules by which they themselves are willing to be bound. This has nothing to do with traffic safety, you understand. But it led me to some thoughts about the price Klaus Kinski pays for his defiance of as many rules as he can manage to disobey, because of his preference for this thing. I was mulling this over when he arrived at our meeting place. There was something wrong with his car, he told me; we would use mine. I started to get out on my side, expecting him to drive. "No, no," he said. "You will drive." I had already warned him that my driving was still somewhat uncertain, that I had just gotten my license. But he wouldn't drive a piece of shit like this, he told me, casting an indescribably scornful glance at my rented subcompact car. And in any event, he told me, he won't drive a car other people have driven. The latter fact did not surprise me much, as he had already told me that he won't read a copy of a book anyone else has read and that, in fact, one of the reasons he hates old houses and hotel rooms is that he can sense the lingering presence of their former occupants. Still, it was with dread that I got back into the driver's seat, turned on the ignition and inched from my parking space toward the road, and then stopped to see if any cars were coming. "Further! Further!" complained Kinski, who had obviously made a quick assessment of my driving skills and had concluded that I could use some coaching. "How can you see anything? You must go on the road. Now, just go! GO!" © 1985 by Marcelle Clements and Playboy Enterprises Inc.

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