Eye Candy #78 - "My Best Fiend"

My Best Fiend: A posthumous documentary about the often stormy working relationship between German director Werner Herzog and his frequent leading man, Klaus Kinski. It’s hard to believe, with the events described in this film that Herzog and Kinski managed to make ONE film much less FIVE: Fitzcarraldo, Aguirre The Wrath of God, Woyzeck, Nosferatu, and Cobra Verde. Herzog is an awfully mild guy so it seems odd that he would gravitate to Kinski, who can best be described a FRIGGING NARCISSIST MANIAC. He was the German Brando. He used to travel around doing spoken word performances as Jesus Christ. Who turned down performing in “The Raiders of the Lost Ark” to star in “Venom” (!?!). Herzog met Kinski as a young boy as they both shared the same communal apartment and Kinski was a nutbar even then, locking himself into the communal bathroom for 2 days and breaking all the fixtures while in there, and practicing his acting exercises for 10-12 hours straight. Their professional relationship was anything but smooth and the closest description is probably, “Near murder“. Herzog threatened to kill Kinski on the set of “Aguirre” if he quit. Some of the Native actors offered to kill Kinski during “Fitzcarraldo” after his tyrannical outbursts in the jungle. Herzog even planned to firebomb Kinski’s house. Kinski, for his part, slandered Herzog in what is believed to be a largely fictional autobiography. But the longer the film goes on, the more off his rocker Herzog actually appears (Kinski, being dead, can’t show up to defend himself). Makes a nice companion piece to “The Burden of Dreams”. Woodchuck sez, “If you know the subjects, you’ll probably enjoy this. If you don’t, you won’t.”