“One should judge a man mainly from his depravities. Virtues can be faked. Depravities are real.”

-Klaus Kinski (via nytimes.com)

“Where a beast would have claws, I was born with talent.”

-Klaus Kinski (photo by Giulio Broglio/via AP)

Werner Herzog, speaking at the British Film Institute, watches a clip of Klaus Kinski in Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972, dir. Werner Herzog)

“[Werner] Herzog is a miserable, hateful, malevolent, avaricious, money-hungry, nasty, sadistic, treacherous, blackmailing, cowardly, thoroughly dishonest creep. His so-called ‘talent’ consists of nothing but tormenting helpless creatures and, if necessary, torturing them to death or simply murdering them. He doesn’t care about anyone or anything except his wretched career as a so-called filmmaker. 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.

…If he wants to shoot another take because he, like most directors, is insecure, I tell him to go fuck himself. Every scene, every angle, every shot is determined by me, and I refuse to do anything unless I consider it right. So I can at least partly save the movie from being wrecked by Herzog’s lack of talent…He should catch the plague! Syphilis! Yellow fever! Leprosy! It’s no use; the more I wish him the most gruesome deaths, the more he haunts me.”

-Klaus Kinski, via his autobiography Kinski Uncut

“Kinski’s fits can partly be explained by his egocentric character. Egocentric is perhaps not the right word; he was an outright egomaniac. Whenever there was a serious accident, it became a big problem because, all of a sudden, he was no longer the center of attention. He was no longer important.

[On the set of Fitzcarraldo], a lumberman was bitten by a snake while cutting a tree. 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 and then he grabbed his saw again and cut off his foot. It saved his life, because the camp and serum was 20 minutes away. When that happened, I knew Kinski would start raving  with some trifling excuse, because now he was just a marginal figure.

In another incident, a plane crashed, which was bringing people here. Luckily, they all survived, but some were seriously injured. Kinski saw that he was no longer in demand. So, he threw a fit, because his coffee was only lukewarm that morning. For hours he screamed at me, that close to my face. Incredible. I didn’t know how to calm him down, and then I had an inspiration. I went to my hut, where, for months I had hidden a piece of chocolate. We would almost have killed one another for something like that. I went back to him, going right into his face and ate the chocolate. All of a sudden he was quiet. This was utterly beyond him.

Kinski’s raving fits strained things with our Indian extras. They were Machiguengas, these two here, and a lot of Campas, too. Normally, they speak very softly and physical contacts are gentle. They were afraid. They would sit huddled together, whispering.

Towards the end of shooting, the Indians offered to kill Kinski for me. They said: “Shall we kill him for you?” And I said: “No, for God’s sake! I still need him for shooting. Leave him to me!”

I declined, at the time, but they were dead serious. They would have killed him, undoubtedly, if I had wanted it. I at once regretted that I held the Indians back from their purpose.”

-Werner Herzog, via his documentary My Best Fiend (1999)

Klaus Kinski in Nosferatu the Vampyre (1978, dir. Werner Herzog)

“Kinski loved the work and for pretty much the whole time on set he was happy, even though he would throw a tantrum maybe every other day. He was at ease with himself and the world at the time and loved to sit with his Japanese make-up artist Reiko Kruk for hours and hours. He would listen to Japanese music as she sculpted him every morning, putting his ears and fingernails on. We had to do the teeth and ears and shave his head every morning and just seeing him with this enormous patience was a fine sight. I would walk in and sit with him for fifteen minutes. We did not talk, we just looked at each other in the mirror and nodded at each other. He was good with the project, and he was good with himself.

Though the film is close to two hours and Klaus is on screen for maybe seventeen minutes, his vampire dominates absolutely every single scene. That is the finest compliment I can give him for his performance. Everything in the film works towards these seventeen minutes. His character is constantly present because of the story and the images which intensify this sense of doom and terror and anxiety. It took fifty years to find a vampire to rival the one [F.W.] Murnau created, and I say that no one in the next fifty years will be able to play Nosferatu like Kinski has done. This is not a prophecy, rather an absolute certitude. I could give you fifty years and a million dollars to find someone better than Kinski and you would fail.”

-Werner Herzog, quoted in Herzog on Herzog

Klaus Kinski & Isabelle Adjani in Nosferatu the Vampyre (1978, dir. Werner Herzog) (via)

“I never thought of my film Nosferatu as being a remake. It stands on its own feet as an entirely new version..It is a very clear declaration of my connection to the very best of German cinema, and though I have never truly functioned in terms of genres, I did appreciate that making a film like Nosferatu meant understanding the basic principles about the vampire genre, and then asking, ‘How am I going to modify and develop this genre further?’

The images found in vampire films have a quality beyond our usual experiences in the cinema. For me genre means an intensive, almost dreamlike, stylization on screen, and I feel the vampire genre is one of the richest and most fertile cinema has to offer. There is fantasy, hallucination, dreams and nightmares, visions, fear and, of course, mythology. What I really sought to do was connect my Nosferatu with our true German cultural heritage, the silent films of the Weimar era, and [F.W.] Murnau’s work in particular.” 

-Werner Herzog, quoted in Herzog on Herzog

Klaus Kinski on the set of That Most Important Thing: Love (1975) Photo by Jean Gaumy (via) 

“I felt this thing coming up in myself, just really physically growing in myself and happening, but it was a jungle, so I couldn’t distinguish things so much. I knew there were, in myself, the souls of millions of people who lived centuries ago - not just people but animals, plants, the elements, things, even, matter - that all of these exist in me.

… And through the years it became clearer and clearer, this thing; it started to separate itself. I could make it come when I had to concentrate on, let’s say, a person I had to become - this thing became stronger. And took more of me. In this moment, I let it do it, because I wanted, I had to be this person. And as I was led to doing it, there was then no way back. And the more I tried to do it, the more I hated it. But there was no way back anymore; it was always going farther and farther and farther.

Until one day, when I was walking through the streets of Paris, I started crying, because I could look at a man, a woman, a dog, anything, and receive it, anything, everything; there was no difference between physical and psychological. I felt like I was breaking out, breaking up, receiving everything, every moment, even things I did not see. There is no turning back from this.

But this danger is the power you have. It is this same power that lets you hold an audience when you are on a stage. Then it is a concentration, the same concentration that in kung fu is used for the kick that kills or to break a table with your hand. It means that you are sure of the power and that you relinquish yourself to it.”

-Kinski, quoted in Playboy magazine (November 1985)