For years, clips of Klaus Kinski’s onstage rampage in Werner Herzog’s documentary My Best Fiend haunted me. I had been familiar with this actor’s eccentric, tantrum-filled personality. After all who can forget his endearing lines to Walter Saxer – “Come on, lick my **s man, we’re making a movie!” – during the filming of Fitzcarraldo. Or his blowup during a marriage in Rome, or his blowup in Cannes during a Q&A for his last film Paganini…the list is endless.

The scene I am referring to is a clip from Kinski’s spoken word performance in 1971 Jesus Christ Saviour (Jesus Christus Erlöser ). It showed a megalomaniac who saw himself as the savior, and when pacific members of the audience attempted to have their say, they got a mouthful from the performer, even violently shoved. Eruptions ended with Kinski storming off the stage.

Luckily I read somewhere that the clip, in some way was taken out of context. In that description, it said that after most people left, Kinski returned to complete the performance, and those who stayed behind were treated to the rendition they were suppose to see. I recently revisited a favorite film from my childhood: Roman Polanski’s Tess. I found it so rewarding, I attempted to dig up Jesus Chrisus Erloser, and have a closer look at the man who fathered Natassja Kinski.

And what I found, was that the clip grossly misrepresented Kinski. If you watch the entire performance (below in 9 parts), you will note that Kinski was brutally heckled from the first sentence onward. Members of the audience did not let up even after two walk-offs. The piece itself, a monologue of the New Testament spanning some 30 written pages is a gorgeous creation that delves into the depth of the human condition, a vehicle that enabled the unblinking Kinski to display a talent that some have said made Brando’s work look like child’s play.

In a way, the audience heckling was transforming. Even if Kinski began the night to deliver a portrait of Jesus, by the end of the night – through repeated crucifixions and taunting from the faceless black hall- he was transfigured into his subject. Some have speculated that the hecklers were part of the program, but what I saw was the true anxiety of an artist who was devoted to his craft, and had to make it through 30 pages on memory alone. Heckling a person during such a tightrope act would be akin to bringing an electric keyboard to a concert hall and playing during a Rachmaninov piano recital. I don’t know who these people were, but I found the sight of them casually strolling on stage to add their two bits appalling.

It should be noted that German audiences are known for being hostile. I heard somewhere that jazz musicians who returned to festivals with the same material the second year could expect airborne legumes, fruits, and assorted nightshades. Or perhaps they just weren’t that familiar with the spoken format in a large hall. Long before the likes of Karen Finley and Eric Bogosian, Kinski blazed a trail, turning a simple reading into a metatextual entity, most probably not of his choice.

After the credits roll (Part 9/9), and almost everyone has left, Kinski returns to perform for a small group of faithful listeners, who recognized Jesus Christ Saviour ( Jesus Christus Erlöser ) as a creation worthy of attention. Kinski walks among the group, talking in a hushed calm voice. Much to filmmaker Peter Geyer’s credit, beautiful shots of audience members listening are immersed in the performer’s words. Not to be missed!

Talking about the making of Fitzcarraldo, Werner Herzog once explained his decision to haul an actual full-sized boat over a mountaintop.

“I wanted the audience in a position they could trust their eyes. I want to take cinema audiences back to the earliest days, like when the Lumiere brothers screened their film of a train pulling into a station. Reports say that the audience fled in panic because they believed the train would run them over…. This is the issue of truthfulness in today’s cinema. It is not about realism or naturalism….Nowadays, even six-year-olds know when something is a special effect.”

Herzog on Herzog, p 177

I think about that quote often.

In this day and age of CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery) and Photoshop disasters, the line between reality and imagination is one clone stamp away. When a fake can be as real as the authentic item, what does authenticity now mean? It certainly doesn’t help that a counterfeit nation is quickly overtaking the West, dictating the rules of conduct by shattering any considerations towards intellectual property.

The trend is that we, the audience, have become increasingly skeptical. I know when I see a spectacular YouTube clip online, the first thing I do is to scan the comments for the keyword “FAKE.” If that produces nothing, the next stop is Snopes.com. It’s not that I don’t want to be swept off my feet and dazzled, I just don’t want to get prematurely enthusiastic, soar to the heights of inspiration, only to have the wind die in mid-flight. I proceed with caution, like most people in the digital age.

For me, the MegaWoosh Video was the turning point where I went from doubtful to permanent skepticism. It turned out to be a viral marketing campaign for Microsoft Germany.

By the time Girl Dies Exhibit B-5 rolled around, I was pretty jaded. A few Facebook click reveals the “dead” girl to be actor Cindy Vela.

So it should come as no surprise, that when the photo of dead Osama Bin Laden / Usama Bin Laden was circulated on the internet, most of us who were well-versed in the viral culture of digital hoaxes shrugged with a “Meh, whatever.” It’s debatable at this point whether there is any true value in releasing the actual picture, especially when the “digitally-jaded” amongst us have been conditioned to question everything we see. I do think the fear of inciting violence, as an excuse for withholding the publishing of the photograph, is proof that terrorism is effective. I’d rather we’ve said “because we are a civilized nation, and we don’t do that sort of thing.” As much as I want to believe it, I know it’s not true. There’s already pictures of the three dead men shot in Bin Laden’s compound making its rounds around the mainstream media outlets.

How to retouch a photo of a dead terrorist: Bin Laden fake dead photo. General Public: 0 Photoshop CS5: 1 (click on picture for Guardian story)

It’s funny that Herzog said he wanted to restore our trust in our eyes, because later on in Fitzcarraldo, there is a scene where speculations abound as to whether the “ship” was a model or the real thing. (Look at the size of the water droplets). Herzog was there, he was on the real boat. There is no doubt about that, but this was also 1978-1982: the pre-digital age. Given Herzog’s insistence on photographing at “the golden hour,” (near sunset) combined with the reckless rapids and the director’s shoot-from-the-hip filmmaking style, it’s not improbable that the camera was set at the wrong exposure during the frantic moment a 360 ton ship was barreling down the white waters of the Amazon. The actual boat did come down the river, as documented in Burden of Dreams. I just believe the footage wasn’t useable, and a replica had to be made for the three second shot.

It’s different today. We are constantly Googling and Factchecking what we see and hear. Oftentimes, regarding items that were manipulated, retouched, computer generated, auto-tuned, cut-and-paste, and digitally spliced. We expend an inordinate amount of time to double-check our reality. And that says only one thing: the machines are winning.

I groan out loud whenever people think they are paying me a compliment when they tell me I am intelligent. This is not false humility or fake modesty: I honestly believe that the more you know, the more you realize just how little you know. I am, hands down, the least intelligent person I know. I am always fascinated at the information friends are in possession of. I don’t wish I know what they know….that’s why I befriended them in the first place: less reading ahead.

However, I live in the perpetual fear that I won’t absorb enough knowledge and wisdom, that I’ll pass away stupid and only less dumb then when I started out. Perhaps this may have something to do with the fact that I think intelligence is completely over-rated.

I watched a beautiful program today on documentary television. It is called Blindsight, a film about Erik Weihenmayer and Sabriye Tenberken’s efforts to bring blind Tibetan children to the summit of Mt Everest. Sabriye Tenberken and Paul Kronenberg’s website is Braille Without Borders. To me, Blindsight is awe-inspiring in the same way the closing scenes of Werner Herzog’s movie Heart Of Glass is amazing, where a man stands on top of an island mountain looking out to the sea, day after day in a Caspar David Friedrich vista. He is the first one to doubt. One day four men on the island decide to set off on a boat, they wanted to reach the edge of the world to see if there really is an abyss. This was a defining moment in my experience and perception of my life and how it related to the world. It made me think: what is out there? Who among us is brave enough to go beyond the walls? How do we nurture this dissatisfaction with the complacency of what we know, and to risk going out into the unknown? That, to me, is the true spirit, of being alive.

I think Blindsight captures that sentiment accurately. Children who are blind are willing to risk their lives to go to a place they cannot see, and that there are blind people who believe it is important enough to want to show them the way. But what is even more important to me than the quest, is the humanity. Intelligence is nice, but nothing impresses me more than kindheartedness, compassion. You can have all the brains, beauty, and money in the world (in that order, and for me, by necessity and through impossibly abysmal stretches!), but what is it all worth, if you don’t have compassion for your fellow man and woman?

I’m not sure if this is even related, but my late father was fond of pulling me aside and saying, “never be arrogant on being human in relation to earth and animals, we humans have only been here for 200 thousand years. That’s a meaningless drop in the bucket in the timeline of earth and the cosmos. Before the next drop, we’ll be extinct.”