:11:01
At first I couldn't figure
out what was going on.
:11:04
All I heard were inarticulate screams
at the other end of the line.
:11:08
It was Kinski.
:11:10
After about half an hour, I could
filter out from his screams...
:11:15
...that he was ecstatic about the
screenplay and wanted to be Aguirre.
:11:23
The shooting of "Aguirre" was
faced with two pressing problems.
:11:29
One was the budget.
:11:30
AGUIRRE,
THE WRATH OF GOD
:11:31
Today, it is inconceivable that we
made the film with only $370,000.
:11:40
No one was interested
in financing it, and what's more...
:11:44
...later, no one even wanted to
see the film for years.
:11:51
Kinski was the next problem.
:11:54
At the time, he had just cut
short a Jesus tour.
:12:00
He had appeared in huge arenas,
in the Deutschland Halle in Berlin...
:12:05
...and the audience merely
wanted to watch him rave.
:12:09
He was laughed at, had terrible
fits and raved and screamed...
:12:17
...and arrived here at our location as
a derided, misunderstood Jesus.
:12:22
He had wholly identified with his
role and continued to live on in it.
:12:26
Often, it was difficult to talk to him,
because he answered like Jesus.
:12:32
in his earlier phase you could
watch him in similar self-stylizations.
:12:36
As François Villon,
the poor, vagrant poet.
:12:41
Then as Dostoyevsky's idiot,
and later in his life, as Paganini.
:12:49
What is more, he had been
fascinated by the screenplay...
:12:56
...which had a different beginning
from the finished film.