Klaus Kinski

Not even all of the previous moments combined could compare with Herzog’s internecine relationship with his greatest collaborator, Klaus Kinski, possibly the only man who could ever make Herzog look sane. On Aguirre, Wrath of God, Kinski arrived in the Peruvian rainforest having just come off of his ‘Jesus Tour,’ where he wouldn’t act Jesus, but was Jesus, and repeatedly smote his audience. He refused to get out of character, and hurt the Indian extras, viciously attacking one with a sword, and shooting off another’s finger. On the set of Fitzcarraldo, Kinski tried to walk off the film, even though he was in the middle of the equatorial rainforest, and Herzog directed him for the rest of movie from behind the barrel of gun he kept pointed at his head. ‘He exaggerates,’ Herzog says of Kinski’s claims of danger, ‘the gun wasn’t loaded.’ On another occasion Herzog tried to firebomb his house after Kinski had called him a talentless, incompetent madman in his autobiography, but was stopped by Kinski’s Alsatian.