Evil? This guy?

Klaus Kinski was a Polish-born German actor best known for being the leading man in five or six Werner Herzog films in the seventies and eighties. He was famous as a bit player in the US, playing a supporting role in Doctor Zhivago, and eventually even got offered a part in Raiders of the Lost Ark, which he turned down, saying in his book Kinski Uncut “as much as I’d like to do a movie with Spielberg, the script is as moronically sh*tty as so many other flicks of this ilk.” He was also so crazy that Werner Herzog eventually made a documentary about their relationship, called My Best Fiend in 1999 (Kinski died in ’91).

Now Kinski’s daughter Pola has alleged in an autobiography and an interview with a German newspaper that her father raped and abused her for 14 years, beginning when she was just five. Yeesh, you wonder why Herzog can work with wild personalities like Nic Cage and Val Kilmer without batting an eye, this is why.

“He ignored everything, including that I tried to defend myself and said ‘I don’t want to,’ Pola Kinski says in the interview which hits newsstands on Thursday, according to Germany’s The Local newspaper.

Now 60, she claims that her father would often rape her and then assuage his guilt by plying her with expensive gifts after she moved out of the home of her mother, singer Gislinde Kuhlbeck, Kinski’s first wife, shortly after their divorce in 1955. [NYDailyNews]

In a new autobiography published in Germany entitled Kindermund – which can be roughly translated as Out of the Mouths of Babes - Pola Kinski, now 60, details the abuse she said she suffered at his hands

She said he was violently abusive towards her, throwing her against the wall and raping her and then compensating by showering her with expensive gifts. He saw her as “his little sex object, bedded on a silk cushion,” Pola Kinski said. “I didn’t want to, but he didn’t care. He just took whatever he wanted.”

Pola Kinski – like her half-siblings Nastassja and Nikolai Kinski – is also known for her acting work, having appeared in several German TV movies, as well as on stage. A mother of three, she is now retired.

“I can’t hear it anymore: ‘Your father! Great! A genius! I always liked him,” she said. “The idolization has only gotten worse since his death.” [THR]

Excuse me one second…

Okay, I’m back. Man, that’s awful. I also absolutely hate that every celebrity or psuedo-celebrity can’t publish a book nowadays without concurrent revelations of past drug addictions and tales of childhood abuse. It dulls the public’s reaction to something that’s pretty horrible. Not that they should cover it up, it’s just terrible that it’s become almost standard practice.

Not for nothing, Klaus Kinski was also quoted as once saying:

Read the rest of this entry »

I worked very hard on this Photoshop

Penny Marshall recently wrote a memoir, My Mother is Nuts, which is apparently full of Hollywood stories in addition to the usual blah blah my family stuff that’s always in memoirs (kudos to Penny for not revealing some decades-old story of molestation and/or drug use to promote her book, that alone speaks to her being a class act). Movieline recently published an excerpt from the book detailing the development process for Big, and we all love playing the old they wanted Nick Nolte for Han Solo?!?, what-if game. Basically Penny Marshall wanted what she says were the three biggest box office stars of the day: Tom Hanks (the eventual winner, obviously), Dennis Quaid (HAHAHA), and future Stephen Baldwin defendant Kevin Costner. They all passed at first, but she eventually got Robert DeNiro interested and leveraged his interest to have her pick of the litter. The whole thing is a bit rambly and she does that punctuating-the-importance-of-a-thought-by-making-it-its-own-paragraph thing, so I’ve edited liberally. I’ll just start with my favorite bit first:

To make the high concept work, I wanted it to be real and believable. The biggest challenge would be casting the lead. I went straight to the three big box-office stars at the time: Tom Hanks, Kevin Costner, and Dennis Quaid. All of them passed. Everyone passed. I tried a different approach. I looked for the kid who would be Josh’s best friend, and I picked Jared Rushton. He had the most spunk of those I saw. He worked well as I brought in actors, including Sean Penn, who was terrific but too young, and Andy Garcia, who was also great, though one of the studio executives said, “We don’t want to spend eighteen million on a kid who grows up to be Puerto Rican.”

That was how they talked.

“He’s Cuban,” I said.

Haaaa. Oh, Hollywood execs. “This kid is supposed to be from Bergen County, New Jersey! We can’t have him be Hispanic! They only make up… the vast majority of the population there!” Man, I wonder what they’d have done if they’d known he was born with a malformed siamese twin growing out of his shoulder. Additional trivia: He also played “Vince Mancini” in Godfather 3. That’s me!

I sense I’ve digressed.

I also read Gary Busey, who had the energy of a child, but I didn’t think he could pull off playing an adult.

Gary Busey actually has the energy of three coyotes and some of the rabbits they’ve eaten, on account of the coyote necklace he wears, which is made out of some coyotes that he killed and ate. He wears it as a talisman whenever he goes out for headbutts.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re a serious Ahnuld-file like myself, you might remember that back in April, Arnold (pictured above in his smallest golf cart) took to his official Facebook page to ask us fans which stories he should include in his impending memoir. Because when you’re Arnold Schwarzenegger, you’re too busy being awesome and getting chicks pregnant to remember your own life. Doers do, homey, yolo. Being in the 99th percentile of Arnold fandom myself, I submitted my own suggestion:

Well now, his memoir, Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story, is set for October 12th and even has its own movie trailer. By the way, that title is bugging the crap out of me. Shouldn’t it be “Unbelievable True Story?” It’s not just unbelievable and true, it’s UNBELIEVABLY TRUE! I guess both wordings are equally hyperbolic oxymorons, but “unbelievably true” is like a brain scab I can’t stop picking.

Here’s the pitch from the trailer:

If my life was a movie, no one would believe it. The directions I’ve chosen, the careers I have conquered. I started out as a bodybuilder from Austria, and became the strongest, most muscular man in the world.

But, I had bigger dreams. I wanted to be in movies. I came to Hollywood, and within a decade, I was one of the biggest action stars of all time.

Read the rest of this entry »