Bruno S. defined the 70s. I mean, I wasn’t alive in the 70s, but he totally defined them.

His influence on music-in-film isn’t, all things considered, that well known. Especially over here in Australia, almost no musicians know who he is, which is a shame since he pretty much defined them for a new generation. Pre-Bruno movies that featured musicians usually focused on popular bands, with no major problems. Only films such as This is Spinal Tap had tried to show them as anything more. When Stroszek was released, though, it was perhaps the first major film to highlight the problem of being an outcast in the slums of Germany, with the loneliness and unrequited ambitions that came with it. For the first time, the freaks had a voice.

…oh shit, sorry, I got my wires crossed. “Doesn’t hit right. Give me obituary,” I can hear you murmur through a gas mask. Let me start again:

Bruno S. was a man who’d spent most of his life in mental institutions, teaching himself how to play piano, glockenspiel, handbells and the accordion. Werner Herzog discovered him and cast him in two films – The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser and Stroszek, the latter of which was quite biographical.

That doesn’t sound like much of a career, and for a traditional actor that would be pathetic. But Bruno S. wasn’t a traditional actor – he was a strange outcast from society who had odd, idiosyncratic talents. Herzog, always a lover of people differing from the norm (Klaus Kinski, the angriest actor in history, and a whole host of bizarre extras in films such as Cobra Verde), saw the true genius in Bruno. Here was the German underdog, the man whose talent was so personal and bizarre that it would be ignored unless someone of Herzog’s standing took him under his wing and displayed him to the public. When that happened, Bruno received a lot of attention in Berlin – and then, as soon as Herzog moved on from him, Bruno was back to being a nobody.

But he’s a nobody that we all know, and that’s what we truly value about him, and what we will miss.

Harmony Korine’s probably kicking himself now for never making a film with him.

Taken from the November 2009 issue of Empire:

“Empire: There was a piece in The Guardian recently, around the DVD release of Che, where it sounded like you wanted to give up. But you don’t sound defeated…

Soderbergh: Okay…What that guy did was not cool. I was not depressed, I was not defeated, I was not resigned. In fact, I was very much the way I am right now.  I was speaking in sort of philosophical terms about the business, about that film, and it was spun and put out in the aftermath of the Moneyball situation to look as though it was a reaction to that. That was not cool, the way I was characterised in that piece.”

Reassuring news!

The first trailer for the next Werner Herzog film is finally here. Written and directed by Herzog, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done is also produced by David Lynch, and stars Willem Dafoe and Chloë Sevigny, as well as Michael Shannon, whose Oscar nomination last year for his supporting role in Revolutionary Road was very well-deserved. The trailer is surprisingly atypical of trailers for a Herzog/Lynch feature, but the movie still looks really great, and with such a stellar cast and crew I’m officially excited!