I watched Fitzcarraldo on the flight home. It was so good! And by that I mean…it was very, very clunky in parts, I’m not actually sure that Klaus Kinski worked as the main character (in that he was tooooo crazy, maybe?) even though he certainly looked the part, the all-sound-was-dubbed-in-later-including-all-dialogue thing always throws me a bit and makes the performances feel like they’re at arm’s length, and a multitude of other aspects of filmmaking that we’d simply just do differently these days…
…but it was also goddamned genius. A cracking story with a clear adventure, shot ON LOCATION, and like Eraserhead—which is on my mind today for reasons I’ll mention in a moment—is equal parts revelatory about the person making the film as it is of the characters inside it. In this case, Werner Herzog and Brian ‘Fitzcarraldo,’ were one and the same; both men set out into the Amazon to do the impossible, to haul a steamboat up and over a mountain in the jungle. Wild stuff. Oh, and it was absolutely gorgeously shot. It’s a must-watch for any die-hard fan of cinema, absolutely.
David Lynch died today. Rest in peace. You were a genius and an inspiration to us all.
Travel back was uneventful, thank lord. Happy to be home. It’s cold here. No rain in the forecast, though, which is what we really need to get this stench of the fires out of the air. They’re still burning, albeit more under control. Hopefully fully under control soon. The house is clean. Our friends who stayed here while we were gone did a very good job of putting it all back the way it was, which is very kind. They could have left it a mess, honestly, and it would have been fine with us. What a terrible situation, having to evacuate their home.
Long, long day. Wiped. And head-spinning to have been walking the beach path above Kapa’a this morning, and back here in LA at night. But so glad to be home.
Night night.