--- Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
> wrote:
> I used to think that I liked Wim Wenders. Then I
> realized that what
> I liked about "Wenders'" films was only the looks
> created by great
> directors of photography like Robby Müller and Henri
> Alekan & some of
> the lines furnished by Peter Handke. By himself,
> he's just a sap and
> a sexist one at that.
He's a bit of an arsehole as well:
Comments by Jon "I am not a gossip" Jost on the guy (He's a US filmmaker that was briefly fashionable a few years back - and a friend of mine).
_______________Jon Jost_____________________________
That aside: Wenders.
Aside from directly observing his willful and ego-oriented use of others, I find his films stylistically facile, and intellectually sophomoric - he studied philosophy but he is most certainly not one (currently he is evidently, under sway of new wife, a Jesus freak).
And now for a few big parenthetical inserts: Nick's film is Wim's film, it is not a documentary, and was not what Ray wished to do; rather - and as visible in hospital bed scene in piece - it is what Wender's did with a dying man, using the obvious impact of death to wrap a film - Wim's film - around.
The origins of the film were that I was in NY with an actor friend (lead in 2 of my films, Bob Glaudini, now an LA playwright) who knew Ray, and was obliquely asked to help Ray make a film before he died. Ray was seriously ill with cancer(s). I was broke but had equipment and knew how to make films very very cheap, and had some time. I said OK. I'd met Wenders in Berkeley when he was preparing his film for Coppola's Zoetrope. He saw my Chameleon and seemed to like. He seemed a nice innocent sort, hippy-style at time. He had used Ray in earlier film a nd was fan. I contacted him about getting some German TV money for Nick. He said he could get about $50,000. Meantime I was mainly a nurse to Ray who was in very bad shape. His girlfriend, younger woman, took advantage of my presence to go off and have an affair. (Don't really blame her, but...) Ray had an ambitious idea which he could never have done in his state. I encouraged him to think of something he could do in his Soho loft. Then Wender's film was delayed and suddenly Wim was going to come and "help". I talked with him a number of times, making very clear Nick's delicate condition and telling him to spend a week there before doing anything. I was then shoved out of project for, according to girlfriend, "negative vibes". Wenders' arrived, small crew of 7 or 8 in tow. He moved in, started shooting in a day. Some of crew stayed in Nick's loft. Nick was in hospital within a week. Wenders basically ignored what he was told, walked right over Nick (visible in resulting film) and then wrapped himself in a martyr's mantle of being such a nice guy helping poor old Nick. I saw the film at London Film Fest with Wender's present and was nauseated by both film and Wenders' posturing. I am not a Ray fan (never could sit through Rebel Without a Cause; liked mostly his cowboy thing, You Can't Go Home Again), and was only with him about a month; he asked when dying to see me I was told by girlfriend... He (and girlfriend) ended up disliking Wenders strongly. Fast forward:
A few years later, ostensibly shooting a doc for Brit Film Institute on Raul Ruiz, I was in Portugal. Ruiz was nice guy, whose films were fashionable with critics at time (still are among some), though I didn't think much of them to tell the truth. Film he was shooting was a modest production involving Paolo Branco (young Portuguese producer at time, currently my wife's producer), and none other than Roger Corman. It involved cannibalism and things, and was being peddled as Ruiz' breakthrough to an audience film. Ruiz knew better. I shot an interview between he and Corman in swank Paris hotel, where clearly Corman knew diddlysquat about Ruiz. Anyway in Portugal at one point post- american pop singer (forget her name, who was briefly Wenders wife I think and I can't figure out which of them - both? - were busy fame ****ing) Wim's new girl, someone from Bresson film, who was in Ruiz' film, announced Wim was coming to visit. Indeed he did. His Zoetrope film Hammett had been stopped because Coppola needed the actor. So Wenders came to Portugal, and in short order Ruiz' film was stopped 3 or 4 weeks before scheduled completion, the cast and crew were taken and Wenders made The State of Things. About a German director getting fucked over by Hwd baddies. It of course doesn't mentin Big Mr Wenders fucking over little Mr Ruiz.... Wenders is a class-A schmuck. Those are things I observed directly. I've heard a bit more. Stories from Antonioni film sounded similar. Wenders is perhaps an insecure star-fucker??
Of course this colors my view of the films, though I didn't much care for them before all this, finding them facile in terms of style (elegant, though often too calculatingly so; just as is his use-a-name too calculating) and truly vapid in terms of content, delivering leaden sophomorisms with deadly seriousness, though film critics, nor normally intellectual heavyweights themselves, fall gaga over this stuff. They seem in the past decade or so to have backed off as the thinness of his talents starts to show.
Incidentally - I saw only a trailer and that was enough for me - Portuguese found Lisbon Story laughably bad, for whatever that is worth. (Wy wife's ex boyfriend has done sound on 2 or 3 Wenders' films here, so I get stories...).
For a full story on Ray/Wenders go look up back issue of Sight and Sound circa then, I don't remember when then was -- 1980 or 81??
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