The ghost of
Fassbinder~ death day tea salon @ Antebellum Hollywood
reading & performance by george regout
conceived by rick castro based on writings about the life of rainer werner fassbinder.
George Regout
is standing in front of antebellum’s black wall.
He is a
modern- day ghost of Rainer-Werner-Fassbinder~ wearing his harshest items of rick owens- head to toe.
next to him is a model portraying the modern day ghost of
Gunter Kaufmann/ El Hedi ben Salem.
He
is in harness & leather gear~ tied up, blindfolded & gagged.
They both
stand in front of a table of guests being served tea.
Rainer~Werner~Fassbinder~
“Homosexuality,
prostitution, and transvestitism. If you present the exotic side, the glamour,
then of course they don’t treat these things as taboo, only if you show the
societal context. This is the case with all minorities. Earlier, when I was
still making films where the representatives of the minorities were good and
the others were bad, society really lapped up my films. But when I came up with
the much truer idea of showing the minorities the way society has made them,
with all their twisted behavior, then suddenly people didn’t like my films
anymore.”
I admire the
people who resisted me, who stand up to me when everybody seemed willing to go
along with me. The people I would have liked to spend my life with …
couldn’t take me.”
Through
filmmaking, I explored new possibilities for living and defining close
connections, realizing self-actualized, bittersweet, and open definitions of
family behind the camera while exploring “utopian” ideas in front of the
camera…
“From my
utopian ideal, from my perfectly concrete yearning for this utopia. If
this yearning is driven out of me, I’ll come to a dead stop; that’s why I
have this feeling I’m being murdered as a creative person in Germany, and
please don’t take that for paranoia. In my opinion, this witch-hunt we’ve been
going through, which I think is only the tip of the iceberg, was staged to
destroy individuals’ utopias. Also causing my fears and guilt to become
overwhelming. When it’s reached the point where my fears are greater than my
yearning for something beautiful, I’ll have to put an end to it. Not only to my
work, but also to my life..... sure. There’s no reason to exist when you
don’t have a goal any more.”

I am a proud
inveterate sadomasochist; gay leather bars, leather jackets, leather boots,
military outfits, the works. In fact I lived my life something closer to the
life seen in the film “Cruising”. Predominantly an aggressive homosexual~ quasi
bi-sexual, since I was married to two women… whom it should be stated I was
quite sadistic with. For an example of my outlook on marriage see my film:
“Martha”. 

I took a lot of chances in my short existence in during my teen years;
I was the pimp to a young Udo Kier. I’ll also add here that, personally, I
believe nearly all my films were about sadomasochism, and yet they weren’t
simple S&M falderal, you didn’t see films full of the usual veneer of
S&M: leather, chains, whips, boots and straps. You almost never saw any of
those things in my work and yet, the films are clearly and entirely about the
psychological and sociological hidden events which involve sadomasochism and
exist everywhere in society.
I was showing what sadomasochism looked like, for
real, everyday and in everything; not just simple “sex play acting” and “sex
games”. There were always those who called me a bastard (and no question, I
could be). But I was as much a sadist as masochist. Not one, but two
lovers committed suicide, at least partially, due ...so they say.. to sadism.


I am not just
a ‘talker’ of things like this, I lived it.
With the film,
“Cocaine” I planned to show the ‘freezing of the mind’. It takes place under
the influence of cocaine by having the entire film, depict the fogged breath of
all the actors, as it would be in freezing climes even while it was warm. I was
also going to show ice crystals and frost forming on all the windowpanes, as
when it’s freezing outside, even when it’s not. I also gave tribute to the films that were visual
cues on this work; films which included the expressionistic work of Visconti’s
“The Damned,” and the 14th part of my own magnum opus: “Berlin Alexanderplatz”,
who’s final 14th chapter is a heightened and highly expressive externalization
of an internal mental crack being experienced by the film’s main character
Franz Beiberkopf. During the rise of Hitler, Franz is stuck in a horrid mental
asylum, tortured daily while the sounds of Kraftwerk, Leonard Cohen and various
krautrock songs play in the background.
Well…. I died,
so this movie was not made. The book by Pifigrilli still exists, so one
can read and at least gather an idea of what this film might have contained.
Though my film would've veer quite away from the main plot of that book. You’ll
never know exactly what it would have turned out like, but I can tell you~
it
would have been exceptional like my films and my life.
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