Yes, there’s a film festival coming – and yes, the streets of Toronto will soon be clogged with movie stars. But there are plenty of stars here right now, gathering down at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre for Rue Morgue’s Festival Of Fear. And Udo Kier is among them.
The still-striking German actor – who established himself in the horror genre with his indelible performances in Paul Morrissey’s Flesh For Frankenstein and Blood For Dracula – is attending the festival this weekend as a special guest. And Sunday evening, he’ll be appearing at the Bloor Cinema for Diobolical Revelations: An Evening With Udo Kier.
Sitting down with the actor in the coffee shop of the Renaissance Hotel, at a window overlooking the field of the Rogers Centre, I ask him exactly what constitutes an evening with Udo Kier.
“I don’t know what it is,” he says without hesitation. “I have no idea. I go on stage, people ask me questions, and I answer. And it’s easy for me, because I basically almost never lie – there are certain things I don’t like to talk about, but about my work and things I never lie. I know Bruce LaBruce will be there.”
Has he done this sort of thing before? Just go up on a stage and interact? “I’ve done it for movies,” he says, “when they show Frankenstein in 3D at the Cinematheque and people have questions about it. I like that. The audience is very important – some actors, they don’t care about it, but I do.”
That audience will have plenty of material from which to draw Kier has built a fascinating filmography for himself. He’s the only person I can think of who’s worked with Jim Carrey and Lars Von Trier in the same calendar year, appearing in Ace Ventura, Pet Detective and then popping up in The Kingdom as a giant mutant baby. He’s in Dario Argento’s Suspiria, Just Jaeckin’s Story Of O and Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s The Stationmaster’s Wife. (He’s also in Berlin Alexanderplatz, but so is half of Germany.) The man’s worked with everyone.
“Not everyone,” Kier says. “There are a few directors – quite a few – who I would like to work with, but I have never written a letter to a director in my life. I remember when I worked with Fassbinder in Germany, actors wrote letters to him. But you see, a director wants to discover you himself. He doesn’t want the actor to say, ‘oh, I’d love to work with you’ – the actor says that to other people, too.”
We talk about possibilities – David Lynch, Guy Maddin, Quentin Tarantino. Kier is somewhat miffed Tarantino didn’t cast him in Inglourious Basterds, though, since he’d played a Nazi in the Grindhouse trailer “Werewolf Women Of The S.S.” (“He must have seen that,” Kier half-pouts. “It was his production.”)
But even if those collaborations don’t come to pass, Kier can afford to be philosophical. About to turn 65, he’s happy in his life and his art he says he’s becoming choosier in the roles he takes, working with people he admires. He recently wrapped Werner Herzog’s My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?, which premieres at TIFF next month.
“I’ve made 180 films, so says the Internet,” he declares. “A hundred films are bad, fifty films are okay, and thirty good ones. But to say in my life, I’ve made thirty good films? That’s not a bad thing to say.”[rssbreak]
