* (Halloween countdown post #3)

 

Infamous primarily on the strength of his shocking 1987 debut feature Nekromantik, German director Jörg Buttgereit was born to make horror films. His grandmother bought him horror trading cards while he was a kindergartner in Berlin, and for his first communion gift, he received a Super-8 camera.

‘At age 14, he made his first short films, and by the time he was 19, the future enfant terrible of the German underground was already creating controversy by showing concentration camp footage with his questionable 1982 short Blutige Exzesse im Fuhrerbunker. For the next several years, Buttgereit honed his talent with a series of increasingly disturbing shorts, picking up what would form the core of his repertory company (Daktari Lorenz, Manfred O. Jelinski, Beatrice M., Franz Rodenkirchen, and others) along the way.

‘Then came Nekromantik, an uncompromisingly grim and savagely appalling study of an Autobahn worker (Lorenz) whose progressive mental collapse leads to grave robbing, necrophilia, and a final ghastly act of suicidal masturbation which became the genre’s most talked-about gross-out scene for nearly a decade.

‘After the less caustic Der Todesking and the disappointing Nekromantik 2, it was a generally held opinion that Buttgereit would never match the ferocious audacity of his debut.

‘Then came 1993’s Schramm, and such premature dismissals were quickly laid to rest. The obsessively claustrophobic study of a necrophilic serial killer (Florian Koerner von Gustorf) who nails his penis to a table and fantasizes vaginal monsters while he isn’t sodomizing nude corpses, Schramm instantly reinvigorated the ebbing Buttgereit cult, solidifying the young director’s reputation as one of the few genuinely disturbing voices in contemporary graphic horror.’ — Robert Firsching

 

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Stills

 

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Further

Jörg Buttgereit Site
Jörg Buttgereit @ IMDb
JB @ Facebook
Sex Murder Art: The Films Of Jorg Buttgereit
JB @ letterboxd
Love & Death: The Films of Jörg Buttgereit
Horror-Liebhaber Jörg Buttgereit im Interview
The horror of the Nazi past in the reunification present: Jörg Buttgereit’s Nekromantiks
NEKROMANTIK: INTERVIEW WITH JÖRG BUTTGEREIT

 

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Extras

Trailer “Kannibale und Liebe” (theater play)

Frankenstein in Hiroshima (Radioplay, 2002)

What is a Cult Film – Jörg Buttgereit

 

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Interview

 

Virginie Sélavy: What’s your reaction to the fact that Nekromantik is getting an official Blu-ray release in the UK?

Jörg Buttgereit: The idea of releasing it on Blu-ray is something we had in mind for quite a while. It took ages because we did our old master from the Super8 film stock, which is not negative but positive film stock, because Super8 is made for daddy’s home films from the 70s, so you don’t have a negative. It was a lot of annoying work and I felt, what’s the use, because I prefer the movie to look very dirty (laughs). But when you transfer Super8 film stock to HD material there is not more depth, and there is no 3D effect, you get more dirt and more grain, so I’m happy (laughs).

That Super8 look is very important to the film.

I think so too. When I saw the dailies – as we say (laughs) – of Nekromantic, which was not the dailies, because when you shot on Super8, it took two weeks for the films to come back… so after two weeks, I saw the footage and I felt that it looked too normal and not dirty enough, so I was a little bit worried. So when we made film prints for the cinema in 16mm (this was a blow-up), we made sure we did it on a certain kind of film stock so the movie had this kind of greenish look, which looked dirtier, and the black looked more right in my opinion. But one curious thing happened. When we put out the film on VHS in Germany there were a lot of bootlegs in the US. I read reviews in magazines – because the internet was not there, this was 27 years ago – that said, ‘the movie looks so strange and it’s very dark’, and the viewer had the impression that they were watching real corpses. And I thought, well, it always works for the movie if you don’t see the real picture. I remember when I got my first Texas Chainsaw 2 VHS from the Netherlands, I couldn’t see anything. It was just darkness and noises, and I thought, what’s happening in that movie? I was totally fascinated. It’s the opposite of a movie experience today.

What did you think when you saw it properly?

It looked a little like a TV movie to me! It’s so bright! The first Texas Chain Saw is also very bright but it’s shot on 16mm so it still looks dirty. There was a hazing, they sprayed dust in the air, and it’s something that I did excessively when I did my episode for German Angst, my new movie that’s going to be finished at the end of the year. That film was shot on HD in CinemaScope so I wanted to make sure that it looked like a film and it looked dirty, so we did a lot of hazing. I was really afraid of seeing everything in HD.

The contrast that comes from using a home movie format and the subject matter is great. But using Super8 also makes Nekromantik look like an underground film, like those of the Kuchar brothers. It seems much closer to those films than to a straight horror film.

That was our thing, it is an underground film. The inspiration came from seeing Throbbing Gristle live in Berlin during that time, and watching John Waters’s movies, like Pink Flamingos, and having the book Film as a Subversive Art. And me being a big fan of old horror movies like Bride of Frankenstein. So it doesn’t work as a horror movie, there’s no tension, it’s terrible in that way – it’s terrible in a lot of ways… (laughs)

And as in underground film, you use non-actors who have a very unique presence. Daktari Lorenz has that weird wired energy, and it’s almost as if he’s not acting but just being himself.

Yes, I wasn’t trying to make them act. I was aware of the fact that they couldn’t deliver any lines and I couldn’t deliver good writing. I started doing good scripts when I started doing plays for German radio, but the first was in 2000. Until that time I wasn’t really sure if I could write good dialogue. Now I’m doing comic books, like Captain Berlin. That’s dialogue stuff I grew up with, very 70s, it’s something I can deliver very fast. So dialogue is something that I’m more able to deliver now. But these people who were acting in the film were just my friends, so how could they act? The film was never planned to be seen outside of my circuit. It was done mainly for this punk-rock-spirit audience inside Berlin. We were in this walled city so I didn’t even dare to take the movie and drive out of the city with it because there was the wall and they would have searched you, so it would have been impossible to screen outside of Berlin. With my short films I did stuff like this. But with Nekromantik I didn’t dare until the wall came down, which was two years later.

Did you not have more ambition for the film than just screening it within your circle?

Ambition maybe, but I was aware of the fact that it was impossible to reach this kind of audience. How could I, there was no internet. I’d only made short films before, that was Hot Love, which is also one on the Blu-ray. With Hot Love I did a tour through Germany. That was the only thing that was a little bigger than anything else I’d done before. I went to 10 different cities, in the West of course.

How do you see Nekromantik now? When you introduced the FrightFest screening in August, you seemed surprised that people were interested.

I’m amazed that it gets so much… not attention, because I understand why it gets attention. The poster we did back in 87 is an attention-grabber, but the movie doesn’t deliver on the poster. It does something else, and that’s nice, but I would never dare to hope that it really works. When I see the film I have to laugh. I see some stupid little kids trying to do a horror movie, or trying not to laugh in front of the camera. There’s a new de-noised soundtrack on the Blu-ray and in the first shot, where you see the legs and the panties coming down and then a girl is pissing, if you listen you can hear me laughing behind the camera. That’s how I approached the movie.

I think it is part of the appeal of the film, this anarchic charm, the gleeful pleasure at showing the most disgusting things possible.

I think maybe where we were ahead of ourselves was in the fact that the movie pretends that everything you see is normal. There is no justification, there is no chain-smoking police guy divorced from his wife who is uninteresting, but is there to put law and order into place. The fact that the corpse-loving scene is depicted in a way every normal love scene would have been, with piano music, with slow motion, all the clichés, I think that’s the trick, and that’s what gets people worried. Today Betty is like some emo goth chick, but back in 87 there was no such thing. There was no Tim Burton, no Johnny Depp. I was having fights with people about the fact that the main actress is in the bathtub with sunglasses on. That was actually like making fun of goth chicks before goth chicks were invented (laughs).

The way the music undermines all the romantic clichés is brilliant. You use the music similarly in Hot Love and Nekromantik 2, and running through those three films there is the same disillusioned view of love.

That’s what I was struggling with. If you see the introduction for Hot Love, it’s a revenge against my girlfriend who had left me. And the film is called Nekromantik, you can see it’s a combination of two extremes. Other horror films have the same topic, love and death, but nobody was going straight for the meaning of the word. To me, it’s about a very naïve part of you. I like innocence. And if a necrophile is having sex with a corpse and his girlfriend, then it should be presented from his point of view, that’s the interesting thing. I had some trouble explaining all these things. Two years ago I did a stage production on Edward Gein, the grave robber, so I had to sell it to the authorities by saying that this case is a cultural thing, it’s the basis for Psycho, Texas Chain Saw, Silence of the Lambs. But what fascinates me in this case, and this also became an inspiration for Nekromantik, is the naivety and the childish appearance of this guy called Ed Gein. One and a half years ago I went to his grave and I made a short film there. It’s not on the Arrow disc but it’s on the German Blu-ray. It’s called A Moment of Silence at the Grave of Ed Gein. So you can see that I deal with these people in this sort of sensitive way. I don’t think you can learn anything from them if you just deal with them as monsters. And that’s the same as Nekromantik. You have to care about them, otherwise the movie will be boring. And if you don’t give them a Jodie Foster character in Silence of the Lambs, or someone who can deliver them from evil, then you have to make these so-called bad people sympathetic.

You do that very well in both Nekromantik films and also in Schramm, which is an astonishing serial killer portrait.

I’m trying to do the same thing on stage now in Germany. I found a topic that’s very much fitting because last year I did a German version of The Elephant Man, and that’s exactly the same thing. You have this deformed man and everybody thinks he’s gruesome, but he isn’t. It was very revealing to do that on a stage and to have a different audience. Because The Elephant Man is something that people would go to even if they don’t know who I am, so I have a lot of normal people in the theatre. And they were surprised that the production was so sensitive, that’s what the critics said. Of course they have this picture of me, they see the movie, they don’t see the person. They were saying, ‘we’re so surprised that your stage version of The Elephant Man is so sensitive’. That’s an insult when you think about it, but I was still happy!

A lot has been made of the necrophilia, but the rabbit scene remains the most disturbing scene in the film.

Because you know it’s real. For me it was important to have real death in the film, being inspired by underground movies that deal with this kind of thing. I was always annoyed by people explaining why they watch horror movies – ‘because we like special effects’. And I didn’t want to have that excuse for my movie. The scene is there to make people aware of what they’re watching, and to make people sensitive about why they’re watching it. Because when you watch footage like this, sooner or later you will begin to ask yourself, why am I watching this? That was something I was asking myself. I didn’t have all the answers but it’s a movie, I just made it with my friends. I had this guy who was a producer and was giving me all these facilities, but I did everything on my own, I experimented, I had nothing to worry about in terms of budget because nobody was paid anyway. So we were trying stuff out, which is the opposite of the experience of making films nowadays – or in general.

You said you made the film in reaction to German censorship at the time. What reaction did you expect?

With the first Nekromantik nothing really happened because nobody noticed that the film was there. In Berlin we had two film prints and it was screened at three cinemas. One cinema shared one print by driving around all the time. Only people who already knew me and who were from this underground scene watched the film, so nothing happened. People were a little worried that the film was too serious – that was the first reaction. The first review I read was in a gay magazine, saying that this was the first movie about AIDS, because people are going to bed with the dead now, and that wasn’t something I was thinking about. So I was totally surprised by people taking the film seriously and thinking that it was about AIDS.

Did you agree with that interpretation?

I didn’t have that in mind when I did the script, which wasn’t really a script, it was about 20 pages of scribbling. But of course AIDS was a big thing during that time. I knew people who were suffering from AIDS so it was in my head. If something is in the zeitgeist then it will show up in the things you do, I think. So I agreed with it but I was also surprised by it. And it goes on until today. I read reviews explaining my films and I wonder… (laughs)

What’s the weirdest explanation of Nekromantik that you have come across?

I think the strangest, and on the other hand the most convenient, interpretation was done by this film historian when we were in court with Nekromantik 2. The first Nekromantik was shot in the West side of Berlin before the wall came down, and after it came down we shot Nekromantik 2 in the East part. So the thesis is that Nekromantik 2 is art compared to Nekromantik because it’s a film about the decaying East German part of Berlin (laughs). That explanation saved me from going to jail and having the movie destroyed, so I really embraced it. And of course it was a conscious decision to shoot in East Berlin because everything looked so dead and so old over there, like the 60s, or 50s even. All the outside shots look strange, it was like a movie shot in the past. So that was the weirdest explanation, but it’s also true because it documents a version of Berlin that is not there anymore. But the main reason was of course that we could shoot in East Berlin with no money. I wanted to do all these petting zoo scenes, so we went to the West Berlin zoo because they have much nicer animals and they told us it was 350 Deutschmarks an hour. We went to the East German zoo and they told us it was 50 pence a day, because they weren’t used to professional camera teams. You could take your home camera there and film for the whole day for 50 pence. There was no capitalist concept in East Berlin, they didn’t ask for money. So we paid nothing for shooting outside, it was heaven. It took a while for East Berlin to get a hold of the rhythm of the West, but all the West Berlin people were going to the East and doing stuff there, so it was like tourism what we did (laughs).

At the FrightFest screening you also mentioned another interpretation that was given of the film, which was that it’s about the unearthing of Germany’s past. Do you see it that way?

I know that depicting death in German movies is a problem because of the German past. And if you watch my earlier short film, Bloody Excess in the Leader’s Bunker, which is not as good as the title, together with Nekromantik, you could come to that conclusion. But to me it’s more about Ed Gein than about concentration camps.

But there are references in Der Todesking and Schramm too, so do you think it runs through the background of everything you do?

Nazi trash was something that was part of the punk rock spirit – Sid Vicious was running around in Paris with a swastika. Something like this would have got you in jail in Berlin at once. So doing a film like Bloody Excesses in the Leader’s Bunker… I did a premiere of that film in 1982 in a punk rock club, Risiko, with Blixa Bargeld from Einstürzende Neubauten at the bar and the police came to check if it was a neo-Nazi meet-up. So over there it was daring to use these symbols because even now it is forbidden to use these images.

Is that why the German authorities have such a problem with horror?

Yes I think so. Under the Nazis you had this clean screen thing, there was no dead body during the Nazi occupation, no dead body on the screen. It was just Heimat films, stupid propaganda movies, something like what you would get in North Korea today. And for some reason until today something that is connoted as horror is only possible in the underground, and you need a very good excuse to deal with this kind of matter. So for me it’s only possible to work in this field if I do it for the radio or on the stage. I did a play on Ed Gein for the stage, it would have been impossible to do it for the screen. Because there would have been no money. But for the stage I had lots of money to do it.

Is that why you stopped making films for the cinema after Schramm?

We did four feature films with no money, so as it was like what Throbbing Gristle did once with all their fans, they sent them a postcard, ‘the mission is terminated’ (laughs). I had everything, the movies were banned, the police raided my home, I was labelled an artist in court, and Schramm was nominated for a German film prize. It was the right moment to stop because it wasn’t subversive anymore. And everybody was running out of money. Because getting our money back like today with Blu-ray editions was not possible.

You said in an interview that you like to disappoint people’s expectations. Is that how you would define your general attitude?

It’s a natural reaction I have. When the first Nekromantik came out it had this strange success, people were demanding Nekromantik 2, and of course it should have been even more gross. To me that just felt so predictable and stupid that we came up with Der Todesking, which everybody was disappointed with in the first place. Later on, we gave them Nekromantik 2, which was also very disappointing because it’s even more romantic than the first one. It’s a natural reaction because I don’t like to be told what to do, in terms of what I’m allowed to do from the censorship boards, but also from the audience (laughs). It’s a childish reaction maybe. Nekromantik 2 is full of jokes about what people expect, this art movie on the ceiling in black and white, it’s all stuff people who were waiting for Nekromantik 2 hated. And only after the film was banned did they try to rethink, and they liked it then. You can never trust the critics or the fans. If you give them what they expect they will tell you that you don’t have any new ideas. If you don’t give them what they expect they have another reason to be disappointed (laughs). But in the long run it’s always more interesting to play around with a concept.

It’s interesting that it seems to define your relationship with both the censors and the fans.

Because to me the so-called artistic freedom is very important. And this freedom can’t be harmed by a fan wanting to have ‘Nekromantik 10’ and also by a guy who says, this tape should be burned. In the end it’s the same for me.

 

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13 of Jörg Buttgereit’s 33 films

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Manne The Mowie (1981)
‘A drunk sloppy person watches rugby (football?), pees in public, and tips over.’

the entirety

 

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Mein Papi (1982)
‘Mein Papi was first produced in 1982 but seems to have been worked on up until the parent of its title’s death. A version was screened in Germany before showings of Natural Born Killers: compared to Stone’s cartoon provocations this cuts very deep indeed. Buttgereit dispassionately records his father’s descent from a young, handsome truck driver into a bloated tyrant, cataloguing a series of tumours that end with an image of Buttgereit pere slumped over in a chair, apparently dead.

‘What matters, though, is not the film’s veracity – and there is a lot in it that is clearly, grubbily real – but its effect. The pinkish, brownish Polaroid tones reminded me of Richard Billingham’s infamous photographs of his alcoholic father, though when Billingham put those in motion – in his Adam Curtis-produced film Fishtank – the affection with which they were taken became more obvious. There is no such reassurance in Mein Papi, which remains a hard, insular, troubling film.’ — Graham Williamson

the entirety

 

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Der Trend (1982)
‘Punk fucking rock!’ — Kevin Riemersma

the entirety

 

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Captain Berlin – Retter der Welt (1982)
‘This is where it all started… Jörg Buttgereit, a leading light of the West Berlin underground film scene, first brought his venerable superhero to the screen in CAPTAIN BERLIN SAVES THE WORLD, with the maestro himself donning cape, tights and mask as he fights evil and saves his own true love. In this film, Buttgereit himself plays Captain Berlin in a yellow jumpsuit with red briefs worn on the outside, capped off by a Spiderman mask and a repurposed flag worn as a cape. Clearly the product of a punk sensibility slamming head-on into a love of the 1960s “Batman” teevee show. The film is funny to watch but low on stuff like “production values,” “plot,” and “sense.”‘ — IMDb

the entirety

 

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w/ Manfred O. Jelinski So war das S.O.36 (1984)
‘A documentary about the now abandoned and very influential punk club S.O.36. A punk music club on Oranienstrasse near Heinrichplatz in the area of Kreuzberg in Berlin, Germany.’ — IMDb

Excerpt

the entirety

 

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Horror Heaven (1984)
‘”Horror Heaven” is a compilation of early short videos, made by the goremaster Jörg Buttgereit, dedicated to Boriss Karloff. 1. Der mumie. 2. Frankenstein. 3. Die rache der mumie. 4. Gazorra: die bestie aud dem eridnnern.’

the entirety

 

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Hot Love (1985)
‘Daktari Lorenz falls in eternal, blissfull love with Marion (Marion Koob) at a party. He is in heaven… but soon she dumps him and moves in with a tall, blond new lover (Jörg Buttgereit himself). Daktari vows bitter revenge. He rapes the girl thus creating a monster baby that will show Marion what “Present Me with Your Heart” literally means. Dark, brooding and violent, this movie, made in 1985, set the tone for NEKROMANTIK.’ — Johannes Schönherr

the entirety

 

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Nekromantik (1987)
‘In the cult genre Nekromantik of Jörg Buttgereit is possibly one of the most discussed films. It was banned in several countries and only shown in theatres at rare occasions. One of the few screenings took place at London’s Scala during the Shock Around The Clock Festival (the forerunner of Fright Fest). Everyone who does something in the cult world, would like you to believe that he or she was there, but that’s probably hogwash. The truth is that a lot of people simply left the room, because Nekromantik is not only experimentally, it is also utterly repulsive.

‘Buttgereit does not understand why people see Nekromantik as a movie. It is an incoherent experiment that took two years to make and that looks like experimental films by industrial groups such as SPK or Throbbing Gristle. A joke that got out of hand. After the London screening the film got all kinds of reviews in fanzines (for the younger readers: magazines made by fans with the help of a photocopier) and the demand increased. There was no real distributor, and consequently the film appeared on the market as a bootleg, often as a copy of a copy, and the younger the generation, the lesser the quality. With the use of digital techniques, Jörg Buttgereit restored the film almost frame by frame (of course to the extent that thas is possible), and the result is now released on Arrow Video.’ — Didier Becu

Trailer

Excerpt

 

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The Death King (1990)
‘Seven episodes, each taking place on a different day of the week, on the theme of suicide and violent death. The Body of a naked man floats in blackness. Slowly stretching out from a foetal position it begins to decompose. A little girl sits in the sun scribbling in a sketchbook. “Der Todesking” – deathking – she writes. Der Todesking, Jörg Buttgereit’s second full-length feature film, has no central character or characters, but instead thematic continuity in the act of suicide. Divided into days of the week, it comprises a series of set-pieces, each featuring the self-destruction of a complete stranger.’ — film affinity

Trailer

 

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Nekromantik 2 (1991)
‘A female nurse desperately tries to hide her feelings of necrophilia from her new boyfriend, but still has pieces of the corpse of the first movie’s hero in her possession.’ — letterboxd

Trailer

Nekromantik 2 Behind the Scenes with Commentary (German)

 

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Schramm (1993)
‘Jörg Buttgereit takes you into the twisted mind of a deranged sex killer in the deeply disturbing SCHRAMM. Lothar Schramm, the so-called “Lipstick Killer”, lies dying in a pool of blood and paint. As he expires, fragments of his life flash before his eyes – his uneasy friendship with the prostitute that lives next door; the brutal slaughter of a pair of doorstep evangelists whose bodies he poses in obscene fashion; his unhealthy pastime of hammering nails into his own manhood.’ — Von Joerg

Trailer

Excerpt

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Captain Berlin Vs Hitler (2009)
‘In 2007 Buttgereit went back behind the lens to film a feature-length project which would undoubtedly be his most ambitious to date. Based upon the character who originally appeared in a ten-minute short created by him in 1982, CAPTAIN BERLIN VERSUS HITLER is in fact a stage play, shot over three days in front of a live audience at Berlin’s Hebbel Am Ufer theatre in November 2007 and during post-production infused with special optical effects for limited theatrical release in 2009.

‘The story goes that after the Nazis took power during 1933, the resistance took great pains in searching for a solution to end Adolf Hitler’s evil dictatorship. They formulated a plan to bio-engineer super-human assassins, eventually finding their man in one ‘Captain Berlin’ (Jürg Plüss). However, Berlin’s attempt on the life of the fuehrer was unsuccessful, subsequently forcing him to go underground and adopt a new identity.’ — Kevin Gilvear

Trailer

 

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Green Frankenstein (2013)
‘A mix between stage play, radio play and Japanese monster movie.’ — letterboxd

Trailer

Intro (German)

the entirety

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** Josh, Hi, Josh! Holy moly, that’s such great news about your book! Worth the long wait, for sure. Congrats, man, and future congrats to all of us. Yes, sure, send me the pdf. You have my email info, I guess? Excellent celebratory weekend! ** wolf, W! My pleasure, pal, naturally. Yes, that’s the piece. And, yes, the cousin part, incredible. I’ve heard that McQueen’s new, imminently forthcoming feature film is a change and maybe brings some of his video work’s qualities into the longer form, and I’m very curious about it. Sweet. I went to the Paris aquarium yesterday for the first time in ages. A guy interviewed me for his podcast there. I forgot how big and labyrinthine-ly structured it is. Very soothing too. Are you going to see the Michael Clarke show/retrospective at the Barbican? I sure would if I could. Happy weekend! ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Yes, momentous news yesterday. Everyone, Mr. E’s FaBlog has tackled the big American news of yesterday, and you can get a clue of how he tackles it via the entry’s title: ‘Hicks Licks Don’s Dick’. ** _Black_Acrylic, Happy the post intersected with your ordering skills. ** Armando, Hi. I seem to be fine today so far. No, your description of the film is not an accurate depiction of its entirety or full intentions. No, its not an Yves Saint Laurent ad. YSL put some funding into the film, that’s all. No, it’s not a mockumentary, it’s a partly improvised fiction film. Dude, there must be synopses of the film out there online if you want to know what it is an accurate way. Today? It’s Nuit Blanche, which has transformed from a super fun, giant event into a very low budget, half assed little thing, features one thing I want to go see — a ‘rain forest’ by the artist Dominique Gonzales-Foerster in the garden of the fashion museum — so I’ll hit that tonight along with a couple of late night visits to nearby museums. Otherwise, the usual. You? ** Dominik, Hey, hey! Theo Cholbi, who plays Tim in ‘Permanent Green Light’ is close with Michael Pitt — they were both in the last Larry Clarke film — and speaks highly of him. I met MP once. He squinted and grunted at me. I watched ‘Who Took Johnny’ too. I (too) am a sucker for that sort thing, unsurprisingly. You’re really hitting me in the deepest pleasure centers with your recent love wishes, thank you. Love like a special Pulitzer Prize created expressly to honor SCAB’s contributions to world culture, Dennis. How was your weekend? ** Brian O’Connell, Hi, Brian. Very good to see you again. I really liked ‘The Cipher’ if that means anything. Good place to start with her work. I agree totally with your Haneke assessment. Thank you for it. People over here in France are mind boggled by the faked-up US controversy about ‘Cuties’, which played here without a dissenting peep. Well, given that the vast majority of what’s happening over there seems like idiotic insanity to people here and elsewhere, the word mind boggled is too big. It must be so strange: starting college, which is inherently big, in such a fractured, hands off way. Happy to hear it’s going well. What are you studying? I haven’t read the Jonathan Littell. I’ve been intending to for ages. I’m easily intimated by very long novels, and I think that’s where the delay comes from. Pretty much everyone I know here either thought it was great or admits it was really something even if they weren’t totally sold. I can’t remember the details of what people said other than them saying they were pretty sure I would like it. Let me know what you think when the time comes, if you feel like it. I should at least go pick it up and put it in my to-read pile. What do you have planned for Halloween? I’m so envious. It’s not much of a thing here, so my hopes and plans are low. The amusement park Parc Asterix has done a makeover with some haunted houses, but there’s a real chance we might get somewhat locked down in Paris soon, which could well kill that off. So, mostly, I think Halloween will largely be celebrated by me in the form of making Halloween-themed blog posts, sadly. Good weekend to you. ** Steve Erickson, Crazy. The new news. I got the ‘Rope’ association thing too. Didn’t seem like an accident. Ah, Luc Sante is a wonderful writer with an excellent brain. That should be great. ** Corey Heiferman, My pleasure. She’s excellent. I think you’ll be pleased. Okay, first I have to find out if the Robbie Basho post is in the old blog data I have already uploaded and, hence, easily restorable, or in the data that’s still on a hard drive and in need up uploading, in which case it’ll probably take a while. Roughly half of the blog’s history is still inaccessible to me. May your dad’s weakness de-weaken incrementally and steadily. And I sure hope those potential gigs work out. Oh, hm, let me see if anything I saw recently is visible to much of a degree online. Oh, okay, I found one. There was (and still is) a show of Ed and Nancy Kienholz’s goofy sculptures and installations and wall pieces from the 80s and early 90s that, in person at least, seemed super alive and obsessive and funny and subtle and ridiculous in a very pleasurable way. Here’s a virtual galerie visit. Thanks for the Jerusalem death metal link. I am, naturally, very curious. ** Maryse, Hi, Maryse! Ha ha ha, I clearly agree since I specifically picked that pic to be the visual headline. I always aim for bliss, but you know how wobbly bliss is. Really fantastic wordage/thoughts about Haneke. That was a joy. Thank you, pal. I owe you an email, which will come very quick. I started your novel, and it’s so fucking good! I’m suffering from serious prose chops envy, and I don’t feel that very often, I assure you. Spooky, exuberant weekend to you! ** Right. It’s Halloween season, and I thought turning the blog over to that dastardly film guy Jörg Buttgereit might be a good way to keep an appropriate spirit snowballing and spiralling. So that is clearly what I have done. See you on Monday.

* (Halloween countdown post #2)

 

‘Kathe Koja’s work has always wrestled with complex issues: the limits of agonistic art, performance/performativity, and expressions of embodiment. From her groundbreaking debut novel, The Cipher (1991), to her 1997 collection Extremities, the author often evaluates these topics through the porous boundaries of horror. Of course, it is not only Koja’s compelling thematic engagements that set her writing apart, but also her crackling, inimitable, urgent prose style.

‘Koja’s career-long fixations persist in her new collection, Velocities, one of the most vital, haunting, and commanding genre releases in recent years. Particularly noteworthy is the book’s interest in art (especially performance art) as a catalyst for negotiations with trauma. Two stand-out examples are “Velocity,” which sees its performance artist reliving a horrific event through his work, and “Pas de Deux,” which depicts a woman grappling with the interior catharsis of dance versus exterior demands on her body. Indeed, this tension between desires of interiority and those of embodied, physical reality (central to novels like Skin [1993] and Strange Angels [1994]) shows up repeatedly throughout this collection.

‘When dealing with Koja, one of the twentieth century’s major American horror novelists, it seems impossible to avoid the question of genre. Is Velocities a “genre” collection? Undoubtedly Koja lays bare her expertise on genre forms and modes (“The Marble Lily” might be the most convincing contemporary imitation of nineteenth-century Gothic I’ve read), but this book circumvents categorical structures at nearly every turn. Within the first couple stories, it dawned on me that Koja’s fiction is simply a genre unto itself; hers is a body of work defined by singular style. Truly, Koja’s voice is among the most distinctive and invigorating I have encountered.

‘Koja maximizes on that which is specific to the written medium; her wildly unique prose style delivers affective experiences that I cannot imagine transmitting fully to any other artistic form. At the same time, though, this author draws often on the tactility of performance and dance, imagining the many ways in which artistic modes can either mirror or contend with each other.

‘Suffice to say that Velocities is, like any other Koja book, a major event. This writer’s work has had more impact on me and my work than I can express. Time and again, her fiction has reinvigorated me and helped me to imagine the boundless literary potential of genre. It is no exaggeration to say that she is among the most important writers in horror, and a major figure in contemporary American fiction more broadly.’ — Mike Thorn

 

____
Further

Kathe Koja Site
Kathe Koja @ goodreads
Kathe Koja @ Twitter
The Exchange: Kathe Koja @ The New Yorker
Podcast: What the Fish Went Through with Kathe Koja
AN INTERVIEW WITH KATHE KOJA
Velocities: Stories by Kathe Koja – weird from the inside out
Hi Kathe! Thanks for stopping by to do this interview!
Kathe Koja is creating Immersive fiction
A new voice in historical fiction
The Horror! The Horror! – Kathe Koja
Exclusive Interview: Velocities Author Kathe Koja
Hash it out with Kathe Koja in Episode 98 of Eating the Fantastic
Happy Sunday, Witches!
Dancing in the dark at Kathe Koja’s DARK FACTORY
This Is What Kathe Koja’s THE CIPHER would be if it was a fun little short sci-fi film…
Women in Horror – Interview with Kathe Koja
‘Queen of Angels’, by Kathe Koja
Kathe Koja on Godmothers of Horror: Emily Brontë & Mary Shelley
Kathe Koja Visits Minuteman
Buy ‘Velocities’

 

___
Extras

NVF Films Interview with Kathe Koja

Virtual Memories #373 – Kathe Koja

Kathe Koja Reads from The Marble Lily

Kathe Koja presents #Velocities in 60 seconds

Lovecraft eZine: Guest: Kathe Koja

 

____
Interview

 

Weirdfictionreview.com: What writers were your introduction to “the weird,” whether the Weird Tales kind of weird or something even stranger?

Kathe Koja: Growing up, I read a ton of poetry and ghost stories, but the ones who made a lasting impression were M.R. James, Poe, Stoker; Shirley Jackson came later, as did Angela Carter and Flannery O’Connor. And Wuthering Heights made a *huge* impression on me, too … I gravitate toward intensity.

WFR: What kinds of things did you read and think “this is not for me”?

Koja: To be honest, I can’t remember: that stuff made no lasting impression. Extrapolating backward, I’d imagine it was anything that was too “nice,” too sure of itself, too ready to proffer an explanation for life. Certainly I read my share of crap, which is a good thing — it’s what helps develop your shit detector.

WFR: Was weird fiction welcome in your household growing up? Can you give a sense of your childhood as it relates to your writing?

Koja: The single greatest contribution to my sense of the mysterious as a matter-of-fact was being brought up Catholic. Cheek-by-jowl since infancy with the spirit world, with miracles and blood.

WFR: Can you give us a sense of what that’s like for a child? Was there a time as a child where you took that all literally to some extent?

Koja: Sure, every day. Grown-ups tell you that the stovetop is hot, you touch it: the stovetop is hot. Grown-ups tell you that a vial of blood liquefies on a certain saint’s day every year; why shouldn’t that be true, too?

I can’t speak to what growing up in a religiously observant household is like to a child, but I can say that for me as a child, Catholicism offered an entry into a repertoire almost unmatched of the grisly, radiant, and strange, a world both within and enclosing the everyday world one glimpsed, well, every day. And so much of the iconography was pretty fucking punk rock, as the late Jim Carroll once observed.

WFR: Do you see a difference between “horror” and “the weird” and “the gothic,” and does it matter to you as either a writer or reader?

Koja: Second question first: No, because I don’t read by genre, I read by voice; and when I’m writing, my own voice is always my own: weird stuff, YA stuff, historical, whatever the genre may be.

And first question, yes, there are striations between those genres, or subgenres, but I don’t know that it’s meaningful to me as a reader to parse them. Like the working definition/recognition of art and pornography, I know what I like when I see it, and if I don’t like it I put it away.

WFR: What do you think is the appeal of weird fiction generally? The scare? Catharsis? Something else?

Koja: Perhaps the frisson of confirmation: knowing that other eyes have seen that, yes, all is not what we think it is, all is not as it appears, and is stranger than we can imagine, no matter what the culture at large might pretend. Reading history is good for this too, but you have to be careful about your sources.

WFR: How mysterious can a story remain by the end and keep your attention? If “very mysterious,” what is it you’re enjoying that substitutes for explanation?

Koja: I enjoy the mystery itself: it exercises the sense of awe and the problem-solving beaver that is the brain, both at the same time. And it respects my intelligence, my own ability as a reader to fathom and puzzle stuff out.

WFR: What influences do you think readers might be surprised by?

Koja: Depends on the reader, but maybe Thomas Merton and Louisa May Alcott (not just Little Women, but Eight Cousins, Rose In Bloom, all of it). And Jack London!

WFR: When the weird in weird fiction fails for you, what’s usually the reason?

Koja: Trying too hard. It’s like laughter or desire: the more you try to force it, the less possible it becomes.

WFR: What constitutes “trying too hard”?

Koja: When you can feel the hot breath of the writer on your neck. When capital‑E Effects are forced upon you. When it feels like the guy in the next-to-last booth at Shoney’s trying to explain his dreams, with napkin drawings.

WFR: Is there such a thing as “too weird”? What does “too weird” mean to you when someone says it about your own work?

Koja: It means my stuff is probably not for them. And yes, sure, there’s the “too weird” threshold for any- and everybody. I don’t know that I’ve crossed mine yet as a reader/listener/art-and-movie viewer; the frontier looms ahead.

That said, there is a real difference to me between “weird” and “ugly.” Cruelty to the helpless is irredeemably ugly and I can’t stomach it.

WFR: You mean cruelty to the helpless in fiction? What other things turn you off in fiction?

Koja: In the real world double, triple, a million times yes: the human race’s force majeure vis-à-vis every other species on the planet is ugly to see.

In fiction, if you strip cruelty of its meaning, and use it as a casual effect, I don’t want to read your stuff.

WFR: Is the “reveal” of the other-worldly element in a supernatural story the toughest part for the writer to get right? How do you know how much to reveal and how much to hold back?

Koja: You have to let the story itself guide you, or I do, anyway. I never plan or outline, I follow the text, because the text is always right. The text also sometimes says, “This story is not for you to write, try again later, or never,” so in sorrow I have to obey that, too.

WFR: Once you finish writing a draft of a story, then, to what extent do you “test” your instincts in revision?

Koja: I do very little rewriting. Mostly it’s at the behest of my three first readers: Rick Lieder, Christopher Schelling, and Carter Scholz. Their insights are invaluable to me and I respect what they say. If any or all of them find something unclear in a narrative, or call me out on word usage, or think something is Just No Good, then I listen and go back and look. Sometimes I disagree. Sometimes I change it.

WFR: How often does the real world give you something seemingly inexplicable, something weird, that becomes a spark for a story or novel?

Koja: All the time. A story is an interaction between a being or beings and the surrounding environment, whether that environment is spiritual, internal, emotional, set in the Pleistocene, a haunted house, Marie Antoinette’s last levee, whatever. It’s the playground, the pantry, the backdrop, the dictionary of what story can and does do: it’s the World, however that’s defined for the moment of the narrative.

WFR: Can a story appear to be haunted beyond the intent of the writer?

Koja: Best case scenario!

WFR: What’s the weirdest piece of fiction, story or novel, that you’ve ever read? Why?

Koja: M.R. James and that toothed, bearded mouth under the mundane nighttime pillow. “Casting the Runes” — read at your own risk.

WFR: Not the white blob in the slideshow?!

Koja: That was very bad, too. Actually I just saw a puppet performance in which one of the actors dressed as La Llorona and moved amongst the kids in the audience, scaring the shit out of several. Reminded me fondly of that magic lantern slideshow.

WFR: Finally, if you had to pick one weird writer who is overlooked and needs to be resurrected and better appreciated, who would it be and why?

Koja: Angela Carter, Angela Carter, Angela Carter! Because she is brilliant; because her fairy tales casually gut everything else and lesser; because she can do it all in a compact and elegant space and leave you thinking it over for days at a time, and remembering it forever. Because she could write so much so effortlessly; get her essays, too, while you’re assembling the oeuvre.

 

__
Book

Kathe Koja Velocities
Meerkat Press

‘These tales have an estimable provenance: “Fireflies” first appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction (2002), “Road Trip” in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 16 (2002), and other stories in similarly respected books. In “Velocity,” an artist creates his art by running bicycles into trees. This act may be his unorthodox way of understanding his famous architect father’s suicide, which likewise entailed driving into a tree. Some of the characters in these generally grim stories come to terms with a tragedy they don’t want to face: The man in “Road Trip” has intermittent flashes of a car accident (or moments before), and he not only mourns losing a loved one, but his responsibility for the fatality. Other characters, like Anne in “Coyote Pass,” have trouble simply moving on. Anne had cared for her ailing art-collector mother, Susan, for years. Now that Susan has died, Anne wants to adopt a dog, which her mother had never allowed—but getting a puppy from the kennel takes a bizarre, unsettling turn. Koja tackles a handful of genres, including SF, somber drama, and sublimely understated horror. Nevertheless, the highlight of this impressive collection is the Poe-esque “The Marble Lily,” one of two stories herein that hasn’t been previously published. In it, a morgue janitor in Paris closely observes a female cadaver that he believes holds some sort of mystery. Koja’s prose throughout the book provides a bevy of indelible passages: “He pressed her leg, the bare skin below the edge of her cutoffs; his hand was warm, with long strong workman’s fingers, small hard spots like rivets on the palm, his skin a topographic map of his days: cut wood, carry water, name and number and know all the plants in the world.”’ — Kirkus Reviews

______
Excerpts

from Baby

It’s hot in here, and the air smells sweet, all sweet and burned, like incense. I love incense, but I can never have any; my allergies, right? Allergic to incense, to cigarette smoke, to weed smoke, to smoke in general, the smoke from the grill at Rob’s Ribs, too, so goodbye to that, and no loss either, I hate this job. The butcher’s aprons are like circus tents, like 3X, and those pointy paper hats we have to wear—“Smokin’ Specialist,” god. They look like big white dunce caps, even Rico looks stupid wearing one and Rico is hot. I’ve never seen anyone as hot as he is.

The only good thing about working here—besides Rico—is hanging out after shift, up on the rooftop while Rob and whoever swabs out the patio, and everyone jokes and flirts, and, if Rob isn’t paying too much attention, me and Rico shotgun a couple of cans of Tecate or something. Then I lean as far over the railing as I can, my hands gripping tight, the metal pressing cold through my shirt; sometimes I let my feet leave the patio, just a few inches, just balancing there on the railing, in thin air . . . Andy always flips when I do it, he’s all like Oh Jani don’t do that Jani you could really hurt yourself! You could fall!

Oh Andy, I always say; Andy’s like a mom or something. Calm down, it’s only gravity, only six floors up but still, if you fell, you’d be a plate of Rob’s Tuesday night special, all bones and red sauce; smush, gross, right? But I love doing it. You can feel the wind rush up between the buildings like invisible water, stealing your breath, filling you right up to the top. It’s so weird, and so choice . . . Like the feeling I always got from you, Baby.

It’s kind of funny that I never called you anything else, just Baby; funny that I even found you, up there in Grammy’s storage space, or crawl space, or whatever it’s called when it’s not really an attic, but it’s just big enough to stand up in. Boxes were piled up everywhere, but mostly all I’d found were old china cup-and-saucer sets, and a bunch of games with missing pieces—Stratego, and Monopoly, and Clue; I already had Clue at home; I used to totally love Clue, even though I cheated when I played, sometimes. Well, all the time. I wanted to win. There were boxes and boxes of Grampy’s old books, doctor books; one was called Surgical Procedures and Facial Deformities and believe me, you did not want to look at that. I flipped it open on one picture where this guy’s mouth was all grown sideways, and his eyes—his eye— Anyway. After that I stayed away from the boxes of books.

And then I found you, Baby, stuffed down in a big box of clothes, chiffon scarves and unraveling lace, the cut-down skirts of fancy dresses, and old shirts like Army uniforms, with steel buttons and appliqués. At the bottom of the box were all kinds of shoes, spike heels, and a couple of satin evening bags with broken clasps. At first I thought you were a kind of purse, too, or a bag, all small and yellow and leathery. But then I turned you over, and I saw that you had a face.

*

 

from Pas De Deux

She liked them young, young men; princes. She liked them young when she could like them at all because by now, by this particular minute in time, she had had it with older men, clever men, men who always knew what to say, who smiled a certain kind of smile when she talked about passion, about the difference between hunger and love. The young ones didn’t smile, or if they did it was with a touching puzzlement because they didn’t quite see, weren’t sure, didn’t fully understand: knowing best what they did not know, that there was still so much to learn.

“Learn what?” Edward’s voice from the cage of memory, deep voice, “what’s left to learn?” Reaching for the bottle and the glass, pouring for himself. “And who’ll do the teaching? You?” That smile like an insect’s, like the blank button eyes of a doll made of metal, made from a weapon, born from a knife and see him there, pale sheets crushed careless at the foot of the bed, big canopied bed like a galleon inherited from his first wife—the sheets, too, custom-made sheets—all of it given them as a wedding present by his first wife’s mother: Adele, her name was and he liked to say it, liked to pretend—was it pretense?—that he had fucked her, too, going from mother to daughter in a night, a suite of nights, spreading the seed past four spread legs, and prim Alice could never compare, said Edward, with the grand Adele, Adele the former ballet dancer, Adele who had been everywhere, lived in Paris and Hong Kong, written a biography of Balanchine, Adele who wore nothing but black from the day she turned twenty-one, and “I don’t understand,” he would say, head back, knee bent, his short fat cock like some half-eaten sausage, “what you think you can teach me, aren’t you being just a little bit absurd?”

“We all have something to learn,” she said, and he laughed, left the room to return with a book, Balanchine & Me: Balanchine in color on the cover, a wee black-and-white of Adele on the back. “Read this,” putting the book into her hands. “Find out how much you don’t know.” Whiskey breath and settling back into bed, glass on his chest, big hairy chest like an animal’s, he liked to lie naked with the windows open, lie there and look at her, and “Are you cold?” he would say, knowing she was freezing, that her muscles were cramping. “Do you feel a draft?”

No, she could have said, or yes or fuck you or a million other responses, but in the end she had made none of them, said nothing, got out. Left him there in his canopied bed and found her own place, her own space, living above her studio: dance studio, she had been away for a long time but now she was back and soon, another month or two, she would have enough money maybe to keep the heat on all the time, keep the lights on, keep going. Keep on going: that was her word now, her world, motion at any cost. She was too old to be a dancer? had been away too long, forgotten too much, lost the fascistic grace of the body in torment, the body as a tool of motion, of the will? No. As long as she had legs, arms, a back to bend or twist, as long as she could move she could dance.

Alone.
In the cold.
In the dark.

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Armando, Thanks. Happy that the post hit your zeitgeist. Well, let’s just completely agree to completely disagree on Noe then. Simple enough. Yes, I got your email. Hugs back, sir. ** Misanthrope, Excellent! About the work-related satisfaction. Surely that trouble maker formerly known as LPS can find something in Halloween to sink his teeth into. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Ooh, that does sound fun and interesting. The assignment. Be twisty. ** G, Hi, G! Very happy the post set off fireworks inside mighty you. I have read the novel, and I liked it very much. She’s an excellent scribe. If I had come across a jpeg or gif of that scene/moment in question, you can bet it would have been at the top of the stack or even acting as the post’s crown. Strange I didn’t (come across one). Oh, no, I found the Haneke interview somewhere online. Never met the man, unfortunately, so far. Of course the crappy aspect of the teaching comes from the top. You know me and power structures, but what can you do, you know? I’m glad it’s mostly an upper and promising. Cool about the lecture watchers liking ‘3:45 AM’. That’s not a given these days, goodness knows. Thank you for including it. Same goes to you for the constant inspiration, my friend. Have a swell Friday. It’s deluging rain here today, but no problem. ** Brian O’Connell, Hi, Brian! A very warm welcome to here, sir! I’m, of course, pleased that the post aligned with your interest in Haneke. Interesting about ‘… the most ethically minded … ‘. I can see that, and I think I would agree. I do really like ‘The White Ribbon’. It’s among my favourites of his. ‘Cache’ is very good. They’re all very worth seeing. There is this kind of vibe about Russia where you can believe there are cannibal cults there. Its charisma is very roomy. Yes, QAnon latched onto the blog for about 48 hours a couple of months ago, briefly deciding it was a portal for child trafficking and snuff or something. But then I think realising that the other posts here are about amusement parks and brainiac film/art/writing confused them, and they moved on. Or, oh, I hope so. Scary times are the words. Thanks again for talking with me. Please do so again at the drop of a hat. How are you, apart from the scariness buffeting. What are you up to? ** Steve Erickson, Hi. Mm, I don’t think Haneke’s work is sadistic. I don’t think it intends to humiliate or cause harm, etc. and take pleasure in that. I think it’s manipulative, sometimes too overtly and/or ambitiously, but that’s very different. Good luck isolating that clipping sound. Nice idea. ** Dominik, Hi, Dom! Yeah, if you watch ‘Funny Games’, watch the original, not the English remake, or that’s my advice anyway. Unless you really, really like Michael Pitt. Ah, you know, you’ve seen one boner, you’ve seen ’em all, ha ha. I get a huge amount of ‘rescued animal’ videos on Facebook. Constantly. And I guess I do pause occasionally to watch them. And I guess they know I do. Technology is so weird. Thank you for the promise of funding our film if you get super wealthy! Cheap Trick! You must know I passionately love Cheap Trick! Thank you, thank you. Love that transforms that super tall column in Hősök tere into a giant boner belonging to the boy of your choice and turns Archangel Gabriel into a voluminous spurt of his cum, Dennis. ** Bill, Hi, Bill! I liked ‘Happy End’. It seemed to divide a lot of people I know, and I wouldn’t put it at the top of his oeuvre necessarily, but it’s odd and sharp, I think. The last time I’d heard/seen the words ‘tea lights’ was out of the mouth of my late grandmother many decades ago, so good question. Oh, no, the return of the skyward diceyness. Good luck, pal. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. I’ve heard that too about Haneke personally. Not a surprise really, maybe surprisingly. ** Nick Toti, Hi there, Nick. Good to see you, bud! I do know the work of David Shields, yes. I don’t know him personally. He’s very good. That’s a fantastic idea/possibility: you adapting him. My esteem for him just went further up based his taste in adapters. Cool, man. All luck on that working out if you need luck. If Parc Asterix didn’t have a Halloween makeover with four haunted houses for me to visit soon, I might indeed be a basket case. Take care. ** Okay. I thought I would take the occasion of Halloween to throw some light on one of the books by horror (and more) auteur/author Kathe Koja. Give it your shot. See you tomorrow.