That’s awesome. My family is, my father is a Slovakian. He’s the first generation American of the family. My last name’s Kikta, so it’s pretty obviously Slavic . This is kind of a random question, and forgive me if I’m wrong but I read that (Rainer Werner) Fassbinder is a big influence of yours. Is that true?
Well, to a certain extent, I started watching Fassbinder at the end of editing What Is It? which was 98-99. So in a certain way, it’s not like an early initial influence but I do admire his work. He’s fantastic.
He’s one of my top five directors. Do you have a favorite film of his?
I have a number of favorites of his, the first film that I saw where I realized what a great director he was, was at the L.A. County Art Museum. I saw a projection of Ali: Fear Eats The Soul which I would say that was probably his first truly great film that he made, although he made interesting films even before that. But that one is just really perfect structurally, emotionally. But he’s made a number of great films. Berlin Alexanderplatz is a real feat..to his last film that he completed while he was alive was Veronika Voss.
That one is really fascinating and also it’s based on a very interesting actress very interesting actress who’s in (Carl Theodor Dreyer’s) Vampyr which is, I think, the first sound incarnation of Dracula from the 1930’s or 1940’s, very early sound (it’s 1932) whose name I’m forgetting right now….is it Sylvia Schmidt? (It is Sybille Schmitz) but like Veronika Voss, it’s based on her. So it was based on a real actress and she was a very interesting actress. Very, very good. She’s in another German-language film called Ferryboat Maria, which was an interesting film as well. Well, I’m sure I saw that at UCLA.
She had an otherworldly quality and she was genuinely addicted to opiates, which is of course, which is what Veronika Voss is about. He’s (Fassbinder’s) made so many films in such a short time. So, so impressive and I mean, he made so many, there’s a portion of those that are just truly great. The thing about his films that I find particularly interesting is his ability to have the nuance of…he understood the psychology of what people need from each other and how people utilize each other.
