Werner Herzog - Deeper reasons

Werner Herzog
It is a very heavy question. There is no frivolity in answering this. I cannot really argue. It is as it is. I wish this singer was still alive and hadn't seen Stroszek at that moment. But deep at the bottom of my heart I do believe that Stroszek was not the reason that he killed himself. I do believe that he must have had some very, very serious deeper other reasons and he may have, and I'm very cautious, he may have used the film as a ritual step into what he was doing. 

In 1977 Werner Herzog made a movie named "Stroszek" (Ebert called it "One of the oddest films ever made")
Three years later Ian Curtis lead singer of the band "Joy Division" viewed it on television before killing himself.  The connection between these two incidents isn't significant.  Having had my own deathtrips in the past I am familiar with the ability to find solace and release in cinema.  The term "Cinematherapy" applies to the belief you can find temporary relief from your woes "forget your problems with a big bowl of mental strawberry ice cream" (you feel depressed...You watch a "Chick flick" etc.).  Alternatively you can find connections in cinema that influence /touch you at a specific time...in the immediacy of it all.  It's a notion I am very familiar with.  A roomate once told me I was the only person she knew who "Watched scenes from movies."  And I do...the Saraghina dancing on the beach for example (8 1/2) it's my favorite movie scene.
When I met Gregg Araki I bought a movie I only knew vaguely about from a trailer I had seen a trailer for when I saw a midnight movie.  Years later I found myself in the arms of Matt..Offering comfort while watching that movie..Cinema therapy.

After what I considered the best years of my twenties...I left the apartment in NoHo I shared with a friend at the time / moved in and out of east Hollywood...and ultimately moved back home with plans of splitting part of a duplex with my sister and her guy.
It was there that I met Matt....We met online and I didn't see the logic in him having any interest in someone like me and well....ultimately he was the first to come that would show me this idea.,,,the idea that there was other individuals out there just as damaged as me.  Maybe I was attracted to the idea of being able to save them, offer them comfort I always sought? I don't know...But Matt started it all.  Now we had a friendship that lasted a bit, but really only had a few dates.  On one date we went to a movie in Santa Monica that seemed interesting.
"Grizzly man" was the story of Timothy Treadwell...a documentarian who lived in the wild with bears, ultimately he and a companion were mauled by a bear.  Werner Herzog made a documentary in an attempt to figure out these eccentric tendencies exhibited by Treadwell which ultimately lead to him being killed.  Matt put his arm on my shoulder.
He put it there and he held it for a bit.
The guy I didn't think would be interested in me because he seemed on another level of some unattainable something or other in this queer world was interested in me.
Needless to say it didn't go anywhere.
I grew older
My roomate Brian introduces me to "Joy division"
I find the Ian curtis connection
I see Herzog in "Mr.Lonely" and weep.
One day he messages me and tells me he misses me yada yada yada we're hiking.
He tells me any of a number of personal woes and we share some moments.  I realize at that point something I will always keep in mind from that point on...something that I think is best told in a poem by Willa Cather
"The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one's own."
So we sit on the futon and he's upset.  I know he needs something...some sort of emotional release.
I put on "Harold and Maude" and by the end he has his head on my shoulder (think "Mysterious skin")

08/01/2009
Book soup
I'm next in line to meet Werner Herzog and suddenly I realize at this point that my signature project isn't just about these movies anymore.  It's not high school and good times, ex girlfriends and our "prom of doom" horror movie athon we had on the date of the actual prom....It was just about people and times.  And Herzog is there and i'm thinking Brian and Joy division, and Matt....Matt met me at a very strange time in my life, sort of one in his too.
Herzog signs my arm and I thank him.
cinematherapy works
just avoid Herzog movies when you're depressed.