I am Gustav Klankenheimer and they love me. I have clawed away at the jaded façade of cinema and forced the bourgeoisie to inhale deeply upon the excremental stench that permeates all our lives. ‘Look,’ I order them, ‘look at the shit’. ‘Smell it,’ I demand, gripping the backs of their skulls and forcing their powdered snouts down into the stinking crap. ‘Eat the shit’ I scream. ‘EAT EXISTENCE’. It is intense. We are . . . each of us, . . .every one of us, . . .all of us, . . .terrified . . .and . . .aroused. I make them eat the shit and they LOVE me for it.
My latest film is called F**king Dog. It features an emaciated dog being severely beaten by a blubbering and incoherent alcoholic sheet metal worker. This abuse goes on for four and a half hours. A lone bagpipe wheezes lethargically on the soundtrack. The dog finally shits and then dies. This is death, all our deaths, and the life, all our lives, that precedes it. This is suffering. This is IRAQ!
Cannes rise to their feet. They cheer. They applaud. One woman screams and tears open her blouse. Her breasts are wantonly exposed, like a greedy infant I clasp to them and feed. I feed for dear life. I Feed. FEED! This garners more applause from the assembled cognoscenti who then begin to shriek in unison like panic stricken primates at the approach of a large jungle cat. The complimentary vol au vents are hurled into the air. ‘Bravo le nouvelle merde’ roars a member of the newly liberated hoard as he discards the petty presumptions that have guided him all his life and falls to the floor on all fours. Soon everyone is on all fours, salivating and tearing at each other’s garments with their teeth until they are naked and bloody and rutting like dogs. Filthy, mange ridden DOGS! They are like dogs . . .yet I have never seen anything so human.
The cloak room attendant looks puzzled as the editor of Cahiers Du Cinéma mounts his lower leg. F**k that cloakroom philistine. What knows he of torment? What knows he of the abyss? What knows he of flickering fluorescent bulbs, steadily dripping faucets, abandoned foetuses in dingy train station toilet cubicles?
We are all desperate starving dogs being slowly beaten to death by drunken sheet metal workers. We are all the nouvelle merde. This is the stench of life and I, . . .I, . . .I, . . .I AM GUSTAV KLENKENHEIMER!!!!! LOVE ME!
