Udo Kier: The Movieline Interview

Have you seen Twilight or New Moon?

I saw just the trailers. I understand the success of the films, of course, because they are very good-looking people, young people, and they have a young audience. The world situation at the moment is very bad, and people in crisis situations are always looking for idols. So you had James Dean, now you have the vampire stuff. I have nothing against it, and I'm very happy the film is successful and the industry is being supported by films like that. There's always two things -- the art films, like my next film with [My Winnipeg director] Guy Maddin shooting in Canada -- and commercial films. I like to be in both.

Your former collaborator Andy Warhol had a genius for combining the two.

Andy Warhol, speaking now purely as a filmmaker, was a revolution in filmmaking. The real Andy Warhol films were basically the art films -- like Empire and Henry Geldzahler smoking a cigar -- those were basically the Warhol films. But films like Trash and Flash, Dracula and Frankenstein were films directed by Paul Morrissey. The thing is, he not only invented the expression, "In the future, everybody will be famous for 15 minutes," but he brought beautiful people from the street. Transvestites or whoever wanted to be in movies just knocked at his door, and if they had personality they were in his films. It's such a different period.

Who discovered Joe Dallesandro?

I think Paul Morrissey discovered him.

What were your memories of working with him?

At that time I was very connected to modern art, so I saw Trash and Flash, which were very cleverly marketed in Europe, because they could get away with much more under the auspices of art. You could even get away with an erection on screen. I had seen the films, and he presented at that time, me not knowing America very well, a very typical American college boy or man. You know -- the typical American type. I was so busy with being the vampire, and he was totally the opposite of myself.

Do you think he was fully aware of how he was being portrayed? Was he in control of his image at all?

Do you think everybody who is a sex symbol knows how to use it? [Laughs] I guess he knew very well what he was doing. I wouldn't say he was "used," but I'm sure he was aware of what they wanted him to present.

Speaking of sex, a whole generation came to know you through your involvement in the Madonna Sex book, and in the video for "Deeper and Deeper." How did that come about?

Well, Madonna had seen My Own Private Idaho, and I was in New York. It was very secret. My agent told me that Steven Meisel wanted to see me and it's for a book, and the rumor was it had something to do with Madonna. So I went there, and met Madonna, and she asked me if I'd like to do photographs for her book, and I said yes. And so we did a section in a tuxedo, and I went back to L.A., and I got a call asking me if I'd be up for some hardcore, and I said yes, of course, any time with Madonna. And so that was the book. Later on, I got a call from her people saying they're doing a black and white video for "Deeper and Deeper" and she wanted me to play a role. I like people who are ... I use the word zeitgeist -- setting trends. I admire Madonna that she is still doing what she's doing.

Do you find people just assume you're into fetishes and fringe sex acts, and is that actually the case?

That's why it all works. In my private life I'm totally the opposite of what I present on screen. I like gardening, I love to plant trees and see them growing, I rescue dogs -- I have three dogs -- and I like to cook for friends. For real friends, and I don't have that many, so I don't cook that often. So I'm totally the opposite. When I'm doing things like sex books, or playing a vampire, it's like fun for me. I have fun and let it out, then go back to my gardening and do that. As I always say, to be the devil you have to be the angel -- otherwise it doesn't work. Of course going back, the devil was an angel who got bored of being an angel.

I think that's why I have so much fun with it, because evil has no limits. I'm writing now a new film, which I will do next year, which is about a vampire who bites beautiful women in their legs. Because I'm tired of this vampire cliché where there's blood on their neck and they fall back and two little marks are revealed. So I bite women in the legs, until the end when I get to a beautiful woman and she has a wooden leg, and I bite her in the leg and my teeth get stuck in the leg. I mean, come on! You have to have fun with it.

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