1987: Cobra Verde
KK is to tragedy what Andy Kaufman is to comedy: a “black hole sun” who made an event horizon out of his career, blurring the boundary between life and representation to a point of no return, making reality fiction (read here) and fiction reality. Pasquale Squitieri, who directed KK in La vendetta è un piatto che si serve freddo, remembers the way he yelled “realism, realism!” while beating extras “for real” during a quite-pointless saloon fight scene. Sounds just like silly whimsical violence? Then watch “Cobra Verde”’s final sequence: some say KK died for real in that scene, wearing himself out, pulling that fucking boat, conquering Herzog’s Infinite Useless for the very last time.
