Thanks to the British Film Institute, there’s a list of films that played Scala. To celebrate the release of Severin’s new documentary, I’ll share a few of these movies every day. You can see the whole list on Letterboxd.

This was written in two and a half days by Werner Herzog, who was inspired by a book his friend gave him and what he read about Lope de Aguirre. He was on a trip with a football team at the time and someone got so drunk on the bus that they puked all over the script.

Herzog knew who he wanted to be Aguirre: Klaus Kinski. Years ago, as a child, he met the actor when he rented a room in Herzog’s family apartment and proceeded to destroy it in three months, reducing a sink and toilet to dust. He sent the script to the actor and a few days later, at four in the morning, Kinski called him screaming.

Kinski wanted to play Aguirre as a madman. Herzog wanted him to be a quiet menace. So he would enrage Kinski before each shot and wait for the actor’s anger to work itself out and then yell for the camera to roll. This may have backfired, as Kinski was so upset at the noise extras were making while playing cards that he shot a man’s fingertip off, which was soon followed by Kinski trying to leave the set, only for Herzog to claim he would murder-suicide to stop that from happening.

Gonzalo Pizarro (Alejandro Repullés) sends Don Pedro de Ursúa (Roy Guerra), Don Lope de Aguirre (Kinski), nobleman Don Fernando de Guzmán (Peter Berling), Brother Gaspar de Carvajal (Del Negro), Ursúa’s mistress Doña Inés (Helena Rojo) and Aguirre’s teenage daughter Flores (Cecilia Rivera) along with forty slaves down the river to find El Dorado, the city of gold. Of course, things don’t work out that way, leaving us with Aguirre starting a mutiny that ends with him clutching a monkey and yelling, “Who else is with me?” but everyone is dead.

I wish someone had filmed the making of this movie, as Herzog chopped down a tree and was attacked by hundreds of fire ants, Kinski nearly killed an extra by hitting them in the head with a sword, Herzog filming with a camera that he stole from the Munich Film School, the monkeys biting Herzog fifty times and Kinski a few times as well and no regard for history, only the movie that Herzog wanted to make.

Look, we live in a world where there’s a Werner Herzog action figure. Also: Just seeing Kinski’s insane face, brooding on a raft that everyone was really in danger riding, all in the literal heart of darkness making a movie that Herzog almost lost the film for makes me realizing that magic can be real.

You can watch this on Tubi.