Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Rainer Werner Fassbinder emerges in Andy Warhol’s diary as a vivid but fragmentary presence: a filmmaker encountered at work, remembered for his flamboyant clothes and unsettlingly unpredictable manner, and then abruptly reported dead at thirty-seven. The entries do not offer a full biography; instead, they preserve a sequence of impressions that becomes more poignant when the news of his death arrives.

Encounters in Berlin

On March 2, 1982, Warhol visited the set of Querelle, a film Fassbinder was directing in Berlin and identified in the diary as being by Genet. Brad Davis starred. Warhol had his picture taken with Davis and obtained his autograph on an ashtray for Jon Gould, turning the visit into a small exchange of souvenirs as well as a look at the production.

Fassbinder made an immediate impression through his appearance. He wore leopard-skin jodhpurs, which struck Warhol as outrageous; someone nearby suggested that Fassbinder had dressed that way especially for Warhol, because he usually wore plain black leather. The diary presents this as another person’s speculation, not as an explanation Fassbinder himself supplied. Warhol compared his appearance to that of a circus trainer. Davis, by contrast, seemed delicate and strange to him, and Warhol thought he looked much better in person than on the cover of Interview. The observations show Warhol taking in the scene through clothes, faces, and the gap between a printed image and a person standing before him.

The Film Beyond the Set

Warhol and his companion later attended a screening of the film they had watched being made, but they saw only an hour and a half. Warhol had a lunch engagement and left before the screening was complete; the film still had about forty minutes to run. His assessment was limited to what he had seen: that portion seemed acceptable to him, but the diary does not record a judgment of the work as a whole.

The incomplete screening and the earlier set visit give the film a presence in the diary without turning it into a sustained review. Fassbinder first appears amid the activity of production, then through a partial viewing, and later through the practical work of making a poster. In another entry, Warhol records working with Rupert Smith on the Fassbinder film’s poster until eight o’clock. The production thus reaches him not only as a director’s performance on set but also as a finished image to be prepared for public presentation.

A Visit to Warhol’s Office

When Fassbinder and his producer came to Warhol’s office on April 20, Warhol told Fassbinder that he loved the movie. After they left, the producer returned and explained that he had left Fassbinder in a Village pornography shop. Warhol treated the episode as another instance of Fassbinder’s strangeness, rather than as evidence for a more complete account of his character.

Warhol’s description of the visit stresses how differently Fassbinder seemed to behave with different people. He had been nice when introduced to the boys at the office, but peculiar when introduced to Lidija, the exercise teacher. The contrast is specific to Warhol’s observation: the diary does not say what Fassbinder did or why his manner changed. Its portrait is made from these quick social readings, where an ordinary introduction can become evidence of a personality that resists easy interpretation.

Death and Retrospective Measure

On June 9, Thomas Ammann called Warhol with the news that Fassbinder had died by suicide. Warhol connected the news to his earlier impression, recalling that Fassbinder had seemed unusually strange at the office. He also recorded two stark facts: Fassbinder was thirty-seven and had made forty films. The count gives the brief notice a measure of the director’s productivity, while his age makes the news feel abruptly final.

In retrospect, the diary’s scattered details form a compressed arc: the director at work in Berlin, the unfinished screening, the office visit, the poster made with Rupert Smith, and finally the call from Thomas Ammann. Fassbinder is not given an extended interior life in these passages. Instead, Warhol’s record preserves the force of a presence as he encountered it—distinctive in dress, variable in manner, and associated with a remarkable volume of work—before reducing the distance between a passing celebrity encounter and the fact of his death.