It Came From Memphis

Lovely afternoon spent drinking coffee and eating cake with Sebastian Horsley, who is becoming something of a legend around these parts for his, er, unusual activities – undergoing crucifixion, frequenting prostitutes, and now writing what he calls his ‘unauthorised autobiography’. We’re talking about the possibility of doing a documentary on his life, or maybe a feature film. The problem is, I can’t imagine anybody who could possibly play Sebastian better than he does himself – well, Klaus Kinski maybe, but he’s pretty definitively dead. Tried to screen one of my earlier films for Sebastian but the videotape doesn’t work anymore – possibly due to water damage from the year and a half I spent living on boats. I bet Stanley Kubrick never had these problems. In the end we watched scenes from My Best Fiend, Herzog’s film about Kinski, as we sipped our coffee and nibbled our tart au citron, and Sebastian told me how his book starts with him surviving his mother’s attempt to abort him and ends with his crucifixion. Then I walked him back to the tube and as we passed a posh-ish block of flats he said “I went to an orgy there, organised by these right-wing types...” I enjoy learning these morsels of information about my neighbourhood.