The following is repurposed from the journal and correspondence of film director Wolfram Krenkel relating to his unfinished documentary Journey to the Heart of Madness: Ryan Walters’s Playbook for Success in Life and Business before his mysterious disappearance in 2023.
Letter to the Institute of Wolfram Krinkel Studies, June 21, 2023
I
was on location in a remote island I am legally not allowed to disclose
filming a new picture called “Murders from God” when I got a telegram
from the United States. The film was not going well. My entire crew
was suffering from an ailment that translated loosely as “the devil’s
rivers” that was known around the camp as “diarrhea 2.” Our financing
had run out two weeks before when accountants noticed that the eccentric
count who had lavished us with funds for the production was declared
legally demented and his heirs were preparing to tear each other apart
in the legal system. We were trying to get to the mainland to regroup.
The leading man played by the insane actor Kaspar Bullenhoden had been
rampaging throughout the set for weeks in a home-made “reverse
loincloth” that covered his entire body from the neck down except for
his nipples, buttocks, and genitals. He menaced everyone he encountered
after telling us he was beginning an intense biting regimen and was
only held at bay with staves fashioned from tree branches. The telegram
had told me that an American University in the midwest was offering me a
substantial amount of money to make a film about their annual
headbutting championship. I was intrigued.
Journal Entry, July 18, 2023
I
have arrived in West Lafeyette, Indiana, but quite late. They were
anticipating me flying, but I explained that I had instead chosen to
travel with a group of steamship enthusiasts crossing the Atlantic in a
homemade vessel. The seas were violent, and I spent most of it ill
alongside most of the crew. When we were not vomiting, the steamship
enthusiasts quarreled among each other about the authenticity of the
rivets and whether the food on board was period appropriate. Every
night, a particularly irate retired professor of train literature from
Italy threatened to mutiny with much screaming and wagging of his
elaborate mustaches. Finally, this man managed to successfully pull off
his coup after we had arrived in port by getting off the ship first and
declaring himself the captain to a baffled customs agent. The crew got
into an intense shoving match that lasted four hours until police
intervened. The university bursar who I told about my voyage in order
to try to convince him that I had a valid reason for arriving late had
no interest in hearing about the debased madness of man at sea.
Journal Entry, July 19, 2023
There
are complications with the film. It appears that while I was on my sea
voyage, I had missed some budgetary window to secure funding. The film
professor who contacted me told me he had found some funds if I was
willing to alter my project. It appears the football team was looking
to document the activities of the team and had money for a film. I was
instructed to meet with Lorenzo “Wayne” Kragg, the chief financier of
the football team who somehow had no direct ties to the university but
is instead a man who made his fortune selling decorative truck
genitalia. I have no knowledge or interest in football but the
professor was so apologetic that I felt I had to have a meeting out of
politeness.
I was taken to Wayne Kragg’s mansion overlooking
the scenic Celery Bog Nature Area. Mr. Kragg (“Call me Lorenzo
“Wanyne,” he said) met me at the door and led me into the foyer.
Everywhere I looked there were images of trains. On one wall, the
famous nineteenth-century film “L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de La
Ciotat” ran on a loop from a projector while speakers blared train
noises and whistles constantly. This agitated me greatly. I do not
like trains, which I have always seen as the vanguard of man’s violent
incursion against nature. Also I was told that my maternal great-uncles
were all killed in separate and unrelated train accidents. One of them
was bludgeoned to death, but it happened on a train. Lorenzo “Wayne”
led me to a room covered in pictures of football players. He told me he
had heard that I am a filmmaker of some international renown and he was
honored to host me. I could tell he had not seen any of my films, not
even my popular bird documentary “Shrieks of Hostility.”
He
told me he wanted to make a motivational film about the leadership
techniques of the program’s new coach. The coach was young and
inexperienced and Lorenzo "Wayne" wanted to burnish his reputation and
rally the other rich men who donated their money to the football team
around this man. I told him I appreciated the attention, but I do not
make those kind of films. I know nothing about football. In fact, I
find the spectacle of violence and pageantry disgusting and anathema to
everything I think about humanity. I am not opposed to violence, for
example if a man is torn to pieces by a large, flightless bird. But the
organized, symbolized warfare in American football is something I find
odious and intolerable.
Then, I noticed something that changed
my mind. In the corner, I saw a gigantic totem of a man wearing a
football uniform and a hard hat. He is not quite a man. He is a
grotesque caricature of a man, like if a person was drawn by a disturbed
child like my school friend Dieter who was taken away and described as
Bavaria’s youngest pyromaniac. This totem has gigantic bulging, dead
eyes and a swollen, jutting chin. He carries a hammer. It is the stuff
of waking nightmares. I asked Lorenzo “Wayne” what is this repulsive
creature? He told me it was the school mascot “Purdue Pete” and he
prowls the sidelines during athletic contests. I told him I must study
this perverse abomination and the unhinged people that worship him. He
said great, people here love Pete you can put him in the movie as much
as you want. He also offered me enough money to restart my other film
and hire a person specifically to restrain Kaspar from his normal course
of biting and gouging attacks between scenes.
Journal Entry, July 20, 2023
I
met the football coach Ryan Walters in his office. I told him I was
there to learn his leadership secrets. I had already decided that my
film would include none of the nonsense about leadership and I would
instead investigate the twisted iconography of the terrible train goblin
that had repulsed and intrigued me, but I needed to maintain the
pretense. Coach Walters laughed. He told me that he thought that a
motivational film about a first-year head coach was absurd, but he
figured it was an easy way to keep Lorenzo “Wayne” happy, and he had to
indulge him from time to time. Consider that his first Leadership
Secret. I immediately liked him. I understood that you need to
occasionally entertain the whims of maniacs in order to secure funding
for your football program or film about a man who loses his mind trying
to build a homemade spacecraft while you simultaneously try to build a
homemade spacecraft as part of the filming process. Over his shoulder I
noticed a smaller totem of the Pete grimacing at him and seemingly
peering into my soul. I asked him what he thought about Purdue Pete.
He told me that everyone loved Pete. I asked him why because he looked
like he was a demon dedicated to murder. Walters’s face changed. “I
don’t think it’s a great idea to make fun of Pete like that. People
here don’t like that.”
I thought he was joking but he appeared
deadly serious so I changed the subject. I told him that I noticed from
the pictures on the wall in the facility that many of those who came
before him seemed to have large mustaches. Perhaps he should consider
growing a mustache. “I haven’t earned mine yet. Not until he says so,”
Walters said. Not until who says so? Uh, not he, I meant them. The
fans. The fans, he said. Then he told me it was nice meeting me but he
had a practice to prepare for.
Journal Entry, July 21 2023
I
went to the library to research the iconography of Purdue Pete. The
librarian handed me a dusty book on past showing the evolution of the
Pete mascot through the years. He told me to enjoy the book and flashed
a sinister smile. It turns out that Purdue Pete had gone through
several changes dating back to the 1940s. The book showed photos and
drawings of earlier, cruder designs where Pete was somehow more menacing
and more deranged. In one earlier incarnation, he has broad shoulders
and a tiny pin head emanating malice. In another, he has rosy cheeks
like an evil California hamburger mascot. I wanted to retch and recoil
but I could not look away. I sat for hours staring at these photos lost
in some sort of demonic reverie. An unearthly cackle seemed to bounce
around my skull. Eventually I threw down the book and ran out as the
librarian chased me and scolded me, but I could not bear to touch the
book anymore. On my way out I passed a drawing of a Purdue Pete
reminding students to return their books and I threw my knapsack at it
in disgust, exploding the half a turkey sandwich I had saved from my
lunch all over a poster explaining the Dewey Decimal System.
Journal Entry, July 21, 2023
Last
night I was unable to sleep. I had a vision that I was trying to move
but was unable to because I had ingested some sort of psychedelic or
poison that prevented me from using my limbs. I was affixed vertically
on some sort of plank like I was standing up and could not see below me
but I felt a rattling. I was able to move my eyes enough to see that my
plank was mounted to a railroad track. I heard a blood-curdling bellow
that sounded like someone trying to make a train whistle. That’s when I
saw it coming. A shadowy figure was pumping one of those old time
railroad vehicles and heading straight towards me. There was a blinding
lantern mounted on it but I could see it also had a battering ram
shaped like a Purdue Pete head. As it came closer, I could see the
figure pumping was a malformed Pete, a sort of hideous amalgam of all of
the historical and discarded Petes. The pump car was increasing speed
and coming straight for me. Right when it was about to collide with me,
I woke up screaming.
In fact, I had actually faced this exact
situation when I was filming "The Grim Melánge" with the insane actor
Kaspar Bullenhoden. We were in the desert and had run out of Kaspar’s
favorite sarsaparilla brand. One night, I awoke to find myself lashed
to a train track and Kaspar coming at me with a similar hand cart. His
eyes were wide and he was singing passages from "Salome" in an agonized
shriek. He rammed me thirteen times. My ribs were badly bruised. I
could hardly speak and the doctors told me that if I laughed I would
collapse into agony but fortunately I never laugh.
Journal Entry, July 24, 2023
I
arrived at the football facility to get practice footage. The players
are engaged in inscrutable drills and the coaches are bellowing out an
indecipherable array of football jargon. During breaks, I filmed short
interviews with whatever players were around. I received very few
usable answers. My line of questioning was simple and straightforward:
what do you think about nature’s indifference to man’s thoughts and
suffering? Most of the players simply laughed or said "I don't know" or
asked me who I was and what I was doing there. One player told me that
“I am the indifference of nature to man’s suffering, on the football
field.” I was so disturbed I had to leave.
I tried to interview
Coach Walters on film. It took me several hours to light his office.
The Purdue Pete on his shelf still stared at me, and I ended up covering
it with a camera case. But when it was time for him to start, an
assistant told me the coach was too busy. I began to pack my things.
As I put away my camera equipment I thought I heard something stir at
the door. I looked up but no one entered. Then a piece of paper shot
under the door with my name on it. I opened it. There was a hasty and
careless scrawl that only said “Pete Says Stop.” I opened the door and
looked to see anyone who could have slid the note, but the hallway was
empty. The door slammed behind me and locked with all of my equipment
inside. I had to try to convince a janitor to let me back in, but he
had to talk to three different people in the football department to find
someone who had heard of me until I found someone who had recognized me
as the villain from the action movie "Operation: Cobra Strike: A Jack
Kicker Film."
As I headed back towards the hotel, I noticed
something strange. A startling number of people I passed had large,
blond mustaches. I thought I had noticed a slightly larger number of
people you ordinarily see with a blond mustache, but now I was seeing
them everywhere. And every person with a blond mustache seemed to look
at me, if even for a second, and glare at me. I have only seen that
look of pure hatred once in my life, and it was when the insane actor
Kaspar Bullenhoden had chased me for three days through the Cambodian
wilderness with a homemade nunchuk because I had told him to say “excuse
me” instead of “pardon me” in a scene.
Journal Entry, July 25 2023
It
is the middle of the night. I have heard a nonstop rattling in my room
for several hours. I initially thought it was the air conditioner, so I
turned it off and the room immediately became impossibly warm and humid
in the steamy Indiana night. I am soaked in sweat. I tried to call
the front desk but no one answers and the humidity seems to have swelled
my door closed and jammed. A storm has rolled in and the rain pounds
on my window while the thunder bellows outside. I pound on the door and
scream for help but no one answers. Perhaps I am going mad. But I
have suffered from the entire scale of filmmakers’ madnesses in my
career: desert madness, jungle madness, and space madness, and this does
not feel like any of them.
I look outside the window and see
only my own face reflected in the window, but when a flash of lightning
illuminated the courtyard I could swear I saw the face. The eyes. The
chin. I thought I should
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