Life'll Kill Ya

Here's a pair of obits you're never likely to see anything like again:


Both of these people were fiercely unique in their own way, which didn't really fit in to how society might have hoped for them.

Warren Zevon I discovered through my friends with better music taste. I had actually seen him years before in Atlanta somewhere, and dismissed him as a drunken California-ized Tom Waits. Friends encouraged me to look deeper, and I found that under that godawful Jackson Browne production was a real songwriter. Not the greatest singer, mind you -- but the soul of a poet nonetheless. A funny poet at that. How many songs can you name about gorillas who trade places with yuppies and discover the shallowness of their existence?

Some of my favourites of his songs are probably some of yours -- "Werewolves of London," "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner" and "Lawyers, Guns and Money," among many others. And how can you not love a song called "My Shit's Fucked Up"? He was, as one of my friends would say, an individual. A rare quality these days.

His heartbreaking final year on Earth is being thoroughly documented elsewhere so I won't go over it here. For most people, his vision can easily be condensed into a handy "Greatest Hits" package with maybe a bonus track or two from his last, The Wind. Those willing to dig deeper will find a great deal more -- it's rough and often unpolished, unvarnished, unkempt ... but it's uniquely Warren Zevon. Not many people leave a last request so eloquent as "Keep Me In Your Heart (For a While)."

Will do, Warren.

Leni Riefenstahl, for those who don't know, was Hitler's documentarian. Unlike Zevon, she lived exactly long enough, managing (as she pointed out in her autobiography) to have "Five Lives." Many still shun her for her close working relationship with Adolph Hitler and the Third Reich, but anyone who actually talked to her knew that she was little more than a pawn in that game (though she knew this and played herself well), and didn't know or share his views on the Holocaust at the time. But she refused to varnish the truth of her past, admitting freely that she was fascinated with Hitler and the effect he had on the people and country of Germany.

Let me make this absolutely clear -- I do not condone the Nazis or harbor any admiration for their acts. I particularly loathe bigotry against Jews. But just as I can enjoy a Wagner opera and still hate his anti-Semitism, so too can I admire Riefenstahl's cinematic triumphs and her "Wonderful, Horrible" life.

In 1993 in an extraordinarily brave move, the Enzian Theatre brought Leni in for a screening of a documentary about her life, and I got to meet and (briefly) talk with her. Several friends expressed reservations about the wisdom of attending such an event, and there are those in my wife's family who may be appalled that I admire her -- but I was not afraid to be seen shaking hands with a piece of living history -- the value of her work trumps her circumstances.

She was an amazingly beautiful woman for her age (91 at the time I met her), and sharp as a freakin' tack. She did not pull punches. She did not apologise for working for the Nazis, and she did not apologise for making "Triumph of the Will" (nor should she have -- it's a masterpiece). She said repeatedly that she did not fully know about the Holocaust until the end of the war, and did not approve of Hitler's anti-Semitism. She pointed out that she was never a member of the Nazi party, almost unheard of among people that close to Hitler and evidence that she was able to stay independent of the monster she worked for. Ask yourselves what you might have done in the same position -- and if you want an honest answer, rent The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl, or go watch Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary, another film featuring a member of Hitler's inner circle.

Leni talked at length about her films (Triumph and Olympia, the latter of which is a must-see for any student of film, athletics, politics, propaganda or history), and about what she had been doing since (mostly still photography of the obscure Nuba tribe in Africa). At the time we talked, she had just started what would turn out to be her final "life" -- photographing sharks and scuba diving (which she did even as she turned 100). I've always been fascinated by people like this, especially women.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that I feel a loss when we lose "complicated" people like Zevon and Riefenstahl. Both are people who are loved or hated by many -- but really can't be put in those boxes so easily. I appreciate that.