If you saw the actor Volker Spengler first you might want to cast him in dumb-guy role, a bit like he is here. He can be awkward, wobbly, and peer at you through thick glasses. You might just want to stick him in your movie and get him to peer, as he does at the creepy Kusters family funeral, much photographed by the Frankfurt press.

Spengler also reminds me of Tim Robbins, though not when he's playing Elvira in In a Year of Thirteen Moons; but that's just his build and the way he lurches about. He's funny.

I wonder how long it took him to manage his appearance in Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven? An afternoon or a few days? One would kill to know how the Fassbinder troupe worked, and whether it really was as fast for everybody else as it was for him. I suspect it was.

In the above photo you can see a whole gang of Fassbinder collaborators following Ingrid Caven, and Volker Spengler is on her left.