Trivia / Rainer Werner Fassbinder

• Amateur Cast: Fassbinder would cast his lovers and friends in films just because he thought they'd be right for the part. Irm Hermann was a secretary for ADAC, Germany's largest motoring association, before becoming Fassbinder's girlfriend. She'd never acted in her life, but he cast her in his first film and gave her prominent roles in several others, and went on to have a distinguished acting career. In Ali: Fear Eats The Soul, Fassbinder cast his then-lover El Hedi ben Salem as the male lead and the film won multiple awards.
• Copiously Credited Creator: Fassbinder wrote almost every film he directed, and acted in about half of them, but he went beyond that in numerous cases. He edited around a third of his films (albeit under the pseudonym Franz Walsch), and was also credited multiple times in different roles.
  • Turned up to eleven on In a Year of 13 Moons and The Third Generation, Fassbinder’s two films between The Marriage of Maria Braun (which, though released after In a Year of 13 Moons, was made in early 1978) and Berlin Alexanderplatz. During the production of The Marriage of Maria Braun, he burned bridges with go-to cinematographer Michael Ballhaus. Also, he had fallen out the previous year with frequent actor and set designer. Kurt Raab. So on both films, Fassbinder was director, writer, editor, set designer, and director of photography, and he produced The Third Generation.