A Problem With Suits

Karl Krogstad’s early career was rife with missed opportunities to make big bucks — but he’s never stopped capitalizing on creative freedom.

When indie filmmaker Karl Krogstad crosses the street from his loft to his favorite restaurant, he always orders a special crepe by name, the “Karl Krogstad.” It mixes ingredients eccentrically, just like his experimental collages, dramas, animated romps and documentaries, as well as his new indie filmmaker’s guidebook, Shot to Death: How and Why Karl Krogstad Makes Films. The author will be autographing copies at Tacoma Public Library on December 3 as part of the series “Three Thursdays with Karl Krogstad,” which also includes a Krogstad film event at the Grand Cinema December 10 and an exhibit of forty-three of his paintings that opens at nearby Two Vaults Gallery on November 19.

Photo by Kyle Johnson

So, how many films has he made since 1968? “Aaugh! When you get old, you don’t know anymore. Over seventy.” Not bad; he’s sixty-one.

The last time I saw Krogstad, in 1986, he was laughing like a madman while directing Debra Winger, who asked me, “Do you want me to unbutton my pants?”

Disappointingly, she wore pants that, when unbuttoned, only revealed a foldout fabric pouch. She disappointed Krogstad, too; and the thwarted video she starred in still haunts him. Scripted by their mutual friend Tom Robbins and shot to a click track, it almost became a Randy Newman project. But Newman was getting divorced and depressed. “I’ve never seen a more sad person, and I was clumsy. I’ve met an enormous number of people, big people, that I wish I’d handled differently. I mean,
I was the guy who told B. B. King what music video was. I spent a day with Bonnie Raitt. I was not taking her seriously, and that was stupid.”

He could have parlayed his indie cachet into a huge career, riding music video to the top of Hollywood like David Fincher or Spike Jonze. Or he might have made it like his friend Gus Van Sant, who started out at the same time, saw all Krogstad’s films, wrote the introduction to his book and sees him annually at the joint birthday party Krogstad throws for himself, Tom Robbins and Van Sant.

“One year Tom brought Debra Winger,” Krogstad recalls. “It was hard to see her.”

Krogstad had torpedoed an even better chance at the big time in 1973, in the days when he used to go three times a year to Los Angeles, lunch at the Polo Lounge near the grossly obese, purple-cape-clad Orson Welles, and take meetings with the great cinematographers whose works he’d studied scene by scene — about forty geniuses, from Sven Nykvist on down. One day he decided to see how animators filmed the computerized Pillsbury Doughboy. The president of the company, Mr. Peterson, called Krogstad up to his office to show him the commercials he made for Japanese TV — as wild as anything Krogstad had concocted, and a magic carpet to mainstream U.S. success. Then Peterson said, “I want to hire you as a director.”

“It’s 1973, OK? I’m really young,” says Krogstad, gently shaking his head. “I said, ‘I’d like to get better at what I do. Give me another year or two, then I think I’d probably be ready.’”

“Do you regret it?” I ask Krogstad.

“No, I don’t,” Krogstad replies. “All of my life has been this amazing success. I think it’s my Norwegian side that lets me turn down things other people would never turn down. Also, I don’t like heat, I have asthma and I have a huge problem with suits.”

Krogstad does have some regrets about letting the real estate fortune that funded his films slip through his fingers. “I owned eight houses in Seattle,” mourns Krogstad. Eight average Seattle houses would now be worth $3,296,712. “That all went away in the ’80s through, dare I say, basic mismanagement of property.”

He’d like the money back, but he thinks his life is a bargain. He gets to make totally personal movies and paint at his Willapa Bay studio and on regular trips to France.
Reading Northwest author Greg Olson’s recent book on David Lynch made Krogstad wonder how come Lynch got away with making both weird movies and big money.

“He has a problem with suits, too.”