IN BETWEEN PALAIS AND DAS LOCH

Back then, deep in the nineteennineties, when I was writing for real money—and so did almost everybody else—I had a stint working for the german leg of UFA Grundy, based in Bonn I think at that time. Or was it Cologne?

However we were four writers in one single room at that time. Storylining soap operas. And we had to show up every day to do what we had been hired to do: Master Joe Eszterhas had layed down the rules of the trade for us to bang your head against the typewriter until something materializes. And so we tried. Did our best. Whatever.

Headwriter was Julius Gruetzke, son of a famous german painter, Johannes, whom I adored, because he had done these fine drawings, portraits that were used in the last movie that had Rainer Werner Fassbinder as an actor himself. Fine title also: Kamikaze 2000. And there still was a restaurant by the banks of river Spree near the train station Friedrichstrasse where they had massive paintings of his. Paintings, both
thick with colour and paint, that displayed an excessive lifestyle of the german male, of their drunkenness and devouring that by that time seemed long way gone down the drain already.

Now Julius, son of a late artist, told me one lesson which I should always stick to (and I tended to almost did.) He went »See, I hold two apartements in Berlin. One I call Das Loch, the other one I dub as Palais.«

I did not get him in full in that time. Nowadays I seem to have understood. Whenever things got bad Julius rented out Palais and retrieved himself to the hole. 

But, as said, that was a very, very long tome ago.