On football – Ian Penman in 2014 in LRB:

‘Last week someone on Twitter sent me a photograph of the late German iconoclast Rainer Werner Fassbinder, decked out in the crisp white livery of FC Bayern Munich. Ach, der einzige Fassbinder! A waxy faced slob who worked harder than anyone alive; a queer and dreamy aesthete who necked Bavarian beer by the steinful and counted German league football an all-consuming passion. (All Fassbinder’s passions were all consuming: this was both his song, and his downfall.)
There was a time in my life (closing years of my teens, opening years of my twenties) when I was a complete Fassbinder nut. He had an intense and unforeseen influence on the way I saw the world. (Far more decisive, in retrospect, than any contemporaneous music.) I rushed to see each new Fassbinder film – and there were plenty to see. Some were let-downs, some were slow-burners, some sent me reeling. When Veronika Voss was released in 1982 I went to see it four times in its opening week.
One of the best things about the image of Fassbinder in his Bayern T-shirt is the look on his face: our famed debauchee and grumpy pessimist looks like a little boy who got exactly what he wanted for Christmas, looks almost embarrassed by how happy he is.’

Read the article here.

What to do with the not all-consuming passions? That’s one of the questions Fassbinder wants us to answer.
Perhaps we sould strive to become the man without passions.