Biographies can be as varied as human lives. And yet _Magnificent Obsessions Saved My Life_ is truly an outlier, an (auto)biography of a different kind that traces milestones and turning points in the life of a postwar artist from a dysfunctional family, against the backdrop of his experiences of sexual liberation from the 68 generation and his all-too-personal experience of two deadly pandemics: AIDS and Covid-19\. But these biographical and historical elements of the author's life come to the fore in a continuous dialogue with Hollywood classics, arthouse films, contemporary art and literature. Because a work of cinematic or visual art means nothing if it tells you nothing about your own life: cinema and art are always about what was and what could have been. _Magnificent Obsessions_ addresses these existential questions in text and images, including selections from Brunner's impressive collection of film stills and reproductions of his favorite works of art. As in the movies, people are the center, the protagonists, of Brunner's writings, sometimes bitingly blunt but affectionate, sometimes almost tender. When he loses the love of his life, Swiss art dealer Thomas Ammann, to AIDS, he writes about their shared happiness so as not to be consumed by grief. He remembers the glamorous Elisabeth Bossard, his lover for many years, and relates anecdotes of a flirtation in Venice with Edmund White, the American writer with whom he befriended. It chronicles his love-hate relationship with Swiss filmmaker Daniel Schmid, packed with intimate looks at the late German filmmakers Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Werner Schroeter, their works, and the entire scene that surrounded them. It was the film curator Brunner who brought the films of his friends John Waters and Andy Warhol to Switzerland, bypassing the censors. Brunner knew the light and dark sides of the Dream Factory, but he was always ready to succumb once again to its imitation of life, as Douglas Sirk titled one of his great melodramas.

With a preface by Stefan Zweifel and an afterword by John Waters.

426 pages, 30 × 24 cm, soft cover, text in English.

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