Professionally, Wenders left Europe for the United States only once. And it was a disaster. The shooting, or better the two shootings of “Hammett” between 1977 and 1982 as an “employed” director under Francis Ford Coppola’s control ended in a personal nightmare. It was a kind of filmmaking he never would accept. Accustomed to writing his own story which would usually change during the process of filming, and used to choosing his actors and his crew, Coppola’s Hollywood-style approach in the production of “Hammett” was a blow to Wenders’ professional ambitions in the United States. Asked if he wanted to work there again, he said that “it would be too much of a loss of autonomy. The way they despise and destroy their abundance of talent is appalling. The films are not made by artists, but by agents and lawyers.” A couple of years later, his tone appeared to be more moderate: "It was a comprehensive experience [and] one of the most important at the same time.” Nevertheless, ever since “Hammett”, all of Wenders’ movies have been produced and financed through Europe. “America” as a mythical place and the place of his dreams developed in his early youth. The fascination for this country, for its culture, especially for its cinema and its music, has been decisive throughout his life. After seeing “Easy Rider” in 1968, at the age of 23, he later explained that after leaving the cinema he “realized that [he] indeed looked like the people in the film, that [he] loved Jimi Hendrix, that [he’s] not served in many places, and that [he] too spent time in jail for literally nothing." This is not just a statement about a film, more than that, it seemed to be an identification with the protagonists of “Easy Rider”. But, on the other hand, doubts about “American colonization in the heads of Europe” obviously arose just as early. Wenders’ “Hammett”-experience followed the decade of the 1970s, which in the United States, according to the Time Magazine, “as far as foreign films are concerned, [belonged] to the Germans.” Wenders made more movies in or about the United States than any of the protagonists of the New German Cinema, and his early work already mirrors his affinity to (and influence of) U.S. American cinema and music....