"I wouldn’t emphasize the mental illness so strongly. Sure, in My Son, My Son there is an element of mental illness, but there is also something else, something other, something inexplicably scary about the story. If it’s all explained by mental illness I wouldn’t care very much for a story like that. I met the real man who committed the murder, who will spend 8 1/2 years in a maximum-security mental institution for the criminally insane. I met him and he was really…you could tell he was not right in his head. There were things like he wanted to be crucified on national television live, and he was upset that it wouldn’t happen. There was real madness there, and I don’t harp on it. I do not want to play with it too strongly, then all explanations come down to “it was insanity, period,” which is not the case."
— A Documentary is Just a Feature Film In Disguise: An Interview with Werner Herzog : This is quintessential Herzog. He went and met the madman that was the central character in his film. You’ve got to respect a man that so frequently deals with insanity. Of course, he would characterize it more as “ecstasy,” but the line between insanity and ecstasy is so fine as to be indiscernible.
