"If you don’t know the heart of men, you can’t be a director."
—
Werner Herzog. Again.
I know I know, back to back quotes from the same man—I couldn’t help it!
"People always say, ‘The production companies are all so stupid; they do not even want to read my screenplay.’ My answer is just roll up your sleeves and work where there’s real intensity of life. Don’t work in an office. Work as a bouncer in a sex club. Something like that. Work as a guard in a maximum security prison. Earn the money and then make your film, no matter what."
— Werner Herzog. What a guy. Many other bits of excellent advice, too.
Just finished watching Herzog’s first feature, Lebenszeichen (Signs of Life), which is available on YouTube thankfully. I haven’t seen everything of his, but the range goes from good to great of what I have. The man has just never made a bad film. It’s fascinating (biographically) that his first film is about a man going mad because he’s made so many films about crazy people.
There’s always something more to Herzog’s insane characters, though. They are never just labeled insane and disregarded. On the contrary, Herzog relishes the opportunity to observe the conditions surrounding a character when they lose sight of reality and watches with odd delight as they impose their mad will on the world around them. In the case of this film’s main character, the lack of purpose and the stasis of the world around him drives him to action. He goes over the edge when he sights a valley filled with windmills while on patrol. It is a powerful, poetic moment: countless windmills spinning lazily in the countryside. The camera pans and pans and pans, and the windmills go on and on and on. A powerful metaphor for humanity’s complacency and capacity for wasting time.
Roger Ebert linked to this panel discussion with Errol Morris and Herzog from the 2010 Toronto Film Festival that has both men talking about each other’s work. Morris and Herzog discuss this moment in the third video at the 5:45 mark. It’s a great discussion, so go ahead and watch the whole thing if you’ve got time.
"Yes. But shooting a film itself is nothing but banalities. [Then, as though reluctantly, he continues.] However, there’s very rare moments where I get the feeling sometimes I’m like the little girl in the fairy tale who steps out into the night, in the stars, and she holds her apron open, and the stars are raining into her apron. Those moments I have seen and I have had. But they are very rare."
— Werner Herzog. From an interview with GQ in May 2011 after the release of Cave of Forgotten Dreams.
PLASTIC BAG | FUTURESTATES | ITVS (via IndiesLab) - Narrated by Werner Herzog, directed, written, and edited by Ramin Bahrani. Odd, yet beautiful. Thanks to Roger Ebert and Jason Kottke for the link.
"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.
"Werner had had a couple of drinks,” Cage said. “He said in this distraught voice, ‘The iguanas are the best thing in the movie. And I must have five minutes of iguana time! And if I don’t have my full five minutes of iguana time, I will never make another movie again!’ ” (Needless to say, the iguanas stayed in the picture.)"
— Werner Herzog and Nicolas Cage: Partners in crime — latimes.com : Who cannot admire a man that would make such a statement.
First video. Hit Play. Werner Herzog. Eating his shoe. Talking about the culture not having “adequate images.” Genius.
From his bio page:
Werner Herzog (real name Werner H. Stipetic) was born in Munich on September 5, 1942. He grew up in a remote mountain village in Bavaria and never saw any films, television, or telephones as a child. He started travelling [sic] on foot from the age of 14. He made his first phone call at the age of 17. During high school he worked the nightshift as a welder in a steel factory to produce his first films and made his first film in 1961 at the age of 19. Since then he has produced, written, and directed more than forty films, published more than a dozen books of prose, and directed as many operas.
The website is terrible, but the man is amazing.
"The Rogue Film School is about a way of life. It is about a climate, the excitement that makes film possible. It will be about poetry, films, music, images, literature."
— Werner Herzog’s Rogue Film School : 1) I didn’t know Herzog actively participated in a film, uh, “course.” 2) How amazing does that sound?
