Film
Ahead of his appearance at RBMA Festival New York, we look back at some of Herzog’s craziest tales.
It’s not for nothing that Werner Herzog has a reputation for being possibly the most extreme filmmaker of all time. During his storied career, he’s dragged a real-life steamship over a Peruvian mountain, plotted to murder leading man Klaus Kinski, shot a film on the edge of a volcano and stole a camera to make crazed epic Aguirre, The Wrath Of God… and that’s not even the half of it.
His real life is just as colourful. Watch any one of his extraordinary documentaries and his enthusiasm for the bizarre often sees him going off on delightfully random personal tangents – for example, witness the Chicken Church expedition in volcano documentary Into The Inferno or the off-kilter lecture about albino alligators in Cave Of Forgotten Dreams.
As befits a man who is inspired by life’s great wonders, a lot of strange things have happened to Werner Herzog over the years. Ahead of the Red Bull Music Academy Festival New York 2017 event A Conversation with Werner Herzog On Music and Film on May 9, we’re taking a look at some of the real-life exploits that make the German director such a living legend…
One afternoon while filming an interview with the BBC in the Hollywood hills, Herzog was shot with an air rifle. The pellet caused a pretty unpleasant wound and naturally shook the interviewer and crew. Herzog, however, shrugged off the affair as “not significant” and carried on talking. This isn’t even the first time he’s been fired at. “I was shot at more seriously in my life while filming crossing illegally a border from Honduras into Nicaragua,” said the filmmaker. “The moment itself is unpleasant, but there’s a great exhilaration to be shot at unsuccessfully.”
In a typically unexpected series of unfortunate events, Herzog was first on the scene when, in January 2006, actor Joaquin Phoenix flipped his car while driving in Hollywood. While in the upturned automobile, Phoenix tried to light a cigarette but stopped when he heard the Munich-born director tapping on the windscreen. Petrol was leaking into the car, so Herzog smashed a window and helped Phoenix out of the wreck.
A self-confessed literalist, Herzog is a guy who very much takes things at face value. “For me a chair is a chair,” he says. “I do not reference to other possibilities.” However, one night, when he was at a dinner with his wife and old friend and fellow director John Waters, he had a hilarious moment of clarity. “After 35 years of knowing John Waters I turned to my wife and I said 'I think this man might be gay',” he said of the famously out filmmaker. “For me, a man is a man, I cannot distinguish a gay man from a straight man.”
“Look into the eyes of a chicken and you will see real stupidity,” Herzog once said. “It is a kind of bottomless stupidity, a fiendish stupidity. They are the most horrifying, cannibalistic and nightmarish creatures in the world.” Needless to say, he’s not a fan of our feathered friends, but he does enjoy hypnotising them. “Calm the chicken down,” he explained in a Reddit AMA. “Put its beak on the floor, and then, with determination, draw a line of chalk away from it. Release the chicken, and you will see it will be hypnotised.” While there is no love lost between Herzog and those fowl creatures, he has deeply considered the psychological depths of penguins – he’s just that kind of guy.
A word of warning, never make a bet with Werner Herzog, he takes that sort of this very seriously. One time he wagered fellow filmmaker Errol Morris that he’d never finish his acclaimed documentary Gates Of Heaven. When Morris did indeed complete the film, Herzog, true to his word, chowed down on his footwear at its premiere. The resulting penance was made into the aptly titled short film, Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe.
For more from Red Bull Music Academy Festival New York 2017, click here.
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