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I Couldn't Roam Wildly And Speak Secretly With Villagers [in North Korea]. No Way You Could Do That. And Honestly, I Didn't Even Try. I Was Realistic Of What I Could Do And Yet Persuaded Them Into Accepting Numerous Things That I Shouldn't Have Filmed.

-Werner Herzog

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I Couldn't Roam Wildly

Werner Herzog

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I Couldn't Roam Wildly And Speak Secretly With Villagers [in North Korea]. No Way You Could Do That. And Honestly, I Didn't Even Try. I Was Realistic Of What I Could Do And Yet Persuaded Them Into Accepting Numerous Things That I Shouldn't Have Filmed.

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Of Course The Entire Planet Earth Consists Of Magma Under Us, And Only The Very Inner-core Is Different.

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Spirit Of Immersion And Curiosity And Awe And Participation Is Something Which Timothy Treadwell And I Have In Common.

When You Look At The Paintings At Chauvet Cave, They're Not Primitive Or Like Children's Little Scribbles, It Bursts On The Scene Fully Accomplished And When You Look Through The Faces Of Cultural History, Art History, It Has Never Gotten Any Better.

We Are Not Accountants, We Are Not Accountants Who Do Number After Number After Number Of Storyboard Images, A Robot Could Do It Ultimately, But What I'm Doing A Robot Cannot Do.

The Collapse Of The Stellar Universe Will Occur - Like Creation - In Grandiose Splendor.

If You Want To Do A Film, Steal A Camera, Steal Raw Stock, Sneak Into A Lab And Do It!

I Think Irish People Started To Move To The United States - Many Things That Were Of Consequence. And It Was A Tiny And Mild Event Compared To What Had Happened 74,000 Years Ago.

We Ought To Be Grateful That The Universe Out There Knows No Smile.

When I See A Face, I See A Face In General And I See You Are Curious, I See The Curiosity But I Don't Not Look After A Dermatological Report Of Your Cheeks, And That's What You See When You're Too High-resolution. And Now Desperately In Post-production, In Color Grading, They Are Trying To Wipe Out The Precision Of The Dermatological Report.

I Don't See Poetry As Something That Has To Do With Too Much Emotion Anyway. It Has To Do With Language.

I Doubt That Vr Will Really Replace The Quality Of Books. If You Want To Go Into Let's Say The Prado In Madrid And You Want To Go Into Hieronymus Bosch Or Whatever, You'd Rather Go Into Books And You Take Your Time And It's Sitting There All Day Long And You Go Back And Revisit It And It Becomes Part Of Your Physical Life.

Get Used To The Bear Behind You.

I Think I'm A Prudent Filmmaker.

I'm Not A Citizen Of America, I Cannot Vote. But It Is Fascinating Because There's A New Kind Of Protagonist Out There That We Didn't Expect. By The Way, I'm Not In Any Panic At All.

The Opinion Of The Public Is Sacred. The Director Is A Cook Who Merely Offers Different Dishes To Them And Has No Right To Insist They React In A Particular Way. A Film Is Just A Projection Of Light, Completed Only When It Crosses The Gaze Of The Audience[...]

Well They Are Very Frightening For Me Because Their Stupidity Is So Flat. You Look Into The Eyes Of A Chicken And You Lose Yourself In A Completely Flat, Frightening Stupidity. They Are Like A Great Metaphor For Me... I Kind Of Love Chicken, But They Frighten Me More Than Any Other Animal.

Martin Luther Was Asked, What Would You Do If Tomorrow The World Would Come To An End, And He Said, 'i Would Plant An Apple Tree Today.' This Is A Real Good Answer. I Would Start Shooting A Movie.

I Know What I'm Talking About And I've Never Been Over Budget, In 70 Films.

I Work Very Fast And Steadily, And I Don't Hardly Ever Notice That I'm Working. It Feels Like Just Breathing Or Walking When I Do Films.

May I Propose A Herzog Dictum? Those Who Read Own The World, And Those Who Watch Television Lose It.

I Cannot Work Fast Enough. I Cannot Cope Fast Enough, Really. And Just Releasing A Film Is Hard.

There Are Specific Times Where Film Noir Is A Natural Concomitant Of The Mood. When There's Insecurity, Collapse Of Financial Systems - That's Where Film Noir Always Hits Fertile Ground.

I Always Had A Feeling, For Example, That There Should Be Something From Verdi's "requiem" In The Film. You Hear It When You See The Lava Flow In Iceland. That Turned Out To Be A Very Easy Choice.

While You Are Walking You Would Learn Much More About Filmmaking Than If You Were In A Classroom. During Your Voyage You Will Learn More About What Your Future Holds Than In Five Years At Film School. Your Experiences Would Be The Very Opposite Of Academic Knowledge, For Academia Is The Death Of Cinema. It Is The Very Opposite Of Passion.

I Have Learned A Lot Through Defeats, And, Until Today, It's - I'm Still Haunted By Defeats, And They Do Happen. Sometimes, A Film Of Mine Is Rejected. And How Do You Deal With It? And You Have To Learn How To Deal With It And Survive Anyway.

This Climate Surrounding Me Has Reached Clive Oppenheimer. In Practical Terms He Sees That I'm Not Interested In Any Sort Of Daredevil Stunts, I'm Just Interested In The Work. And He's Convinced That I'm Clinically Sane.

Tourism Is A Mortal Sin.

I'm Trying To Find These Rare Moments Where You Feel Completely Illuminated. Facts Never Illuminate You. The Phone Directory Of Manhattan Doesn't Illuminate You, Although It Has Factually Correct Entries, Millions Of Them. But These Rare Moments Of Illumination That You Find When You Read A Great Poem, You Instantly Know. You Instantly Feel This Spark Of Illumination. You Are Almost Stepping Outside Of Yourself And You See Something Sublime.

Hold Firm To Your Vision But Don't Be A Tyrant On Set.

Our Presence On This Planet Does Not Seem To Be Sustainable. Our Technical Civilization Makes Up Particularly Vulnerable. There Is Talk All Over The Scientific Community About Climate Change. Many Of Them [scientists] Agree, The End Of Human Life On Earth Is Assured.

Film Is Not Analysis, It Is The Agitation Of Mind; Cinema Comes From The Country Fair And The Circus, Not From Art And Academicism.

What Have We Done To Our Images? What Have We Done To Our Embarrassed Landscapes? I Have Said This Before And Will Repeat It Again As Long As I Am Able To Talk: If We Do Not Develop Adequate Images We Will Die Out Like Dinosaurs.

If I Had To Climb Into Hell And Wrestle The Devil Himself For One Of My Films, I Would Do It.

Orson Welles, One Of The Best Of The Best. One Of The Strongest. As Strong As An Animal. He Somehow Was Pushed Out Of The Business Because He Would Spend The Entire Budget Of The Film Before He Had Even Done Half The Pre-production.

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All Of A Sudden It's Twelve-year-olds Who Are Contacting Me, Fifteen-year-olds, And They Have Very, Very Fascinating Questions. However, They Speak In A Language Of Their Age Group Which I Have To Learn First.

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I Think Psychology And Self-reflection Is One Of The Major Catastrophes Of The Twentieth Century.

There's This Kind Of Strange Mythology About Me In The Media Because I've Done Unusual Things.

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Cambridge University

The Wonderful Thing Is That Clive [oppenheimer ] Insisted On Training His Camera - His Private Camera - On Me At One Point. We Were Discussing Things Such As How To Avoid Certain Dangers, While Reflecting On A Volcano That Had Threatened To Explode 40 Years Ago.

Netflix Trusted Me In A Way That Was Very, Very Pleasant.

I Am Torn Between The Beauty Of The Natural World, Which You See All Around Us, And The Idea That Some Dumb Tornado Could Blow A Telephone Pole Onto My Sweet Camaro.

You Should Look Straight At A Film; That's The Only Way To See One. Film Is Not The Art Of Scholars But Of Illiterates.

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"jack Reacher" Was Easy Because The Function Of The Villain Was Just To Spread Fear And Horror.

I Believe The Common Denominator Of The Universe Is Not Harmony, But Chaos, Hostility And Murder.

I Have Made 70 Or So Films. In All My Films Not A Single Actor, A Single Extra, Was Hurt. Not One. So Statistics Are On My Side When I Say I'm Clinically Sane.

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Otherwise You Have To Repeat A Lot When You're Filming. And I've Seen The Film And It's In A Border Town In Mexico Close To The Border With The United States, So Of Course You Have A Lot Of Traffic And Noise And Dogs Barking Right Nearby, And For That You Have To Repeat A Lot And Robert Rodriguez Didn't Do That. Smart, Smart, Smart, You Better Have Smarts Also.

The Punishment Itself Is Something I Respectfully Disagree With, But For Thousands And Thousands Of Years It Was Practiced Everywhere.

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North Korea Has A Very Striking Mythology There. It Is Influencing The Whole Nation.

Public Life Is Constantly Aware Of The Volcano.

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I Am A Product Of My Failures.

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Maybe I Should Stay A Good Soldier Of Cinema.

I'm A Very Circumspect And Prudent Person, And I Eliminate Danger As Far As It Can Be Done.

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I Make Films Because I Have Not Learned Anything Else And I Know I Can Do It To A Certain Degree. And It Is My Duty Because This Might Be The Inner Chronicle Of What We Are. We Have To Articulate Ourselves, Otherwise We Would Be Cows In The Field.

With Actors, Normally I Don't Like To Have Any Conversation About Background And About Motivations And All This.

I Do Other Sorts Of Things. I Act In Other People's Movies. I Direct Operas. I Write Books.

It's Very Enigmatic Because Of Course, The Population [of North Korea] Has No Contact With The World Outside Or It's Very, Very Limited. They Don't Have Any Telephone Connections, No Radio, No Tv, No Movies, No Newspapers - Nothing From The Outside World. This Is Very Strange And There's The Very Strict, Unifying Government That Forces You To Be In Step. You See It In The Stadium Where The Spectators Create, By Flipping Cards, An Image Of The Dear Leader, Or Of The Volcano, And It's Made Of A 100,000 Human Pictures.

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There Are Photos Of Kim Jong-un Right Up Atop The Volcano. I Actually Wrote A Letter To Him Asking If I Could Speak On Camera. I Never Got An Answer. But What Was Interesting Was The People Who Were Responsible For Us, Our "guards," It Took Them Two Days To Figure Out How I Should Address Him. "president? No, You Can't Because There's A President For Eternity." And It Was A Time When His Status Was Still In Flux. Only A Few Months Later There Was This Party Congress Which Assigned An Official Title To Him, But That Was After We Did Our Film.

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Do You Not Then Hear This Horrible Scream All Around You That People Usually Call Silence.

It's Not Because Nature Is Angry, It's Rather That We Are Stupid. We're Not Doing The Right Thing With Our Planet.

Of Course I Do Things In My Voice In My Commentary, Which I Wrote.

Similar Thing Until Today, With Digital Cameras You Look After Something Like That As Robust As They Can Be.

I Had Complete Freedom. They [netflix] Knew Roughly What I Was Doing.

Complete Freedom

There's Happens To Be A Volcano In The Vicinity And There's Some Talk About A Volcano As Well, So That's The Title Salt And Fire

I Think There Should Be Holy War Against Yoga Classes.

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In Private I'm Not. You Will Have To Ask My Wife. She Maintains I'm A Fluffy Husband.

You Are In A Place That Has Not Been Seen For Tens Of Thousands Of Years, Because It Was So Sealed Off. There Is Such Silence That When You Hold Your Breath You Can Hear Your Own Heartbeat. Everything Is So Fresh That You Have The Sensation That The Painters Have Merely Retreated Deeper Into The Dark And That They Are Looking At You.

In The Face Of The Obscene, Explicit Malice Of The Jungle, Which Lacks Only Dinosaurs As Punctuation, I Feel Like A Half-finished, Poorly Expressed Sentence In A Cheap Novel.

I'm Quite Convinced That Cooking Is The Only Alternative To Film Making. Maybe There's Also Another Alternative, That's Walking On Foot.

[internet] Is Amazing As Much As Human Beings Can Be Amazing, And It's Debased And Depraved And Vile As Human Beings Can Be.

Everything That I've Done Was Prudent And Never Has Anyone Gotten Hurt In My Films - Not A Single Actor, Not A Single Extra, Ever.

In Germany, You Would Be Hanged If You Cracked A Joke About Hitler And You Would Be Killed By The State If You Were Insane In A Project Of Euthanasia.

In My Films, I Hope There Are A Few Moments Where You Feel Almost Illuminated, Like In A State Of Ecstasy, Stepping Out Of Yourself, Beyond Yourself And Perceiving Something Which Is Only, In The Case Of Cinema, Possible In Collective Dreams.

Facts Sometimes Have A Strange And Bizarre Power That Makes Their Inherent Truth Seem Unbelievable.

Everything You See In North Korea, It's All Propaganda, But It's All Connected To The Volcano.

The Deal Was We Had To Have People Accompanying Us And They Would Ask Us Not To Film Something [in North Korea]. For Example, We Wanted To Film At A Certain Place And There Happened To Be A Building Under Construction And It Didn't Look As Fancy As The Other Buildings, So They Wanted Us To Shoot Where Everything Looked Finished And Made A Good Impression Of The Cityscape.

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As For The "anger" Of The Volcano, We Leave It Up To The Local Populations Who Create Their Demons, Their Gods And Their Divine Punishment.

When You Look At My Film You See Footage That Is Unbelievably Awesome And Beautiful And Dangerous Looking. It's Something That Is Very, Very Cinematic.

I'm Very, Very Curious About How People Live Under The Volcano, How They Handle The Permanence Of Danger.

We Live In A Society That Has No Adequate Images Anymore, And If We Do Not Find Adequate Images And An Adequate Language For Our Civilization With Which To Express Them, We Will Die Out Like The Dinosaurs.

I Think I Would Be A Good Villain In A James Bond Movie. They Were Fairly Weak, The Last Half-dozen Of Villains In James Bond Movies Were Not That Convincing.

Most Of The Volcanoes Are Pretty Far Away. You Have To Go To, God Knows, Alaska. Or You Have To Go To The Southern Indies Or You Have To Go To A Specific Island.

English Is A Really Wonderful Language And I Urge You All To Investigate It

The Trees Are In Misery, And The Birds Are In Misery. I Don’t Think They Sing. They Just Screech In Pain. …taking A Close Look At What’s Around Us, There Is Some Sort Of Harmony: It’s The Harmony Of Overwhelming And Collective Murder.

By The Way, Today With Digital Cameras And Editing On Your Laptop, And Things Like That, You Can Make A Feature Film, A Narrative Feature Film Easily For $10,000.

I'm Not A Journalist; I'm A Poet. I Had A Discourse, An Encounter With These People But I Never Had A List Of Questions.

I Was Able To Persuade Them To Let Me Shoot In Areas That Were Beyond The Volcano Itself. Beyond The Joint Scientific Program Between Cambridge University And North Korean Scientists. I Was Able To Film In A Kindergarten, Subway, Other Things You Would Not Normally Be Allowed To Do.

Cambridge University

You Have To Realize That, About 20,000 Years Ago, There Was A Cataclysmic Event When An Entire Rock Face Collapsed And Sealed Off The Cave. It's A Completely Preserved Time Capsule. You've Got Tracks Of Cave Bears That Look Like They Were Left Yesterday, And You've Got The Footprint Of A Boy Who Was Probably Eight Years Old Next To The Footprint Of A Wolf.

If An Actor Knows How To Milk A Cow, I Always Know It Will Not Be Difficult To Be In Business With Him.

Everyone Who Makes Films Has To Be An Athlete To A Certain Degree Because Cinema Does Not Come From Abstract Academic Thinking; It Comes From Your Knees And Thighs.

This Is The Birth Of The Modern Human Soul. The Artists Are Like Us, Not Like The Neanderthals, Who Had No Culture - And Who Incidentally Were Still Roaming The Landscape At The Time The Paintings Were Made. It Is Striking That There Is A Distant Cultural Echo That Seems To Reach All The Way Down To Us, Over Dozens Of Millennia.

You Can't Have A Helicopter Fly Over Boiling Lava. It Would've Exploded From The Heat, And Is Just Way Too Dangerous. The Pilot Of A Helicopter Would've Flatly Refused Anyway.

You Must Live Life In Its Very Elementary Forms. The Mexicans Have A Very Nice Word For It: Pura Vida. It Doesn't Mean Just Purity Of Life, But The Raw, Stark-naked Quality Of Life. And That's What Makes Young People More Into A Filmmaker Than Academia.

For Me, The Distinction Between Documentaries And Feature Films Is Not So Clear - My "documentaries" Were Largely Scripted, Rehearsed, And Repeated, And Have A Lot Of Fantasy And Concoction In Them.

Strangely Enough, There's This Mythology Sprouting Out That I Cannot Stop.

I Do Not Recall To [kim Jong-un], But It Was Complex. "dear Young Leader Of The People And Chairman Of The Joint Military Commission" Or Something Like That.

I Know For Sure That There Is Only One Step From Insecticide To Genocide.

If You Truly Love Film, I Think The Healthiest Thing To Do Is Not Read Books On The Subject. I Prefer The Glossy Film Magazines With Their Big Color Photos And Gossip Columns, Or The National Enquirer. Such Vulgarity Is Healthy And Safe.

But The Question That Everyone Wanted Answered Was Whether I Would Have The Nerve And The Strength To Start The Whole Process From Scratch. I Said Yes; Otherwise I Would Be Someone Who Had No Dream Left, And Without Dreams I Would Not Want To Live.

It Has Always Been My Aim To Find That Sort Of Passion And Figure Out How To Transform It Into Cinema.timothy Treadwell's Footage Was Almost Like A Diary, And He Had Always Dreamt Of Becoming The Movie Star In His Own Gigantic Production.

Roger Ebert Was The Last Mammoth Alive Who Was Holding The Flag For Real Movies And Moviemakers.

ِِِِِِِِِِart House Theaters Are Vanishing. They Have Almost Disappeared Completely, And That Means There's A Shift In What Audiences Want To See. And They Have To Be Aware Of That And Be Realistic. It's As Simple As That.

There's A Completely New Culture Out There. I'm Not A Participant Of Texting And Driving - Or Texting At All - But I See There's Something Going On In Civilization Which Is Coming With Great Vehemence At Us.

Film Is Not The Art Of Scholars, But Of Illiterates.

Netflix Knew I Was Going To North Korea And Ethiopia And Iceland. They Saw The Film And Liked It And That Was That.

For Such An Advanced Civilization As Ours To Be Without Images That Are Adequate To It Is As Serious A Defect As Being Without Memory.

I Function Better In The Jungle In Amazonia Or Antarctica Or Alaska Or The Sahara Desert. An Artificial Environment Like A Studio Has Never Attracted Me. I Could Work In A Studio, But I Would Never Really Feel At Home.

I'm Not A One-trick Horse.

I Think It Is A Quest Of Literature Throughout The Ages To Describe The Human Condition.

Fragility Of Modern World Leaves Me With The Idea We'd Better Anticipate What's Going On. We Take Our Right Steps Today And Now. And We'd Better Avoid, That We Are Overdependent On, Let's Say, The Internet.

Some Of The Most Important Caves, Like Lascaux In The Dordogne Region In France, Have Had To Be Closed Down. There Had Been Too Many People Allowed In, And They Left A Mold On The Walls That Is Spreading And Which Can't Really Be Stopped.

It's Not Far-fetched That Almost Everywhere In The World Where You Have Volcanoes You Have Mythologies Or New Gods Being Created.

The Beauty Of Netflix Is On The 28th Of October They Push A Button And The Film Will Be In 190 Countries At The Same Moment In 17 Languages.

It's Very Strange, For Example, In North Korea Where The Volcano At The Chinese Border Is Some Sort Of The Mythical Birthplace Of The Korean People.

The Rogue Film School Is Not For The Faint-hearted. It Is For Those Who Have Travelled On Foot, Who Have Worked As Bouncers In Sex Clubs Or As Wardens In A Lunatic Asylum, For Those Who Are Willing To Learn About Lock Picking Or Forging Shooting Permits In Countries Not Favoring Their Projects. In Short: For Those Who Have A Sense Of Poetry. For Those Who Are Pilgrims. For Those Who Can Tell A Story To Four Year Old Children And Hold Their Attention. For Those Who Have A Fire Burning Within. For Those Who Have A Dream.

Women Have A Very Good Sense For Seeing Instantly What Constitutes A Good Man. Not Physically. The Physical Strength Is Only A Small Side Of It.

We Are Just A Blip. I Found It Very Interesting When Clive [oppenheimer] Interviewed The Ethiopian Scientists And Asked Them, "do We Have Another 100,000 Years?" In Their Calculation, Mankind Will Be Entering A Very Critical Phrase A Thousand Years From Now.

Only The Poets Can Hold The Country Together, And I Wanted To Hold Germany Together.

Coincidences Always Happen If You Keep Your Mind Open, While Storyboards Remain The Instruments Of Cowards Who Do Not Trust In Their Own Imagination And Who Are Slaves Of A Matrix If You Get Used To Planning Your Shots Based Solely On Aesthetics, You Are Never That Far From Kitsch.

I've Never Left My Culture. I've Left My Country, But I've Not Left My Culture. In The Same Way, You Shouldn't Be Worried Why George Lucas Is Going To The Outer Galaxy To Make A Movie. He's Still Making A Film Within His Culture; He's Making An American Film. I Go To Thailand Or The Peruvian Jungle, The Amazon, And I Still Make Bavarian Films.

Money Doesn't Make Films. You Just Do It And Take The Initiative.

A Fairly Young, Intelligent-looking Man With Long Hair Asked Me Whether Filming Or Being Filmed Could Do Harm, Whether It Could Destroy A Person. In My Heart The Answer Was Yes, But I Said No.

We Have To Articulate Ourselves. Otherwise We Would Be Cows In The Field.

After "jack Reacher" The Parts I Didn't Like, Most Of It Was Silly.

I'm Reminded Of An Interview Larry King Had On His Talk Show With One Of Michael Jackson's Sisters. He's Talking About How Many Millions She Made On Her Latest Record, And All Of A Sudden, She Looks At Him Tearfully And Says, "larry, You Know, I'm Not Interested In Money Or Sales Or Songs. I'm A Spiritual Person." And I Thought, "oh My God..."

I Have Always Postulated That We Have To Find A New Way To Deal With Reality. It's Not So Much Facts That Interest Me, But A Deeper Truth In Them - An Ecstasy Of Truth, An Ecstatic Truth That Illuminates Us. That's What I've Been After.

Tourism Is Sin, And Travel On Foot Virtue.

It Is Not Only My Dreams, My Belief Is That All These Dreams Are Yours As Well. The Only Distinction Between Me And You Is That I Can Articulate Them. And That Is What Poetry Or Painting Or Literature Or Filmmaking Is All About... And It Is My Duty Because This Might Be The Inner Chronicle Of What We Are. We Have To Articulate Ourselves, Otherwise We Would Be Cows In The Field.

You Are Confronted With Abysses Of Time That Are, In A Way, Unfathomable. You See A Painting In Charcoal Of Raindeer And It Was Left Unfinished And Somebody Else Finished It. But Through Radio Carbon Dating We Know That The Next One Completed The Painting 5,000 Years Later. You're Just Blown Away By The Notion Of Passage Of Time. We Have No Relationship To That Kind Of Depth Of Time.

I Couldn't Roam Wildly And Speak Secretly With Villagers [in North Korea]. No Way You Could Do That. And Honestly, I Didn't Even Try. I Was Realistic Of What I Could Do And Yet Persuaded Them Into Accepting Numerous Things That I Shouldn't Have Filmed.

I Looked, For Example, To Certain Types Of Literature To Which I Would Like To Refer, Like The Peregrine By J. A. Baker, And I Mention A Book, "read This, Read It, Read It If You Are Serious Of Being In Any Type Of Art Or Into Filmmaking," Or Films That I Should Quote As Examples.

Once In A While I Come Across A Director Who Hasgrown Up Thousands Of Miles From Me, And The Work Touches Me.through These Issues/50/images I Am Connected And Something Is Illuminated.and I Know Then That I Am Not Alone.

I Always Felt Completely Confident - It's Like In A Feature Film, Knowing Your Principle Character Is Extremely Well-cast. I Had That Same Confidence In Clive [oppenheimer].

If You Don't Read, You Will Never Be A Filmmaker.

I Simply Don't Like The Culture Of Drugs. I Never Liked The Hippies For It. I Think It Was A Mistake To Be All The Time Stoned And On Weed. It Didn't Look Right And It Doesn't Look Right Today Either And The Damage Drugs Have Done To Civilizations Are Too Enormous. And Besides, I Don't Need Any Drug To Step Out Of Myself. I Don't Want Them And I Do Not Need Them.

At The Press Conference For The Film He Impressed Everyone With His Complete Sincerity And Innocence. He Said He Had Come To See The Sea For The First Time And Marveled At How Clean It Was. Someone Told Him That, In Fact, It Wasn't. 'when The World Is Emptied Of Human Beings' He Said, 'it Will Become So Again

I Have Never Been One Of Those Who Cares About Happiness. Happiness Is A Strange Notion. I Am Just Not Made For It. It Has Never Been A Goal Of Mine; I Do Not Think In Those Terms.

I Am So Used To Plunging Into The Unknown That Any Other Surroundings And Form Of Existence Strike Me As Exotic And Unsuitable For Human Beings.

I Do Whatever Pushes Me Hardest. It's Coming At Me And I Try To... It's Like Uninvited Guest And I Have To Wrestle Them Out The Door Or Through The Window - Get Them Out And Get Over With Them Quickly.

Here, All Of A Sudden, We Have A Revolution In - In Communication, And It Is - It Is Really, Truly Big. Internet Is As Big As The Introduction Of Fire To The Human Race, Or The Introduction Of Electricity Into Our Lives.

I Think A State Should Not Be In The Capacity Of Killing Anyone With The Exception Of Warfare.

Of Course There's A Value In A Storyboard If You Do A Big - Let's Say An Action Movie And Actors Have To Move And Act In Front Of A Green Screen Because Entire Backgrounds Exploding And Cars Flying Through There Have To Be Created Separately, And In This Case You Better Make Sure The Actors Are Precisely Placed And The Background Action Is Moving In A Certain Moment, For This Type Of Film You Would Need A Storyboard.

You Have To Be Completely Open To What People Would Tell You. You Do Not Shape Them; You Do Not Force The Materials Into Your Ideas. You Have To Have All Windows And Doors Open.

You Also Can Understand How To Play Tennis From Serena Williams, And She Is Awesome. I Haven't Seen Her Masterclass But Just Watching Her On The Court - I Saw Some Of Wimbledon On Tv And There's Such An Awesome Force In Her And Focus And Determination And Technique, You Just Look At Her And It's Awesome. If I Would Like To Learn Tennis I Would Immediately Turn To Her.

Because You're Delegated To A Cook Book Recipe And You Slavishly And Pedantically Rely On It While You're Shooting And You're Not Relying On Your Creative Instincts And You're Not Relying On Something Which Brings Life Into Movies And Excitement Into It.

I'm Talking A Lot On Financing In The Masterclass And I Know What It Means To Because I Had To Finance My First Films, All Of Them, And I Earned My Money As A Welder In A Steel Factory Doing Night Shifts While I Was Still In High School During The Day.

I Have Nothing Against 3d Films But I Do Not Need To See Them.

When I Say Tourism Is Sin And Traveling On Foot Is Virtue, It's Condensed Into A Dictum. It's Much More Complex Than That, But Let's Face It, For Me, My Experience, The World Reveals Itself To Those That Travel On Foot. You Understand The World In A Much Deeper Level. And It Does Good To Anyone Who Makes Film.

Read, Read, Read, Read, Read, Read, Read, Read, Read, Read, Read, Read, Read...if You Don't Read, You Will Never Be A Filmmaker.

If You Go To Florence, It Has All Surface Beauty, But Like Venice, It's Simply A Museum Of Renaissance Times. Los Angeles Is Raw, Uncouth And Bizarre, But It's A Place Of Substance. It Has More New Horizons Than Any Other Place.

There's More Substance In My Prose And My Poetry Than In All My Films Together. Writing Is A More Direct Way Of Expressing Yourself Because, In Cinema, You Always Have Finances, Organization, Actors, Technical Apparatus And All That Stuff Coming In Between.

You Better Make Yourself Acquainted To What The Requirements Are, What The Value Of Money Is All About And How You Create A Long-term Survival, And In Many Cases It Has To Do With How You Handle Finances.

There Are Deeper Strata Of Truth In Cinema, And There Is Such A Thing As Poetic, Ecstatic Truth. It Is Mysterious And Elusive, And Can Be Reached Only Through Fabrication And Imagination And Stylization.

Life In The Oceans Must Be Sheer Hell. A Vast, Merciless Hell Of Permanent And Immediate Danger. So Much Of A Hell That During Evolution Some Species—including Man—crawled, Fled Onto Some Small Continents Of Solid Land, Where The Lessons Of Darkness Continue.

I Always Loved Celluloid Cameras In The Early Days That Were Sturdy And Reliable. Even Under Tropical Conditions And Downpour Of Rain, It Would Still Work.

Perseverance Has Kept Me Going Over The Years. Things Rarely Happen Overnight. Filmmakers Should Be Prepared For Many Years Of Hard Work. The Sheer Toil Can Be Healthy And Exhilarating.

We Have Volcanoes Also In Our Immediate Neighborhood. I Wish We Didn't Have To Travel That Far. Probably The Kind Of Magnitude And Awesome Raw Power Of Them Is Very Fascinating, And Of Course It's Very Cinematic.

I Don't Want To Travel.

Look Into The Eyes Of A Chicken And You Will See Real Stupidity. It Is A Kind Of Bottomless Stupidity, A Fiendish Stupidity. They Are The Most Horrifying, Cannibalistic And Nightmarish Creatures In The World.

I Could Not Become An American Citizen. I Would Not Like To Become A Citizen Of A Country That Has Capital Punishment.

I Don't See [the Jungle] So Much Erotic. I See It More Full Of Obscenity. It's Just - Nature Here Is Vile And Base. I Wouldn't See Anything Erotical Here. I Would See Fornication And Asphyxiation And Choking And Fighting For Survival And Growing And Just Rotting Away. Of Course, There's A Lot Of Misery. But It Is The Same Misery That Is All Around Us. The Trees Here Are In Misery, And The Birds Are In Misery. I Don't Think They Sing. They Just Screech In Pain.

If You Don’t Have A Deal In Two Days, You Won’t Have A Deal In Two Years.

I See Planets That Don't Exist And Landscapes That Have Only Been Dreamed.

For Example, How You Would Introduce A Leading Character Into Your Film, And As An Absolute Ingenious Example, [elia] Kazan In His Film Viva Zapata!, How He Introduces His Leading Character Marlon Brando Into The Film. No Film Ever Did It As Wonderful As He Did It.

Nature Is Monumentally Indifferent.

I Have Not Seen A Film As Powerful, Surreal, And Frightening In At Least A Decade Unprecedented In The History Of Cinema.

It Doesn't Matter Whether You Shoot On Celluloid Or On Digital, You Better Make A Good Film.

The Universe Couldn't Care Less About Us. I Say This Very Clearly In The Film [ "into The Inferno"]: Our Planet Is "indifferent To Scurrying Roaches, Retarded Reptiles And Vapid Humans Alike."

Chauvet Cave Is Rather Like The Awakening Of The Modern Human Soul Or I Would Say The Awakening Of Modern Human Culture. Because Neanderthal Men Who Still Rode The Landscape Parallel To The People Who Did These Paintings Didn't Have Culture. There's No Evidence Of Culture, No Symbolic Depiction, No Evidence Of Music, No Evidence Of Sculptures, No Evidence Of Religious Beliefs.

I Think The Worst That Can Happen In Filmmaking Is If You're Working With A Storyboard. That Kills All Intuition, All Fantasy, All Creativity.

There Are Certainly Laws And Elements That Make A Film More Accessible To Mainstream Audiences. If You've Got Tom Cruise As A Strongman, I'm Sure It Would Have Larger Audiences, But It Wouldn't Have The Same Substance.

Of Course Subjects Are Changing, And Since I Started So Early In Filmmaking, I Did My First Film At Age 19, Of Course You Grow Up With Your Films And You Are Not Trotting The Same Path All The Time.

It Happens Sometimes That The Material Itself Carries Things You Have Not Fully Planned. The Footage Has Its Own Right, Its Own Life, Its Own Vibrancy And Energy In It.

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