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I Run My Own Film School, The Rogue Film School, And I Do It Over Three And A Half Days, Eight Hours Non-stop Everyday; Alone, Single-handedly. But The Difference Is In The Rogue Film School I Do Have Real Human Beings In Front Of Me From All Over The World, And Of Course There's This Course As Well, They Can Ask, Talk About Their Problems And Obstacles, Finances, Anything, You Just Name It. Whereas In The Masterclass, You Are Speaking To Cameras.

-Werner Herzog

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I Run My Own

Werner Herzog

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I Run My Own Film School, The Rogue Film School, And I Do It Over Three And A Half Days, Eight Hours Non-stop Everyday; Alone, Single-handedly. But The Difference Is In The Rogue Film School I Do Have Real Human Beings In Front Of Me From All Over The World, And Of Course There's This Course As Well, They Can Ask, Talk About Their Problems And Obstacles, Finances, Anything, You Just Name It. Whereas In The Masterclass, You Are Speaking To Cameras.

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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.

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.

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

I'm Not Into Digital Marketing, Downloading, Or Streaming - I've Always Been A Man Of The Theaters.

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

I'm Not A One-trick Horse.

The Universe Is Not Harmonious: You Know That By Looking Outside.

You Should Bear In Mind That Almost All My Documentaries Are Feature Films In Disguise.

If You’re Purely After Facts, Please Buy Yourself The Phone Directory Of Manhattan. It Has Four Million Times Correct Facts. But It Doesn’t Illuminate.

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

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.

Every Man Should Pull A Boat Over A Mountain Once In His Life.

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.

The Elections Have A Different Platform, The Town Hall Is The Platform For It. But The Other Question Behind All This Is Should I Run For President?

North Korea Is Not An Exception. Even There, Where You Think It Would Be Completely Sober, They Have The Myth Of Their Revolution Being Connected To The Volcano.

If You Want To Propose Marriage To Your Girlfriend And You Live In England And She Is In Sicily, Do The Decent Thing And Walk Down There. Travelling By Car Or Aeroplane Wouldn't Be Right At Such A Moment.

I Am Too Much Into What I'm Doing In My Work.

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

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

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].

Tourism Is Sin, And Travel On Foot Virtue.

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

I Am Not An Artist And Never Have Been. Rather I Am Like A Craftsman And Feel Very Close To The Mediaeval Artisans Who Produced Their Work Anonymously And Who, Along With Their Apprentices, Had A True Feeling For The Physical Materials They Were Working With.

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

I Have Worked For Youtube Like Texting And Driving Because I Was Curious To Test What's Out There And How Does It Function, Can I Release Something Like About Texting And Driving To Very Young Audiences, At The Age Where They Do Their Drivers Test? And The Response Was Phenomenal, Millions Of People Saw It.

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

Otherwise [digital Revolution] Hasn't Changed My Way Of Filmmaking, I'm Not Nostalgic In Postulating We Should Still Make Films On Celluloid. I Love Celluloid But I Don't Need To Continue On Celluloid.

Digital Revolution

I Must Say, The People Who Started This Whole Masterclass Series Have Been Very Helpful And Very Intelligent To Point Out Certain Things And Also Give Me Some Guidance, "isn't There Something Missing, Shouldn't We Address This Or That?" So It's Not Completely Alone Out Of The Blue. It's Very Well Thought Through.

When The Camera Is Looking Back At Our Planet Earth, It's The Tiniest Of Specks Somewhere Out There In The Universe. So We Do Have A New Sense Of Proportion. Of Course The Volcanoes And The Magma Under Us Just Remind Us Of That.

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

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.

Public Life Is Constantly Aware Of The Volcano.

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

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.

I Like To Direct Landscapes Just As I Like To Direct Actors And Animals.

I Run My Own Film School, The Rogue Film School, And I Do It Over Three And A Half Days, Eight Hours Non-stop Everyday; Alone, Single-handedly. But The Difference Is In The Rogue Film School I Do Have Real Human Beings In Front Of Me From All Over The World, And Of Course There's This Course As Well, They Can Ask, Talk About Their Problems And Obstacles, Finances, Anything, You Just Name It. Whereas In The Masterclass, You Are Speaking To Cameras.

If Your Project Has Real Substance, Ultimately The Money Will Follow You Like A Common Cur In The Street With Its Tail Between Its Legs.

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

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.

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.

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.

If The Part Is Really Good Of Course I Would Like To Do It.

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.

Robert Rodriguez, Makes A Feature Film In 35mm Celluloid One And A Half Hours Long, And Nobody Believed Him, I Think He Wrote A Book About It And Gave All The Details Of How He Spent The Money, Even Making A 35mm Celluloid Feature Film Was Possible, At Least For Rodriguez.

When I Film, There Are No Emotions. That Would Be The Last Thing.

My Non-fiction Films Are Pretty Much Fiction, Or At Least Close... It's All "movies" For Me. I Never Have Searched For A Subject. They Always Just Come Along. They Never Come By Way Of Decision-making. They Just Haunt Me. I Can't Get Rid Of Them. I Did Not Invite Them.

I Live My Life Outside Of The Glitz And Glamour Of The Red Carpet Events, And So You’ll Never See Me There. I’m Never At Parties.

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

I Went To Volcanoes Where I Knew That There Was A Lot Of Mythology Around Them; There Was Something Like The Creation Of Gods And Monsters And Demons.

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

The Internet Doesn't Have Any Qualities, Technical Qualities. It's Just Fast, Reaching Out Everywhere And So, It Can Process That And That Volume Of Data Flows And So, But It Doesn't Have Any Qualities Like "good" Or "bad" Or "ethical" Or "non-ethical". It's Humans, It's Us, Not The Internet.

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

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

Your Film Is Like Your Children. You Might Want A Child With Certain Qualities, But You Are Never Going To Get The Exact Specification Right. The Film Has A Privilege To Live Its Own Life And Develop Its Own Character. To Suppress This Is Dangerous. It Is An Approach That Works The Other Way Too: Sometimes The Footage Has Amazing Qualities That You Did Not Expect.

I Have Nothing Against 3d Films But I Do Not Need To See 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 Would Travel Down To Hell And Wrestle A Film Away From The Devil If It Was Necessary.

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 Despise Formal Restaurants. I Find All Of That Formality To Be Very Base And Vile. I Would Much Rather Eat Potato Chips On The Sidewalk.

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

The Paintings Are Not Just On Flat Walls - You Have These Enormous Niches, Bulges And Protrusions, As Well As Stalactites And Stalagmites. The Effect Of The Three-dimensionality Is Phenomenal. It's A Real Drama Which The Artists Of The Time Understood, And They Used It For The Drama Of Their Paintings.

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.

Facts Do Not Convey Truth. That's A Mistake. Facts Create Norms, But Truth Creates Illumination.

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.

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."

I Do Not Want To Have A Cell Phone. I Do Not Want It For Cultural Reasons. I Do Not Want To Be Available All The Time. I Want To Have Time To Think And To Touch Somebody, And Have A Meal Across My Kitchen Table Without A Cell Phone, Being Constantly On Tweets.

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.

It Is Something More Fleeting Than What You Normally See. People Might Somehow Take It Into Their Own Dreams, Into Their Own Life, In A Way. I Hear It More Recently; People Are Telling Me That When They Leave The Theater And See One Of My Films, They Are Not Alone Anymore. It's Probably More That Kind Of Feeling. If I Managed To Do A Film Like That, Everything Is Fine.

What Would An Ocean Be Without A Monster Lurking In The Dark? It Would Be Like Sleep Without Dreams.

James Joyce Is A Cul-de-sac. [ulysses Is] ... An Example How Literature Branched Out And Went Into, Lost Itself In Nowhere, No Man's Land.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

What I Do Not Like, The Kind Of High-resolution Cameras, 4k, 6k, For Shooting Dialogue, For Having Faces And Close-ups Of Actors, And You See Every Single Pore In The Skin.

Roger Ebert Was A Very Valiant Soldier Of Cinema Who Passed Away, And We Miss Him. It's Over With Serious Discourse About Cinema In The Print Media And On Television. It Has Been Replaced By Celebrity News. So We Are Speaking In His Spirit Always.

I Have A Great Map Of The Tibesti Mountains In The Southern Sahara Or Northern Chad. It's A Dream Of Mine To Go There, But It's Such A Volatile Area, You Have To Be Prudent.

If You Do Not Have An Absolutely Clear Vision Of Something, Where You Can Follow The Light To The End Of The Tunnel, Then It Doesn't Matter Whether You're Bold Or Cowardly, Or Whether You're Stupid Or Intelligent. Doesn't Get You Anywhere.

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.

It's Curiosity, And Always A Sense Of Poetry. You See It In Particular In The Chapter "iceland" Where I'm Reciting Ancient Icelandic Poetry. It Has This Very Beautiful Gravitas In Conjunction With The Volcanoes.

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

That Shot In "into The Inferno" Somehow Popped Up While My Editor And I Were Viewing The Footage. I Immediately Said, "that Looks Like The Opening Shot Because The Camera Approaches The Action Very Slowly And We Have Enough Time To Insert Some Of The Main Credits Into It." So It Was A Practical Choice. At The Same Time, You See These Tiny Figures Standing At The Rim Of Something, And All Of A Sudden, The Camera Rises Further And You Find Yourself Looking Straight Down Into An Inferno.

Finding Yourself

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.

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.

For Me A True Landscape Is Not Just A Representation Of A Desert Or A Forest. It Shows An Inner State Of Mind, Literally Inner Landscapes, And It Is The Human Soul That Is Visible Through The Landscapes Presented In My Films.

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.

You Have To Be Very Prudent With What You Are Doing And What Sort Of Tools You Are Utilizing. Drones Have Become A Wonderful New Tool In Filmmaking.

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.

People Think We Had A Love-hate Relationship. Well, I Did Not Love Him, Nor Did I Hate Him. We Had Mutual Respect For Each Other, Even As We Both Planned Each Other's Murder.

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

In A Way, I Managed To Get The Deepest Things, The Best Things Out Of People. That's Why I'm A Filmmaker. If You Don't Have It In You, You'd Better Do Something Else.

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.

I Know Whenever It Comes To Be Really Dysfunctional And Vile And Base And Hostile On Screen, I'm Good At That.

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

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

When We Speak About Trespassing, We Speak About Artistic Trespassing. You Have To Be Prudent And Have Common Sense And A Sense Of Responsibility When You're Trespassing. I Think You Haven't Seen A Film On Volcanoes Like That Before. It's Not National Geographic. It Is Wildly Imaginative And Very Poetic And Has A Sense Of Awe That You Normally Do Not See In Films.

I Like And I Love Everything That Has To Do With Cinema, Writing, Directing, Editing, Creating Music, And Even Acting.

There Is A Fascination About Crime, Which Is Understandable, But Hardly Anyone Talks About The Families Of Victims Of Violent Crime And The Devastation That Is Beyond The Victim Alone.

My Contacts With The Film Industry Can Be Described In Very Simple Terms: The Industry Does Not Really Need Me, And I Do Not Really Need The Industry.

[this Kind Of Strange Mythology About Me.] I've Pulled A Huge Steamboat Over A Mountain; I've Done A Feature Film With All The Actors Acting Under Hypnosis - Things That Are Very Unusual.

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

The Act Of Killing Invents A New Form Of Cinematic Surrealism.

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.

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.

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.

I Think There Should Be Holy War Against Yoga Classes.

I Don't Want To Travel.

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

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

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

It Seems Odd, But People Who See My Films Normally Take Them In In A Deeper Way Than You Would Actually Watch A Film, Let's Say The Terminator Or Whatever.

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.

For A Moment The Feeling Crept Over Me That My Work, My Vision, Is Going To Destroy Me, And For A Fleeting Moment I Let Myself Take A Long, Hard Look At Myself, Something I Would Not Otherwise Do--out Of Instinct, On Principle, Out Of Self-preservation--look At Myself With Objective Curiosity To See Whether My Vision Has Not Destroyed Me Already. I Found It Comforting To Note That I Was Still Breathing.

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.

I Have Been In Lots Of Very Intense Life Situations. I Have Been Shot At, And I Have Been Hungry, And I Have Been In Solitude, And I Have Also Briefly Been Behind Bars. So In A Way, I Know The Heart Of Men.

At The Same Time, There's Something Magnificent About Volcanoes; They Created The Atmosphere That We Need For Breathing.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

I Do Have A Clear Vision, And I Do See Things That Are Existing In My Quote-unquote Spirit, But That Doesn't Necessary Make Me A Very Spiritual Person.

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.

Without Dreams We Would Be Cows In A Field, And I Don't Want To Live Like That. I Live My Life Or I End My Life With This Project.

I Am Someone Who Takes Everything Very Literally. I Simply Do Not Understand Irony, A Defect I Have Had Ever Since I Was Able To Think Independently.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I Never Planned My Career In Steps. It's All Coming At Me Like Burglars In The Night.

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.

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.

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.

Well, It Had To Be About The Stories And The People Who Live Under The Volcano, What Kind Of New Gods Do They Create? What Sort Of Demons? And Of Course North Korea Falls Clearly Into This Category Since The Socialist Revolution At The End Of The Second World War. Somehow They Adopted The Myth Of The Power And Dynamics Of Their Volcano.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Fact Creates Norms, And Truth Illumination.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ten Years Ago In Antarctica Shooting "encounters At The End Of The World," I Met A Very Fine Volcanologist From Cambridge University [clive Oppenheimer] And We Kept Talking About Doing A Film And All Of A Sudden It Became Serious When He Hinted At The Possibility To Film In North Korea.

Cambridge University

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'm Not Into The Culture Of Complaint. I Roll Up My Sleeves And Somehow I Get It Together.

We Do Not See The Danger Clearly Enough That We Develop Images Adequate To Our State Of Civilization. When You Watch Tv, You Know Instantly That There's Something Wrong With The Images. When You Open A Magazine And See The Ads, You Know There's Something Wrong With The Images. And It's Unhealthy And Not Good And Outright Dangerous, In My Opinion.

The Power Of A Volcano When It Erupts Is So Evident, So Visible, So Palpable.

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.

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

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.

I Find It Interesting That There Are Impostors Out On The Internet Pretending To Be Werner Herzog.

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

We Were Very, Very Lucky [with Tim White Filmed Making Historic Discoveries In The East African Rift ] . In 100 Years, Only Three Skeletal Remains [of Early Man] Were Ever Found At This Site. This Was The Third One, And We Were Right There When It Happened. In Fact, When I First Heard They Had Found Something, I Said, "please Stop It! Don't Do Anything Right Now. Let's Do It Tomorrow Until We Have Unpacked Our Cameras And Assembled Our Stuff.

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

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

The Daredevil Aspect To What I Did There Is Moving A Monstrously Big Ship Over A Mountain In The Jungle Of Peru With 800 Or 900 Or So Native People From The Area. So That Idea Was Wild But The Way It Was Executed Was Prudent. Nobody Was Ever Hurt And When It Became Clear That We Had To Be More Secure With The Posts That Would Hold The Ship, I Spent 12 Days Having A Post Built That Would Have Withstood The Force Of 10 Times The Weight Of My Ship.

[tim White] Always Spoke About His Work In Terms Of Forensics, As If He Was Investigating A Crime Scene. While We Were There, They Found The Fossilized Excrement Of A Lion That Had Turned Into Stone, And We Would Immediately Start To Concoct Stories. Was It A Lion That Killed The Early Human? Of Course, The Lion Could've Been There Three Weeks Later, Or Maybe 20,000 Years Earlier.

Someone Like Jean-luc Godard Is For Me Intellectual Counterfeit Money When Compared To A Good Kung Fu Film.

I'm One Of The Few Reading And Thinking People Who Loves Las Vegas For The Vulgarity And Omnipresence Of The Dream. The Collective Dream. There's Something Enormous About It. Let Me Say One Thing: Las Vegas And Cinema Have Similar Roots. The Country Fair. The Magician At The Country Fair. The Vulgarity Of The Country Fair.

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.

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.

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

Maybe I Should Stay A Good Soldier Of Cinema.

We Live In An Era When Established Values Are No Longer Valid, When Prodigious Discoveries Are Being Made Every Year, When Catastrophes Of Unbelievable Proportions Occur Weekly. In Ancient Greek The Word “chaos” Means “gaping Void” Or “yawning Emptiness.” The Most Effective Response To The Chaos In Our Lives Is The Creation Of New Forms Of Literature, Music, Poetry, Art And Cinema.

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.

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.

Of Course, You Do Not Do Any Research: You Have To Go There And Do Your Film. It's Not That I Would Travel There Before Without A Camera And Spend Half A Year On One Of Those Volcanoes And Then Come Back With A Camera. You Have To Have Some Sort Of A Clear Mindset.

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.

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

I Love Nature But Against My Better Judgment.

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.

Gaining Trust Is Not Difficult For Me. I Needed To Gain The Trust Of The North Korean Supervisors.

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

Nature Is Monumentally Indifferent.

The World Reveals Itself To Those Who Travel On Foot.

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.

Facts Do Not Constitute Truth.

Very Often, Footage That You Have Shot Develops Its Own Dynamic, It's Own Life, That Is Totally Unexpected, And Moves Away From You're Original Intentions. And You Have To Acknowledge, Yes, There Is A Child Growing And Developing And Moving In A Direction That Isn't Expected-accept It As It Is And Let It Develop Its Own Life.

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.

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

I Discover No Kinship, No Understanding, No Mercy. I See Only The Overwhelming Indifference Of Nature.

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

You Can Fight A Rumour Only With An Even Wilder Rumour.

[ Digital Revolution ] Only Has Allowed Me To Work Faster, Editing Digitally, Which I'm Doing Right Now, A Film On Volcanoes. I Can Edit Almost As Fast As I'm Thinking, Editing With Celluloid Means Always Searching For This Little Reel Of Film, And Number It, And Scribble On It With Some Sort Of Pens, And Gluing It Together, And Working On A Flatbed. It's Much, Much Slower.

Digital Revolution

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.

The Volcano Itself Wasn't That Interesting, But The Man Who Refused To Be Evacuated - The Only One Of 75,000 People - Was What Set The Tone For The Film ["encounters At The End Of The World"] That We Made Together [with Clive Oppenheimer] Ten Years Later.

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.

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

There Are Certain Ways, Narrative Forms, That Do Not Function As A Continuation, For Example, Of 3d Movies. You See, What Is Obvious To Me Is Virtual Reality Or Immersive 360 Degrees Virtual Reality Is Not Somehow A Part Of 3d Movies, And It Is Not A New Form Of Video Games, It's Neither, It Is Something Completely New, Something Different, And Nobody Has Come Up Yet With Real Convincing Content.

In The Chauvet Cave, There Is A Painting Of A Bison Embracing The Lower Part Of A Naked Female Body. Why Does Pablo Picasso, Who Had No Knowledge Of The Chauvet Cave, Use Exactly The Same Motif In His Series Of Drawings Of The Minotaur And The Woman? Very, Very Strange.

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