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

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

Understanding the Quote: "if i had to climb into hell and wrestle the devil himself..."

This quote by Werner Herzog reflects deeply on the theme of devil. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Devil, Film, Hell, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Werner Herzog interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Werner Herzog

Werner Herzog is celebrated for insightful thoughts on devil and film. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Devil
Film
Hell
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When I Film, There Are No Emotions. That Would Be The Last Thing.
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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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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.
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I Try To Be After Something That Is Deeply Reverberating Inside Of Our Souls, Some Deep Echo From - Even From Prehistory. What Makes Us Humans? How Do We Communicate? Where Are We Going At This Moment? Something For An Audience Where They Can Step Outside Of Themselves, Where They Can Be Almost Like In Ecstasy Of Truth, Some Sort Of Deep Illumination. And That's What I'm Trying In Documentaries And In Feature Films.
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I Don't Want To Travel.
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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.
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Fact Creates Norms, And Truth Illumination.
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Never Wallow In Your Troubles; Despair Must Be Kept Private And Brief.
Despair
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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.
Half
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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.
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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.
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If The Part Is Really Good Of Course I Would Like To Do It.
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It's Not Because Nature Is Angry, It's Rather That We Are Stupid. We're Not Doing The Right Thing With Our Planet.
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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.
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Technology Has A Great Advantage In That We Are Capable Of Creating Dinosaurs And Show Them On The Screen Even Though They Are Extinct 65 Million Years. All Of A Sudden, We Have A Fantastic Tool That Is As Good As Dreams Are.
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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.
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I Travel Without Barely Any Luggage. Just A Second Set Of Underwear And Binoculars And A Map And A Toothbrush.
Underwear
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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.
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I Would Travel Down To Hell And Wrestle A Film Away From The Devil If It Was Necessary.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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There's This Kind Of Strange Mythology About Me In The Media Because I've Done Unusual Things.
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Maybe I Should Stay A Good Soldier Of Cinema.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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Of Course I Do Things In My Voice In My Commentary, Which I Wrote.
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Amos Vogel Was A Mentor, A Guiding Light For Me. In His Presence, You Always Rose. But His Importance To Me Is Of Minor Significance. What Is Significant Is That With Him An Entire Epoch Ends. The Last Lion Has Left Us.i Am Still Not Capable - Or Rather Unwilling - To Understand The Fact That Amos Passed Away, Because A Man Like Him Cannot Be Dead. His Traces Are Everywhere.
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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.
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Film Is Not The Art Of Scholars, But Of Illiterates.
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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.
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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.
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You Can Fight A Rumour Only With An Even Wilder Rumour.
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If An Actor Knows How To Milk A Cow, I Always Know It Will Not Be Difficult To Be In Business With Him.
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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.
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Ice
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Country
Hurt
Media
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.
Book
Thinking
Long
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Thinking
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Villain
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Running
President
Different
Along With This Rapid Growth Of Forms Of Communication At Our Disposal - Be It Fax, Phone, Email, Internet Or Whatever - Human Solitude Will Increase In Direct Proportion.
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Technology
Phones
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Travel
Feet
Tourism
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.
Home
Alaska
Sahara Desert
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.
Real
Tails
Substance
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.
Thinking
Able
Irony
I'm A Very Professional Man. I'm Not Out For The Experience Of Adventure.
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Men
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.
Wall
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Drama
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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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Two
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England
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Enough
Mythology
The Act Of Killing Invents A New Form Of Cinematic Surrealism.
Killing
Form
Surrealism
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Art
Mean
Yawning
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Real
School
Netflix Knew I Was Going To North Korea And Ethiopia And Iceland. They Saw The Film And Liked It And That Was That.
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Iceland
Netflix
If You Don’t Have A Deal In Two Days, You Won’t Have A Deal In Two Years.
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Two
Deals
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Volcanoes
Titles
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Vibrancy
Sometimes
I Have Not Seen A Film As Powerful, Surreal, And Frightening In At Least A Decade Unprecedented In The History Of Cinema.
Powerful
Cinema
Film
I Think Psychology And Self-reflection Is One Of The Major Catastrophes Of The Twentieth Century.
Thinking
Reflection
Self
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.
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Culture
I Believe The Common Denominator Of The Universe Is Not Harmony, But Chaos, Hostility And Murder.
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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.
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Way
Lava
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.
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Would Be
It's All Movies For Me. And Besides, When You Say Documentaries, In My Case, In Most Of These Cases, Means "feature Film" In Disguise.
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Documentaries
Film
Money Doesn't Make Films. You Just Do It And Take The Initiative.
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Initiative
Just Do It
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Read, Read, Read, Read, Read, Read, Read, Read, Read, Read, Read, Read, Read...if You Don't Read, You Will Never Be A Filmmaker.
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Filmmaker
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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
Talking
Korea
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.
Country
Way
Amazon
"jack Reacher" Was Easy Because The Function Of The Villain Was Just To Spread Fear And Horror.
Horror
Villain
Easy
[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.
Years
White
Lions
North Korea Has A Very Striking Mythology There. It Is Influencing The Whole Nation.
Korea
Influence
Mythology
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.
Insane
Germany
Would Be
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.
Responsibility
Thinking
Volcanoes
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.
Iceland
Choices
Feelings
I Wouldn't Make A Connection Between The Daily News And Volcanoes.
Volcanoes
Connections
News
I Love Nature But Against My Better Judgment.
Judgment
Nature Love
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.
America
Citizens
Panic
I Am Too Much Into What I'm Doing In My Work.
Too Much
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.
Volcanoes
Years
Training
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.
Military
People
Leader
Centuries From Now Our Great-great-great-grandchildren Will Look Back At Us With Amazement At How We Could Allow Such A Precious Achievement Of Human Culture As The Telling Of A Story To Be Shattered Into Smithereens By Commercials, The Same Amazement We Feel Today When We Look At Our Ancestors For Whom Slavery, Capital Punishment, Burning Of Witches, And The Inquisition Were Acceptable Everyday Events.
Grandchildren
Punishment
Achievement
Do You Not Then Hear This Horrible Scream All Around You That People Usually Call Silence.
People
Silence
Scream
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.
Hurt
Moving
Ideas
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.
Determination
Play
Focus
English Is A Really Wonderful Language And I Urge You All To Investigate It
Language
Wonderful
Urges
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.
Boys
Rocks
Years
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.
Art
Children
Looks
I Shouldn't Make Movies Anymore. I Should Go To A Lunatic Asylum.
Lunatic Asylums
Asylums
Should
I Don't Dabble, I'm Good At Acting.
Acting
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[...]
Light
Directors
Different
It's Not Far-fetched That Almost Everywhere In The World Where You Have Volcanoes You Have Mythologies Or New Gods Being Created.
Volcanoes
World
Mythology
It Was A Subject [ Volcanoes] That Was Dormant In Me For A Long Time And It Popped Up 40 Years Ago When I Made A [short] Film On The Caribbean Island Of Guadeloupe About A Volcano That Was About To Explode And A Single Farmer Refused To Leave ["la Soufrière"].
Islands
Volcanoes
Years
Everything You See In North Korea, It's All Propaganda, But It's All Connected To The Volcano.
Volcanoes
Korea
Propaganda
Get Used To The Bear Behind You.
Behind You
Bears
Used
May I Propose A Herzog Dictum? Those Who Read Own The World, And Those Who Watch Television Lose It.
Watches
Television
World
My Crew [on "fitzcarraldo" Filming] Actually Said, "we Have Filmed It From Outside On The Rocks Of The Shore. We Should Be On Board [the Ship]," And I Said It's Dangerous, I Only Do It If You Cinematographer Thomas Mauch And You Actor [klaus] Kinski Decide On Your Own.
Rocks
Boards
Actors
For A Film I Shot On The Most Difficult Mountain On God's Wide Earth In Patagonia For A Sequence Where There Was High Probability Some Digital Effects Were Needed, Somebody Made Storyboards And I Quickly Ignored Them, After Half An Hour I Ignored Them And I Never Used Any Digital Effect.
Mountain
Half
Earth
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.
Government
Volcanoes
Korea
I Never Planned My Career In Steps. It's All Coming At Me Like Burglars In The Night.
Night
Careers
Steps
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.
Soul
Mind
Desert
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.
Rain
Cameras
Tropical
Similar Thing Until Today, With Digital Cameras You Look After Something Like That As Robust As They Can Be.
Cameras
Looks
Today
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.
Weed
Mistake
Hippie
We Are Surrounded By Worn-out, Banal, Useless And Exhausted Images, Limping And Dragging Themselves Behind The Rest Of Our Cultural Evolution.
Useless
Evolution
Exhausted
I Am A Product Of My Failures.
Products
Clive [oppenheimer] And I Figured Out That I'm The Only One Probably In The Film Industry Who Is Clinically Sane. I Say That As A Joke, But There's A Grain Of Truth To It. I'm Not A Stupid Daredevil Who Jumps Into The Crater Of The Volcano To Get The Closest Close-up, I'm Not One Of Those. And You Have To Be Aware That You Have A Crew With You And You Are Responsible.
Stupid
Volcanoes
Film
I'm Quite Convinced That Cooking Is The Only Alternative To Film Making. Maybe There's Also Another Alternative, That's Walking On Foot.
Feet
Cooking
Alternatives
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.
Men
Good Man
Sides
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.
Numbers
Robots
Accountants
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.
Character
Example
Viva
I Know Whenever It Comes To Be Really Dysfunctional And Vile And Base And Hostile On Screen, I'm Good At That.
Knows
Hostile
Screens
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.
Print Media
Missing
Soldier
I Think A State Should Not Be In The Capacity Of Killing Anyone With The Exception Of Warfare.
Thinking
Warfare
Killing
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.
Years
Age
Groups
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.
Skins
Cameras
Actors
I Don't Care Whether The Person Is Guilty Or Not Guilty. It's Not My Business To Establish Guilt Or Innocence. It's A Court Of Law That Does That And A Jury Does That, But Not Me.
Law
Guilt
Doe
For Example, The Face Of Nicole Kidman In Queen Of The Desert And She Is The Most Beautiful Goddess On Screen That You Can Find Anywhere Around In The World. There's No Imperfections, And Yet I Don't Need To Know Every Single Pore In Her Face.
Beautiful
Queens
Imperfection
After "jack Reacher" The Parts I Didn't Like, Most Of It Was Silly.
Silly
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.
Book
Thinking
Color
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.
Perseverance
Hard Work
Years
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.
Athlete
Thinking
Degrees
I Know For Sure That There Is Only One Step From Insecticide To Genocide.
Steps
Killing
Genocide
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.
Data
Quality
Flow
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.
Alaska
Islands
Volcanoes
I'm Not Into The Culture Of Complaint. I Roll Up My Sleeves And Somehow I Get It Together.
Together
Culture
Sleeves
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.
Civilization
Adequate
Dinosaurs
I Do Other Sorts Of Things. I Act In Other People's Movies. I Direct Operas. I Write Books.
Book
Writing
People
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].
Character
Knowing
Principles
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..."
Spiritual
Song
Kings
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.
Doors
Trying
Guests
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.
Editors
Choices
Finding Yourself
It Doesn't Matter Whether You Shoot On Celluloid Or On Digital, You Better Make A Good Film.
Matter
Digital
Film
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.
Reality
Facts
Way
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.
Party
Red
Events
I Think I'm A Prudent Filmmaker.
Thinking
Prudent
Filmmaker
I Have Nothing Against 3d Films But I Do Not Need To See Them.
Needs
Film
Nature Is Monumentally Indifferent.
Indifferent
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.
Volcanoes
Punishment
Population
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.
Museums
Venice
Florence
If I Had To Climb Into Hell And Wrestle The Devil Himself For One Of My Films, I Would Do It.
Devil
Film
Hell
I Know What I'm Talking About And I've Never Been Over Budget, In 70 Films.
Talking
Film
Knows
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.
Imagination
Mind
Coward
I See Planets That Don't Exist And Landscapes That Have Only Been Dreamed.
Landscape
Planets
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.
Documentaries
Fantasy
Film
Sometimes Bad Luck Hits You Like In An Ancient Greek Tragedy, And It's Not Your Own Making. When You Have A Plane Crash, It's Not Your Fault.
Greek
Luck
Tragedy
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.
Today
Film
Sometimes
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.
Men
Volcanoes
Years
[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.
Hypnosis
Acting
Mountain
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.
Phones
Manhattan
Four
The World Reveals Itself To Those Who Travel On Foot.
Nature
Feet
World
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.
Art
Passion
Opposites
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.
Pain
Fighting
Thinking
Meanwhile It's Got Stormy, The Tattered Fog Even Thicker, Chasing Across My Path. Three People Are Sitting In A Glassy Tourist Cafe Between Clouds And Clouds, Protected By Glass From All Sides. Since I Don't See Any Waiters, It Crosses My Mind That Corpses Have Been Sitting There For Weeks, Statuesque. All This Time The Cafe Has Been Unattended, For Sure. Just How Long Have They Been Sitting Here, Petrified Like This?
Fog
Clouds
Glasses
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.
Dream
Would Be
Want
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