Background Image

...

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.

-Werner Herzog

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

If You Truly Love

Werner Herzog

...

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.

Views: 6

Topic

More From Werner Herzog

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.

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.

I Travel Without Barely Any Luggage. Just A Second Set Of Underwear And Binoculars And A Map And A Toothbrush.

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.

We Are Surrounded By Worn-out, Banal, Useless And Exhausted Images, Limping And Dragging Themselves Behind The Rest Of Our Cultural Evolution.

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.

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.

[ 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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

At The End [when I Speak About] Magma Under Us Everywhere, How It's Monumentally Indifferent To Scurrying Roaches, Recoiled Reptiles, And Vapid Humans Alike. You See, You Would Never Hear Anything Like That In A National Geographic Or A Pbs Movie. This Is Clearly A Transgression When It Comes To Being Politically Correct With Your Commentary.

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

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.

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.

Facts Do Not Constitute Truth.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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'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.

I Am Somebody Who Creates Images, With My Perspectives, Fascinations And My Instincts As A Narrator. You Have To Activate The Audience's Imagination. If You Are Just Giving Them Scientific Results, They Would Forget The Film In Five Minutes Flat.

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

It's Funny How In The Long Time Of Me Working In Various Countries And Various Situations That There Is This Kind Of Idea Out In The Media That I Am A Daredevil And That I Risk The Lives Of Everyone Around Me, But Nobody Ever Gets Hurt On My Shoot. Some Crew Members Sometimes, But The Actors Are Ok.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

I Don't Dabble, I'm Good At Acting.

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.

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

I Prefer To Be Alive, So I'm Cautious About Taking Risks.

Maybe I Should Stay A Good Soldier Of Cinema.

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

There Is Never An Excuse Not To Finish A Film.

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

Civilization Is Like A Thin Layer Of Ice Upon A Deep Ocean Of Chaos And Darkness.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

The World Reveals Itself To Those Who Travel On Foot.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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].

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

The Danger Is To Stupidly Believe That Depicting Facts Gives Us Much Insight. If Facts Were The Only Thing That Counted, The Telephone Directory Would Be The Book Of Books.

I Think I'm A Prudent Filmmaker.

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.

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

Complete Freedom

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

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

Of Course, As A German, I Wouldn't Like To Tell The American People How To Handle Their Criminal Justice.

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.

Fact Creates Norms, And Truth Illumination.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

If You Do Not Understand How Finances Are Functioning, You Are In A Very Precarious Situation, At Least Concerning Long-term Survival.

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.

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.

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.

I Am A Product Of My Failures.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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[...]

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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 Would Travel Down To Hell And Wrestle A Film Away From The Devil If It Was Necessary.

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.

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.

ِِِِِِِِِِ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.

When You Look At Any Of My Films You Will Immediately Be Able To Tell This Is A [werner] Herzog Film. Even If You Didn't Have Any Credits, In Two Minutes Flat You Would Know.

I'm A Very Professional Man. I'm Not Out For The Experience Of Adventure.

I Don't Spend Sleepless Nights Over Getting Very Bad Reviews.

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

I Love Nature But Against My Better Judgment.

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.

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

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

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.

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 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.

Get Used To The Bear Behind You.

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

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.

Tourism Is A Mortal Sin.

Ambition Is To Be The Fastest Runner On This Planet, To Be The First On The South Pole, Which Is A Grotesque Perversion Of Ambition. It's An Ego Trip, And I'm Not On An Ego Trip. I Don't Have Ambitions - I Have A Vision.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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?

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

I Do Not Believe In The Cinema Verite. Sometimes A Really Good Lie Is Better Than Any Truth.

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.

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

In The Communist Revolution In North Korea, When They Threw Out The Japanese Occupiers, They Claimed The Power In The Dynamic Of This Volcano For Their Revolution, Saying That This Is At The Center Of The Dynamics Of Our Revolution. Everything That You Encounter - You Don't Have, For Example, Any Advertisements, You Don't Have Anything Like That Anywhere In The Country - If You See Anything It Would Be Propaganda, And Propaganda Always Inevitably Comes Back To The Volcano. It's Always Including The Volcano. You See The New Leader And Standing Behind Him You See The Volcano.

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

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

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

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.

I Prefer The Material Woman.

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.

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.

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.

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 There Should Be Holy War Against Yoga Classes.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Trending Author

Category