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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.

-Werner Herzog

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It's Very Enigmatic Because

Werner Herzog

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

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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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 Prefer The Material Woman.

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.

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

I Wouldn't Like To Travel At All. I've Been Too Much Around.

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.

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.

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

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

Complete Freedom

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

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.

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

I'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.

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

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.

[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.

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.

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.

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.

However, There Are A Couple Of Volcanoes Very Close Nearby, Like Vesuvius In Italy Right Next To Naples.

Maybe I Should Stay A Good Soldier Of Cinema.

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 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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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'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..."

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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.

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

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.

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

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Get Used To The Bear Behind You.

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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.

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.

Tourism Is A Mortal Sin.

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

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

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

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

I Think There Should Be Holy War Against Yoga Classes.

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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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.

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Nature Is Monumentally Indifferent.

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

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.

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

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

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

I Am 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.

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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.

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

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.

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.

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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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

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.

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.

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.

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

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Facts Do Not Constitute Truth.

I Think I'm A Prudent Filmmaker.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

I Wouldn't Make A Connection Between The Daily News And Volcanoes.

I'm Not A One-trick Horse.

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.

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.

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.

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

I Am A Product Of My Failures.

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

There Is Never An Excuse Not To Finish A Film.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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?

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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"].

The World Reveals Itself To Those Who Travel On Foot.

[ 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

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 Think I Would Be A Good Villain In A James Bond Movie.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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'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.

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

I Love Nature But Against My Better Judgment.

I Don't Want To Travel.

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

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

I Shouldn't Make Movies Anymore. I Should Go To A Lunatic Asylum.

Lunatic Asylums

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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