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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.

-Werner Herzog

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Well They Are Very

Werner Herzog

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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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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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I Love Nature But Against My Better Judgment.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

[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.

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'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.

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

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?

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

The World Reveals Itself To Those Who Travel On Foot.

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

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 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[...]

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.

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.

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.

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'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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

[ 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

ِِِِِِِِِِ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.

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.

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

I Prefer The Material Woman.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

We Haven't Seen A Real Volcanic Event At Least In 74,000 Years - [mount Toba] In Indonesia, In Sumatra, Where The Crater Itself Is 100 Kilometers Across. It Was So Monumental, What Happened, That For A Very Long Time The Entire Atmosphere Of Our Planet Was Darkened. It's Not The Lava And The Heat Per Se; It's The Obscuring Of The Entire Atmosphere, And It Made It Very Difficult For The Human Race To Survive.

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'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.

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

Public Life Is Constantly Aware Of The Volcano.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Get Used To The Bear Behind You.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Lunatic Asylums

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Nature Is Monumentally Indifferent.

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

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

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.

Tourism Is A Mortal Sin.

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.

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

Maybe I Should Stay A Good Soldier Of Cinema.

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.

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

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

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.

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

There Is Never An Excuse Not To Finish A Film.

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 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.

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

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.

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].

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

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

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

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

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

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

One Of The Most Original And Poetic Works Of Cinema Made Anywhere In The Seventies.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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 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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

I Have 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.

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.

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.

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.

I Think There Should Be Holy War Against Yoga Classes.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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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Karl A. Menninger

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