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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.

-Werner Herzog

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You Also Can Understand

Werner Herzog

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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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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.

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.

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.

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.

Everything That I've Done Was Prudent And Never Has Anyone Gotten Hurt In My Films - Not A Single Actor, Not A Single Extra, Ever.

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.

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

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?

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

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.

I Love Nature But Against My Better Judgment.

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

I Think I'm A Prudent Filmmaker.

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.

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

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.

You Will Learn More By Walking From Canada To Guatemala Than You Will Ever Learn In Film School.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

I Function Better In The Jungle In Amazonia Or Antarctica Or Alaska Or The Sahara Desert. An Artificial Environment Like A Studio Has Never Attracted Me. I Could Work In A Studio, But I Would Never Really Feel At Home.

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.

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

Digital Revolution

I 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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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].

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.

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

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?

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

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

The World Reveals Itself To Those Who Travel On Foot.

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

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

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

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.

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 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.

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.

Tourism Is Sin, And Travel On Foot Virtue.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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'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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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 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 Don't Want To Travel.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

There Are Photos Of Kim Jong-un Right Up Atop The Volcano. I Actually Wrote A Letter To Him Asking If I Could Speak On Camera. I Never Got An Answer. But What Was Interesting Was The People Who Were Responsible For Us, Our "guards," It Took Them Two Days To Figure Out How I Should Address Him. "president? No, You Can't Because There's A President For Eternity." And It Was A Time When His Status Was Still In Flux. Only A Few Months Later There Was This Party Congress Which Assigned An Official Title To Him, But That Was After We Did Our Film.

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.

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 Think There Should Be Holy War Against Yoga Classes.

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

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.

Maybe I Should Stay A Good Soldier Of Cinema.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

[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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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..."

In My Films, I Hope There Are A Few Moments Where You Feel Almost Illuminated, Like In A State Of Ecstasy, Stepping Out Of Yourself, Beyond Yourself And Perceiving Something Which Is Only, In The Case Of Cinema, Possible In Collective Dreams.

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

Tourism Is A Mortal Sin.

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

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

It's 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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

Complete Freedom

[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.

Of Course There's A Value In A Storyboard If You Do A Big - Let's Say An Action Movie And Actors Have To Move And Act In Front Of A Green Screen Because Entire Backgrounds Exploding And Cars Flying Through There Have To Be Created Separately, And In This Case You Better Make Sure The Actors Are Precisely Placed And The Background Action Is Moving In A Certain Moment, For This Type Of Film You Would Need A Storyboard.

The 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[...]

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

I Am A Product Of My Failures.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Lunatic Asylums

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

I Prefer The Material Woman.

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

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

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

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 Work Very Fast And Steadily, And I Don't Hardly Ever Notice That I'm Working. It Feels Like Just Breathing Or Walking When I Do Films.

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

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

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

While You Are Walking You Would Learn Much More About Filmmaking Than If You Were In A Classroom. During Your Voyage You Will Learn More About What Your Future Holds Than In Five Years At Film School. Your Experiences Would Be The Very Opposite Of Academic Knowledge, For Academia Is The Death Of Cinema. It Is The Very Opposite Of Passion.

ِِِِِِِِِِart 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.

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

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.

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

I Try To Be After Something That Is Deeply Reverberating Inside Of Our Souls, Some Deep Echo From - Even From Prehistory. What Makes Us Humans? How Do We Communicate? Where Are We Going At This Moment? Something For An Audience Where They Can Step Outside Of Themselves, Where They Can Be Almost Like In Ecstasy Of Truth, Some Sort Of Deep Illumination. And That's What I'm Trying In Documentaries And In Feature Films.

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Karl Von Frisch

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