Werner Herzog Has Never Thought a Dog Was Cute
“I would assign a dog a different word.”
Werner Herzog has never thought a dog was cute.
In the more than 50 years since his first feature film, the director Werner Herzog has come to seem more and more like one of the existentially inclined dreamers who populate his work. Those adventurous and often ontologically fuzzy works include art-house classics like “Fitzcarraldo” and “Aguirre, the Wrath of God,” as well as highly stylized documentaries like “Grizzly Man,” “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” and his latest, “Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin,” about the late travel writer. Herzog, who is 77, has also developed into a compellingly portentous on-screen acting presence, including as a villain in the Disney+ “Star Wars” spinoff series “The Mandalorian” — the latest twist in a career gloriously lacking in the mundane. “How do we give meaning to our lives?” Herzog said. “That question has been lingering over my work and life. That’s what I’ve been pursuing for a very long time.”
A lot of your films deal with apocalyptic themes and imagery. At the risk of overstating things, what effect might something like coronavirus have on your — and our — imagination? That’s a good question. We may see another Boccaccio’s “The Decameron” — it’s the time of the plague in Florence, and everybody flees to the countryside into exile, and then the storytelling begins. So you may have the origin of imagination or culture. But I can’t predict how I’m going to respond to coronavirus. Everybody, in a way, will have to respond.
Are you anxious about it? No. It’s a question of discipline. You just anticipate what might come at you and be prepared even for, let’s say, a quarantine of the Hollywood Hills, where I live. You need to be prepared and logical and professional.
Your narration, in “Grizzly Man” for example, is famous for your descriptions of nature as impersonal and savage. The monumental indifference.
Why are you inclined to interpret nature that way rather than, say, in the more cosmically harmonious manner of the Dalai Lama? You interviewed him for one of your documentaries. I advise you to go outside on a clear night and look out into the universe. It seems utterly indifferent to what we are doing. Now we are taking a very close look at the sun with a space probe. Look at the utmost hostility of the hundreds of millions of atomic bombs going off at the same time in its interior. So my personal interpretation of nature comes from taking a quick look at the stars.
How do you derive meaning from life if life is indifferent? Life is not indifferent. The universe is indifferent. But just trying, itself, is something I should do.
It always seemed so weird to me that you live in Los Angeles. You’re someone who believes in the almost spiritual importance of traveling on foot, and this is a city where no one walks. But that would be strolling or ambling. I’ve never been into that. I see how you are looking at me.
How am I looking at you? With bemused skepticism.
I didn’t mean to convey skepticism. You’ve talked in the past about your desire for your documentaries to convey ecstatic truth — or deeper truth — rather than what you’ve called “the truth of accountants.” Does anything about the need for ecstatic truth feel different now, at a time when even factual truth feels destabilized? I’ll make it very simple. My witness is Michelangelo, who did the statue of the Pietà. When you look at Jesus taken down from the cross, it’s the tormented face of a 33-year-old man. You look at the face of his mother: His mother is 17. So let me ask: Did Michelangelo give us fake news? Defraud us? Lie to us? I’m doing exactly the same. You have to know the context in which you become inventive.
Does ecstatic truth have any connection to morality? Invented truth or facts can serve a dubious purpose. What I do serves a purpose, and that is to elate us, to lift us up, to give us a sense of something sublime. Ekstasis in ancient Greek means to step outside yourself. All of a sudden, we have a glimpse of something deeper that might be behind the images. Something like an ecstasy of truth.
When I was in touch with you about doing this interview, you said you’ve had issues with articles about you being inaccurate. Do you remember that? Yeah, sure. Inaccuracy always happens.
What if those inaccuracies were a result of the writers’ trying to achieve an ecstatic truth? In that case, go ahead. You’ve got my blessings. I have explained the purpose behind ecstatic truth, but you are free. Just go wild. Swing wildly.
Did you ever find out who shot you? I was shot at various times. You mean here in Los Angeles?
Yes. No, I wasn’t interested.
When you pulled Joaquin Phoenix from a car accident, did you know it was him? Yes, although he was upside down in this car, squished between airbags that had deployed and wildly trying to light a cigarette.
That could be an image from one of your films. I knew he must not light his cigarette, because there was gasoline dripping and he would have perished in a fireball. So I tried to be clearly commandeering to him and tell him not to. But I was worried that if you gave him a command, he would strike his lighter even harder. So I managed to snatch the cigarette lighter from his hand. Then it became completely clear that it was Joaquin. But I didn’t want to speak to him after. I saw he wanted to come over and thank me. I just drove off.
When have you used butyric acid on someone? Not on someone. On a building. I won’t tell you any more details because it was a big event.
I’m sure the statute of limitations has passed. No, I can’t tell you. But may I say something about this acid? Dry chemistry books, 800 pages thick, become lyrical when it comes to butyric acid. “Inextinguishable” and “pungent” and “intolerable.” I advise you to sniff butyric acid. You’ll know why it makes the chemists lyrical.
You’ve made 60-something films. Over 70. But let’s not be pedantic.
It’s a lot of films, and so many of them involve adventures — filming in the jungle, at the edge of a volcano, in Antarctica, with Klaus Kinski. These aren’t easy films to shoot or finance, yet you keep finding ways to turn these dreams of yours into reality. Is your ability to do that a matter of will? No, no, no. In many cases, I have not invited the films that I’m doing: They manifested themselves. “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” — after reading 15 lines from a book for 12-years-old boys, I started writing in a fever while I was on a bus with my soccer team, who were all drunk. I could see the entire film. I’ve hardly ever written longer than five days on a screenplay because of the vehemence with which these projects come at me.
Do you ever think about Klaus Kinski? Not very often. I don’t really miss him. But we have done important work. May I add something? Just recently I was attacked: “You have worked with a man who violated his daughter.” I am speaking of Kinski. At the time we worked together, I had no clue. But — not in defense of Kinski — I’m asking myself a deeper cultural question. Do we have to take all Caravaggio paintings out of churches and museums because Caravaggio was a murderer? Do we have to dismiss the Old Testament because the prophet Moses committed manslaughter as a young man?
So the question is about whether we can absolve — No. We do not absolve. We have to bear it in consideration. There is baggage which is never going to go away. I don’t have a real answer for how to deal with it. I cannot teach anyone anything anyway.
Is part of the reason you take acting jobs to help finance your films? It’s not so much for earning money. I do it for the joy of it.
So it’s for fun? Deep joy. Fun is superficial.
You’ve acted in some big pop-culture projects like “Jack Reacher” and “The Mandalorian,” but you basically rarely intersect with the mainstream. How do you see your relationship to Hollywood? I enjoy being marginally involved. Just a few days ago, I did some voice recording for a “Simpsons” episode, and I did it in such a wild way. So wild that the director and some people who sat with me in the room burst out laughing before I ended my line. I had to be relegated into the control room, because twice in a row they started laughing. I said, “Gentlemen, I have not even finished my line yet.” In a way, “The Simpsons” is a bold intellectual design.
In what way? Let’s not analyze it.
Here’s what I was really getting at: You’ve previously expressed a belief that culture needs fresh images to feed our imaginations. Almost by design, projects like “Jack Reacher” or “The Mandalorian” involve recycled imagery. Do you feel at all conflicted about working on them? I don’t have to reconcile anything. I love everything that has to do with cinema, and that means writing a screenplay or directing, editing, acting. I love it and, by the way, when doing “Jack Reacher,” I knew I would bring a specific quality for spreading fear among the audience. That was my quest. I wanted to spread fear. My character was blind in one eye with no fingers left on his hands and no weapon. It was only me and my voice, and I really did scare audiences. And I was paid for it handsomely.
Were you familiar with Tom Cruise’s work before doing that movie? Not very much. It struck me to see the relentless professionalism with which he worked. I wish I would never have a life like him. He would have his nutritionist on the set and nibble a few things every two hours. A very precisely balanced sort of diet — and working out physically. Not a life that I would like to live.
So much of your work is rooted in the idea of pilgrimage. Why is that important to you? My work has always had a deeper quest behind it. I have traveled on foot from Munich to Paris because Lotte Eisner, my mentor, was critically ill, and I did not want her to die. I did not want to allow her to depart. I have traveled around Germany, always following the border. I wanted to hold the country together. It was before the reunification, at a time when many Germans were vehemently against it. I had huge problems with Günter Grass, the writer, who was vehemently against reunification. I loathed him with all my heart. Later it became evident that he was a Nazi or a Hitler Youth or whatever. It didn’t come as a full surprise to me.
It wouldn’t be crazy for someone to look at a person who believes his walking can prevent somebody else’s death and unify Germany and say that person is a megalomaniac. Ultimately, they are great gestures. They are gestures of the soul, and they give meaning to my existence. Nobody knew I was traveling to Lotte Eisner. Nobody knew I was traveling around Germany. I said only the poets, our common culture, will hold us together, and I have to do this. It has no connection with megalomania. It would be an utterly false assessment of why I do things like that. I’m not into the business of egomania. I mean, I really am NOT. You better spell that in capital letters.
Did your gestures of the soul have practical effects? A very conditional yes. Lotte Eisner was out of hospital when I arrived, and she lived another eight years, until she summoned me. That time I came by train. She said: “There’s still a spell upon me that I must not die. Can you lift it?” And I said: “Of course, Lotte. If you die now, it seems to be all right.” She was 87. She was almost blind. Could not read, could not watch cinema — the two joys of her life. She said something very biblical. She said, “I am saturated with life.” And I said to her, “Lotte, hereby the spell is lifted.” She died eight days later, and I had absolutely no problem with it. It was a good death.
But to go back again to the need for fresh images: In “A Guide for the Perplexed,” you say that our children will be upset with us for not having thrown hand grenades into television stations. I took that to be a criticism of the poverty of television’s visual imagination. Are Hollywood movies much better? Hollywood, of course, is undergoing a massive shift. There are new forms of passing your films onto audiences and new expectations and new behavior and patterns of audiences. Everything is in great turmoil, and the dust hasn’t settled yet. But we should not underestimate how we can reach, with our films, to a village in Kenya. It’s phenomenal and strange. You’re sitting in front of a man who is unique. I’m unique in world history. My generation. Not just me. I grew up with pre-industrialized agriculture, with hay being turned around with forks and then hoisted up onto horse-drawn carts. Then I have seen gigantic harvesters, and they have three computer screens inside, and it goes by GPS. And I have seen — may I go wild?
Yes, please. I have witnessed, as a child, the town crier with a bell coming up the street and shouting: “Announcement! Announcement! If you want to have subsidies for your new septic tank, opening hours will be then and then.” I am coming from a pre-industrialized town crier to today’s world. There’s no one like my generation.
Are you unique in any other ways? There are no other men like me. I’m quoting from a film of Les Blank.
Is it a coincidence that over time you’ve become a much more visible presence in your documentaries? In early films like “Land of Silence and Darkness,” you don’t even do the voice-over narration, which is now such a trademark of yours. I was present also in “Land of Silence and Darkness,” but more imperceptibly by writing, for example, a caption: “If a world war would break out now, I wouldn’t even notice it.” That caption is attributed to the leading character, who is deaf and blind. I interfered. But becoming more visible has been an evolution. I can’t pinpoint why and how it started. I seem totally comfortable with it because it has to do with my joy of cinema.
Whether you’re consciously participating in its creation or not, it’s indisputable that there’s a comically dour “Werner Herzog” persona out there. Is there any way in which having a publicly identifiable persona is valuable? I live parallel existences out in the internet that are completely and utterly fictitious. Since I have worked in an unusual way and have lived in a kind of unusual way, of course the world reacts by attributing a certain persona to me. I can live with it. I know who I am. That’s enough.
Who are you? To find out, you’d have to spend the next five years here with me.
Do you ever have doubt? No.
Not about anything? Not about films and not about my writing and not about the things that I do.
What about baby Yoda? Did you think baby Yoda was cute? No, not cute. It was a phenomenal achievement of sculpting mechanically. When I saw this, it was so convincing, it was so unique. And then the producers talked about, Shouldn’t we have a fallback version with green screen and have it be completely digitally created? I said to them: It would be cowardly. You are the trailblazers. Show the world what you can do.
So baby Yoda wasn’t cute? Not cute. It’s heartbreaking. My wife has seen companion robots that are being created: a fluffy creature with big eyes talking to you, reading your facial expressions, putting its head to the side and asking you, “Oh, you don’t trust me?” There’s big stuff coming at us in terms of robotics.
Is anything cute to you? Have you ever seen a dog and thought, That’s a cute dog? No. I would assign a dog a different word.
Do you see yourself as having peers in cinema? Do you look at Coppola, Scorsese — No, no. They’re all different, so they are not peers. There are some. I would say Kurosawa doing “Rashomon.”
Francis Ford Coppola shows up a couple of times in “Conquest of the Useless.” Not in a particularly flattering light. I like Coppola. I had a problem when he was in the culture of complaint: “The industry’s so stupid; they don’t give me money for filming a great dream I had.” It’s nonsense. He could make five feature films per year with the money he earns at his winery. But that’s the only thing. He has been kind to me.
I have to say, I like a lot of your films very much, but I think the most inspiring thing about you and your work is your ability to keep envisioning these fantastical projects and then actually make them. Is there any advice you can give about how to do that? Do the doable. I do only the doable, including moving a ship over a mountain. But I’ve had very difficult shoots, and nobody knows about it. Much more difficult than “Fitzcarraldo.” Like “Fata Morgana.” I think it’s a very irrelevant criterion for Herzog to be, for example, the first barefoot runner on Mount Everest. I won’t be, because that would be stupid. But moving a ship over a mountain is not stupid. It’s a big, big, big metaphor, although I don’t know for what. I know it’s a memory that has been dormant inside many of us.
It’s a collective dream that was manifested? Yes, and I’m the one who articulated it.
David Marchese is a staff writer and the Talk columnist for the magazine.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity from two conversations.