The Wondrous Life of Werner Herzog

The exploits and trifles of legendary film director Werner Herzog (*1942) could fill several lifes. Let's start with 20 facts.

1   An unkown shooter once opened fire on Herzog during an interview. He was hit in the stomach, stated calmly that "Someone is shooting at us", and intended to continue the interview (his wound not being "significant").

2   The title of the film "Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe", by Errol Morris, is to be taken literally.

3 In the movie "Heart of Glass", most actors performed under hypnosis.

4   Known for shooting films under the most difficult circumstances. A prime example is "Aguirre, the Wrath of God", made in the Amazonian jungle. Herzog stole the camera out of the Munich Film Museum, rode river rapids on a raft, and abducted 350 monkeys from an airport, claiming to be a veterinarian. (To be fair, he had paid for the monkeys but was deceived by the sellers, and set them free afterwards.)

5   Another film set in the jungles of Brazil, "Fitzcarraldo", features the perhaps most Herzogian scene: the title character and his crew pull a ship over an isthmus. No special effects are involved.

6   Speaking of "Fitzcarraldo", its lead actor, Jason Robards, had to abandon the film after 40% of the scenes were completed. He was replaced by Klaus Kinski, and everything started all over again. Mick Jagger also had to drop out, but was found irreplacable.

7   Klaus Kinski was perhaps the single most irritable actor in the history of film. He regularly threw tantrums that lasted several hours and nearly killed crew members in fits of rage. Herzog collaborated with him on five films, not willing to go without the actor's mad genius.

8  On the set of "Aguirre", native Indians offered to kill Kinski. They were less afraid of the choleric than of the director who met him with utter calmness.

9   Herzog on Kinski: "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." Take the last sentence literally. Herzog once foced Kinski to continue working with the help of a gun.

10 In 1976, the island of Guadeloupe was evacuated due to an expected volcano eruption. Only three natives refused to leave. Herzog visited the ghost island to make a movie about them. The volcano didn't erupt.

11   One of his more serene works has been the documentary "Encounters at the End of the World". It involves a penguin that strays off from his groups and can't be stopped even by scientists to pursue his way into the Antarctic desert, to certain death.

12   Even though he is primarily a filmmaker, Herzog's peculiar voice and look has earned him fame as an actor. He voiced characters in "The Simpsons" and "Rick & Morty" and plays The Client in the Star Wars series "The Mandalorian" (without having seen any of these series or movies).

13   Looking for an actor who would frighten audiences with his sheer look, the makers of "Jack Reacher" decided to cast Herzog.

14   When his friend, the elderly film critic Lotte Eisner was seriously bed-ridden in Paris in the winter of 1974, Herzog walked there from Munich by foot - believing to save her by this epic gesture. She lived on for nine years.

15   Herzog is a fan of walking on foot. In 1984, when former chancellor Willy Brandt expressed doubt towards a German reunification, Herzog made a walk around Germany, from Southern Bavaria to the Danish border, "because it was clear now that only poets could provide unity."

16   His advice to future filmmakers includes working as a bouncer in a sex club or a lunatic asylum, and walking the distance from Lisbon to Kiev on foot.

17   Werner Herzog's Rogue Film School is unlike any regular film school. His students learn how to crack security locks and forge film permits.

18   Raised in post-WWII rural Bavaria, Herzog was unaware of the existence of cinema (neither did he know flushing toilets or telephones). However, he read the Greek classics - in the original language, of course. To this day, he is an avid reader but only watches about three films per year.

19 Next to ancient and modern Greek, Herzog speaks several languages, including French, but regrets to use it. "You'd only get me to speak French with a gun pointed to my head... It actually happened to me. I was taken prisoner in Africa and drunk soldiers on a truck, all of them 15, 16 years old, some of them 8, 9 years old and, I mean, really scared, one pointing a gun here [points to his head], Kalashnikov, another one here [pointing downwards] ..."

20 Included in Time Magazine's list of the 100 Most Influential People in 2009.

Sources

1: Werner Herzog gets shot

3: Filmmaker Magazine on the making of Heart of Glass

7: DVD Audio commentaries of Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo

8: The Guardian article

9: Celebs interview on Jack Reacher

14: “Of Walking in Ice”, Herzog’s published diary

15: Der Spiegel article

17: DW interview

18: Conversation with Jonathan Demme and Werner Herzog: A Guide for the Perplexed: Conversations with Paul Cronin.

19: Video: Werner Herzog on Languages