Werner Herzog (placeholder)

I met Werner Herzog at a screening of the film ‘Incident at Loch Ness’. He introduced the movie before it started, and after he finished and left the theater I ran outside to meet him. My dad was with me, and he said to Herzog “We really loved your film ‘Little Dieter Learns to Fly’!” and Werner Herzog said “No, It is ‘Little Dieter NEEDS to Fly!” I had a copy of the script for ‘Incident at Loch Ness’ that I’d won, but it only had the director’s signature on it and not Herzog’s. So I asked Herzog to sign it. He wrote “To Michael. Every man for himself and God against all! -Werner Herzog”

Herzog is one of my heroes, and so to contrive a way to meet him, I decided on a whim to pitch an article about him and his new film “The Wild Blue Yonder” to a magazine. To my surprise, they bought the pitch and paid for my visit to his house in Los Angeles, where Herzog made me hot tea and talked to me for an hour and a half. Not a bad way to meet your idol… I should try this with other people I want to meet!

Oh, and Erik Benson is right: “The Wild Blue Yonder” is an amazing film.

Last night I went to a screening of his new film, The Wild Blue Yonder, a film he described as “breaking every rule you learned in film school.” It was filmed with reward money he got from Grizzly Man, the main actor’s part was filmed in 6 hours, the music was composed before the movie was even begun, without rehearsal, by people that had never met before, and didn’t speak the same languages. Most of the footage was taken from unwatched NASA tapes, and interviews with renowned NASA mathematicians. Most of the text and dialogue was written after all of the footage was already taken. It’s a strangely hypnotic and beautiful film with a bold point. Under the surface, it’s about man’s illusion about the universe… how we still entertain ideas of visiting other planets in other solar systems/galaxies. Werner’s main thought on this point (captured perfectly in his harsh German accent and monotone voice) is that there’s absolutely no chance of this ever happening. None. Not only that, but “aliens suck”.

He completely won me over. If he started a cult, I would join. After the show we all filed out and I thought I had missed my chance to hug him (which is my new criteria for having “met” someone). I looked around the lobby of the Seattle Art Museum and saw him standing with the lead actor dude, and nobody was talking to them. So I went up to him and gave him a big hug. He hugged me back. I felt at that moment that we were brothers, and that everything in the world was going to be okay… doomed, but okay.

Lessons of Darkness. ‘nuff said.

He lost a bet (that his friend wouldn’t be able to make a film) and ate his shoe. When he worked with dwarves (Even Dwarves Started Small), and one of them caught on fire accidentally, he promised them that if they all lived he would jump into a cactus (and he did). When people ask him how one makes enough money to make a film he said that you just make it: steal things, cheat, borrow, lie, do whatever you have to do to just make it.

I watched a movie about his friendship with Klaus Kinski (My Best Fiend), and it had this brilliant quote:

“Kinski says [the jungle] is full of erotic elements. It’s not so much erotic, but full of obscenity. Nature here is vile and base. I wouldn’t see anything erotic here. I see fornication and asphyxiation and choking, fighting for survival and growing and just rotting away. Of course there’s a lot of misery, but it’s the same misery that’s all around us. 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. But when I say this, I say this all full of admiration for the jungle. It’s not that I hate it. I love it. I love it very much. But I love it against my better judgment.”

It’s all the better when you hear it in his brutal German accent.