TOTAL FILM INTERVIEW
Werner Herzog on mountains, madness and Baby Yoda.
From Fitzcarraldo to Grizzly Man, Werner Herzog has written, directed and produced dozens of films in a career spanning over fifty years. Right now, from acting in The Mandalorian to heading to Tokyo for his latest cultural head-trip Family Romance LLC, he’s more active than ever. Total Film meets a true moviemaking maverick.
YOU THINK I’M THIS OBSESSED, MANIC, TEUTONIC, GLOOMY FELLOW… MY WIFE WILL TELL YOU THAT I’M A VERY FLUFFY HUSBAND!
They say get them while they’re young. For Werner Herzog, that doesn’t seem to be an issue at all. “I have tonnes of emails from 15-year-olds,” he reveals. “It’s the very young ones who discover my films.” Thanks to the internet, the German filmmaker’s back catalogue is widely available to a new generation of viewers. Of course, it helps when you’re currently starring in Disney+’s superb Star Wars TV series, The Mandalorian.
Playing ‘The Client’ who sets Pedro Pascal’s bounty hunter on his mission, Herzog is quite perfect. His acting forays are rare – a villain in Jack Reacher, films for Harmony Korine, a bit-part in sappy Robin Williams movie What Dreams May Come – but there’s something pleasurable about seeing him on screen, even just hearing that unique Bavarian accent.
Certainly, it’s no surprise that he’s narrated his documentaries, whether pushing the forefront of 3D technology in Cave Of Forgotten Dreams, travelling to Antarctica in the Oscar-nominated Encounters At The End Of The World or exploring the world of animal activist Timothy Treadwell in Grizzly Man. Yet this is just a fraction of an endlessly fascinating career that is absolutely – like the name of the film school he once set up – rogue.
Raised in an isolated village in Bavaria, long mountain walks and a 15-page encyclopedia entry encouraged him to be a filmmaker. He liberated a camera from the Munich Film School and made his first short when he was 20. His debut feature, Signs Of Life, came six years later, in 1968, the beginning of a famed period of work that saw him venture to unforgiving terrain on films like Aguirre, The Wrath Of God and Fitzcarraldo, two of five films with the explosive Klaus Kinski.
More recently, he’s worked in American cinema, but always on his terms – films like Rescue Dawn with Christian Bale, the remake of Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant with Nicolas Cage, and My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done, with Willem Dafoe. They’re all maverick talents – though none able to hold a candle to the relentlessly busy 77-year-old. Last year alone, he completed documentaries on author Bruce Chatwin and former Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev, plus a feature, Family Romance, LLC.
We first meet in Cannes, where Family Romance, LLC is playing out of competition, before a catch-up Skype just as Los Angeles, where Herzog lives with his third wife Lena, has gone into lockdown. Set in Tokyo, the film’s fiction is inspired by, and stars, Yuichi Ishii, whose hugely successful company hires out surrogate relatives – a father, say, to walk a bride down the aisle – for those in need.
A typically inquisitive look at Japanese culture – “terra incognita for me,” he says – it’s Herzog at his most tender. But it’s also a fine recognition of the illusion of connectivity in the modern age. Personally, Herzog isn’t big on social media; all those Twitter accounts with him are forgeries. “Representation of self is not what it used to be,” he sighs. After all, there is only one Werner Herzog.
How did Family Romance, LLC start?
It had a clear origin. One of my former Rogue Film School students, Roc Morin, wrote an article about ‘Family Romance’, about the business, and I immediately said, “You have to make a film. This is so big, this is so incredible.” And he said no, that he didn’t feel ready. I said, “Should I do it? I would love to do it.” So I jumped into it instantly. I met Ishii who founded it, I did a screenplay, scouted a few locations, and started shooting.
What do you think of this business, renting out surrogates?
I knew it was big. Very, very big. I sensed that it was coming at us as well, although it’s not a completely novel thing. We have used, for example, babysitters that replace absent family members for a short period of time. I knew it was very, very big and it has exploded in Japan by now. Ishii has close to 2,000 agents or actors that he sends out. And I chose my actors from his pool and I never intended to have him as the leading character until during the process of casting, he was so good behind the camera, to cue people or speak to them, I said, “You have to be the leading character in my film!” We never had any intention of that but it became so evident and of course it was a good choice.
Why is it now exploding?
I think it has to do with existential solitudes. These solitudes are reinforced and deepened by the explosive growth of instruments of communication. We are using Skype here, or people on cellphones or YouTube or Facebook and social media… these tools, instruments, of communication are growing exponentially. And at the same rate, although it sounds like a paradox, our existential solitudes are increasing. I spoke about it in the 1980s. I said, “Wait, the next century, the 21st Century, will be a century of solitudes.”
Are you a big social media user?
I don’t have social media. My social media is my kitchen table, holding six people maximum. I cook and we have wonderful conversation around this kitchen table and that’s my social media. And I do read. I keep telling young filmmakers – if you
want to be a filmmaker, you have to read. Read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read. Read! I’m saying that now not only to the filmmakers but to everyone.
What was the experience of making like?
Family Romance, LLC
A little bit like returning to my early days of filmmaking, like on Aguirre, The Wrath Of God. Jumping out the window and doing it. Or Even Dwarfs Started Small or Fata Morgana – those are films where I just went straight in. I had no shooting permit, anywhere in Japan, and it’s difficult in Tokyo, especially with high-security areas like the bullet train [station]. I filmed at the platform, rehearsing the scene with the actors, among 10,000 people milling around. I rehearsed in the middle of the crowd. And then I walked down to the platform and I knew I had 60 seconds to shoot the bullet train, and during its arrival and departure, I shot a sequence and I could do it only once. After 30 seconds, security rushed in… You have surveillance cameras literally everywhere. Even when I was rehearsing among tens of thousands of people, security came and tried to find out what I was doing. But I had a small camera, no microphone booms, people were wired with radio mics. What I’m trying to say is it was filmmaking as I did it when I was 23, 24, 25 – that kind of age, this kind of return.
For much of your career, it feels like you’ve never gone down a traditional moviemaking path. Was that the case?
You are correct. I have always disregarded the rituals and the formulaic part of filmmaking. For example, I have not had any legal counsel advising me for the past 25 years. I do my legal work myself. If you don’t understand the basics of it, you shouldn’t make films. And you never, ever, ever, ever, ever allow attorneys to negotiate… you negotiate. And once you have an agreement then you may eventually bring in an attorney to formulate the contract. But you do the agreement first. But I do the agreement and the contract myself.
Did you study law?
No, it’s a necessity. The same way I’m curious about sound. I’ve done sound in many of my films. I have been my own cinematographer on quite a few films. And I have shot films where I used the name of [a] well-known cinematographer … I asked him, “Can I use your name? I was the cinematographer!” And he’d say, “Was it any good?” I’d say, “Yes. Not ‘any good’… it’s most excellent!” So even in feature films, you have a name of another cinematographer – and that was me! I found it embarrassing that I was the writer, producer, director, editor and cinematographer, all in one person.
In a way, knowing all these departments is vital for a director…
Of course, yes. Including acting, by the way.
You’ve done a lot of that too…
Yes, and I’m good at it! My caveat is [I will do it] as long as I have to play the badass, bad guy – a villain or somebody who is not trustworthy, and dysfunctional and hostile.
So we’re not going to see you in a romantic comedy?
You may be right! Ask my wife… You think I’m this obsessed, manic, Teutonic,
IF YOU WANT TO BE A FILMMAKER, YOU HAVE TO READ. READ, READ, READ
gloomy fellow… my wife will tell you, if I call her in, she will tell you that I’m a very fluffy husband!
What about your experience on The Mandalorian? How did it come about?
I was invited and I didn’t compete for a role! It was easy. I was so well accepted. Jon Favreau, who loves my films, invited me and I had a wonderful shoot.
Were you a Star Wars fan?
I always had to be briefed – what is a Mandalorian? What is a yodi or yedi? I don’t know what the name is…
Yoda…
Yoda! I had to be informed all the time and they did it well. I haven’t seen Star Wars movies so far, but I know they’re big and they are part of a new mythology emerging, so there’s something big about it.
What was also wonderful in this experience was that there were no green screens anymore. Acting once had to be done, in all these big films, against green screens. You had to go back there on the mountains and to my left is the cemetery and above me a plane is attacking me… you were in an artificial world of green screens. Now they started a very new way of horizons. Not only round horizons, also ceiling, sky and floor, where both actors and the camera see where they are moving. They see the world they inhabit. This is really wonderful – and it’s cinema back where it always has been and has been best. And that was one of the reasons why I raised my voice mildly when they tried to do one of the Baby – what did you say, Yoda? – where they did one of the Baby Yodas… and it was incredible to see it.
What was Baby Yoda like to work with?
It was a mechanical device of incredible intensity and calibre. Heartbreaking to just look at it. And then they contemplated… for security, they thought “We should do it green screen and as a digital effect.” And I said, “No, you shouldn’t do it! You are the trailblazers. You are showing us a new technology. Show it to the world that you are confident. Don’t be cowards!” And they dropped it. You could see that the little creature had heartbreaking expressions – you could see it. Trust what you see with your naked eye; trust what the camera saw because you can see it on the screen, see it on the monitor – trust in what you see.
It looked absolutely beautiful. Were you aware of the entire cult that’s built up around Baby Yoda, aka The Child?
I had no clue and I made a little side remark once, half a sentence, and I found myself in the middle of millions of comments on that, on the internet. It is as it is.
What is it like for you coming onto a big Hollywood production?
I think that the set of Mandalorian was not over-staffed. For the technical ability to create this round horizon, and costumes and props and whatever… including Baby Yoda, which needed two highly trained technicians. You need a certain amount of technical back-up. So, no, there’s nothing wrong with it. Although I could have made the same film for many millions less money! It’s part of the rituals of the film industry… for example, I refused to have a chair with my name on it. I hate them. This folded-up chair with your name; I said, “I am saving the production $65!” Would you ever consider directing an episode in Season 2? Erm…well, let’s put it this way. I could do it, but at the moment I have more urgent projects than that.
You were also in Jack Reacher. As you don’t act that often, do you find it a thrill?
It’s not a thrill as such. I love everything that has to do with cinema: screenwriting, directing, editing, creating music, acting, you just name it. And of course again I did not compete for the part, I was invited. I didn’t go to an open casting. I was invited by the director and I was invited by Tom Cruise, who had seen me on some other earlier films, like Harmony Korine’s Julien Donkey-Boy – that’s where I’m really dysfunctional and hostile. I knew I was well cast. I knew I had to fulfil one task: be as frightening as it gets. And being quiet; I have no gun. I do not open fire. I have only one eye. I have only two fingers, instead of 10. So how can you be frightening? In fact, I was so frightening that in one of my key sequences, the studio said: “There is no obscenity in it, there is no violence in it, but it’s so frightening, we have to castrate it.” They did and then they showed it to test audiences. And they castrated it again. And now what you have left is the sequence where I try to make my henchman eat his own fingers. It was much, much, much more frightening [originally].
I REFUSED TO HAVE A CHAIR WITH MY NAME ON IT. I HATE THEM
Was that footage ever released?
No, you don’t need to see everything! The film is the film. But I’m just telling you that I was more frightening than what you see more on the screen.
You’ve worked with some outstanding maverick actors – Christian Bale, Nicolas Cage, Willem Dafoe and famously Klaus Kinski. Is that the sort of performer you’re attracted to?
You forget the best and deepest of all with whom I have ever worked – that was Bruno S. On two films. The Enigma Of Kasper Hauser and Stroszek. I have never worked with anyone of his depth and also solitude and nobody has moved me as deeply as he has moved me.
That was a long time ago in your career. Was it hard to move on from him?
No, it wasn’t hard… it wasn’t hard to move on from Klaus Kinski either. There were films before Kinski, in between Kinski and after Kinski. I had taken the decision not to work with him anymore after Cobra Verde. And I told him that. For the last three years of his life, I did not work with him anymore, although he was desperate for me to direct Paganini, which he directed himself.
Your most famous film with Kinski was probably Fitzcarraldo, a shoot that has been compared to Apocalypse Now for its difficulties…
Apocalypse Now was kindergarten in comparison to what had to be done in Fitzcarraldo. By the way, Coppola knows it and he speaks like that about Fitzcarraldo. All the problems in Apocalypse Now were solved with cash-money, which was there in abundance. They were just there and they fooled around and created problems because of their own self-inflicted stupidity and that self-inflicted chaos. In this case, there was not enough money there to solve things with cash. Ultimately, no cashmoney will move a ship over a mountain [as happens in Fitzcarraldo]. What I keep saying, only faith moves mountains.
Was Kinski particularly tough to work with on that film?
Kinski was a great problem, but that was a daily business I had to deal with. Fitzcarraldo was plagued with real catastrophes. Two plane crashes, for example. We shot half the film and the leading man, in this case Jason Robards, fell ill and had to be flown out to the United States, and his doctors forbade him to return to the jungle. In such a case you have
to start all over again. Our camp was attacked in the border war between Peru and Ecuador. It was burnt to the ground – built for 1,100 people. I had to start all over again almost 2,000km away. There was not one day without a catastrophe.
Cobra Verde was based on a Bruce Chatwin novel, and you’ve just made a documentary about him, Nomad: In The
Footsteps Of Bruce Chatwin. What was your impetus to make that?
I was invited by the BBC. And I immediately said, “I do not need a second to contemplate, yes I’ll do it.” I had a different, and probably in a way deeper, relationship with Bruce Chatwin than many others. We were kindred spirits in many ways, in terms of writing, in terms of a world view, which included travelling on foot. So it was obvious that I had to do the film.
Has the documentary been a form you’ve become more interested in over your career?
Sometimes, like Bruce Chatwin, I was invited. I immediately knew that was my film. Sometimes, it’s easier to finance them. Little Dieter Needs To Fly was always a feature film. And there was a screenplay. And the non-existing feature film, which we couldn’t finance right away, [inspired] a documentary – Little Dieter Needs To Fly. And only a few years later, we made the feature film Rescue Dawn with Christian Bale. Basically the same story. And the non-existing feature film informed the documentary, in many ways. But please do not forget that in the last 10 years I have made six narrative feature films. For anyone in the profession, in Hollywood, you have directors who make a film every five, six, seven, eight years. I’ve made six feature films in 10 years.
Right at the beginning of that cycle was
Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans,
the remake of Abel Ferrara’s movie. How did that come about?
Bad Lieutenant was… Nicolas Cage and me working together. It’s very strange. Almost at the same time, almost at the same hour, both of us [felt], “Why have we not worked together?” And almost at the same time, we were trying to find each other’s telephone number. And he called me from Australia. I was just about to have his number and call him. I speak of literally! And we were astonished, why had we never contacted each other. And in less than 60 seconds we knew we would make a film.
Everyone remembers the iguanas in your Bad Lieutenant. Was that your idea? SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS
I love to have strange animals in my films. I do not know why. As a child, I didn’t even know what a flamingo, or an ostrich or what an iguana was. Of course I did not know because I grew up in a remote mountain valley in Bavaria, where there was no telephone or cinema. I made my first phone call when I was 17. Can you imagine that? I never knew that there was such a thing as cinema when I was 11. I didn’t know that it existed.
You went on to work with David Lynch on
How did that happen?
My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done.
Of course we like each other and we respect each other’s work very deeply. I sat with him and we talked for about one hour, and we kept talking about production costs exploding, with Hollywood films now $180 million. And somehow casually I said to David, we should make films like putting out a manifesto, which cost only $2 million and will make profit…. and he said, “I’ll put my name on it and keep an eye on the production, that they do it right.”
Your work rate is remarkable. Are you amazed that you’ve kept that up?
It partially has to do with that it has become easier and faster to make films with the kinds of tools that we have. Digitally, I can edit almost as fast as I’m thinking. And by the way, I’m more fluent in telling a story. I do the editing of a film and while I’m editing, I’m writing the documentary and I’m speaking it right away, at a little recording booth right next to me. A long film – almost two hours long – Grizzly Man was edited in nine days. But also the commentary was written and spoken, and part of the music was put in.
Could you ever see Grizzly Man becoming a feature film?
I wouldn’t like to do it. It may become a feature story, but nobody can really do it. No actor will get as close to grizzly bears as Timothy Treadwell did. No insurance company would take it on! No completion bond company would ever accept a film like that. The alternative would be to create the grizzly bears digitally, and everybody would know it’s just a technical trick.
You’ve already shot another doc,
Fireball. What’s that about?
It’s [about] a meteorite. It’s like the film [2016’s Into The Inferno] I did on volcanoes with Clive Oppenheimer of Cambridge University. He’s the co-director and he’s the one who actually came up with the project. It sounds dry but it’s wonderfully alive. It’s incredible. It’s totally wild! Totally, totally wonderful and wild.
You’re also working on Fortlandia, an ambitious-sounding drama consisting of eight feature-length screenplays. What’s the story?
Fortlandia…well, it’s a very fine story of Henry Ford, who acquired a territory as large as the state of Tennessee in the Brazilian jungle. He wanted to control rubber supplies for his car factories. He tried to transplant American Puritan smalltown values into the Brazilian jungle and it was a disaster from the beginning. At the same time, there were great dramas with his son, who he would humiliate in public at any moment he had a chance to.
THERE WAS NOT ONE DAY WITHOUT A CATASTROPHE
What is the secret to working in a jungle terrain?
I understand the mentality. I understand how to deal with the jungle. I can be effective. Everybody in Hollywood is afraid there might be tarantulas, a jaguar, a boa constrictor… that attitude is the attitude of cowards.
THE MANDALORIAN IS AVAILABLE ON DISNEY +. FAMILY ROMANCE, LLC WILL BE IN CINEMAS IN SEPTEMBER