Werner Herzog – A Guide for the Perplexed: Conversations with Paul Cronin

by Paul Cronin

Hans Zimmer wrote the music. I like Zimmer because he is talented, self-made, has a true understanding of cinema and is unable to read music. It turns out he was inspired to become a film composer after seeing Fitzcarraldo, and immediately quit his band, moved into a sleazy hotel in Los Angeles and started a new career.

thanks to Hollywood – the collective dreams of the entire world. A fascinating density of things exists there like nowhere else in the world.

I would rather jump off the Golden Gate Bridge than visit a psychiatrist. Self-scrutiny is a strong taboo for me, and if I had to stop and analyse myself, there’s no doubt I would end up wrapped around the next tree. Psychoanalysis is no more scientific than the cranial surgery practised under the middle-period pharaohs, and by jerking the deepest secrets out into the open, it denies and destroys the great mysteries of our souls.

the world is overwhelmingly chaotic, hostile and murderous, not some sentimental Disneyesque place.

A holiday is a necessity for someone whose work is an unchanged daily routine, but for me everything is constantly fresh and always new. I love what I do, and my life feels like one long vacation.