Werner Herzog: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers Series)

by Eric Ames

After moving to a safe location, they resume the interview. The journalist almost gleefully pops the question: “Have you got a wound? Let’s see!” Without hesitation, Herzog literally takes down his pants, mumbles an apology for doing so on camera, and reveals a bleeding wound on his abdomen. Zipping up, he comments with a German accent, “It is not a significant bullet.”

Werner Herzog: I can’t actually say who my audience is, though I can say with some certainty who it is not: I did not make the film for tree frogs, because so far I haven’t seen any tree frogs at the box-office, nor have I ever seen a squirrel behind a camera.

Above all, I believe in the film’s staying power. One shouldn’t be too stingy and imagine people watching it for the next four years, but rather forty or forty thousand years. When I say forty thousand, I don’t mean a million years, because by then there may be dinosaurs back on the planet. And I didn’t make the film for dinosaurs either. I know my limits.

WH: I was never an assistant or a student at a film school, aside from the fact that I’ve been using some equipment from the former Institute for Film and Television in Munich. Nor do I come from anywhere, neither from literature, nor from the theater, nor from photography, nor from any other discipline.

I almost think the fact of my birth is just a rumor.