Werner Herzog on Letterman, October 11, 1982

French swab Truffaut called my next guest the greatest filmmaker alive today his most recent film Fitzcarraldo has just won the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival we're delighted that he could be with us tonight for his first talk show appearance ever welcome please Werner Herzog [Music] what an enthusiastic following represented here tell me I hate to do this for you since this is your first talk show but let's talk about your brand new film just like they do on all talk shows tell me about Fitz Corolla first of all who is Fitz Corolla well the name is derived from the British or Irish name Fitzgerald the leading characters name is Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald but s people down in the Amazon can't pronounce his name properly he calls himself Fitzcarraldo it's a story based in the Amazonian Changi during the turn of the century during the rubber boom which was like a gold fever and he wants to bring great opera into the jungle in his kind of a dream and settles out for an expedition to move a huge steamboat over a mountain into another river system which is inaccessible because further down you would find the most violent Rapids in all Latin America and he just moves them moves about over the mountain and it ends quite happily at the end are estranged it's unusual for my films here you describe this it all sound so simple I have seen the burden of dreams of the film about this film and it was anything but simple anyway let me we'll get to that in a second how did did Fitz Kerr although the Irishman you said yeah how does he get to the middle of the Amazon jungle and want to bring in an opera what the film doesn't show it but apparently he's an opera fan and he goes down to the city the Brazilian city of Manaus where people actually around the turn of the century built a huge opera house a pompous incredible opera house in the middle of nowhere just in the middle of the Gyeonggi there was just ramshackle Hut surrounded and just incredible and they they brought Caruso and big names from Europe into this place just to perform for one night for let's say 200 thousand gold dollars or so it was fortunes to get those guys in so he was originally attracted by the Opera or the the rubber boom or Bono I would say both when you see him in the film s as a man who has had a lot of failures before he tries to link the Amazon basin across the Andes with a railway system which gets stuck and he goes bankrupt and the railway the Train the locomotive is still sitting on 200 yards of rails which ends in the jungle after 200 yards only and he has had another big failures trying to make a fortune that ice producer but nobody wants that yeah in the charge either so you're gonna try something a little easier bringing the operative the Amazon right we have a bit of film from Fitzcarraldo and you know what we're gonna look at here Werner yeah miss Tolton okay give us her give us a description of what we're gonna see if the scene where Fitzcarraldo finally arrives at the place where he actually knows that the two rib assistants come very close to each other less than a mile distance in between and only a small mountain in between and he's planning to drag this monstrous steamboat over the mountain which we actually did in one solid piece and that's what the film is about you know it sounds very simple by description take a look at it here a scene from Fitzcarraldo now this this movie was in in the filming from beginning the end what about five years four and a half almost five years but most of it of course is pre-production we had to build two identical huge steam boats there were not there around so we had to be afraid we would lose one of the boats in a rapid scene the boat actually went four times through the most violent rapids in all Latin America so we thought if if it sank we would need another two years to build a new boat and you don't get your crew and directors back on on location after such a time we actually didn't lose it but we almost the film that I saw a burden of Dreams about the making of this one it just is a litany of one thing after another that goes wrong starting with the cast who was the original cast for this film chaise and robots and we also had Mick Jagger in the film but unfortunately Jason Robards got ill and Mick Jagger had some other commitments for later on for his concert tour so that was a big loss for another film worried when they these people left almost 40% it's awful to to start a film all over again yeah that's quite a drag but it turned out that this was one of year this was one of your smaller problems by comparison again we were caught in the border war that was building a border wars a rule and Ecuador there was also some feuding native fraction sets and we got caught in the middle of that and they attacked our camp at the end and burnt it down we had two plane crashes we had all kinds of of things that can happen of course we remove this belt over the mountain and it has not been done before I mean nobody there was no necessity for such opinion so there's no there's literally no precedent in in technical history for such a thing well that Deb rings of another point I'll ask you about when we come back here we have to pause for commercial also I want to find out about Mick Jagger as an actor was that pretty good pretty good all right Werner Herzog we'll be back [Applause] [Music] werner herzog is here in the film that I saw the burden of Dreams that there was some speculation that during the filming of Fitzcarraldo you went out of your way to make things more difficult for the crew and the actors and the natives you hired my feeling is that this is a misinterpretation of my intentions les blank is a good friend of mine who did the film a littles an excellent film I can say that easily because I haven't done the film yet he's not free of mistakes I wouldn't look out for trouble but I would be the last one to check me out if it was necessary to climb down to into hell and in Wrestler film out of the claws of the devil I would do so so I wouldn't be scared of anything you say that again I'm not sure I understood that you would well if I have done a film on a volcano that was just about to explode like mount st. helens it was actually a volcano in the Caribbeans so once you climbed on that mountain that bastard my might blow up any second you don't know yeah so you got to decide what are you gonna do so we did it anyway yeah this would be a good place for me to ask you about this particular quote something to the effect that film is is is worth more than human life no I wouldn't say human life length in my life I would only I would only speak in that term in such a term so you would never risk a life of any of anyone else of course when we went on the volcano and of course when they did Fitzcarraldo everyone was with me and they decided to be with me and they even pushed me in into doing things like when we went through the rapids we had seen the boat which almost sank and then finally we said it would be marvelous to have a couple of cameras on board the ship and they even pushed me on board at the end almost everyone was injured but that that was fine I mean it's it's quite it's quite some spectacular shots that we got out of that that's worthwhile I mean nobody complains and but Elm is what counts but I mean looking at this film the the circumstances and you would know better than anybody were just impossible you you were knee-deep in mud a couple of times you had other natives attacking the natives you had hired yeah there was not enough medicine you're the soccer ball had a hole in it yeah which was a disaster him and at one point when the to see the film they're moving this a 90-ton steamship whatever across route 20 320,000 more than 90 90 90 90 tons I would move with let's say 200 discipline people from the Bronx [Laughter] give me 300,000 give me 300,000 people from New York and I'm gonna move Empire State Building but to New Jersey but I need about 30 years for that but they said in in the film that the people who were doing the pulling of the ship and there was some Ranger involved at one point the engineer said you may lose this guy you may lose that guy you may lose this guy and you elected to go ahead with it but the the the guys doing precautions I'm sorry I didn't take care of course yeah there was no one really in danger okay but I would have been the first one to be behind the boat well now that's a the the people pulling the boat said we would feel better if the owner of this boat yeah what was back there while we were pulling yeah exactly but nobody was behind the boat when we pull yeah and if we needed anyone behind the boat to push it I would have been the first one and probably the only one yeah let me ask you about working with Klaus Kinski he he doesn't look like an easygoing guy well let me put it this way Marlon Brando has a reputation as being a difficult actor but I think it's in comparison to Kinski's probably like only like a docile extra under said no but there's so much talk about the difficulties with Kinski of course he is difficult but all his madness is is his real quality you only have to make it productive for the screen and so what what do all the battles count that we had we we do have a very deep understand that probably actors and directors normally do not have okay I want to ask you one more question about Klaus and we'll go back to Mick not on this film but on another film did you pull a gun on Klaus well there are some some crazy reports about that and I must say that was in an earlier film the Aguirre the wrath of God he he he had an argument with a sound assistant he demanded from me alternatively that I should dismiss the man and it was all Klaus fault I said now I won't dismiss him in the said I'm gonna fire him and I said now you don't do that so he said I'm gonna leave and that was ten days before the end of shooting and he packed everything and went into the speedbird and I came unarmed of course and I spoke quite with a soft voice and I told him I I would shoot him he would reach the next River Bend and he would have eight bullets in his head and in the last words would be for me so the man has instinct and he knew it was no joke anymore he was kind of scared and he screamed for the police but for about 600 miles around there was no personnel Police Post yeah it was to no avail anyway now back to Mick Jagger what yeah here's a guy you'd never worked with before I know of course I had never met him before a good accurate do you think no not a good actor that would be wrong to say he's he's a sensation and nobody has realized that what what a performer is that man it's just incredible he's he played a part of a feeble-minded of a Englishman who ends up as a crazed actor somewhere in the Charlie and his a sidekick off of the leading character just a very very big and sad loss I tried to take the momentum of those catastrophes for the advantage of the film I I concentrated the story better I made the conflict between the white intruders and the and the Native Indians more important so it at the end I think it was the advantage of the film and maybe we shouldn't speak so much about the losses and other all the difficulties that we have gone through what we see on the screen is the only thing that counts and Klaus Kinski's Fitzcarraldo and we've got that film and I'm quite happy with it and again you already said you'd want to talk about this but what is there anything to be done with this all of this footage with Jagger in it I mean or is that just you should have folks over to your house and look at it no as a matter of fact I threw it all away only before I did that I made a small collection for Mick Jagger I put it on video and I sent it to him as a gift it's very nice oh I'm sorry jeez I had one more question we're out of time we do it okay now I forgot the question well auditions for this job will open up soon I was gonna say at one point in one of these monologues in this film you say I don't think I should be making films anymore you said if I complete this maybe I should look for another line of work obviously that was not really how you felt you have to see it out of the situation how it came of course I'll be around and I'm gonna struggle and I'll try to do my best get a stare at the jungle for a while I would guess I guess maybe I'll go to the Sahara next time 10,000 people terrific werner herzog we have to pause thank you very much a defined thank you my guest tonight mr. Jay Leno and of course mr. Werner Herzog fascinating film called Fitz Corolla thank you very much 400 nice of you to be here

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Length: 13min 50sec (830 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 21 2016