Werner Herzog on Philosophy of his Films, Cancel Culture, Consumerism & More | Full Video Episode

[Music] hi and welcome to the origins podcast i'm your host lawrence krauss this week we had the remarkable opportunity to visit with the filmmaker werner herzog at his home in la and it was a remarkable conversation werner is not only one of the most important filmmakers in the last 50 years indeed francois truffaut called him the most important filmmaker alive at the time but he's a thoroughly fascinating interesting human being thoughtful well-read widely experienced and also knowledgeable about topics including science and i've had many such discussions with him now we decided not to do a retrospective of his films it's been done before of course we discuss and he discusses the films in the context of what we're talking about but we decided to focus on ideas and our discussion ranged incredibly broadly over everything from norms and political correctness to the catholic church to the nature of evil and the nature of nature itself i think you'll find his ideas provocative and fascinating and the stories of his own experiences truly remarkable werner's often been called the most misunderstood man in the world and and i think you'll see the man you see here may be very different than the man you've heard about in particular very different from the villain he played in jack reacher so with no further ado varner herzog [Music] [Music] verner thank you so much for letting us invade your solitude i'm happy to say for those people are watching that verner and i are both fully vaccinated and we feel comfortable being this far apart without our masks so you don't have to write in um good to be together with you with the two villains yes in movies that's right you were my wonderful villain in uh salted fire one of their hearts i have played the parts of villains in some movies yes we'll get in there good you're yeah you're definitely a better villain but but uh um i promised you when i said we talked that this is not going to be a retrospective of your career those things have existed and there's some good books that that that by uh paul cronin that talked to you a lot about i'm actually honored to have written the afterward in one of them um but i do but this since it's an origins podcast i we have to begin with origins so we have to go a little bit of the origins and i want to read i want to read two things um first from the back of of your book about to make the making of kits geraldo the conquest uh of the useless it says that you grew up in a remote mountain village in bavaria you never saw any films television or telephones as a child which is which i want to get to then let me read the beginning of the the first version of cronin's book which says most of what you've heard about werner herzog is untrue more than any other director living or dead the number of false rumors and downright lies disseminated about the man and his films is truly astonishing in researching herzug's life and work a process that involved trawling through endless sources it soon became clear how frequently some would contradict others i confessed having deviously longed to trip him up to find holes in his arguments uncover a mass of contradictory statements but to no avail and i now conclude that he is either a master liar or more probably he's been telling the truth and so the truth is you never saw any movies or television when you were a child is that right sure but you have to imagine the situation when i was born munich was bombed it was one of the early born big raids and the place where i stayed or my mother just had come back from hospital and brought me home i was only two weeks old and in the neighborhood there was heavy damage and where we lived it was an attic on a not a penthouse but an atelier with lots of glass and it was shattered and she found me in my cradle only two weeks old with a layer of glass shards and brick and debris debris on me wow but i was completely unhurt so but but she was frightened and fled to the remotest place in the mountains a safe place and i grew up next to a farmhouse in a small appendix a small adjoining house which was meant for the old farmers when they retire they move out of the main farmhouse but still help the young farmer who has inherited the farm now and of course we barely had electricity we had no running water we had no sewage we had no heating system only in the kitchen there was a stove which created also worms but in the bedroom in a tiny bedroom there was no heating and we had no toilet we had no running water well a toilet yes but an outhouse an outhouse but it was made of wooden planks and in winter when it was very windy little snow drifts came in and it it wasn't easy so and we had to take water from the well into the house so no sewage system nothing so of course there was no radio there was nothing and no uh cinema i only learned about it when i was um i think 11 years 10 or 11 years old a traveling projectionist came to the schoolhouse and showed two films which didn't impress me at all but of course i became i took notice there was something out there that was unknown to me is that what intrigued you because what interests me is that by the statement that you hadn't seen it is when you were 16 you took an all-night job as a welder working all night long and then going to school or sleeping through school i think you said largely because you were working all night long in order to finance your first film right so what why with a childhood that had never really experienced that except at school what was it about making a movie that made it that made it that drove you well it's a complicated uh story but uh too complex for a quick exchange of opinions but i can summarize it i give you the the shorthand of it when i was 14 of course we had to return to munich when i was 11 12. because it was high school and there was electricity in the radios and you you just name it also cinemas but for the high school which we called gymnasium which was with classical buyers we had to learn nine years latin six years ancient greek a little bit english at the end and in munich of course there were some very decisive moments all crammed in a few weeks and it was one of the events was i had a dramatic religious faith uh and converted to become a catholic of all religions i started traveling on foot and i knew i was a poet and i knew i was it was my destiny to make films so that's all in very few weeks crammed sure but of course it still has guided is still is guiding me until today sure it's clear i mean all of those things having known you are logical are logical in retrospect this epiphany if you want to call it that what age was it uh 14 14. wow but you see becoming a catholic i knew at the time it was a difficult decision because i had problems with church history that the church was always on the side of the oppressed i had problems with the church hierarchy for example in islam you don't have a hierarchy of clerics and so you you are facing god on your own you say your prayers five times a day and you have no you don't need a church you don't need clerics you're exposed all alone with your soul to to the almighty uh which doesn't exist in catholicism yeah it says in in i mean i was brought up jewish and i think it does a little bit in judaism although i don't think god listens to you unless you have a certain number of men with you yes and it's also interesting that jewish people talk back to to the lord they argue they argue exactly i find this a very a very interesting very interesting attitude i i thought about that as well but i had problems about dogmas and and it goes back all the way to a bishop ryus i think in alexandria in the 4th century who try to define the nature of god and what is the very substance of god that it's a unique a new unique existence that exists per se and out of itself and is not connected to time so god is outside of time because he's here it creates time now the problem is what about jesus christ who was born his son wasn't his born ton born within time so and arius argued that way but he was declared a heretic at the council of nikea in 336 or so it's very interesting because i i would like to have been on the side of the heretics of course you and then a good hundred years later council of ephesus the saint augustine and it at that time it was the the argument about uh free will and there was again a bishop i think probably also in alexandria in egypt who argued that we as human beings have an inborn free will and therefore we have the choice to sin or stay virtuous for saint augustine impossible because for him there was an indelible mark upon the human soul and that was being sinful and only with the assistance of god or jesus we could be redeemed so redemption does not come from us by avoiding sinful lives but it only could come from from the almighty yeah and again again i think today or at that time i had the feeling uh saint augustine should be the heretic and not pilagus it would have been better for the world i think saint augustine had been the heretic i think but and in the the discourse the debate comes up until to this very day when the uh capital in washington was stormed one of the younger senators from i think mississippi uh what is his name uh who is one of this firebrand who who showed the fist in front of the capitol building to the ones who were about to in the interesting thing is he has a theological argument and it is against saint pilagus he quotes pilagus a fourth fifth century theological thinker as somebody who who is in favor of the very hardcore theological sort of dogma of of free will or or will that is imposed on us through our birth through our very nature all of a sudden all of a sudden with the fundamentalists with the fundamentalist christian fundamentalists argue about this today sure and i find it interesting yeah it's fascinating because this this debate is gonna go on for the next centuries it's not it's not anything eccentric that it comes up uh today yeah in fact actually i think it's probably that same aspect of saint augustine i first heard this quote from christopher hitchens but i've since learned it was a 16th century bishop who said it but the problem that that he that christopher saw with christianity is that you were born ill and commanded to be well and that seems like that seems uh yeah that seems unfair and in saint augustine says non-possum not to sin is impossible for me because sin is a blemish it's an indelible mark upon your soul and his soul and everyone's soul so a very very fascinating argument but to make it short at that time i thought about these things and i still chose to become a catholic well the fact that you thought about those things at age 14 is itself unique i would say well you have to think about uh about the nature of god yeah sure about it and the nature of creation you have to get into it well you i agree one what you have to i think most people most people don't and um in fact there was another another quote that just came to mind because i was writing it from from um bertrand russell who said most people would rather would sooner die than think and they do which is which is an attitude which is okay we have the capacity so does the cow in the field yeah yeah exactly and that's what thinking about the nature of these deep questions is yeah i think what makes life worth living it might and i think we agree on that i want to jump before we leave film entirely we'll come back periodically you were nice enough to to let me ask me to speak at europe film school and we had a fun discussion as i remember about the fourth dimension but i was i was shocked but at the time you you talked about the num the most important things that for a filmmaker and the two things that you that i remember you said were first reading yeah but reading's the most important thing the second as i remember was learning how to pick locks so maybe pick locks is only a separate isolated item and by that i mean live live an intensive life the way like hemingway would live through things and then write about it or joseph conrad who has been captain of ships in southeast asia and in the congo and so and and he he's somebody who's experienced what what he writes about in a way and has developed great prose both of them and i i just name them among many others who are the ones who would actually pick the lock or do other things i propose for example learn how to forge documents learn how to write a convincing letter documented of permit allowing you shooting in and for example 10 12 years ago i filmed in myanmar at that time military dictatorship and once and now dictatorship again and i had a wonderful a wonderful document in the script of myanmar and allowing me to film and i did and so you you have to have to do it i would never have gotten the the permit nor would i ever have gotten the permit for shooting in peru when i moved my ship yes that i had to move over a mountain but i was not allowed because what we did not know there was an impending nazi will border war with ecuador and passage on the river that was near the border was not allowed they even shot at our ship once oh really and and so i came back with a shooting permit that was even signed by the peruvian president perfect wow wild stamps invented stamps and they never got back that you never had no i showed it to the coronel who was at a military camp and had somehow stopped my ship and i showed it to him and and he said move on and salute it oh wonderful you didn't have to forge any documents for north korea i assume too you shouldn't do that yeah that would be now with north korea there's no joking and and you can't do it and by the way i i respect it i completely respected what they asked me to do i was there for filming a volcano which is a gigantic volcano at the border right at the border with china half the volcanic lake in the rim is chinese the other southern part is belongs to north korea high military presence and we were only allowed to do filming related to the volcano and at one instance very interesting we filmed at the rim of the volcano with a scientist and about 10 yards away from marseilla soldiers everybody in north korea should at least once visit the volcano because it's meant the spiritual origin of the korean spirit in the korean nation so soldiers are very there and and experience the wonder of this place of origin and i hear some laughter right next to me and i i see there are some young soldiers taking photos we swung the camera around and there were five or six young soldiers in the young female soldier and they did selfies and took photos of them in front of the volcano and one of the soldiers had ticket one of the girls oh so and she was laughing and they were enjoying and all of a sudden one of our secret service guys was bang in front of the camera demanded switch it off and now we were forced to delete it and they said i uh i tried to argue and i said this give such a human face to the armed forces in your country no in no country in the world you can show soldiers with their face recognizable you can identify them and besides the north korean soldier is not giggling and laughing he and she are determined to sacrifice their lives for for the fatherland so and we tried to delete it and we couldn't read it was complicated um data management and then after three days they wanted to confiscate the entire hard drive and they said please don't do that because we are losing three four days of shooting and i said i have a proposal i would like to give you a guarantee that i'm not gonna use this footage and i'm really and i said i function like that many of my contracts the most importance were not in 120 pages contracts but handshakes an oral sort of commitment and they always functioned and they said what what does your guarantee look like and i said i have three guarantees my face my honor and my handshake and i shook my hand and i was allowed to keep it wow and i never used this footage they said uh when you're outside of our airspace you immediately are gonna use it and it's showing up on this cnn and it's gonna show up on fox news so i said no it will not i do not function like that yes that and you see that's that's my general attitude and it is always functioned yes even with the north koreans i maintained the honor in my faith in my commitment and it that again knowing you as i do that does not surprise me but it's one of the things that makes you unique in hollywood i think especially i i read somewhere that one point um uh i forget which film you you said hollywood was coming to you where they wanted to make something and you made them come to munich and and they and they said um what how much will it cost because you were writing the screenplay yeah and you said i think it's a dollar fifty for a hundred sheets of paper and made an extra dollar for a pencil no it was true actually it was at that time um a 20th century fox that was interested in my films because at that time all of a sudden three of my films on the american theater market were among the 50 best selling films and they wanted to produce three films with me uh among them there was uh fitzgeraldo but then it turned out very quickly actually we did one film together dos ferrara to the vampire film but they were not producers there were they paid an advance guarantee a distribution advance guarantee and endeavour surprised because i took them to the countryside to a very nice old fashioned bavarian restaurant and they said could you start working very soon on the screenplay i said yeah i can do it very quickly and they did they didn't understand that i could do it in a week or so because i saw the entire film then i write a screenplay and it takes me a week yeah in fact generally that's true right i think when there's a film we made i think you said you made a weekend or something written on a long weekend two and a half three days but um and and they wanted to know how how would it be financed and i was surprised and how much would it cost i said a dollar fifty i have to buy 250 sheets of of paper and at that time of course typewriters and then i may uh mess up a few pages and i have to repeat some so uh at 1.50 and they thought i was pulling their leg yeah they must have they must have well but now let's get back so i think the point you're making which we we just digressed from is that filmmakers have like writers have to have experience if they haven't had any life experience it's hard to make films that that that have meaning or depth is that i mean is that basically what you were trying to get no not necessarily it it's my way to make films or write write texts there are filmmakers who haven't had that much experience in the world outside for example fellini i think he never left rome for a shooting film and he came was born and raised in remini which is only two two hours car drive away yeah or for example when you look at writer's marcel post spent his time lifetime in bed dictating to us to to to a housekeeper and it's all his memories and bringing his memories to life and digging into the fluctuations and the heartache of memories so no not necessarily but well let's get to the second aspect which which i think is even more interesting the fact that you the first thing you said you have to do if you're gonna make films is read and i know during the time i've known you you've introduced me to books that i'd never heard of that have that have changed the way i've thought of the world so i assume you stand by that that reading is an essential part of still well any creative work if you're an architect if you are an artist a visual artist or if you're a writer it's a filmmaker in particular and it gives you a sense of of concepts it gives you a sense of storytelling it gives you a sense of dialogue it gives you a a separate interior life that you can experience it is purely out in the abstract and yet it is full of life lives of others lives that were experienced by an author and expressed by someone so i think reading is is essential and look at all the great filmmakers that i know today alive um you just name it coppola for example has his own library even his own librarian you have terence malik reading reading reading libraries full of of books ariel morris book after book that he's reading um everyone if you look at the at the real uh greater of the filmmakers uh just the other day on this table was florian henkel from donorsmark who did the lives of others he reads reads reads reads even moves to russia for two years studies in russia in order to be able to read the great novels tostoi tolstoy and dostoyevsky in its original russian wow yeah man i thought that's that's the way you you you gotta do it yeah that's dedication every single one every single one who is really good at it is reading no i i mean it's for both of us i think reading i it framed me i i the the time that i had i guess the time i had my life to read the most was up up till about age 16 before other things began to get in the way but the but the fact that i spent almost my entire time just reading has served me the for the rest of my life and right and the but there but there's reading and there's reading there's people who when we talk about reading there's different levels of of material one of the things having having been involved a little bit in movies my view of of of lit of film critics and people who write about film is a little jaded and i i i when you were taught there's a quote of yours when you're talking about time is that time is over film critics but anyway when you were talking about bad lieutenant you you you there's a great quote he said i call upon the pedantic theoreticians of cinema to chase after such things go for it losers sure yeah sometimes i'm provocative i know i shouldn't be so out of course you should but but uh let's face it the time of great uh reviewers uh and that is pauline kyle or at the new york or roger ebert and important because the audience was on the lookout what do they say about the film but this culture has disappeared and they have been replaced bit by bit by bit um and uh removed from the print media and replaced by celebrity news yeah today's all all has shifted into celebrity news and it has shifted to the internet so and for example i remember the good old days in the 70s for example at prime time television you had gorvital and norman mailer at prime time uh discussing and wildly fighting each other over the shape of the of the modern american novel prime time yeah it's all gone when you look uh at universities even with departments of classic classics where they in humanities the students do not read anymore yeah in fact not only they're not reading i'll want to get to it they they determine what they they do in advance what they don't want to read which is even worse because they don't know what they shouldn't be reading or should be reading and they decide i don't know what i should be reading either yeah so but i follow my curiosity of course and exactly but but you follow it in a positive sense not in a sense saying i refuse to even think about reading that which is unfortunately as we'll get to as a characteristic of a lot of what's going on in in in academia now yeah and of course sometimes i'm i'm provocative on purpose because i remember bad lieutenant you saw it all over the place in the reviews a remake of a film that was made by abel ferrara also bad lieutenant but mine is uh part of called new orleans i want to desperately want it only part of called new orleans it only has a title in common it's completely and utterly different stories and this kind of insipid insisting on this was a remake not a single thread of my story has to do with abel ferrara's film and arbel himself believed how we are stealing his movie and at the cun film festival when it was announced as stupidly as it gets by the produce by one of the producers we are doing a remake and it caught on and you cannot delete it anymore and abel side we said oh herzog and his people should rot in it should burn and rot in hell and i met abel two years later and we were only laughing and had had such a good time we we i think three hours eighty percent of what was not this course but laughing together oh that's well yeah well i wonder i honestly wonder lately when i see film reviews if they've actually seen the movie um i i i'm i'm not being facetious it has become very popular on the internet now yeah yeah yeah and it's one of my best films it's a it's an it's an we'll come back to it because i think it's an interesting reflection also on a number of things including society and government but before i i i do want to ask you what there's a the opening quote from from the book about fitzgeraldo which i think you know this but i i've told you this at the i mean fitzgeraldo is what i i saw i i saw the wrath of god and fitzgerald when i was a graduate student in boston and um and it's what made me so so dismayed the first time i met you because i i thought you were so much older you must be so much older than me and i remember the first time we met i thought i was a graduate student doing virtually nothing and you were picking up age i think i was your age when i did a career i think i was just in my late twenties yeah exactly maybe in my late 30s yeah it made me feel useless but but you at the beginning of that book you you the first words you write is a vision had seized hold of me like the demented fury of a hound that has sunk its teeth into the leg of a deer carcass and is shaking and tugging at the downed game so frantically that the hunter gives up trying to calm him this gave me a sense that there's some things you the sense i have is that some that you have to do something some movies just have to be made you don't have you can't not make them is that is that true yeah it's there is a demented theory and there's a i have a maybe a better word that's not so loaded with uh obsession or so because i'm not obsessive yeah yeah you know there's a vehemence there's a vehemence with which projects are coming at me well why you know i i i always assumed and having hap i've never been involved in two movies of yours but but but one which was in bolivia that substitute fire exactly and um which as i told you it's one of the anyway is it for me a highlight of my life um but i've always kind of felt like you didn't want to make a movie unless it was hard no and that's not true exactly wrong and there's a wonderful yeah well let's let me give you the quote and then you can elaborate on that though well first of all you say i don't believe in fate and destiny but i have a great faith in probability i make sure that whatever do puts me firmly on the side of safeties safety perhaps mountaineers are motivated to seek out the most difficult routes but not me as a filmmaker such an attitude would be wholly unprofessional and irresponsible and being my own producer means it's especially in my interest to work as efficiently as possible sure so this notion that you that i think probably because of fitzgerald or maybe the others that that the movie has to be almost impossible to make is not what drives you uh almost impossible but doable they're doable i do the doable i do the doable and i keep telling everyone do the doable and you remember salt in fire we had a scene where we thought we would uh dig the camera very very low and even through into the salt assault plane miles and miles and miles very strange and beautiful and extraterrestrial and we tried to dig the camera into the salt and it was hard it was the salt was hard like concrete yeah and and we had only a fortnight of shooting the entire feature film and the cinematographer peter cycling has said oh come on let's spend more time and so but i said peter look at the sun here it is and it will be down in two and a half hours there's no more shooting and we have still three sequences left i do to film and i said drop drop your ice axe and try do not try this we have to do the doable and you were right there yeah i remember oh yeah we were we were because some of us were leaving the next day in fact yeah we that was the last time remember that and i remember you saying let's just do it forget continuity in one scene company doesn't matter it's just important to get it done yes and continuities is something which is some sort of the sacred cow of the um let's say the film industry and um for me sometimes in films where you cannot predict everything like i carry the wrath of god what is gonna happen to you in the rapids in three rafts passing through rapids you just collect footage and you try to get through the whole thing so and i keep saying if footage has great substance it always fits together it always connects and it's a truth that i have learned through many many many of my films now let's see how that's okay that's remarkable um it has to be worth making i guess there's another quote in that same page that again struck me and i'm going to read it because i love it if you give a piece of an unknown metal alloy to a chemist he will examine its structure by putting it under great pressure and exposing it to great heat this gives him a better understanding of what the metal is composed of the same can be said of human beings who often give insight into their innermost being when under duress we are defined in battle the greeks had a saying a captain only shows during a storm shooting under a certain amount of pressure and insecurity injects real life and vibrancy that wouldn't otherwise be there into a film but i wouldn't be sitting here if i had ever risked anyone's life while making a film i'm a professional who never looks for difficulties my hope is always to avoid problems so so but that doesn't mean you don't avoid the difficult there's a difference between avoiding problems and avoiding the difficulty i guess and difficulties have to be faced and you have to outsmart the the obstacles that are thrown into your way and still you have to be professionally enough to outsmart the reality on the ground that is against fundamentally against your filmmaking in fact there's another quote somewhere i don't want to dig it up i know it's somewhere something about um you said something about perseverance something like perseverance is the heart of a no no there's a peruvian i know it from peru the perseverance here is it's perseverance is where the gods dwell and that's a very nice way to to say it and you are correct lawrence in 70 or so films 70 plus films not a single actor ever got injured not one that's not one that's not a single one however i was injured some crew members were injured i remember fitzgeraldo the cinematographer thomas mauro he had a handheld camera but at that time celluloid 35 millimeter and it was 20 kilos heavy huge piece of iron and we re we banked into a rock when it goes the ship goes through the rapids and the impact we had several impacts but that one was so ferocious that the lens shot away from out of the camera and we flew after it i tried to hold him and he landed some 30 yards further down with his hands on the deck with a camera in his hand and it split his hand apart oh between the last and the ring finger all the way to the center of the hand and we had to operate him and stitch him together did you have a doctor on site at the time we had a doctor and we had a very very good peruvian paramedic who was very good in stitching by by the way and very good in as a midwife he was very always in child birth there and he was a real bester dislocated shoulder he would massage back in he was really good and at the time we didn't have any anesthesia left because only two days before we had an incident where people who were fishing local people native people who were fishing for us further upriver were attacked by a semi-nomadic tribe that was not contacted by civilization and they were very hostile and we had the driest dry season in recorded history in the river further up ten days further dried out oh my goodness and they moved along with a dwindling water probably in search of of turtle eggs and at night they attacked our three people and one man was shot through the throat with an error if you reach out right next to you there's some arrows reach of you oh yes give give me a few a few yeah yes i'll give you one time you see there are some is there something like uh they're beautiful six feet six feet tall wow and actually don't understand they're still you still can feel are these from that that that no from a different tribe from a different movie inside here they are still poisoned but it's uh it's not like courage that would kill you it's an anticoagulant so if you shoot it up here it the bleeding would not stop easily but it's mostly there that long because they keep straight when they're in the water so they do not wobble and you can shoot fish and it was exactly the same type of of errors and he was shot through it split open his shoulder stuck through his neck and was with a with a arrow tip uh he had stuck was stuck in the other shoulder but the arrow was still through his throat and the arrow itself the shaft had broken off and he survived we operated on the kitchen table wow because we couldn't transport the woman yes also had three shots one in in the abdomen one through the body here and they were very lucky if they were filming nearby they would have been they were yeah sure and and we had medical people but we knew we couldn't transport them anymore there was no way they would die on during transport yeah sure yeah so we instantly started to operate on them did someone also uh get bitten by a snake in that in that yeah he thought of his foot in order to survive here but but those are the the things that may happen but here with these arrows it was really an unusual experience for making a movie yes yeah and i assisted with a torchlight uh illuminating for example the abdominal cavity of the woman who was because one arrow was struck in stuck inside the pelvis and none of them died they saw two two of them they both survived wow and with a with my other hand with a mosquito repellent i sprayed away the the clouds of mosquitoes that were attracted by the and it was on the kitchen table oh geez okay well there you go that's just doable but not but difficult but unusual those those things yeah but they do happen and and you see some of it actually it's not made up you you have to watch les blanc's film burden of dreams you see the man who had the arrow through through the neck and um of course he can only speak in a whisper and when he's survived yeah surviving that's amazing well you know so yeah if it's worth doing and it's difficult it's worth doing i guess but it's it's uh yes but you do not expect such an event in a way yes we were medically fairly well equipped but you have to be prepared to to not uh somehow get frightened and delegate the case to the next hospital in let's say in iquitos which is 800 kilometers away sure yeah you just can't do it you you have to take a decision uh whether it's right or wrong it it was right because they would have died yeah exactly well that was the making of a of a fiction movie one of the things that's intrigued me and it's the last sort of film direct film related question i have before i want to move to other things is you move between documentaries and feature fiction drama and i don't know what governs the choice do you try and balance that or is it just the mood at the time or or it's unusual i think for filmmakers to be so well versed in the two different media yeah but it's it makes it makes reviewers nervous and i i think there's nothing wrong about it and there's nothing wrong about it i do not want to compare myself with him but shakespeare why is he writing dramas and then he's writing uh poetry so what's wrong about that there's nothing wrong about it but but it it what i mean is there do you go through periods um mentally or intellectually when you are more attuned to thinking in terms of documentaries or is it just what happens no no it's what whatever is coming at me with great vehemence i'm i have to deal with that first yeah okay absolutely okay good that's the uh i want to move into a a totally other area well maybe not totally other area talking about writing and reading you introduced me to a book which i'd never heard of uh the peregrine which which i i was sitting in this living room and you showed it to me and i went out and got it and it and it and there's a quote in that book which i actually began one of my later books with because it was so influential to me the hardest thing of all to see it is what is what is really there that that that quote from that book it seems to me to be epitomized so much about certainly my own science but life in general i wan comment on that on that quote well that's a very essential way to to review and understand and scrutinize and love the world it's essential you see and when you when you look at for example political discourse it's always pre-conditioned kind of discourses it's almost like kabuki theater uh and you know exactly what's coming from uh from this channel or from that channel so and it's almost like brainwashing and and stay away from brainwashing just uh take a good look what's out there and and besides look at it with an intensity and look at it with and that's the peregrine look at it with his ultimate passion of what he's observing in his case a narrow world peregrines we just followed that and yet he has written in my opinion the best pros we have seen since joseph conrad yes and uh some of the deepest uh insights into not into yeah also human nature but into passion and into observation and into nature that is completely unique no i i yeah and again it's something i never would have picked up i would have thought why would i read a book about someone who's following a peregrine falcon round for there it is i have to show it because yeah you have to show it because gotta read it apparently and it's just a simple simple book about which is clearly heavily notated i see if in your version lots of yeah lots of not annotations but important someone basically who decided to become the peregrine in order to in order to follow it yeah and uh and in the text becomes really intense even some some almost incandetory a real religious incantation yes it has qualities of things that i always like to find in movies to find in literature so and and it's so intense that baker would somehow morph into a perry green himself he describes a peregrine soaring higher and higher until it's only a dot and then we come swooping down we come slowing down as if he were a peregrine himself yeah that's right he comes down you get the sense that that's what he had to become he had to become a peregrine in order to follow it and what i also like is it's absolutely no designation of nature yes it's stark and and uh and ferocious and uh well yes relentless relentless relentless before we leave the peregrine though i mean this this notion of of of seeing what's really there not what's appearing yeah and i hate to almost question almost makes me sound a little too literary and i don't really mean it but i mean does that guide what what you're doing in films too i mean i hate it sounds like a film question and i hate to ask a little bit but but all of a sudden i discover someone who who reverberates uh in life and in um exploring the world on a wavelength that is has been mine since my childhood and then so it's the in and there's somebody who has this incredible intensity and incredib incredible gift of speech um so i i really admire him and i keep telling everyone if you want to be a filmmaker start with that i remember it has nothing to do with filmmaking yeah absolutely nothing and i think maybe it was even the film school that i first heard about i can't remember but i picked it up after that yeah and uh and it is it's profound and um something that occurred to me when when when i think i first first occurred to me when i first saw grizzly man which is when we first met just to be to be clear we i always happen to be a judge at the sundance film festival at the time and and that's and that's how we and we gave you slept pricey yes and that was to each other yes and um but what always what there were so many things about that movie that were impressed with me but but the interesting thing which i've seen in a number of which i've now looked for i think in in subsequent documentaries is you keep the camera on a person longer than the end of the interview and and as a sense after the interview's over in sometimes you see what's really there i don't i don't me maybe i'm reading too much into it but maybe you could talk about that a little bit well i'm not shooting keeping the cameras rolling all the time we are not garbage collectors and you can collect hundreds of hours but sometimes when i have a conversation on camera and when the statement of my partner in dialogue is over i normally keep the camera rolling because very often there's after a pause says an afterthought and very very often the afterthought gives a real insight so i'm hoping and waiting for an afterthought that's what i'm thinking of sort of what's really there is you get the talk and then you get the afterthought which is sort of what's really sometimes but uh it's it's just uh it's just a way i i use i use a camera and try to get something that is unexpected for both in dialogue speaking of unexpected one of the things that that that i want to talk about is defying norms which is increasingly difficult in the modern world but nevertheless i want to i want to explore in a variety of levels of depth because it seems to me i mean besides as an individual defying norms which yeah which is fair to say you do you're attracted to that if i think about it if i look at your films and the characters both in in in in the documentaries and in the non-documentaries i mean from fitzgerald here it's a dwarfs to rescue dawn a little deter um uh the grizzly man and even in salt and fire the characters are traditionally or the real people are people who defy norms and and and it seems to me you're increasingly attracted to that which i find not only enlightening but refreshing in a world where where it's becoming virtually impossible to define norm without being cancelled well you can define norms but but we shouldn't we shouldn't overlook that there's something in the background of all one is the side of truth let's not try to define it religion or philosophers or mathematicians cannot even tell you exactly what's what is truth but on the other side there's facts and much of cinema documentaries fact oriented like cinema verity or what you see on television every night normally um a story that has to do with uh with an issue and and then there has to be redemption and closure and hope at the end so there are certain norms and i have not liked it but facts should cannot be overlooked because i have normative normative norm creating power and what i'm trying to say is when you have a pandemic which is a worldwide fact all of a sudden it creates norms of behavior you better wear a mask when you are not vaccinated yet you better keep six feet six yeah six feet distance from your neighbors so the the normative power norm creating power effects should not be overlooked so i'm not totally against norms but when it comes to fantasies when it comes to invented characters when it comes to storytelling when it comes to poetry just go wild you just go white create your own yeah your own norms or your own borderlines and your own uh fantastic constructs that's that's the beauty of poetry that's the beauty of writing it the beauty of filmmaking it's and it's the freedom of poetry and filmmaking i'm wondering if that's why one of the attractions is the fact that you can go wild and there's very there are increasingly fewer areas in the world where you can go wild but in some sense with filmmaking and with writing yeah um you can you can you can go where you want yeah even even in nature you hardly can go wild anymore just try it try try that in yosemite national park you will have five park ranges in hot pursuit if you leave the paved walkway yeah try that yeah it's it's it's just increasingly hard everywhere and i but this sense of independence um there are two quotes earl in this book um about you by that that cronin says it says herzog pays little attention to the chorus and why should he it is an antagonism he feels towards such folk as much as indifference his ferocious need to make films and write books will forever trump everything regardless of the obstacles um and i so i think the the obstacles are important we've talked about that but it's the freedom to approach whatever you want i think that well the obstacles are the natural concomitant of the methane which i'm working and everybody knows it and and almost everybody complains but i'm not in the culture of complaints well we'll talk about the culture really now i i'm not into it i i don't like it the making of the film is is irrelevant it's what counts is what you see on the screen so if i have suffered through it or not who cares it's it's irrelevant and and whether it was difficult to work with orson welles is irrelevant with like marlon brando the young marlon brando the older marlo brando difficult yes who cares what what we care about other films and i'm not seeking uh problems and difficulties i don't i don't like that aspect of it but he says one thing that surprised me a little bit but um i i i because it surprised me because i can really relate to it but i never thought you of relating that says werner feels no shame in admitting that the respect of those he respects somehow keeps him going or temporary lessens the burden so yeah no no no it's i think i'm trying to with all my films to some degree to look at our human condition what is uh what are we who are we right now and uh and i'm not afraid to look very as deep as it gets and i'm uh in the film that we did together salt and fire i have two blind boys who are all of a sudden stranded with my protagonist a young woman in in a in a salt desert and abandoned there how does she cope with it how all of a sudden comes something across through these two boys who are blind well for example i would look into the deep joy and the fantastic designs of a man like fitzgerald or i'm looking into the recesses of our the darkest recesses of our human soul doing eight films nine films on death row yes you see and and and that that that's serious business i remember when you were doing them i remember talking it was very difficult to do it to be difficult but but at the same time you see everybody expects from you to be like either the attorneys defending them and and i would tell them in writing before my film is not a platform to prove your innocence you have had 11 years and your support groups and your separate trial again and your clemency appeals and all that so are you still prepared because i want to look deep into into who we are and what what the nature of these crimes were and in one case the most nihilistic crime that i know a triple homicide two perpetrators and the one of them the perpetrators was condemned to death his um his execution scheduled for eight eight days from the time i had him on camera and i i tell him right away within the first 120 seconds and he looks like a very nice kid really a sweet young man and i tell him mr perry we know that it's highly probable that you will die in eight days and looking at you in the crime that happened it's not necessarily happening that that i have to like you i do not have i do not necessarily have to like you and still i'm against capital punishment and i'm very open to listen to you and when i say that he hesitates a moment and he says all right because nobody has spoken like this to him ever ever people you have to make it seem as if they like him and he was actually executed eight days later but sometimes you see it it was on discovery channel the day four films and then they asked me to do four more and i had so many fascinating credible cases and they covered them and then they wanted for more and at that time i had my last film was a film with a young very young man 19 years old in texas and it was a botched exorcism wow wow and the toddler girl was murdered in a way that is unspeakable it it is beyond beyond what you could imagine and you and i read the entire case file and with the homicide detectives they showed me photos of the crime scene and i told them the day before delete the photos of the victim delete it i have seen the coroner's report which is abstract do not show me the photos they projected it against the wall all of a sudden the tenth photo is is that little girl and this quickly switched to the next again the victim and what i saw what i saw not even my worst enemy should ever see in his or her life i have seen something that you should never see and just at the time when they wanted me to do some more films i woke up in the middle of the night because i heard a scream and i woke up and i was wide awake and my wife next to me she was scared and because it the scream was my scream i woke up from my own scream because i had seen because and so uh i decided within five seconds i'm not gonna continue shooting anything on death row although there was projects just don't do it yeah yeah as an economy with your own with your own soul or with your own perseverance or your own capacity to to absorb so although uh there's a vehemence there to do it um i knew i had to stop because there was a brink yeah yeah for yourself in a way yes but uh so i'm not i'm not doing everything yeah and i've done nine films and the film i'm referring to is uh i think online it's called into the abyss yes and it's one of my my very very intense films i remember when you were in the process of making but i i i noticed that doing it was affecting you it said that i got the sense it was very difficult emotionally to to be able to well as a filmmaker you're not allowed to have emotions only to a certain degree yeah so on my set it's uh people would cry next to the camera and i would after the take is done i would say um my set um um is is a tear free zone it's uh yes yes no no cry free it's i set this cry free it's an emotion free i remember i remember vividly when i made when we made salt and fire because as you know i like to joke around yeah it's just the way i am and and and we joke when we're together as friends but when we're on the set it was i was planning to make some jokes and i just did not i didn't do it because i looked in your eyes and it was clear that it was there was no joking there was no crying there was it was just distracting from the intensity of work because we had to squeeze a program of shooting in one day that other filmmakers couldn't even do in five yeah so there was not not a breath free for but i like i like when there is laughter on the set i like when there's joy and i like for example not long ago i recorded a voice for a guest role for the simpsons the director was sitting not in the um in the control room sound proof behind glass fronts he was sitting in mine next to me and i i thought oh yeah i'll do it really well and before i had finished reading the text he laughed so he burst out laughing and from the control room you can't laugh into his line just keep quiet and i said to him please keep quiet and and next time i did it even while i just started to laugh even earlier they had to and i knew i knew this was good now yes because even the man who has written the lines sitting there and who knows everything bursts out in laughter well you know i knew i was good well you know you you you are good but that reminds me but no but you know it's funny like lawrence no no i know you mean i make my mistakes and i'm uh i'm a i'm a result i'm a child of my mistakes sure but but the the reason i was gonna what made me think about this is a very similar experience i had with you there was a line that you wrote in salted fire i think when when when i've asked my name or something i have to go yes and no yeah and you kept telling me how to do it and i was doing it one way or another and then i remember i finally got it and you broke down and started laughing and i said i know i've gotten sure sure yes and and always when when it comes to something and i'm always right next to the camera yeah with my face very close and there's something it doesn't have to be funny but if something is so extremely good like uh some things with uh nicolas cage i had to gag myself with a with a handkerchief because i was i was getting purple in my face and i was not i was about bursting out laughing even with kinski really wild serious scenes and and i was when the dialogue was over i would bend down and burst out laughing and they knew they were good now don't repeat it from that moment on i always have something to gag myself oh interesting i need i need to gag myself so you don't make the mistake of spoiling because it would be in the sound sure sure yeah yeah but yeah anyway that's memorable for me that i believe yeah that at that moment that was the moment that was the first time i was nervous about doing what i was doing but when i made you laugh that time i just thought okay well it may work at least i can now let's switch completely um i told you i'm going to jump over top there's a quote and i know this i will again frame this i i used to hate los angeles you're the first person that made me see los angeles in a different way and there's a quote in this book that i that i think captures it you said what i like about los angeles is it allows everyone to live his or her own lifestyle drive around the hills and find a moorish castle next to a swiss chalet sitting beside a house shaped like a ufo there's a lot of creative energy in los angeles not channeled into the film business for me los angeles is the city in america with the most substance even if it's raw uncouth and sometimes quite bizarre yes well said well well said exactly colored my own picture of los angeles since then but i want to use that as a hook to talk about something else which is your the reason you like los angeles is in my mind correlated i think to a lack of political correctness namely in los angeles anything goes to anything there's also political correctness but a little lesson in some other areas but i'm here in los angeles because i'm happily married here i'm not here for hollywood and and of course everybody when i say we moved to the city with the most substance in the united states everybody thinks here i'm making a joke because they think immediately about the glitz and glamour of hollywood sure no it's uh substance creative substance scientists uh mathematicians even the reusable rockets are built within the perimeter of the city itself not outside somewhere in the countryside here in the city and uh all the crazy sects and i mean the crazy things that as well crazy sects uh um yoga classes for five-year-olds and you just name it but i i do believe that maybe even in the world it's a city at the moment it's a city with the most substance and things get done here things can get done if there's a variety if there's sort of a thousand points of light if different people because most things fail and and only if you try lots of different things we will some of them succeed and that's certainly the way it is in science and i think it's the way it is in business and problem perhaps in film too yeah but but i'm i guess the reason i'm asking this is i want to frame this in the way in which society is moving towards a kind of level of uniformity a kind of level of where where you cannot strike out in different directions and and so um how do you see the future here in los angeles uniformity is not only a question of los angeles it's uh it's a worldwide phenomenon because we are so many human beings on this planet and it enforces uh some sort of structured behavior and controlled behavior and controls today are so easy through the internet you can locate where you are and in china for example i do believe that you can find out that some person is exactly at that moment at a at a rally at a political opposition rally yes and meeting some dissidents and you know and all of a sudden you're being punished you cannot open a bank account anymore or things like that so you cannot have a credit card anymore and this kind of normed streamlined behavior will inevitably uh take more root the more human beings we are we are too many and all the problems of ecology and wasting away our resources on our planet um is a result of of this enormous amount of population in the second massive massive uh downside is most of the population on this planet is into the mood of consumerism we are all moving in and this is why i try to to live a life with mud as little consumerism as possible i have one pair of shoes for example i don't need two or three actually i have a second one for mountain climbing so it's not completely right and i i do not throw food away 45 of food is being thrown away and it pains me because as a child after the war my brother and i my mother we were very hungry we were really hungry for about one two years and i know what it means to be hungry so and and this consumerism is something it's not the entire world when when you look at the amish for example they still live um life without technology you have with very little technology low impact technology and they have homestead farms and they have a very very clear understanding how to behave as human beings so in in the long term they have a long-term better survival than we have well that's what i was going to ask it's almost unfair to ask this but are you optimistic or pessimistic about the direction the the future given the the forced uniformity the increased population the internet uh um uh uh of course you made a movie the about the ethereal aspects of the internet which i was going to talk about maybe later but but uh but but its influence on the social behavior of individuals uh yes it's inevitable and straightforward individualism is is a more rare phenomenon and yes you can for example go into back into homestead farming but then how do you feed uh how do you feed 8 billion people 8 000 million people and i remember on the set of salt and fire we had these arguments with peter seitlinger who lives a very green life he has a little homesteaded home in northern italy and he said ah yeah we should all build we should all have little farm plots on the roofs of skyscrapers and i said fine try that with new york city yeah yes you can have beans and tomatoes up there but how do you feed 11 mil or 8 million inhabitants of manhattan island you have to go hunting and gathering and for that you have central park and you have eight million people who do not know how to shoot a bow and arrow and you have maybe 400 squirrels as prey so show it to me no go out and show it to me exactly the the blissful uh you know romance of nature in that sense is is not realistic in terms if we want in fact it it discourages some people to realize that you know i i told you i just wrote a book about climate change that that um the way to feed to potentially deal with this is not to go back to homestead farming which takes more land yeah but for better or worse uh large scale farming and and technology has allowed people to do more with less and sure and we can do it that there's lots of improvement but the very basic problems remain and it's hard to tackle one is overpopulation china has tried it with a one-child policy and it will have long-term term effects in the next generation just wait for that second is consumerism and almost every single civilized society on this planet is wildly into consumerism and that's where we can do a lot of changes but it will lower our standard of living it inevitably will lower the standard of living well we'll change it it's an interesting question of lo when when you say lower it means you you consume less you you spend you have fewer things but it's not necessarily i don't know i think this is kind of a minority yeah because it's considered a high standard if we have a lot to to waste and consume and having uh uh 200 shirts in in our in our closet and so it's yes we we can we can reduce it but it will have severe consequences on economy yes we will have a reduced economy and more unemployment and the it's not just an attitude that we can adopt easily it will as more people are not employed or not paid to do work yes and let's face it here we face it here and that's why i find ideas of colonizing the next planet mars with one million people i don't like it it's not right we should stay and understand this is our own planet this is our home it is glorious it is wonderful it's miraculous and it's friendly also of course hostile but it's that's a and such a blessing upon us and uh i keep saying about colonizing other planets in the only one in our vicinity would be it would be mars one million people there it's technically it's not doable technically and i say it without being a technician the last century the 20th saw the demise of great social utopias communism fascism creating a master race of aryans and all the devastation that came with it and all the barbarism that came with it our century the 21st will inevitably see the demise and the collapse of technological utopias for example through genetic manipulations we will not become immortal or quasi-immortal it is not gonna happen number two we will not colonize mars with one million people it's an illusion it's a utopia mind my word when we meet in 100 years i can't wait to have this discussion with you in 100 years and elon musk mind my word when i meet you somewhere out there i want to have that discourse with everyone as a as a tech as more as a technician i suppose i'm not quite a technician i'm a theorist but i can't agree with you more this this illusion that we're going to colonize mars is is an illusion and it's yes but we should we should explore it yeah that's the send robots and send scientists up there i prefer robots are easier to handle and they probably have more more value than a human being that needs to pee that needs to breathe that needs to stay safe from radiation and that needs uh to drink water so of course that we spend far much too much time keeping people alive instead of exploring that's what i like about yes explore it send send a few astronauts there bring intelligent science up there yeah sure wonderful go out do it i would like to be there with the camera yeah i would be the first one to volunteer there's a mission now going around moon and returning to earth i'd love to be on board but it's let's face it uh it's a it's an idea of mine or it's a dream of mine which is not gonna happen probably not gonna happen but i still would like to go i understand the feeling this but i have mixed feelings we talked about this before i i i've i yearned as a young man to go into space and it would be an amazing adventure but i'm not sure when it when it came down to it whether i would really want to do it personally because one of the things is as we as i said i would love to do it come on i'd love to do it in princeton but i also love when the rovers take pictures of mars i feel like i'm there i don't need i don't need to have a cameraman i'm happy to have the rover there taking the picture and the images are just amazing i feel like i'm there yeah but when we talk about the future we've talked about the things that the technological utopia that won't happen there is an aspect of technology and you you touch on it in a way that i wa in in in a i want to maybe it's a perversion of what you said but we'll see again thinking about bad lieutenant believe it or not from a guide for the perplex yeah from a guy i'm reading from guy from perplex which which you and i know what the subtitle comes from and we'll let other people can you show it to the camera because of the bear yeah it's not a photoshop lena my wife did it oh okay she was nervous because the bear was right behind you yeah wow i i wasn't nervous but i i mind it because it had a very foul breath let's get that you've got that okay excellent well now from another movie from that bad lieutenant you said which takes place in new orleans after the after the flooding yeah you said it was it was as if every one of america's problems was located there not least the crisis of government credibility so as far as i was concerned it was the perfect place to set the story that interested me government at the time you're talking about the government credibility of being able to hand of of keeping people safe and and and from from a flood well sometimes you can't keep them from a disaster of course so but the next question is how do you take care of those who are afflicted and government response came very very late oh yes and in a very timid way we all remember that and so we cannot avoid all the trials and tribulations for the human race the question is the response and of course at the time post katrina yeah it was a collapse of let's say public behavior corruption in the police force corruption in politics it was many things coalesce at that time it was very fascinating because the screenplay originally was written for the um for the city of new york and the opening sequence was taking place in the subway with a bad lieutenant save some a suicidal man from jumping in front of a incoming train but i moved it into a flooded prison where prisoner is forgotten and the water is rising and rising the ceiling is that close and and finally the bat lieutenant nicholas cage jumps into the brackish water where a snake is slithering around and swimming and he saves him and he he minds that he ruins his cotton swiss underwear that cost him 45 bucks he's really miffed about that so i invented that scene to adapt it for new orleans and for a natural disaster that took everything off balance taking it off balance and the natural disaster that's right and that's the one aspect of the cup the lack of government credibility and a lack of response appropriately to a natural disaster but i want to take it forward now 10 years or i don't know how long ago but maybe 10 years since then um a different kind of concern about government credibility that's partly technological the loss we've seen in the last four years uh in this country the credibility of government and the credibility of what you even see in the media going away because of the ability of technology if you wish to falsify reality are you concerned about that yeah yeah sure and all the fake news but i think um even though the media conformist for this or the other political part of this spectrum you have a lot of possibilities through the internet and i find it fantastic to have it to go you you read for example very awful uh remarks about the the former the previous pope benedict the bavarian pope and um there was a session in in parliament 10 years ago in german parliament at the bundestag and some of the left parties walked out because it lived delivered a speech and and i read the speech and it was the deepest about law making that i've ever seen in my life he was criticized for his attitude towards uh towards jewish faith and i i said wait a minute let me read his uh speech he delivered in auschwitz and in the website of the vatican you can read all the full speeches of all the popes and and it's a stunning speech three times in a short speech the pope asks a question that in two thousand years not a single pope dared to ask where was god then where was he where was god when this barbarism and atrocities happened period and you you can read it in the internet use the internet use it intelligently use use the sources even on television you can you can watch contrast programs watch ultra zero for example because they're serious news and all of a sudden you hear news from parts of the world that are not covered by bbc or cnn or anything of course you have to know that when it comes to israel it's going going pretty wild yeah but but you have to see it against this texture look at russian tv some very intelligent political discourse but of course you have to see it against the texture you better see cnn against this texture or bbc or fox you can do that you can get a little bit yes a little bit independent thinking a little bit looking into direct sources the internet has a glorious side oh absolutely it has it's a it's a storehouse of of information and misinformation and i've often said that the the problem of education right now yeah when i was growing up at schools were to teach you a bunch of facts but there's more facts in my phone yeah than than there is an all education what we need to teach kids is to do exactly what you said which is how to distinguish the information and see it and read it and and a part of when we spoke about reading books there's a second thing experience the world the real world as intense with with intensity uh like i say to young young filmmakers rather than going four years to film school why don't you work half a year as a bouncer in a sex club or as a guard in a in a lunatic asylum that's what makes you a filmmaker that's or travel on foot of course nobody travels on foot but i have traveled on foot sure and i've traveled large distances like from munich to paris you wrote a lovely book which i was really i was walking in ice because my mentor an old woman lotte eisner was dying and i did not want her to die i didn't want to allow this and because of walking experience experiencing the real world on foot all of a sudden gives you insights that are very very deep absolutely and i have a dictum and i leave it with that dictum the world reveals itself to those who travel on foot and i say it without further explanation because you will not start traveling on foot you will not cross canada from uh from the west coast to the east coast no but i am planning a bunch of walking travels and maybe you and i could do one together sometime yes all right i i i love that idea because it's totally different yeah now you say values change from one generation to the next and perhaps my grandchildren will find it ridiculous that i chose not to include the tape in grizzly man but i doubt it you say now that you're referring to the famous scene in grizzly men where there's the tape of of timothy and and his girlfriend basically being eaten by which you don't allow the the young his ex-girlfriend to hear you listen to and and you don't don't show it and and i think that you know that was a choice and i think it was a good choice but but what i want to focus on is that values change more a's change over time and you and i are a certain age and and even in the time when we've been when we've been growing things have changed immensely but we live in a time now where we tend to view the where people want to view the past in terms of the of the sensibilities of the present i just read that for just today the senate congress for the first time is talking about rep reparations for slavery for people who are never slaves now but i maybe come from a society that has a uh that in a background how how do you feel about this this notion of of of rewriting the past in terms of the present well it's a it's an attitude towards history and it is looking at history from [Music] the pedestal of today's enlightenment of today's morality of today's science and of course it was perfectly normal for our great great great great great ancestors it they found it perfectly all right to burn witches they found it perfectly all right in natural that there was there were slaves even the bible doesn't uh deny it completely or absolutely the bible is full of slaves and of course the american constitution does not uh does not mention them at all as human beings or so so of course and in looking at history from today's perspectives i think is um is is a very dangerous way because we have to accept uh the voyage that we have done as human beings and the voyage is interesting and seeing just seeing and noticing that we do not have witch burnings anymore and seeing that capital punishment is vanishing more and more great yes we are we are on a voyage and we should know where we came from and and it's utterly absurd what this uh canceled culture is doing or historical perspectives um in san francisco i think 250 or so schools and colleges will be renamed and the craziest of all one i think a high school named after abraham lincoln yes good old ape has to be renamed not because he was the one that the strongest power in abolishing slavery because he treated the native populations the first nations badly yeah yeah happily by the way but then we have to we have to abolish literally everyone everyone has to abolish that's the um how can pretty much everyone you're be happy no i just read that that that that change of name that lincoln is going to stay so that's at least lincoln is at the time of the past when they weren't sins is is is uh the worst view it seems to me of history as you say so in some sense the arc of history but as as martin luther king said men should bend upward yes and and and and the better angels of our nature yes it denies us the the deeper insights in into our voyage into our intellectual into our ethical into our historical and and in somehow shuts off understanding for history completely i think it is a dangerous path which blinds us for the obstacles of the past and how we overcame because we judge everything from our perspective today and we are sitting on the as we say in germany we sit on the high horse on the pedestal and and we judge oh yeah lincoln was bad because he treated the first nations badly my god yeah my it makes me cringe in despair because i i love history absolutely and if if you love history then the the fact that you have to erase it is is worrisome and it worries them even not just for the lincolns of the world but i guess i worry about the future politicians in a world where you are cancelled for something you did 30 years earlier or when you were a 12 year old boy or a 15 year old boy or woman young woman or whatever then how can anyone of any substance ever rise well you have to have the the privilege of youthful mistakes yes you're not doing this kind of mistakes when you are over 60 or so in running for office of the president of the united states the political correctness has been wildly somehow challenged through trump and and i think uh it it was it was a good moment it was a good moment because the the system has been paralyzed in in a certain way and we have a great we have a great bonus from the trump presidency because he looked and he recognized that there is a forgotten america the heartland nobody speaks about the heartland heartland people are not the heroes in our movies you do not see them on the news at night and they are disenfranchised they are not as well paid at like on both coasts and friends of mine said oh yeah we have elections now 12 years ago i remember and they said oh don't worry about wisconsin and iowa and so there are the flyovers and my heart stood still and they said what what did you say what did i hear flyovers those this is the heartland has any one of you ever been in wisconsin no they haven't but i said i have worked in wisconsin i've made a film in wisconsin i've made a film in louisiana i've made a film in cherokee north carolina or part of a film so the flyovers and this attitude of neglect was laid completely open by trump yeah he's exploited he didn't really care about it but he exploited it i i do not i cannot step inside of his mind but i think it was good that he that he made it visible sure politics politics if it wants to survive in the united states has to find a much better attitude towards the heartland speaking of no matter no matter if they think differently from you on the east coast or the west coast no matter speaking they are americans absolutely and i love i love them the best the best people that you find in in wisconsin my car breaks down you know what happens the first car that approaches stops and helps you and half an hour later in this middle of nowhere the next car that comes also stops and then a truck stops everybody stops to help and helps you and i was i was accepted as a as a sixth child in a family of five children in in pittsburgh when i was a young man and stranded and literally homeless a family picked me up and allowed me to live in the attic wow so i've seen the very very best and they were not east or west coast what comes to mind have you seen the movie nomad land now have you ever seen it yes and that sort of it seems encapsulates a little percep in microcosm a little bit of that do you think you no it's it's more about solitude and it's more about spaces about empty spaces and emptiness in human lives and and also touches a chord of american mobility yes that means moving the frontier moving to the west now it has moved all the way to alaska and now it's moving into space so america is still somehow on the move and and it reflects some some something that's deeply embedded in the american soul and that's why the film has has caught the attention okay i i was also taken by in some sense the these people who don't have anything the communal sense of community that they built among themselves to support something that has to do with solitude and in in a way with solidarity yeah but it's solidarity and and i think uh no matter what you what you think about american politics you you do see a certain amount of solidarity emer or emerging and and it's a good thing it's a good that's nice okay well it's good times good times for american politics interesting that you're very interesting times it's interesting times and and and but i haven't heard them called good times that's good that's nice to hear you say that it'll be interesting to hear what people think this book guide for the flex which as i said i know well it begins with a forward by harmony korean and i can't help but read this because i want to ask you it says werner herzog hates chickens this is a fact this is a consistent theme throughout his films it is clear to me that he hates chickens and this is one of the reasons why he's always been one of my favorite directors i too hate chickens i've never known you to hate chickens so i had to ask no no no it's um now it's something different i they they frighten me because the flatness of the uh when you look at the head of a chicken it's very very narrow in the eye and the idea that narrow the kind of stupidity looking at you yes and it's overwhelming it's kind of frightening and i have had many chicken in my in my movies like the end of uh strashek which is about dancing chicken and it's somehow the best maybe the best and craziest that i ever filmed dancing chicken that nobody can stop anymore not even police can stop the dancing chicken in their cage actually in cherokee north carolina filmed and i had chicken in very special training to dance longer than they normally would do oh really for the tourists do the barn shuffle dance and you see hypnotized check me in my movies in some of my movies you can actually hypnotize him if you put the beak on the ground and then with a piece of chalk draw a very fast straight line from them they stay like that hypnotized and stare oh it's a straight line ah you can hypnotize chicken you could do it even i could do it yeah no i do not hate them and and by the way i like to eat them once in them in a while a real good roasted chicken on your barbecue is priceless they somehow reconcile me with their stupidity yes well i i as you know i've i've stopped eating chickens and meat and and it's an interesting thing for me so i'm in the middle of a no i still i still like to to eat a good solid steak once yeah i know i can understand but i eat less than before and i think we talked about that because partly because of this consumerism the fact we realize that in terms of climate change the imprint the imprint of cattle yeah is fairly high yeah that's that was certainly where i began probably the and the moral issue is a different one but the but the imprint that yeah of yeah and this is why i have only one belt or one pair of shoe or two pairs pairs of shoe because uh the cow does not generate itself in the wild and and the cow does not volunteer to give away its hide for your purse your wallet your belt and your shoes absolutely but i want to talk about nature and science because yeah because we've talked about it personally together as a scientist we've talked science a lot about you and i and and it was also what drew me to you uh initially i mean obviously the film said but as a person and it was in sundance uh uh when one of the reasons that we that i wanted to give you that award which was for which was for science in a feature film and and and it was interesting because the feature which meant the fiction and and we've we all the movies we saw were awful and and we would decide to expand it and and and there's a narrative flow to grizzly men that made us think okay it's it's it's a story yeah i still have that flow in me yeah yeah and yeah and and it was the scene uh uh where where near the end where you where you zoom in on the bear and you say i look at the bear i don't see i don't see a face i don't see i don't see you know caring i don't i i i and and you say whatever yeah yeah and and that was so powerful because that's his nature it's against the justification nature which you say here in this interview you say he can about treadwell he considered nature to be wondrously harmonious but for me the world is overwhelmingly chaotic hostile and murderous not some sentimental disney-esque place the world does not care about us nature doesn't care about our happiness and but that doesn't make it bad it makes it wondrous sure of course and it's magnificent that we have this world and of course we have our frictions and we are challenged and we benefit from its benign side in fact yeah you it's for unforgiving but it's pleasant i read that you like used to like to spend with your son summers in alaska yeah that because of the it's so attractive but but in some sense nature is for me more attractive because it's unforgiving if it was built around us like an amusement park it wouldn't be life would would not be so worth living in some sense the challenge of course yeah now we have not only the best of all worlds we have the only world in the best thinkable world there's nothing like that you have in their films filmed the extremes of nature which is interesting to me i mean and and um and from volcanoes to to to under the ice in in antarctica um and and it's it's those extremes in some sense that are that maybe attract you the most you know no but in these locations something significant became visible that otherwise wouldn't have been visible under the eyes of antarctica you encounter a science fiction world a world that doesn't seem to be of our own planet so it's totally fascinating and of course volcanoes give you an incredible insight into the fragility of our existence and of our planet and we know if there is a real big event it may obscure the sky for a decade and that would be our end yes as a species or many other things like a meteorite hit i made a film on meteorites fireball if a real big meteorite event is going to happen it will be the end of the of this of our species cockroaches have a much better system that's right reptiles even have a better survival chance or for example if we have a very massive solar flare which could come it occurs every few hundred years um then the internet will be going we talked about that in in in fact i actually was my i got to talk about that and lo and behold that's exactly and that's the danger yes some more my wife experienced the the ripple effects of the hurricane sand in new york where she stayed 14th street blackout all the way down to wall street and up to 34th street there was no running water there was no financial transactions anymore stores couldn't open because they have electrical doors you couldn't get money cash money out of a cash of a atm machine the lifts wouldn't go tens of thousands of people after a day were desperately searching and wandering around for a toilet because your toilet flush wouldn't function anymore you had no water you couldn't brush your teeth you could not make connections with your cell phone the towers were down you could i mean and that was just a tiny tiny bit of experience of the taste of what what made of what sense you couldn't buy food you couldn't cook food you couldn't have water you couldn't have electricity so and the solar flare could could make it much much worse it could be worldwide and then again the amish have a great chance and and again some inuit who are hunters gatherers would be great in some [Music] goat herders in the altai mountains in central asia would have a good time they'd be all right yeah they're not sensitive to that that that interconnectedness which lo and behold is a wonderful film about um is part of a what intrigued me is i began to think about this we've i know you're fascinated by you're interested in science but it hit me that i think for at least four of the five last documentaries you've made have been scientific lo and behold cave of forgotten dreams yeah the movie about volcanoes the movie about meteorites for me what i what what is so wonderful about it is is is is science is a part of our culture and and the fact that you are fascinated by it the the the things that will reflect on our social cultural future have a scientific component and it and it's unfortunate that some people are afraid to to go to dwell to go in that area and and and the fact that i see more and more of your films going in there i find fascinating the fact the the tying of which is part of what this podcast is all about the tying of culture and science is is so important but so ignored in some sense science is appreciated for its technology but not for its cultural enrichment its cultural value yeah and and you uh see it very clearly articulated of all sources if i may point to the yonah bomber in his manifesto about the future of technological civilization and some of it very precedent and and of course i i do not adhere to his ideology sure i do not condone his crimes and and yet he has in the impact the manifesto has had at the time the kind of dust it it kicked up was enormous and and here you have a a source where you can read what's coming at us well it's interesting that technology always prevails over over ethical behavior oh i see and over freedoms you see the the the cell phones that we have are more important than our freedom to uh throw it on the pillow and leave it alone yeah yeah we we give up we forfeit a good part of our freedom because we are fascinated by the technological progress sure uh of the cell phone yeah it's seductive and it's not it has become addictive and and it has negative side effects we know about it yeah although it's a wonderful tool but we have to learn how to use it yeah and one of the one of the side effects which kicks us back to somewhat at the beginning and this is is is that people don't read as m people read tweets but not reading and i i think when i talk about reading i can't help but mention that for me i've done a lot of media and radio and other things but the most enjoyable hour i've ever spent on the radio was having you and cormic mccarthy together talking with eloquence and competence on early modern humans yeah and when your movie the the the cave of forgotten jesus came out and then the the loveliest scene for me which i want people to go and listen to is at the end of that when you brought all the pretty horses with you i don't know if you remember yes i remember i read i think i read the last paragraph you read the last paragraph and this is just great prose to me such a wonderful book is it still somehow available on the internet oh i i believe you can listen to that piece and to listen to you read the last paragraph of of of uh all the pretty courses of course it was just of all the times i've been on the media that that's and and it's just again to me it was this one not just bringing you and cormac mccarthy together but the the merging of science and culture and thought it's just yeah it's delicious and and you know lawrence since i couldn't venture out with a camera and actors in cruise or whatever so i spent a good time of writing i wrote two books since september and they will be released here in the states i'm jealous it's a meeting that i understood part of the duties that i have understood my destiny and part of it is trying to be a good soldier and of course their duties and responsibilities and loyalty and courage and all these things and part of my duties is when you can't write when you cannot shoot a film you better do right like of walking in ice or a conquest of the useless i know that my writings will live longer than my movies that's interesting if you think that's true well that's interesting well people challenge my opinion but and i've been wrong many times but i hope i have the feeling i deep inside i have the sensation they made live longer than my films as a as a writer as someone who's written books i i i i share that sense of that they will they'll that's the part of me that will live on and in fact i have to say i share with you i wrote my book during this for exactly the same reason i felt i can't be a front-line physician in the pandemic but what can i do i can at least i can write and so it's something you can do yeah now i want to end i want to take us this last topic even though the beauty we you know it's we've reached to the pinnacle of science and and i want to end because we're both villains yes okay and you are a wonderful much more as i say your villain and jack reacher and you told me that they cut out the parts that were even more terrifying yes yeah it was too too much for the timid audience and the and the and the mandalorian too but but there's a quote about evil that i find interesting and you said and i i i i know where it is in the book but i haven't written here there's such a thing as the bliss of evil so maybe you want to comment on that i couldn't resist well it had to do in giving instructions to nicholas cage he said to me werner i know that you hate to have endless discussions about motivations of an actor and his possible childhood and all this i don't like it either yeah and and he said but i don't know how to handle this opening scene in the film where he um forces a young couple uh and and the girl into awful things to do with him and he said how how do i how do i show this kind of of evil and i said to him nicholas you know what there is a bliss of evil there's such a thing like the bliss of evil and he said no more i i got it and i said uh we roll the camera now and you will turn the pig loose turn turn the hog loose the hawk inside of you and he does it and we shot it once or twice and that was that wow and you see the joy the bliss of evil he understood the part yeah well that's those words caught it and i think um i think that's why that's why i was i i was so happy to be a sort of villain i mean i the though those characters that aspect of humanity is is so interesting to explore in in in writing and in in in in literature deep dark reasons this is these dark research we're afraid to go they reside in all of us but we're afraid to go there and um and so i had to talk about it yeah yeah yeah but but we shouldn't be afraid to to look into it face what's out out there just face it and and be courageous to look into abysses that give you vertigo well i couldn't have if i wanted to sum up one of the one of the wonderful things about the films you make and and the human being is that you're not afraid to look into those of business you don't jump but you look and i think that's that's the key aspect so so let's end what's next what what what's next for you well um it's a little bit working with publishers at the moment and printing two books in translation of the books the film with my older son about of all things colonization of space very fascinating a feature film i like to do in west africa oh i would love the feature film i would like yeah there are two three four feature film projects one never knows at the moment i can't really tackle them but it's okay i take it as it comes take it as it comes and take speaking of taking as it comes i can't help but end with we made salt and fire remember a year before i was on stage with you in mexico and i said werner you've always promised me i could be a villain in one of your films when am i and then a year later i got the script yes so i'm going to say is what's next for me in your movies well we can make you a young lover okay we better take one of the one of the young under 20 or 25 year old hollywood bows um a scientist always uh i hope it might always be good but but as a villain you are always convincing i think well i would love for it as a performance that's a perfect thing and same for me i mean when jack reacher came out my wife got frantic calls from a girlfriend in paris and she said lena we saw jack reacher we saw your husband is that really your husband lena says yes and she says you know are you really married to him we we have we have a free room you can take if you need you can take shelter we have a free room for you all the time and and you know now hearing that i knew i was good in the film yeah absolutely well look i hope we both get a chance to be villains once again it would be a once again the high point of rogues rogues rogues exactly and it's been a pleasure to to be a rogue with you here today i thank you so much for your time and as always it's just such a joy to be with you thank you very much thank you [Music] the origins podcast is produced by lawrence krauss nancy dahl john and don edwards gus and luke holwarda and rob zepps audio by thomas amosen web design by redmond media lab animation by tomahawk visual effects and music by ricolis to see the full video of this podcast as well as other bonus content visit us at patreon.com origins podcast [Music]

Channel: The Origins Podcast

Views: 130,905

Rating: 4.8973017 out of 5

Keywords: The Origins Podcast, Lawrence Krauss, The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss, The Origins Project, Science, Podcast, Culture, Physicist, Video Podcast, Physics, Werner Herzog, Fitzcaraldo, Grizzly Man, Filmmaker, Director, Lena Herzog, Aguirre, Wrath of god, Lo and behold, Klaus Kinsky, Chickens, German, Germany, Munich, The Unbelievers

Id: yAuwQyLfueE

Length: 120min 16sec (7216 seconds)

Published: Sun May 16 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/NoodleCzar]

I'm not sure if I needed to submit a comment with this link, but I thought this was a very nice and informative interview with Herzog, and it provides a lot of perspective into what a delightful person he is.

[u/jdubbrude]

I could listen to him for 20 hours