3: Werner Herzog
Description
Episode 3 of The Portal is with film director Werner Herzog
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated and needs to be cleaned up considerably. Feel free to edit this page and fix things. The first 20 minutes have been edited.
00:00:03Hello, you found the portal. I'm your host Eric Weinstein, and this will be our second interview episode to be released. I think we have something really remarkable for you today because we have a human being who has led a life that even though he makes movies that are fictional I would say that his actual non-fiction life is more interesting than any movie he's ever made. This is a person who has been shot on camera, a person who has stolen, who has forged, and who has taught other filmmakers to steal and to forge.
00:00:32 The person I'm talking about is Werner Herzog. Now I first became aware of Werner Herzog when I was 16 and just entering the University of Pennsylvania and a friend of mine said you've got to see this movie Fitzcarraldo. I said, what is Fitzcarraldo? He says if nothing else it's a story about a man so possessed by an idée fixe that he drags a boat over a mountain in the jungle in order to somehow build an opera house. The whole thing sounded incredibly mad. And in fact, what was so interesting about this film was that the director actually had to do in real life what the crazy fictional character did inside of the story.
00:01:14 This led me to a fascination with today's interview subject Werner Herzog. This is a man who has lived so richly and so profoundly that I actually started to get a different idea about what he was doing as a filmmaker. The idea that I could not shake was that Werner Herzog needed to live so deeply and so profoundly that he had to make movies simply to justify what it meant to be Werner Herzog. I've often asked myself this question: What is it that great generals do between wars. It's hard to imagine, let's say, a Patton or a MacArthur in normal times. Do they just sit around and open dry cleaners? Do they write essays for their local newspaper? What does a Winston Churchill do if there is no World War II to win?
00:02:03 In such a situation, I think it's very hard to come up with an answer. But I think that the best answer that I have is that these people would make movies.
00:02:16 The following interview was recorded in front of a live audience. We join the conversation in progress.
00:02:22 Eric Weinstein (EW): May I just asked first of all before I try any theories of the kind do you see any clear organizing principle that unifies your output that is sort of subtle and non-obvious to your audience?
Werner Herzog (WH): Yes, I do believe so. People are quite often puzzled about the range of the subjects that have attracted me. There's a world champion ski flyer from Switzerland, and there's a Paleolithic cave, and there's a man who moves a ship over a mountain in the Peruvian jungle, and there's a film on the internet, and there's a film... you just name it. So it looks perplexing at first sight, but I do understand although I don't like to look back at my films often I do understand that there's some sort of an architecture
00:03:22 of concepts in that you would immediately understand there's a common worldview. Very much it's about the worldview, and you could probably spot it very very quickly if you walked into a room and the TV was playing and there was a film within and you didn't see any credits. Probably within 2 minutes, you would understand this must have been my film.
00:03:54 People see, they understand it. How they do it? I don't know. And how I do create this common worldview? I don't know either but it doesn't really matter.
EW: Now one of the things that I've been very struck by which is what we all get wrong about Werner Herzog and because many of the stories that come out of these films in these undertakings involve tremendous seeming danger of physical risk, chaos, madness, all the things that are usually associated. I was trying to figure out what it was that those stories might cover up as if sort of cheap icing on a very rich cake and one of the things that I saw was what - and correct me if I'm wrong - It seems like you have tremendous concern for the people that you bring out onto these crazy projects for their safety and well-being. Am I getting that wrong?
00:04:54 WH: No, We shouldn't waste any time of what some people get wrong about me doesn't really matter let them be wrong. But one of the things that comes up quite often seems to be an identification of the creator of a story, a creator of a character, namely me me with the qualities that the creator automatically has to have. In other words, If I do a film like Aguirre, the Wrath of God about a demented, crazed conquistador 1560s in the Peruvian Amazon people quite often are mislead to point out Herzog must have these qualities: obsessive and demented and borderline paranoia. And no I understand them, but they are not my qualities, they are inventions.
00:05:54 EW: But you picked an actor in Klaus Kinski who might I mean I would venture to say did have some of those qualities. is that wrong?
WH: Of course he had it. A part of being an actor who was really under the grace of creation to make things that we have not seen before or after on the screen. So otherwise he was the mildest I could express would be he was the ultimate pestilence. But he was also destructive. He would destroy a set, he would when we had a we actually had two plane crashes on Fitzcarraldo, small aircraft and we didn't know what had happened. We had a very sketchy shortwave radio connection with Iquitos about 1,100 kilometers away. And garbage messages would come in.
00:06:55 "Plane is down." And we desperately tried, was it nearby, could we send out a search party, or what who was a part of what had happened. And we had it happen in our camp. Sometimes some days my route starts in the afternoon and shoot into the night. Breakfast would be served from hut to hut to hut. And so the last hut would have cold coffee. This morning by conincidence, Kinski was the last hut and I heard it from from 150 yards away screaming out. I mean at the complete, not just a tantrum. It was it was just an outburst of rage because his coffee was lukewarm and he stormed at the place where we were checking on the radio and trying to figure out and he kept screaming and screaming I could not calm him down. I could not get him away. I try to tell him there's a plane down you have to keep quiet.
00:07:55 We must listen to what has happened. It wouldn't help at all. He would scream and he would scream he could scream a glass, he could shatter a glass, a wine glass. Really, I mean it, I do not exaggerate. And so the only way I could after an hour and a half when he had already froth, hardened froth at his mouth. I went to my hut, and I had a little piece of Swiss chocolate left, which people would murder for such a treasure in our camp. And I stepped in front of him and ate this chocolate, and that silenced him. That was something which was stunning.
EW: And you knew, you intuited that this would have that effect.
WH: I should have intuition after 5 minutes. It took over an hour.
00:08:55 So, but the problem is that qualities of the characters in my films have been super imposed on my own character. For example, I have acted in some Hollywood films and some independent films, Jack Reacher, for example. And I'm playing the real real dangerous badass bad guy and I am very very dangerous and I had to and I'm unarmed and I have no fingers left, and I am blind on one eye, and yet I had to spread terror from the screen, and I did it so well, I did it so well that my reviews were much better than the reviews for Tom Cruise.
00:09:44 WH: No it's true. I'm not exaggerating. I was good, but not that I can say this kind of vile, dangerous character is really in me.
00:09:58 EW: Really?
WH: And it came very easy. I did it unprepared you see, and I have learned that when we did Fitzgerald in the first round of shooting there was Mick Jagger as the sidekick of the leading character and Jagger spent six weeks with us in the jungle. We shot half the film, had to stop because the leading character became ill. We had to send him to the States and the doctors wouldn't allow him to return to the jungle. So I knew I had to start all over again. And on Jagger's contract, there was not time enough left for doing the whole film all over. I shot the film actually one and a half times.
00:10:40 What is strange about this recasting and in restarting the whole thing? I knew if I did not find an actor quickly, in such a case, I had no alternative but playing the part myself because I would have been credible, and I would have been good, not as good as let's say Mick Jagger and Jason Robards, or Kinski. And I learned one thing from from Mick Jagger which astonished me. He took me once backstage when they were recording.
00:11:23 And I was there and he was arguing with somebody about some totally trivial things, completely and utterly trivial things. And also on my set he was arguing about the mineral water, or about the per diem, or something and I said to him "Mick the camera is rolling" and he looks at me and he sees we are already doing it and he steps three steps in front of the camera and within three steps, he becomes a demon.
00:12:00 From a trivial trivial little bickering mediocre kind of character he steps in front and he's a demon. And that in a way, I learned that from him and I didn't prepare myself. When I stepped in front of the camera, I knew there was only one thing.
00:12:24 Be calm and be frightening. And I can do it. And I would accept it only because I knew I could do it.
EW: So you're really not the ultimate badass.
00:12:37 WH: Uh.
EW: Because I-
WH: Maybe I am but unbeknownst to me.
EW: Well okay, it feels to me like I was just watching video of you being interviewed by the BBC and improbably you're shot in the abdomen while being interviewed and you seem to be somewhat irritated that the interviewer is treating this as a big deal and I think otherwise how would I know that you wear paisley underwear? I mean, you take your your pants down...
WH: Yeah, because I want people to see it.
EW: ...because you're bleeding. And why is it... it's not that big of a bullet - that was your attitude.
WH: No, I actually I said something more beautiful. I said, this is an insignificant bullet.
EW: Yeah, that's true.
WH: And I knew it had not perforated everything. It went through my jacket in the catalog in the pocket and everything but didn't perforate into my intestines. So that was insignificant, but
00:13:37 they immediately hit the hit the ground laid the camera flat and I have the feeling, Stay, let's finish it. At least the sentence.
EW: Because it was great video.
WH: I mean for the image it was great video.
EW: But what I'm trying to suggest sir is that you are the unreliable narrator. You are actually...
WH: No, I'm the one who makes sense. I'm the one who puts order into a chaotic situation.
EW: That's what you did. But what I'm saying is that when your autonomic nervous system is is triggered it barely registers. You've been shot in the abdomen...
WH: It registered, it hurt. It hurt a year, because when I was laughing hard, it was still hurting. Yes, but there's a sense of duty.
EW: Which I very much appreciate. That's very unusual. These are real...
WH: Yes, but it's part of being a good soldier of cinema that I tried to be with a sense of duty.
00:14:37 You have to be reliable. You have to hold an outpost that others have given up. It's loyalty. And it's loyalty to the entire crew that was there. However, they they argue that we should call the police right away. And I said let's not do it because do you want to spend the next six hours in a police station to file charges? And do you want to see a helicopter circling there? And do you want to see a SWAT team in ten minutes flat?
EW: Right.
WH: Do you want to see that? My answer is no but it's okay. Let's move out of the danger zone because the man with a rifle was still somewhere hiding on a terrace in hiding inside the building get out of there. But let's continue. Let's continue this all your team has come from from the UK and you have to return tomorrow. Let's get over with it.
00:15:39 So it's a sense of duty.
EW: I appreciate that very much. But what you're talking about is the highest levels of discipline and military style leadership. I mean this goes far beyond...
WH: Yes, but you should be careful about confusing it with military discipline where there's some sort blind adherence to given orders. I do think what I'm doing and I do not ask anyone to do blindly something in front of the camera. But there's a safety margin whenever things are difficult and let's say borderline dangerous. I would always do it myself first for the actor.
00:16:25 I would go through the rapids with a small raft to see does a raft survive these three consecutive rapids. Or a very simple thing Christian Bale in Rescue Dawn. He plays a German-born Navy pilot who is shot down in 40 minutes in his first mission over Vietnam War Laos. He was actually was the only American POW who managed to escape from the Vietcong in captivity, an incredible story. And Christian Bale who plays the part of him, they're starving to death almost starving to death and they get some food that is infested by hundreds and hundreds of wriggling maggots.
00:17:19 And we use maggots that native people would eat, but they would roast them. Not not alive and still wriggling. So I said to Christian that was what Dieter Dengler, the real character, told me they had to do. There were nutrients a lot of nutrients in these maggots. They ate it. And I said to Christian you know what give me the plate and give me a spoon. I'm going to eat a few spoonfuls which I did and he said oh come on stop it stop it. Let's roll the camera and I'm going to get over it quickly. So he did and that was one of the very very few moments of controversy between the two of us because I told him and he didn't hear it. Apparently. I told him Christian, you know, what you stop eating when you really have when you had it.
00:18:19 And you keep eating eating eating until the plate is empty and then I say cut and he said why didn't you say cut before? What happened? And I said Christian you are the one who should have said cut, but you didn't hear it and he was kind of miffed.
00:18:37 But but those those moments they do happen, the unexpected on the set. That's movies.
EW: Yeah.
00:18:53 Right, I guess those moments do happen. So it does strike me though...
WH: I tested it first...
EW: But you said...
WH: I would always test it first
EW: It seems like that's... you know the Israelis have a theory of leadership which is called follow me where they take the highest value person on the team, that is the general, the colonel... and he goes into danger first because the morale of the troops is so much heightened when you see a leader saying I will actually take that kind of a risk. That seems to be a part of how you get this fanatical loyalty.
WH: For example, a very long tradition Alexander the Great for example always on foot with his soldiers. He would not ride on his horse. He would be on foot thousands of miles. He would be the first to climb the ramparts on a ladder. He would be the one who when they were thirsty and almost dying from thirst, one soldier collected a helmet full of water, bit by bit, drop by drop.
00:19:53 And, when the thirst was at its worst, this footman comes and steps in front of Alexander and says I save this for you, drink this and Alexander looks at it, and spills it away and says, "Too much for one, too little for all," and marches away. So that's leadership. Or Hannibal, who crossed the Alps on elephants. He would sleep with his soldiers at the outpost wrapped in his in his coat and he would lose an eye crossing an ice-cold river south of the Alps and he would do things that nobody else in his army would ever do.
00:20:47 EW: Do you feel that this aspect of leadership of putting oneself in the greatest situations of risk and harm is...
WH: No you avoid harm if possible. You eliminate harm before it even appears.
00:21:03 You see you have to be prudent, And in any kind of business including the business of warfare, you have to evaluate the situation and you have to try to avoid the danger for anyone the leader and the troop. You better stay out of it and you use all sorts of military trickery, deceit. You use and bushes you use the so-called cowardly things into before you really put anyone into very grave danger eliminate, whatever you can sometimes you can't eliminate everything but sheet shorts. Of course, I buy a Jesse Ventura used to be a bodyguard of the 00:22:03Rolling Stones by the way into used to be a studio wrestler play the the bad guy by the way in the completely stylized and he became governor of Minnesota and I always liked him for his down-to-earth approach and he said once about his time in the ring is as a wrestler it's as one of these WrestleMania people and he said to win if you can
00:22:35Lose if you must but always cheat really like him for that.
00:22:45Yeah, so this is one of the things that I found most endearing about your approach is that you teach film in this completely different fashioned. It's it's let's be honest, you're an outlaw before you're a filmmaker and you say to your students. You have to be prepared to Steel to forge to pick locks to do whatever it takes for each documents. Steel. UCI. I wouldn't say steal I have stolen once in awhile but expropriation than stealing then sift. Like my first camera was expropriated TriMet institution, but I do anything that's outside of the legal Norms as long as it as it does not hurt anyone into foraging a shooting permit in a country that has a military dictatorship ship is something fine and you should do with you forever.
00:23:45Forage you must yeah.
00:23:49So you have to do it. Sometimes I try this at home countries as a student visa that my severely punish you if they found out that you were filming you did this in China in China filming in the westernmost part Costco near kashgar weather is extremely high military and police presence and I was filming with Michael Shannon, but we had no shooting. / let me know why can't I make with just went out to a local market a very traditional Market of week were tribesmen the cattle market and that was that the real obvious thing. It was that we had a Contraption built on the body or Michael Shannon a tripod.
00:24:49The tell the camera in front of his face when he walks into a crowd everybody who walks by with inevitably turn around and look after him. I wanted to fix everybody staring at him once he's moving through a crowd and he said to me what I'm going to do it as long as you're around next to me because if I get arrested you should be arrested as well. And I said fine, let's do it and in because it was so Brazen. It was so Brazen that nobody actually has stopped us. It was a lot of police and and when you have one or two police people, then it's dangerous because they go to the restaurant they would stop you at least in check you out but if you're 17 18 20 of them.
00:25:42That's a strange psychological reflex. Everybody thinks I have the other one will stop you and you walk straight through the middle weather and I keep saying we're the enemy comes at its thickest walk straight through there and I look it into some sort of a vague distance is if I had spotted a friend 50 yards away and I walk with his gaze upon them. And while I possibly may say something in my the variant dialect I say what's doin hectic saying have you seen my friend heart and they step aside and I'm out. So you have to you have to understand the hearts of men and you have to understand the the way police which would react Tintin. What would they do it? So Brazen that nobody of the Chinese in Chinese release with ever since
00:26:42We will have walking without any permits. It's on.
00:26:48Yeah, now in our time there's this Mania for truth than authenticity and for acknowledging that is always the group and never the individual that matters. They did the so-called great man. Theory of history is certainly at its cultural low and yet here you are talking to us about the need to deceive to break the law and to affirm the violent Act of Creation in a very strong leadership context in which you're taking on all of this additional risk just too and impart Inspire and and protect your people. Even if you seem to be a man completely out of out of time with with the curanderas did the team suit you find it that wrong notary. I need a few of us, but I wish there were more
00:27:44But of course what what we are doing in filmmaking is not always based on Board Room decision the baby shaped the dialogue today in in the Hollywood industry is determined by poetry of decisions. And that's why movie making has become so stale and so uninteresting and so predictable. So if you do the the most the wildest of the stories and that's always said Council seat. I do not step outside the boundaries of legality that has to do with the with a caliber of your quest with the tips of your story with a vision that you are pursuing if that has real real tips, and you know it is 00:28:32Endearing Dex then you have you have to tossed in the beauty to do the things that are necessary. As long as I said, if you do not damage or hurt anyone that would you are taking a fair amount of responsibility. We had the Jim Watson come to this office and he's a CD the co-discoverer of the three-dimensional structure of DNA of Watson and Crick, but he he said something which was you know, I I found very disturbing but also very sensibly said you're giving about five opportunities to really level up in your life. This is how you saw it. And he said you have to take each one of those even though sometimes each of them comes with an opportunity where somebody may be put at risk or hurt and I was curious you have a very strong relationship with risk where you're both putting people at risk.
00:29:32And trying to make sure you put them at risk as little as possible. If both of those are true. Do you believe that that's a Watson was correct that you have to take these opportunities even if they do put others at risk or do you really have no harm, but I think it's more than five opportunities for I have seen a hundred times at least it's in risk-taking Percy has no it's no Great Value. It's it depends on what you're doing. And in what kind of purpose it serves and it's not a quality per se to take risks. I try to to avoid risks in and you see my proof that I have been prudent circumspect and well-organized is that in over seventy films not a single one of my exes.
00:30:32If I was hurt. When I was hard sometimes sometimes it has some very close collaborator physically next to me like a cinematographer. We say yeah, 20 kilo a handheld camera at that time heavy flies through the air the dictates of a ship that bangs into into the Rock. And yes, and we were flying some 10 meters in the bangs with his hand on on the on the deck in the cameras placed his hand apart. So yes, it happens in didn't he didn't mind by the way where you volunteered read my rights Christ. You said she said he was coming with me. Nobody has to actually this case when we went with cameras through the Rapids and we had shot that the sequence with cameras on on the snow real sore spot in the rocks on eyes.
00:31:32Sites of these Rapids pushed by some collaborators. We should have a camera on board. I said really? Yes. Of course. I see that. But we do not know what's going to happen Mason what happened send it the ship probably is not going to sink because we established it with a lot of very very solid. Chambers in Dad's probably wouldn't have sunk even bother the worst of case scenarios. Let me ask him very very difficult question assume that you were trying to make fitzcarraldo in which you drag this steamer over a mountain.
00:32:16It's not the year 1982 but it's some year maybe around now maybe a few years in the future where it's possible to do this completely with computer-generated imagery so that you could do it in CGI. Now my question would be this would if it produced the same visual effect.
00:32:36As you didn't fit scroll de would it be worth doing if it could be done cheaply and safely the five year old 6 year old shot Vue has now eat this was a teacher to defect and and you will always know it. I don't think the digital effects will ever create some sort of equal experience maybe to some degree visually, but you see it moving a ship of remount means exposing yourself to sing set Unsinkable and unexpected you incorporate in your approach did the totally unknown in the totally unknown invade seu in the unexpected in the unsinkable invade seu every, Iowa 00:33:35And you create something and authenticity of story not only visual effect. You create an authenticity of event that is unparalleled and its unparalleled by anyone who is sitting in the car on the computer and creates steam boat moving up on a on a hill. It does not and it is not so do so in the future if you're quite confident because the experience of Route 8 in in reality cannot replaced. It can be substituted. It can be somehow paralleled in that way by buy an artificial go out by digital effects until today. I would I would still insist I should if it's me who does it. I should move the ship.
00:34:35It is in one piece 360 x right let the other students stuff and it will be inferior to mine.
00:34:45Well, this is this is just it I mean you either you mentioned professional wrestling in Jesse Ventura and 00:34:53you know that there is a theory amongst our group that may be professional wrestling is a lot more real than anyone really wants to believe that it's commonly thought to be fake one interpretation of your work sir is that you are making many more documentaries than you claim to be because in fact in something like fitzcarraldo, it's a fictional story about a man moving a ship over a mountain made by a real man who moved a real ship over a real mountain and I remember when it came out in 1982 Mike. I was in college. We were electrified by this concept that if you'd been done in CGI and we had known that it would been in CGI. We would not have been that interested in the story, but it was the fact that there was an insane man moving a ship over a mountain in reality. She did Nicki say no and clinical. She's already there. I don't want to know what is a studious person but but functionally sir, it's it it is a crazy Quest and you said you spoke about it and turned it snow.
00:35:53Responsibility to let's say go to Mars in spending half a year on Mars in coverage and in getting footage you you will fail it's not going to work and we will see the technological Utopia is coming to an end in our very Centre will be like we saw social Utopias coming to an inevitable end of the last century companies in Paradise on Earth not season a master race dominating the planet and on so we will see to do the two of them to the table and I knew it was too because I had figured out how to move a very very heavy object in one piece.
00:36:53On top of the hill Frisch's. I'm trying to figure out the how the Ancients movies that you saw that is a puzzle searching a line of Brittany Furr completely different movie and I end up at night when it was already dark at Karnak. It's 4000 the slabs of stone erected in parallel lines Phillip Hill downhill uphill town. It's it's stunning and what I saw in the headlights was standing and I slept in the car and next morning. I I I see there's a little kiosk they sold to pursue it and in the pursuer it's written that this couldn't have been done by linear Lasik people that didn't have any technology. Yes. I had the rope and seems like this. It could have been the only alien astronauts.
00:37:49And I saw that one sheet I can let I will not move from this place until I nearly sick person could do it. So what I would do is let's assume I have the rock already 3 400 tuns. I would need disciplined men to build a ramp but maybe 1 km ramps which has hardly any inclination which is almost flat at the end. It would end up in a 10 meter high hill and I would create two whole into the hill and then I would move then I would move the the stone on Oak trunks on hardy oak trunks. It is very easy to move it either with the turnstiles in throat swell by pushing it in the way with levers and at the end.
00:38:49Into the crater hole and then you would have it erect with a heavy apart up and then it would remove the hill until let's say the sticking out into two medians of of grounded Harden the crowd so you would have it directed at night. I kept dreaming about 00:39:11what is Mania the heaviest ever 1,100 tonnes heavy near the Coastal Place lock Mariah Carey not too far from, in this Stone to slap has broken into four pieces in the major the biggest of all pieces at least six seven hundred tons heavy what's a lined in One Direction in the little bit further out. The rest of the fragmentation was perfectly aligned in one line. So why does this happen before if that stone falls and breaks it will align the fragments but it didn't so I think what has happened is that they moved the stone dropped it into a hole and it broke it broke at the rim. And in the in the smaller fragments aligned in thousands of years later.
00:40:11Trevor Rosen some of these men. Yes falling over top of the top until they look different in the wrong direction 7 accident the Neolithic accident which must have spoke to Macy as if it was proof of my way out how I would do it and that's how I move the ship over the mountain.
00:40:35And I knew it was to happen if it was doable for nearly sick people 7000 years ago. I can do the same thing as well.
00:40:47I have no doubt whatsoever and Indian an ideal case, you would say according to a primitive laws of physics. You could have one single child pulling it over the mountain that say you wouldn't refuse to put a system of 10,000 filter returns you put on a string of five miles until the ship moves 50 yards in the child could pull it over Mountain.
00:41:19You have to think you have to sync the Bold ideas, but also that was sitting outside the common Trend it pin only has been the the alien astronauts. 00:41:37I showed you because I'm very proud of you. You should try to get hold of it because it's very interesting. It's called The Vanishing area Paradox. I keep it in my agenda all the time and it was published in the Scientific American.
00:41:56Ing, it's very strange to have you have a configuration of elements of of pieces. And when you rearrange the configuration of these all of a sudden, there's an empty space or something that is filled out the entire space without a millimeter in between and I kept thinking about it because it defies all my experience with reality So within my reality it is Unthinkable. It is impossible. So and I kept thinking about it and and I was misled the whole thing is a hoax turns out it's a hoax it's fraudulent and it gives citizen veracity because it's must post this Vanishing area Paradox the Christmas Post in the Scientific American you do not feel 00:42:56Dave Chappelle cheating you and they treat you and what what what is happening you swim when you look at it very very precisely the area where all of a sudden in the middle. There's some empty space high speed artificially made slightly larger by giving slight slight more Angus in in the in the Striped lines in summing-up creates a little empty space. I solved it myself because I thought I cannot solve it because it defies my sense of reality in the sense of reality of everyone around me. Something is wrong. What could be wrong.
00:43:44What could be wrong and I started to check in one of the questions I ask myself. Could it be that this is a hoax that this is a fraud and if it's a fraud, how do they treat you? How do they treat your senses senses of observation? In this case? It fascinated me. There's a quote of yours were apparently you were facing a booing audience booing at you. And you had the sense to say to them you are all wrong and Deborah all wrong. They were all wrong. What is it in you that has the courage to stand up to seemingly, I don't know arbitrary levels of negativity need to problems of that other people think are insoluble where they have to invoke Ancient Aliens. There's something so disagreeable about your personality that you're capable of.
00:44:44Putting an idea through that much negativity. What what what traded that 00:44:50Well, it wasn't specific case when I was filming the the fire seem cool bite in the first Gulf War when Saddam Hussein's retreating Army set every single oil while on fire and I filmed it in a way that it looks as if it was shot on a like a science-fiction film it cannot be our planet and yet we know it must have been filmed on our planet and it's highly aesthetic highly stylized in in the immediate outcry was a steady sizing of the horror at but it wasn't really hard to find a human being. Nobody got burnt. Of course. It was a crime against creation itself obscuring the sky for wide wide area and inside 00:45:50Something that should not happen not only are.
00:45:55Describe against the human race. It was a crime against creation and intend in the screaming and people actually suspected me when I walk through the central island. It's about rainforest by resolved and I I stepped up in that said to contain his Inferno histon exactly the same you're going to mooseport. She has done exactly the same in his hellish business and go disastrously like a God has done the same thing and and and and and then the end I said, did you out all wrong? So do we have to burn the book The Divine Comedy now, do we have to 00:46:41Of course, we don't amount of certainty in me that and it's not really anything that I can say was but it was totally natural to say that.
00:46:58Yeah, I've had to me. It's sort of strikes me is we need people to inspire Us by showing us that it's not only possible that it's necessary to stand up to large numbers of people inside of a crowd one of the things that the entire crowd at the center of the island that probably was an amount of well wishes and the masked a few dollars and some Applause. It it was overwhelming and it was so overwhelming that Samsung very credible reviews like a Muskogee who wrote for the Village Voice describes the scene described it so it's not a figment of my fantasy.
00:47:49You know that there's a very strange story with the reviewer Joe Morgenstern when he first saw Bonnie and Clyde he gave it a terrible review because the violence was so disturbing and it was set to up-tempo happy music. He said will this is an Abomination and then strangely a week or two later. He said I have to review this film again. I was totally wrong. The film is a masterpiece because it took a while to just understand that that wasn't an error, but it was actually a brilliant artistic Choice. Do you find that somebody hit the nerve in the guts in the caliber to declare himself wrong and taking a new Fresh located? 00:48:37So yeah, you hardly see it at all. So I would love to ask you one final question before opening it up to the audience. You've spoken quite a lot for a filmmaker about the importance of reading and the written word you written obviously beautifully and then some of your thoughts and in this guide for the perplexed and you you have previously spoken about how television was turning us into idiots and dumbing us down in the reading would be that the key quality that determine who would inherit power in the in the in the future world. What do you see in the 21st century is having changed in this equation with television haven't gotten much better in the internet having seemingly gotten us into a state where we weren't even be able to get there with with the the idiot box as a segment. Yes in this long.
00:49:37Liberty tribe lives many season of big story set all of a sudden you can decorate large large expansive forms like War and Peace to all of a sudden became create Dostoevsky on a TV screen on Netflix screens or whatever of Christ said the situation is becoming more precarious Sea Adventure of the internet, but of course at the forces that I've started way before the internet, we cannot blame it all free shampoo people who would reads have the numbers have declined considerably since 50 years or so and intraday in universities evening Humanities II Men Classics Department. The weather should reach ancient Greek and Latin.
00:50:35They do not read anymore and I have a hard time and I've witnessed it. I've witnessed it in in person that they are not even capable of writing three career in science and expressing 1/2 year and brief argument and that's alarming that's alarming into and that's why I still young aspiring filmmakers. Yes watch films and do whatever you need to learn in technical terms that read read read read read read. If you don't treat you will be a filmmaker Pat mediocre-at-best.
00:51:14If you really want to to become somebody of significance and everyone who is around at this time of significance is reading that all read everyone and you are not and it's not only for filmmaking. It's probably in your profession the same thing that you cannot lose yourself in in algorithms.
00:51:40Indian in the software questions and an articulating of things without conceptually being up to to a to a very high standard of evolution of not only technology but civilization per say we have a very very deep task and in Reading in my opinion. This is the thing that is absolutely need it and what I keep saying sometimes but nobody will understand it but I say it anyway traveling on foot and irrespective of the distance and I've done very long distance traveling on foot gives you an insight into the world itself and I can say that lean addictive my life repeated its before the world reveals itself to those who travel on foot.
00:52:40Nothing else. This is such Clarity in such transparence. Nothing nothing and get nobody Travis and foot. It doesn't matter stay while you are about to I just say this as a sign of help if you really want to understand the real world and also conceptually where we are standing is human beings at this very moment in history traveler on foot and read.
00:53:10Fantastic advice. Let's see if we can anybody can follow it and I would love to open it up to questions. What questions do we have for dinner tonight?
00:53:21If there is a one Buck or two bucks you would wish for this generation to read what will baby. I don't want to give you one or two books because you receipt down into you would read them. And you think yeah, you have done it. So you should not read two books. Mm books I give you for those who are into creative things in tinting shooting.
00:53:52That would say including even created forms of mathematics. It's a it's a book written by an obscure British writer published in 1967. And it's called the Peregrine about watching its Diaries watching peregrine falcons in a time when the Falcons were almost extinct. J a baker. I think we now only after a few decades me even know what j&a stands for I even don't know what his first names when his middle name and it tastes gross that we have not seen since since Joseph Conrad and it has Precision of of observing a small segment of the real world with a precision and also with an emphasis in the in the passion that is unprecedented in literature. So in whatever you are doing whether you are musicians filmmaker, 00:54:52to mathematics sign into computers this kind of very very deep Relentless passion for what you are doing very specific and it's a it's a great wonderful book and 00:55:10what else where to buy that many but I have a list of mandatory books for my rogue film schools in Kerala style and kisses to film schools and there's five or six books. What comes to mind is the Austin Castillo the discovery and conquest of New Spain that the original title is much much longer. He was a footman of car test and when he was told he wrote from his apparently some Diaries and reminiscences he writes down an incredible story incredibly rich in details and insight into the into the hearts of men.
00:55:59And anything else we treat the Russians?
00:56:03Rita Italian in Christ determines Schnur also determine Hemingway reads Joseph Conrad the short stories in particular.
00:56:19true 00:56:20But it's but don't don't don't believe that this would make you into a man into a different person needs its the permanence of reading the insistence of freezing.
00:56:36Is it worth appealing to you to expose people to Nuance with a buffer for extremes for the reverse?
00:56:49Is it more important to expose people to Nuance or Giants never asked myself this question is desinfectar in my in my work.
00:57:11I found a very very clear Vision. I see a film very very clearly. And of course it has it takes a big story and Extremes in it and detest nuances in and of course, I would never want to touch the story that was snowed really big when I was convinced. This is bacon to eat a successes in detest all sorts of things at the same time that the real life the real life comes from the New York and from the details so that it says I cannot even separated. I cannot give you a satisfying juxtaposition of BIOS.
00:57:56Batter hits it it doesn't it doesn't function in in the way I make my films.
00:58:06I heard you like carrying bolt cutters those ever gotten you in trouble.
00:58:17Olds Cutlass Ciera, I have to take metaphorically. I have a whole list of things to see anyone have the the book a guide for the perplexed just because I in CT on the can you give it to me, please? Thank you a guide for the perplexed and we spoke about before the tightly. So beautiful. I had to steal it from my monat is the great Jewish philosopher middle-aged Spain at 6. If I don't even remember Pat anyway end in t i t on the back end. By the way, it's a real bad snow Photoshop my wife who sits back there to this photo and I don't know how it was put together but it's it gives it seems a lot of things that always taken it is speaks of bolt cutters always take the initial.
00:59:17There's nothing wrong with spending a night in the jail cell if it means getting the short e umeed send all your dogs and one might return with pray never wallow in your travels to spam must be kept private in brief learn to live with your with your mistakes expand your knowledge and understanding of music and literature old in modern that role of an expose solenoid you have in your hand might be the last in existence. So do something impressive with it laptops in front of you may be the last one in existence to something good in depressive with it. That's never an excuse not to finish the film cap carry bolt cutters everywhere Swartz institutional cavities.
01:00:11That's too much institutional cavities in the film industry. And and I do believe the the computer industry and software on cell has his Bolder Boulder designs. I think that's not too much institutional cavities. It comes after things like Facebook has been established. How do we stop excessive on Facebook? How do we stop excessive on Instagram? Do we show do we have to stop a real beheading of a hostage in real time or do we not do it? So the the institutionalization of of content is coming past restroom after it has been normally but in the film industry for example, the institutional cavities 01:01:11I comes before you even make a move. They ask you. Do you have that do you have for example, you know Insurance do we have how do you call it to some sort of insurance with the completion Bond?
01:01:34No, I don't and I make a film anyway, and that was in that case. I had to finance it it out of my own pocket and 01:01:45Can I move in a wild way back to the very early question about something that is fabricated likes WrestleMania has a lot of troops bruises and dislocated elbows. The last film I made is a feature film.
01:02:06Called family romance. LLC romance is a business in Japan in the Japanese language where you can hire a missing friend or a family father of a family during the wedding ceremony because her real father allegedly suffers from epilepsy in truth. He's an alcoholic and cannot be shown to the groom's parents and family and that's an interesting thing that happens to men who actually in reality founded this company family romance who sends out 1600h instant access to help you in to feel less Lonesome and replace a family member. He was filmed by Japanese television, they interviewed him in the interview with one of his clients who had rented in the Sun.
01:03:06If you'd had rented a friend and he's in the in the field mice when it turns out that the client was actually not a client. He was also the rent member from family romance poster put in front of the NHK cameras NHK apologized profusely in credits and on the air in the founder of family romance. Say something very very significant about he says I do believe that 01:03:43The Imposter 01:03:48That was sent out from my pool affect us tells you more of the truth than the real one. The real one would lie to the cameras because it in Japan Inn in their society. You have to keep face and you cannot admit that your life is miserable and you will not win some and you were crying at Helmand your pillow. And so this person the real person would not say that he would lie to the camera. But Mike my man who was put in front of your camera, my name who is standing 200 times comforting solitary people. He tells you the gist the real truth about what is going on and I think he's right.
01:04:34I'm sure he's right.
01:04:36Yeah, she thinks I'm supposed to have some more truth in him. Then the real person who wants to keep her for sage of what a well-behaved behavior in in public.
01:04:56We have some other question.
01:04:58Bernat if you could make a film about our generation to generation at 6 in this room, what do you think the log line would be? 01:05:07I wouldn't know any logline, but I have I've done a film on the internet lowing behold witch has appealed very much to do that to your generation. I am the younger ones you are already a veteran. It's a 15 year olds who who probably come up in and have to to teach you that the 35 year old son a 25 year old no way. I wouldn't know a logline but I have made a lot of film sets apparently well for a general audience when I made them 40 years ago 45 years ago the Enigma of kaspar Hauser all of a sudden I get emails of fifteen-year-olds young kids from Missoula Montana because today they can have access to the film by 01:06:07Streaming other ways through the internet piracy for example, which is a successful distribution system in 2 pints and all of a sudden. It's a very very young respond to my feelings and it's not
01:06:26It not foreign to me that I have always made films for that was so mentally active went into a turmoil in 2 hours looking out for organizing their lives psiphon responding in a way. I've been young and now the film in Japan this is a return to the times when I was 23, 24 25 when I met. Gary the wrath of God, you wouldn't know what's would come after the next Bend of the river. But that begin with. The Rapids are not so this kind of Readiness to to face whatever is going to be thrown at you. When did you just say sit in your deal with it?
01:07:18Actually in terms of the generation that is is might now be rediscovering your films. Do you have any thoughts about the way in which we are going back in re-evaluating cinematic work based on our new feelings about the directors? I'm thinking of Tarantino who put Uma Thurman at breasts at risk in Kill Bill, which I thought was a fantastic film that Woody Allen, of course with his difficulties having his work re-evaluated are we how do you feel about bodies of work being reprocessed through the lens of the alleged failures of the creators?
01:08:01I think that will be a very nice and send receipt already for example classical music all of a sudden. I just read yesterday or today has seen the new platform something tonight. It's all spirits to us mainstream pop all of a sudden you can access it. For example emovies the Criterion Collection, which is a very very fine collection of films had disappeared and reappeared apparently as it's either independent streaming label or within Amazon. I have to find out that don't know yet. But all of a sudden these things affect and the 15 year olds from Missoula Montana is it's not just that case. It's just emerging. So now I have no doubt that we are going to see Film Center outside.
01:09:01Outside of the the regular mainstream but have debts and vision and wonderful story said will not disappear. The shallow will disappear the shallow of of yesterday when you locate talk show so that it pop shows of the 1960s is it's just stunning how how shallow they aren't they disappear very quickly. 01:09:31If some of the questions, what do you think that looks like or perhaps what occupies the minds of men next midnight speaking about technological Utopias. It inevitably will come to an end. I what comes to mind is immediately space space colonization. Not only is it an obscenity. It's also and durable send it to you because it's hints at us the human race like locusts raising our planet empty and then moving on and we can move on to Mars for example, but it it should be contained and it's doable for a few scientists a few astronauts who have a small tiny little habitat, but I have enough 01:10:31Drinking water in a shelter against radiation and did not fit to breathe. Yes, we can create that. We will not put 1 million humans on planet Mars. It's not going to happen. It's technically technically not really do a blind and wise and a part of Mars. We cannot reach anything outside of our solar system because it's simply too far it would take you a hundred ten thousand years to reach the next one, which is only three and a half of four and a half light-years away. We just won't be able to do it. It's. And in this kind of Illusion this kind of Utopia technical Utopia will come to a fairly quick and in our Centre what other Utopias it come to mind immortality, of course, we can 01:11:31A child longevity to a certain point but that's about it that we are going to die. That's what the entire creation everywhere and not a planet everywhere points to the same thing that there's an impermanence of of what is around everywhere. So that says it's one of the things I have to think about other Utopias tech technical you tell PS but you are much closer to the approaching technical Utopia Senayan.
01:12:09So you have to find out what we should doing what we should not do and what is in the Utopia and what is within the within realities of human beings.
01:12:24Your time for one or two last questions.
01:12:27I'm sorry. I was late to ask. Can you speak up?
01:12:35Changes a real situation the way in which you know, you talked about the real world when you eject camera into it how it affects perception people.
01:12:46You are wearing them cameras.
01:12:50Yeah, I tailed philosophical question are the physical question of how deep do you insert your camera on your position is open and some of servant that's it change the reality that's out there. Hopefully it does because I'm a Creator. I'm not an observation camera in the bank that waits for 15 years and no bank robber baby shows up. So we are not we are not the fly-on-the-wall. I want to insert myself. I want to create I want to mold. I want to influence my story even the documentaries and I I do change facts and I'm quoting now all day sheets the French writer who said I change facts to such a degree that they resemble truth more than reality and it's a wonderful way to say it.
01:13:50And you see that you are too if you are seriously asking the question with an indignant and the town. I it means that you're very much text oriented, which I don't believe in your case. But many people are true fact oriented and Cinema and does not have to be even documentaries have to only partly be perfect oriented because the facts do not equal truth that do not end. It's the same thing like with family romance. Am I wish that gives you a deeper truth in the real person and my simplest of all explanations is and I have used it many types of if you have heard it from me my apologies.
01:14:41Mikelangelo creating the sculpture of the pieta Jesus in the arms of Mary Sue face is a 33 year old man. And when you look at Mary, she's 17. His mother is 17.
01:15:01So of course, it's not factually correct, but he didn't want to cheat US Ally to us or whatever. He just wanted to point out an essential truth or something that resembles my truth because I do not know what truth is not do mathematicians. I think I only have deeply religious people know what it is.
01:15:26So they that have fun on easier life than that was so I'm not religious.
01:15:34We have the last question.
01:15:38I worked years ago was David Blaine in Army Carina Circle vertigo and how they happy watching film for The Passion of the woodcarver Steiner do they do with the passion of the woodcarver Steiner and there's a scene at the end of the poem The Raven and that they wanted you very much to focus on that and I will do the Raven was in a place like we couldn't really find them and implication being that Raven maybe was real in your self-worth. So I guess I waited while ask you this but was great in Freeland this matter and with all these questions about truth. Are there any things in documentary film? They would be for both like God example of party Scorsese was recently accused of putting a fake character in is Bob Dylan.
01:16:33Is there any thing that wouldn't be? Okay in the popular documentary? Congratulations to Scottsdale AZ who is normally cowardly when it comes to expanding forms. He follows the following was very much the norm. He's a wonderful filmmaker, but but not really extravagant leave courageous in into creating new things, but I have not seen the pop Dylan film, but I welcome but you are saying what you're saying about how many Koreans David Blaine the magician he seems I don't like they be playing at all.
01:17:15This is his repulsive in everything is doing and what seems to be significant is he tries to see you started as an Illusionist doing card tricks and Illusions. He seems to be moving away from The Illusionist into trying to straighten his body to its utmost limits to the brink of test, which is stupid. It's outright stupid to immerse yourself in the water tank for a whole week becomes get any more stupid than that went and he says he's just making a living out of something that is definitely obscene certain do not have a cactus needle stuck in your knee cap nasty in my knee. Maney send you a jump drive cost of midgets.
01:18:15I made the film me even dwarfs started small and in one of their bus run over by a car. It was driving is coming in circuits when caught fire inside at the end. I said so yourself on a midget to put out the fire and then because everybody else was supposed to be looking at like it a Christmas tree burning and emptied the first thing you to throw yourself on him and extinguish the guy I didn't smell that. He didn't squishy don't you come out unscathed at the end of the the movie I'm gonna from this ramp. I'm going to jump into this field of cacti and you all have your at that time 8 millimeter cameras and your photo cameras in New York. You can take you a picture and I take off and I leapt into yes, right some some of them got stuck in my ignition using and they can't get out easily would be an honor.
01:19:15Where to take you to lunch with David Blaine to work this thing out. I would like to have a dinner with him. I do not want to ruin my appetite but I would gladly take him to the men's room or two to fight it out there to take him to the parking lot asked her and settle this. However, you must be asked about nice to Step Into Obscurity and just let us sort it out. I tell you.
01:19:53Your life has been an inspiration to me since I was 16 and it doesn't even feel like you can meet over in hertzog in real life does a very special day in my life. I want to thank you for coming bringing your stories your wisdom your views on arts and your admonitions which no one is following. I think they'd probably their seminar audience were going to make a special note that this is this is the advice is the tide to get my knife steel. You don't need to listen to me. You you will find you will find your own guidance and your vision best of luck to all the best of luck to all of you so it can you change it for Verner hertzog beautiful.