Werner Herzog

Started by adolfwolfli, August 06, 2003, 01:05:56 PM

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MacGuffin

EXCL: Traveling the Globe with Werner Herzog
Source: Edward Douglas; ComingSoon

Veteran filmmaker Werner Herzog has effortlessly alternated between documentaries and dramatic films over his forty-plus year career, but in recent years, he's become known for his prolific ability to crank out two to three non-fiction films a year. His 2005 documentary Grizzly Man was thought by many to be the best doc that year even though it was ignored by the Academy. His latest effort Encounters at the End of the World is just as riveting, a unique look at Antarctica and the inhabitants of the McMurdo Base, a place that few people get to see and fewer ever get to visit. Herzog spent seven weeks down on the continent filming the gorgeous landscapes and capturing unbelievable underwater shots the likes that haven't been seen except in the movies of James Cameron, combining them with his trademark narrative and a beautiful soundtrack of Russian chorale music. As hard as the famous German filmmaker tried avoiding the penguins who've made the continent famous, he did manage to sneak one wildly lost penguin into the movie, which seemed appropriate.

ComingSoon.net sat down with Herzog at the THINKFilm offices for a brief interview, although it took some time to get onto the same page, since he seemed to want to answer his own questions rather than the ones we asked. Hey, when you make as many great movies as Herzog, you can answer whichever questions you want, right?

ComingSoon.net: When I interviewed Zak Penn last year for his movie "The Grand," we were talking about your role in his movie. He mentioned getting a call from you and you telling him matter-of-factly that you were in Antarctica. Was it that easy a decision to just go down there and make a movie?
Werner Herzog: (ignores my question and answering his own) Sometimes it's good to show a good amount of self-irony. It does good to me, and besides, I've been in the last two films of Harmony Korine, "Julian Donkey Boy" and "Mister Lonely." It's simply that I love everything that has to do with cinema: writing, directing, producing, editing, and including acting, but I'm good in acting only in a limited scope. I'm only good when it comes to characters that are violent, debased people, dysfunctional, then I'm good and quite convincing then.

CS: Having seen you in so many of your own documentaries, whenever you show up in a movie like that, one expects you to start narrating or commenting on what is happening. As far as "Encounters" though, you saw some underwater pictures that got you interested in Antarctica?
Herzog: Of course, the film shows it and I'm making a clear statement. I was absolutely fascinated by footage that I saw under the water, complete and utter science fiction environment that doesn't look like (it's from) this planet. Of course, it is under the ice of the Roth Sea shelf. The divers have to drill a hole through 10, 15, 20 feet of ice and they have to be absolutely expert divers because sometimes there are unexpected currents underwater. If you get disoriented, you cannot surface anymore. If you do not find the exit hole anymore, then you're dead. It was quite clear very early on I would never have a chance to dive. I'm not a scuba diver, and even if I had gone into training for a full year, they wouldn't have allowed me, because it was simply too dangerous. The community in Antarctica, which is very hard to maintain, cannot afford to put all the resources into a rescue operation. They'd better use a helicopter and manpower in supporting a nutrino detection project or climate change project or a whatever project.

CS: Knowing that you wouldn't be able dive yourself, did you just want to have one of the divers take a camera down to film new footage?
Herzog: Exactly. He's the musician Henry Kaiser, with whom I did the music in "Grizzly Man," together with Richard Thompson, he produced the music. He actually in "Encounters at the End of the World" plays guitar, but mostly, it's David Lindley, a wonderful great musician, and the other part of the music is actually prerecorded Russian Orthodox church choirs, and it gives this kind of great space to the landscapes. How it functions is very strange, and of course, it gives something almost sacred to certain things that you see. The Russian church choirs of course already existed, but all the rest of the music was done together with the images, and it was recorded for the movie itself.

CS: When you decided to make a movie down there, did you have to get some sort of financing together and have a solid gameplan or did you just go down with a small crew and start shooting?
Herzog: Well, it was a minimum crew. There was a cinematographer and me, the director who did the sound, and Henry Kaiser who did the diving and worked on the music and the organization, because he was down there seven times maybe, so he knew shortcuts in the bureaucracy down there which is immense... strangely, big big amount of bureaucracy, but it's okay. No complaints about that. It was just an incredible fascination about the footage I had seen from underwater and of course, those stories that I heard. I said, "Oh, I'll never have a chance to go down to Antarctica" and Henry Kaiser said to me, "Yes, there might be a chance. There is an artists and writers' program by the National Science Foundation. Why don't you apply?" I applied and they invited me! It came out and I didn't expect it, and then the consolation in producing the film was the same like in "Grizzly Man" which means Creative Differences, a man who runs it Erik Nelson, he by the way has his own film "Dreams with Sharp Teeth" and I'm very proud that we're handing over the cinema from his film to mine. (Note: It's true. Nelson's Harlan Ellison doc played at New York's Film Forum until Tuesday and then Herzog's film starts on Wednesday.) He's really a wonderful filmmaker and producer, and he since he had worked a lot with Discovery, they came on board and it was in this case, fairly easy, because we had a similar set-up like in "Grizzly Man."

CS: As far as the community down there, it must be very secular and they must keep to themselves, especially the scientists, so how did you approach them about talking in front of your camera?
Herzog: The majority of the population are not scientists. They are people for maintenance and organization, mechanics, people who work in the kitchen. The dishwasher in the galley is a retired judge from a high court, things like this, so you find amazing people, but very dedicated. Out of roughly a population of thousands of men and women down in McMurdo during the astral summer, which is our winter, there are roughly one thousand and about 200 or 250 are working on scientific projects, all the others are plumbers, like the journeyman plumber you see in the film who is a wonderful man. In the organization and housing and maintenance and transport and security, you just name it.

CS: In general, you wanted to talk to whomever you could, so what did you tell them when you asked them to be in your film?
Herzog: That's the strange thing. I flew down and I had no idea whom I was going to meet, with the exception of one or two, Henry Kaiser I knew I would meet and Sam Viser, who runs this diving camp. I knew that, but I flew into the unknown and I had no idea whom I was going to meet and how I was going to do the film and what I would do. I only knew I had to come back seven weeks later with a film in the can... which frightened me. I know I'm a good storyteller and I always connect very quickly to real good people.

CS: But you've done other films in less than seven weeks.
Herzog: Yeah, well you lose about more than a week, once you're down there, once you arrive there, you're not allowed to leave McMurdo. You have to do a course in survival, a course in radio communications, a course in snowmobile riding. Three days into being down there, I had an accident on a steep slope. The instructor asked me to do a turn on a very steep slope and being a good skier, I thought, "well, this looks a little bit twisty for making a U-Turn" and indeed, the snowmobile, 800 pounds, turns over and I tried to get away from it and it tumbles after me, this 800 pound monster rolls all over my body, so for the next six weeks, I was hurting everywhere you can hurt, and I could barely bend down to tie my shoestrings, because my rib cage was hurting so badly, swollen hands five times as thick as a hand should normally be.

CS: Someone was telling me once—I think it was Zak—that they wanted to do a graphic novel about you, your life and your adventures, and I think that story would have to be in there.
Herzog: Yes. (chuckles)

CS: It seems that a lot of people want to go down there to disappear or get lost, they literally drop out of normal society....
Herzog: No, I don't think anybody goes down there to disappear from society. You don't do that, because you could not... if you tried that, you could not sustain yourself for more than a week, because you cannot carry more food with you.

CS: But McMurdo has its own society. I'm talking about getting away from normal society.
Herzog: Society (down there) is not much different from what we have here. You've got an ATM machine in McMurdo and an aerobics studio, and you have yoga classes and Alcoholics Anonymous... and you have three bars and you have a film club, and you just name it.

CS: That's a lot of stuff we didn't see in the movie. I see a sequel here.
Herzog: In condensed form. (chuckles)

CS: Was a lot of the motivation for making the film just to show people things they hadn't seen before?
Herzog: Well, I didn't know exactly what was going on there. I only knew there was a lot of cutting edge science, and not only what everyone thinks, that science in Antarctica has to do with the climate change and so on. Yes, there's a good amount of cutting edge science and knowledge coming from there, but it's other things like origins of life. The divers actually dive for very tiny mono-cellular creatures, which gives us insight into very, very early forms of biological life on this planet. There are people who are trying to detect nutrinos for very obvious reasons. It is much easier to detect in there because from a balloon for example that flies 40 kilometers high into the stratosphere, you can cover hundreds and hundreds of miles under you and detect the tiniest signals without any disturbances. Even a light switch that you turn off and on would be registered as a signal up there at 40 km distance, and of course, you don't have all these disturbances, and then they have a field of observation that is very favorable.

CS: Your documentaries are very well known for your trademark narratives. Do you tend to write that stuff while you're down there or experiencing it or is it all done after the fact once you've edited the movie together?
Herzog: It was done during editing, because I knew while I was filming, I knew I would easily get enough fascinating footage to make a film out of it, but in which order I would narrate it, I did not know clearly. A few things I saw immediately, yes, I had to show why did I go to Antarctica as the first images I have to show, underwater stuff, so a few elements in the whole structure were clear in its position. Otherwise, I fill it with this kind of great curiosity and also, there's a lot of humor in it, and you see it when you watch it in a theater with audiences, so much laughter. I'm very enthusiastic about the fact that people laugh so much and they see the humor in it.

CS: Between "Grizzly Man" and "Rescue Dawn," you've had somewhat of a resurgence, so have you discovered that you have a new younger audience that never saw any of your older films?
Herzog: Yeah, in a way. You know that I live in the United States. I got married and I live in the United States and it's done very good to me. I'm out for new horizons and not only that horizon into Antarctica was opened to me, significantly by the American National Science Foundation, they've been very good to me. It's also distribution, for example, here we are at THINKFilm, it's a first time I'm collaborating with THINKFilm and I'm finding that it's very significant that all of a sudden, the Discovery Channel or Creative Differences or that "Rescue Dawn" was not a studio film but it was released by MGM, so all of a sudden, completely new horizons. I don't want to tread the same spot all over throughout my filmmaking life. I'm always exploring, I'm always out for new horizons. It has done good to my films, it has done good to me. When you look at the films I've made recently, "Grizzly Man," "Rescue Dawn," "Encounters at the End of the World", "The Wild Blue Yonder," it's just a very significant new step for me.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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Gold Trumpet

I don't like the idea of Herzog adapting Bad Lieutenant. When I think of Bad Lieutenant and Werner Herzog, I think of a filmmaker and film that are already pretty much the same. Herzog is the ultimate documentation. His thematic consistency through all of his films is that he deals with extreme characters and situations, but he always does so in a documentation fashion. He chooses to search through nuances of the character's actions instead of question their what ifs. Bad Lieutenant is already a classic example of following a character of extreme emotions through his tumultuous life. I don't know what Herzog would really change. He may have his character doing different things, but I have to imagine it would be to the same ends as the original film.

MacGuffin



Werner Herzog explores the Antarctic
The filmmaker travels to the South Pole to make what he says might be the deepest film of his career, 'Encounters at the End of the World.'
By Sheri Linden, Special to The Times

WERNER HERZOG says he should have known better. In 46 years of visionary filmmaking often devoted to life in extremis, the prolific director has never been one to toe the line. But on his latest work, the nonfiction feature "Encounters at the End of the World," he had a brief lapse: Against his better instincts, he followed instructions -- and found himself on the losing end of a tussle with an 800-pound snowmobile.

"Encounters," filmed over seven weeks in Antarctica, abounds with exhilarating and strange beauty, unforgettable characters both human and otherwise, and is often mordantly funny. Having now made features on all seven continents, Herzog discovered a landscape unlike anything he had previously explored. "The only thing that comes close would be the Sahara Desert, in just the expanse of it and the amount of solitude," he said recently.

Arriving at the Studio City offices of the film's production company, Creative Differences, Herzog was all warm hellos and high energy and dispensed not a syllable of unnecessary preliminaries. That focus and efficiency are hardly surprising; this is a man who has released six films in the last five years, one of which, the acclaimed documentary "Grizzly Man," he shot, edited and delivered in 29 days.

In the lead-up to this Friday's Los Angeles bow of "Encounters" for a weeklong run at the Nuart, Herzog was juggling preproduction logistics for his next project, the Nicolas Cage-starring remake of "Bad Lieutenant." That film, which has more than 45 speaking roles, is at the far end of the spectrum from Herzog's two-man-crew adventures in the vast emptiness of Antarctica.

But he's famous for moving between fiction and nonfiction -- sometimes within the same film -- and for dismissing the distinction between the two as arbitrary. Central to his 2005 sci-fi narrative "The Wild Blue Yonder" was documentary footage of Antarctic dives. That underwater imagery, by diver Henry Kaiser, led Herzog to the South Pole to make "Encounters."

"There is something almost sacred about being there," he said, "something that does not belong to our planet anymore. As if it were science fiction, as if we were confronted with the essence of creation."

But before Herzog, who handled the film's production sound, and his longtime cinematographer, Peter Zeitlinger, could venture into the frozen wilderness and out to the field camps where glaciologists, biologists, physicists and volcanologists pursue their singular passions, they had to endure a week of "briefings and bureaucracy and snowmobile training," not to mention the mandatory exercises of the Happy Camper survival school.

Only a couple of days into his stay at McMurdo Station, the sprawling base camp and research hub, the director, an accomplished skier who had never been on a snowmobile, was asked to make a turn on a slope that looked too steep. "I followed instructions, which I shouldn't have." When the "monster" of a vehicle toppled, it rolled over Herzog and left him "hurting everywhere" for the remainder of the shoot.

But "Encounters" offers no evidence that its director was in pain; marked by Herzog's signature brooding exuberance and German-accented voice-over pronouncements on such "abominations" as aerobics studios and New Age wishful thinking, it's full of affection for the outsiders, full-time travelers and philosopher-forklift drivers who call McMurdo home during the five-month, nighttime-free austral summer.

"You find a retired judge washing dishes in the galley," Herzog said.

Herzog's willingness to strip his filmmaking operation down to the "absolute minimum" -- Zeitlinger and himself -- was a key selling point to the National Science Foundation, which runs McMurdo and was Herzog's sponsor.

"James Cameron apparently, I was told, had applied to be invited to McMurdo, and his request was declined because he would only show up with, I don't know, a 35-man crew -- I'm just taking a guess. And to maintain one single person for one day down there is a huge expense. . . . I did not want to waste resources that they need for other things."

Herzog also made it clear to the NSF that he was not interested in filming a heartwarming tribute to "fluffy" penguins. Yet a couple of individuals from that pop-culture-fav species do make a powerful impression. Zeitlinger's images of them, in combination with Herzog's narration, create an indelible expression of nothing less than the existential mystery of life.

"I know the film has depth, although it tries to hide it behind all its humor," Herzog conceded. "It's probably pretty much the deepest film I've made -- maybe with the exception of 'Land of Silence and Darkness' " (a 1971 documentary portrait of Fini Straubinger, who was deaf and blind).

Although his Antarctic explorations were above the surface -- as far above it as the rim of 12,000-foot Mount Erebus, where he received "etiquette" lessons in how to respond when a volcano explodes -- Herzog's initial inspiration for "Encounters" was the marine world "under the ceiling of ice." That may be why he's particularly pleased with an underwater sequence that uses footage by Kaiser and sound design by Doug Quinn of seals calling to one another, in voices that one scientist likens to Pink Floyd. "That's the finest moment in sound I've heard in many years," Herzog said.

For the filmmaker, who rejects romanticized notions about the natural world -- "I don't have any beliefs about nature. I just make my own observations" -- the Antarctic landscape put certain realities into stark relief. "The only thing that becomes quite obvious in Antarctica," he said, "is that our presence on this planet, the human presence on the planet, is not really sustainable."

Herzog is not talking merely about the top-of-mind matter of global warming. "Climate change would not be the only reason why we might become extinct. Sure, it may be a factor. It may not. But human life in complicated civilized structures is very, very vulnerable. And of course when you look at the presence of biological life on this planet, it has been an endless line of cataclysmic events. . . . I do not make any predictions. That would be silly; we do not know. But there is an all-pervasive sense which makes me see clearly that our presence is not sustainable -- in particular this highly technical civilization which is wasting resources at a dramatic pace."

Some observers have mistaken Herzog's clear-eyed view for misanthropy. But like the "professional dreamers" he encountered in Antarctica, he meets the world head-on -- creatively, ecstatically and without undue regard for convention.

"The thought that human beings may eventually disappear from this planet doesn't make me nervous," Herzog noted. "There was a very beautiful thing that Martin Luther, the reformist, said in the 16th century. He was asked, 'What would you do if tomorrow the world would disappear, would explode, would not be anymore?' And Luther said, 'I would plant an apple tree.' " Herzog leaned forward, smiling, his voice filled with gleeful decisiveness. "And my answer is, if I knew it was over tomorrow, I would start to shoot a movie."
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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pete

encounter was great.  it was like casual herzog; herzog lite, but still full of wisdom, humor, and revelation.
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton

MacGuffin

Michael Shannon Set for Herzog's My Son
Source: Entertainment Weekly

Academy Award nominee Michael Shannon (Revolutionary Road) is working with director Werner Herzog and executive producer David Lynch on the horror film My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done, a picture announced early last year.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Shannon is playing the lead, a San Diego man "who acts out a Sophocles play in his mind and kills his mother with a sword." Shooting is expected to begin in Peru from a script by Herzog and Herbert Golder.

Shannon has appeared in Dead Birds, Bug and World Trade Center. Reports in December also say Udo Kier and Willem Dafoe will co-star.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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abuck1220

i thought encounters at the end of the world was pretty awful. he'd show some cool shit and then cut to some weirdo that zips herself in a suitcase. yawn. it's like he just could resist throwing in some herzog-esque nuttiness to put his stamp on it. unfortunately, the population of this place is pretty small, so he has to try and make the guy whose second and third fingers are the same length seem interesting.

and it looked like shit. even the blu-ray.

MacGuffin

'Done' deal: Trio joins Herzog thriller
Thriller casts Michael Pena, Brad Dourif, Bill Cobbs
Source: Hollywood Reporter

BERLIN -- Michael Pena, Brad Dourif and Bill Cobbs have joined the cast of Werner Herzog and David Lynch's psychological thriller "My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done."

The trio join Michael Shannon, Willem Dafoe and Chloe Sevigny in the film, which Herzog is directing. Eric Bassett ("Inland Empire") is producing while David Lynch serves as executive producer.

Unified Pictures, the Los Angeles-based production, finance and international distribution company, is handling international sales with David Lynch's company, Absurda, and introducing the film at the European Film Market.

The film is loosely based on the true story of a San Diego man who experiences a series of mystifying events that lead him to brutally murder his own mother with a sword.

Pena's credits include "Crash" and "World Trade Center" while Dourif is a veteran actor who's appeared films ranging from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" to "The Lord of the Rings" movies. Cobbs next appears in "Black Water Transit."
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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SiliasRuby

Soooo excited for this....its hopefully going to be Mmm mmm good.
The Beatles know Jesus Christ has returned to Earth and is in Los Angeles.

When you are getting fucked by the big corporations remember to use a condom.

There was a FISH in the perkalater!!!

My Collection

MacGuffin

Werner Herzog and his 'uninvited guests'
The filmmaker insists he doesn't seek out the eccentric, larger-than-life characters he spotlights.
By Susan King; Los Angeles Times

Werner Herzog admits he has never had any grand plan for choosing his projects.

"The films always stumble into me," says the German-born, L.A.-based filmmaker. "I have never planned a career like other filmmakers would do. It's always been like a home invasion -- how do you get the burglars out of your homes in the middle of the night?"

Case in point: His stumbling into "Grizzly Man," his 2005 award-winning documentary that explored the life and death of Timothy Treadwell, who studied grizzly bears before he and his girlfriend were killed by a bear in 2003.

"I was not searching for a story," recalls Herzog, 66. "I was searching for my car keys in the office of a big production company. The producer, who thought I spotted something on the table, shoved an article to me and said we are doing a very interesting project."

Herzog couldn't say no. "It's like uninvited guests," he says. "All of a sudden, you open the door a foot wide and uninvited guests are crowding in your home."

Herzog has never shied from controversy and has a reputation for daring narratives and documentaries that explore larger-than-life characters. They include Treadwell, Klaus Kinski's conquistador in 1972's "Aguirre, Wrath of God" and the offbeat workers and citizens of the Antarctic community of McMurdo Station in his latest film, " Encounters at the End of the World," for which he is nominated for his first Academy Award, for feature documentary.

Friday at UCLA's Royce Hall, Herzog will talk about his films with Paul Holdengräber, director of public programs at the New York Public Library (and former director of LACMA's now-defunct Institute for Art & Cultures). "We had planned on a wild event with musicians from Senegal, Sardinia and Holland, but the problem is apparently they didn't get a work visa," Herzog says. "So it's a complicated situation. . . . I will basically be in discourse with Paul, and we will show excerpts of how I put music particularly in two films -- 'The Wild Blue Yonder' and 'White Diamond.' "

"Yonder" is a 2005 sci-fi drama combined with documentary images about the environment, whereas "The White Diamond" is a 2004 documentary about an airship designer trying to navigate the rain forest in Guyana. Herzog is one of the few directors who moves with ease among genres.

"I am not into this wild business of labeling," he says. "To me, it's all movies. I cross the border lines in a way as I stylize documentaries. Sometimes I script documentaries -- some of them are just feature films in disguise."

Since completing "Encounters," Herzog has directed the feature "Bad Lieutenant" with Nicolas Cage (the cop thriller doesn't have a domestic distributor), staged the opera "Parsifal" in Spain, made a short film in the south of Ethiopia about music and started shooting his latest narrative drama, "My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?," in Peru.

"It was just one isolated sequence which I had to do at the height of the rainy season," he says of "My Son," which is loosely based on a real story about a San Diego man who envisions a Sophocles play in his mind. (The principal filming will take place three or four weeks from now, he says.)

Herzog has also written an English translation of a nonfiction book. "It's based on diaries I wrote during 'Fitzcarraldo,' called 'Conquest of the Useless,' " he says.

"It will be out fairly soon, and it will survive all of my films."
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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NEON MERCURY

im esxcited byt his as well....the synopsis leaves so much to imagine..and gives the creative froces behind the film nuch to work with..but i though that lynch had a writing credit as well :ponder:

SiliasRuby

PM, we still want your complete and full review of 'Inland Empire' hat you didn't get to finish.
The Beatles know Jesus Christ has returned to Earth and is in Los Angeles.

When you are getting fucked by the big corporations remember to use a condom.

There was a FISH in the perkalater!!!

My Collection

NEON MERCURY

its cmoing..i watched it again for the 5th time...and i feel like one more viewing will give me what i need to finish it

MacGuffin

Herzog to teach guerilla filmmaking
Weekend will cost $1,450
Source: Variety

With a typical no-nonsense approach, Werner Herzog has decided to teach guerilla filmmaking at a cost of $1,450 for a weekend -- and cautioned the faint of heart to stay away.

"Censorship will be enforced," he says. "There will be no talk of shamans, of yoga classes, nutritional values, herbal teas, discovering your Boundaries, and Inner Growth."

Herzog -- whose credits include "Aguirre," "Fitzcarraldo," "Encounters at the End of the World," "Grizzly Man" and the new "Bad Lieutenant" -- also warned applicants not to bring a laptop to the first session Jan. 8-10 in Los Angeles. Instead, he promised he'll offer insight into such areas as "the exhilaration of being shot at unsuccessfully" and "the neutralization of bureaucracy."

"The Rogue Film School is not for the faint-hearted; it is for those who have travelled on foot, who have worked as bouncers in sex clubs or as wardens in a lunatic asylum, for those who are willing to learn about lock-picking or forging shooting permits in countries not favoring their projects," he said. "In short: it is for those who have a sense for poetry. For those who are pilgrims. For those who can tell a story to four-year-old children and hold their attention. For those who have a fire burning within. For those who have a dream."

At the end of the seminar, participants will receive a signed copy of Herzog's "Conquest of the Useless."
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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Pozer

so strange what Herzog does. sooooo strange. didnt he once pull Nic Cage out of a streetcar after Ferrara blew it up?

polkablues

Quote from: MacGuffin on September 22, 2009, 08:41:14 PM
Herzog to teach guerilla filmmaking
Weekend will cost $1,450
Source: Variety

With a typical no-nonsense approach, Werner Herzog has decided to teach guerilla filmmaking at a cost of $1,450 for a weekend -- and cautioned the faint of heart to stay away.

"Censorship will be enforced," he says. "There will be no talk of shamans, of yoga classes, nutritional values, herbal teas, discovering your Boundaries, and Inner Growth."

Herzog -- whose credits include "Aguirre," "Fitzcarraldo," "Encounters at the End of the World," "Grizzly Man" and the new "Bad Lieutenant" -- also warned applicants not to bring a laptop to the first session Jan. 8-10 in Los Angeles. Instead, he promised he'll offer insight into such areas as "the exhilaration of being shot at unsuccessfully" and "the neutralization of bureaucracy."

"The Rogue Film School is not for the faint-hearted; it is for those who have travelled on foot, who have worked as bouncers in sex clubs or as wardens in a lunatic asylum, for those who are willing to learn about lock-picking or forging shooting permits in countries not favoring their projects," he said. "In short: it is for those who have a sense for poetry. For those who are pilgrims. For those who can tell a story to four-year-old children and hold their attention. For those who have a fire burning within. For those who have a dream."

At the end of the seminar, participants will receive a signed copy of Herzog's "Conquest of the Useless."

Ho. Ly. Shit.  Someone get on making a documentary of that.  It will be the most hardcore, insane thing ever.  "I'm With Busey" times 10,000.  I guarantee you at least one person will not make it out alive.
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