Welcome to hardtalk. Im stephen sackur. Draw up a list of The Greatest Living Film Makers and my guess today would surely occupy a prominent place. Werner herzog is responsible for some of the most wildly beautiful images captured on celluloid. If youve seen fit to crowd though you wont have forgotten the steamship being called over a mountain. He is seen as the film industrys obsessive genius, the director who once threatened to shoot his lead actor to prevent him quitting. After five decades of Making Movies is Werner Herzogs love of film as intense as ever . If youve seen fitzcarraldo. Werner herzog, welcome to hardtalk. Thank you. Lets start with the word passion, you been making films for the best part of five decades, does your passion for film burn as bright as ever . It hasnt stopped, there is some sort of fire within and in a way i can say i havent had a career. Because career means planning and what do i do after that step so its always, i keep saying, its like burglars in your kitchen the middle of the night, you wake about three in the morning and something stirs and there are five burglars. And the one who comes with the most vehemence at you, with an axe in his hand or a knife or a gun so you have to deal with that first. And thats how my film projects are coming at me and i have in recent years made more films, i mean just counting them which is silly, ive made more films than before and some of them bigger. You mention fitzcarraldo, i am now releasing a Big Epic Film which was shot in the desert in morocco, queen of the desert with nicole kidman. Ive done documentaries, but i have done other things. Its overlooked quite often. Ive written books and i have a suspicion that my prose may outlive my films like conquest of the useless or off walking in ice and i run my own film school and. Im going to stop you there because theres so much. I am acting as a villain so i stop it there. Ill get to the acting as a villain later on to. Even the list you just give me of the artistic endeavours, youre still undertaking so many of them. I wonder whether your style has changed 7 does this word mellowed and people often attach it to age, do you think you have mellowed as an artist with age . It doesnt look likely because when you look at films i made not too long ago, bad lieutenant its so outrageously wild and hilarious, people always think im this obsessed teutonic film maker who has not an ounce of humour in all my films. There is humour including fitcarraldo, including when i came close to shooting my leading actor or grizzly man so theres close to shooting my leading actor or grizzly man so theres an intensity that hasnt been there before. Youve also started Teaching Young Film Makers and i wonder, imagine im one of the Young Students whos gone through a very severe Selection Process and is now listening to Werner Herzogs view of the fundamentals of Making Movies. If there are just a few words he could give to a Student Strike me as to what matters most for successfully making a good movie, what would you say . I think self reliance, everybodys complaining the industry is so stupid, i do not get the money together so i say roll up your sleeves, work as a bouncer in a sex club or as a warden in a lunatic asylum, half a year you earn 10,000 20,000 and you can make a feature film today. Theres no excuse any more and then of course read, read, read, read, read. If you dont read you will never make a great film. And i do have a mandatory reading list, it has nothing to do with cinema, it has to do with the poetry beginning in antiquity, rome, virgil, about life in the country, about agriculture or old nordic poetry or even the Warren Commission report on the assassination of kennedy. Its mandatory. So you want broad minds . You think a broad mind matters . Conceptually yes. Conceptually thinking and those who are ready to break the rules, who are ready to learn from me how to pick a safety, how to forge documents, you see a film like fitzcarraldo would never have been possible without massive forgery. At that time peru was a military dictatorship, All Of A Sudden a military build up along the river where i had to move my ship, i was stopped, shot at and i demanded an explanation and i didnt get an explanation, i was only told where is your shooting permit. And i said of course, i made it up, its in lima and itll take me 3 4 days until i can bring it to the jungle. So four days later i come with a very elaborate beautiful document Written In Antiquated Chancellery sort of diction in spanish and notary paper that says the president of the republic, it allowed me literally. And a complete fake. A complete fake and it was signed by the president of the republic and stamped and the notary of the presidency signed at us and stamped and the notary of the presidency signed it us well and his Interior Minister signed it. So we said you will let me pass now and he looks at me and looks at the document and salutes sensors pass on. So rule breaking is a part of the recipe for success for film making . Yes. You constantly through your career focused on this word courage and youve juxtaposed courage against cowardice in the way you go about making a film, what i want to want to push on and you mentioned fitzcarraldo, is that you can take courage to an insane extent, you can push your crew, your actors, the people around you to a point where they are putting their lives on the line and many would say you did that with fitzcarraldo. I did it with my life, with no one elses so thats a myth that has been created. But lets put it into normal terms. Yes, i have done films that nobody else would have done, how to move, how do you move a very heavy steamboat over a mountain with the help of 1100 savage, of course in movie terms, savage native indians. There were risks but it was not insanity because i knew i could move it over the mountain. Correct me if im wrong but i have read and maybe this is folklore that but ive read that one of your cinematographers had his hands smashed when he was in the steamship going over the rapids, another crew member was bitten by a deadly snake and i think he may have lost part of his leg,. Chopped it off with his chainsaw. Because it was one of our lumber men and they work barefoot because we had to cut trees for moving the ship over a clear part strip of the forest and he was bitten by the most venomous snake in the world and you have Something Like very few seconds to make up your mind what to do. 0ur doctor in our medical camp was too far away for reaching it within minutes, it was Something Like 20 minutes away so he picks up the chainsaw that had stopped and started up again like an outboard engine of a boat and just looks at it and chops off his foot and that made him survive. The point is no movie is surely worth that sort of trauma . No, it is not. It is not and when you do a film, you have to be very very careful that these things are not happening. But things happen when you build a bridge for example, yes, you have accidents but there were none of them directly related to the shooting of the film. There were extreme precautions, for example, some of the horses snapped and when that happens there is some sort of Whiplash Effect that can decapitate one or several persons so whenever we moved the ship, there was far and wide nobody around. I was around but no one else. When you talk of extremes and things snapping, another thing that famously snapped on one of your sites was your own temper with your good friend and lead actor in some of your most famous films klaus kinski. I think it was on the movie set of aguirre in peru where he threatened to leave before the end of filming and you said, if you leave now i will shoot you before you get around the first bend of the river. And im just wondering whether actually that was entirely facetious or there was a part of Werner Herzog that could imagine shooting an actor . Well ive never done it and the funny thing is that both of us simultaneously plotted to murder each other. I mean, beautiful plots like great screen plays of detective and crime stories, we plotted. But in this case, well i was unarmed, i didnt have a rifle in my hand, however i had confiscated his winchester, a real series winchester and a few nights before he had a hut a little bit higher than the extras and you have to imagine it thatched roof and bamboo walls. Very thin. And the extras, a0 or 45 of them are laughing in this hut after shooting and they are Playing Cards and klinski throws a tantrum, these pigs are laughing and All Of A Sudden nobody knew what got into him, he shot through, he fired three shots through the heart, through the walls, that he didnt kill anyone was a miracle. Through the hut. He only shot the middle finger away from one of the extras. Thats why i had to confiscate the rifle and i had itand. Did you, honestly, many years later, did you ever consider going to get that rifle and pointing it at him . Thats hard to say in retrospect, i find it very funny, its a hilarious incident. There was a grain of seriousness about it and he realised there was a task there that was beyond him and beyond me, we had to fulfil a duty which was way beyond us. And later we laughed and talked and drank champagne over all of this and you see you have to, i think the important thing is how do you walk away from such a thing. Ten minutes later. You did. We walked away from it and embraced and laughed. And we laughed until the end of his days over this. And of course that movie like so many of your best known films was set in an extreme environment, very harsh environment and that seems to be a theme of your work. Notjust in your movies, your Fiction Films but also in a lot of your documentary work, you love pushing yourself and featuring subjects who are pushing themselves to the very limits in terms of their relationship with the natural world. Only if theyre willing to do this. You see id never force anyone. Thats a myth that im pushing people to the brink of there, of what they can do to their physical existence, yes, when youre shooting in rapids, we saw the ship going through the rapids, there was nobody on board, it look spectacular and it didnt look that dangerous so we said lets be on board the ship with cameras. So who are the ones on their free will, come with me, there were seven. And one of the cinematographers on one of the impacts, he had the camera on his shoulder and flew through the air and smashed down on the deck with the camera in his hand which was Something Like 20 kilos and its split his hand apart. Yes this happens and he never minded. That was part of our, of a bigger deal, we do risk certain things that we do not impose on anyone else. I suppose im also thinking the context of a more recent documentary, grizzly man, which of course took the home Movie Material filmed by this extraordinary figure, Timothy Tredwell who lived for years in a remote part of alaska with the Grizzly Bears and ended tragically, ended his life eaten with his girlfriend by. Nobody deserves to die like this. No. But what i am getting at, and so many of your movies wrestle with this, is your view of the natural world. Because clearly you love it. You have spent so much of your life working in it, and yet yours is not a sort of benign view of nature. Yours is a very raw, dangerous. Sometimes you have even talked about the murderous capacity that there is within nature. It is unsentimental, it is not a Walt Disney World view of nature, it is unromantic. That is quite obvious. I can say it in short, yes, i love nature, i love wild nature, but most of the time, against my betterjudgement. It seems to me, unlike a lot of modern moviemakers, who are somewhat obsessed with Computer Generated images, Special Effects, and the extraordinary fake, breathtaking visions that can be created by man and computer. You get your breathtaking visions and your beauty and your stunning visual effects from nature itself . Yes. It is how you experience nature and approach it. Sometimes, i say it is a metaphor. Those films made on foot, i have those images within me that come from travelling on foot. You know, we are all alone and you are exposed in the world. It is a strange attitude, the world somehow reveals itself to those who travel on foot. It is hard to communicate it because nobody travels on foot nowadays. But i have done it, and im not like a movie now, a young lady who walks the pacific trail, im not a trail hiker. You are talking about the wild. Not like a backpacker. I travel, basically, without luggage. 0ne walk i know you did many years ago, which has lived in my memory, was a walk around the border of germany. Yes. I briefly want to talk about germany. You came to fame, i guess, in the 19605 and the 19705 as part of a german new wave of filmakers, Like Fassbinder and wim wenders. You looked unflinchingly at the post nazi germany that was emerging. Now, you dont seem to really make films about germany, your native land, at all. Have you lost interest in germany . No, it has always interested me. Although, i must say, im more bavarian than german. Like scottish and british im more like the scotsman for the bavarians. Ive always been fascinated by the country, and fascinated by the, somehow, incomprehensible barbarism. I still have not fully understood it. And im trying to come to grips. Does that mean, as an artist, when you think about germany, you are still thinking about nazism, hitlers legacy, rather than about some of the challenges facing germany today . For example, its place in the modern European Union . Or the role of immigration . Germany is embedded. Its very funny, seeing it from the outside, from the west coast of the us, when the European Union was awarded the peace nobel prize, i remember the german press was grumbling, they all wanted a photo opportunity. It was self celebratory. The euro is in chaos, greece is giving everyone a difficult time. It was just grumbling and mumbling, and discontent. And i thought, you idiots. You blaring idiots. The European Union is the largest, biggest practised Peace Project that this history of this world has ever seen. Period. You think people forget that . Celebrate it. And yet you, as youve alluded to, youve decided to live your life in california, in the United States. To me, thats interesting. Obviously, it is the home of the biggest Movie Industry in the world. Yet you appear to have so little in common with hollywood. I thought, could Werner Herzog ever make Fitzcarraldo Ii . Could he ever make, what they call in hollywood, a Star Vehicle Movie . Built around one of the worlds biggest hollywood stars . They cant do what i did. Lets caution. I do live in los angeles, i dont say hollywood. In 20 years, im happily married in los angeles. Actually, in california, my wife and i lived in san francisco. We thought, we have to go to the place, the city with the most substance in the United States. It was very, very clear, los angeles, very quickly, it was clear. It is the most honest place. It has the glitz and glamour of hollywood at the surface, but look under it, in southern california, many things that decide the world, the trends of the world, i dont speak of trendy things, but serious things, like collective dreams of the world in cinema, video games, computer, internet, free speech movements, accepting gays and lesbians as an integral part of a dignified society. So you see california as a very vibrant, contemporary place. Exactly, yes. But all of the stupidity is there as well. Ah well, lets get to stupidity in a moment. Five year old children going to yoga classes. Hippies and new age. Pseudo philosophy. You talk about all of that as though you arent part of it. But it seems to me you have a dilemma. Hang on, let me finish. From time to time, you have made movies from time to time that have involved hollywood money, studio money. Im thinking of rescue dawn, the extraordinary story of an american german pilot captured in vietnam. When you made that movie, the new yorker wrote a fascinating piece about how, time and again, you were frustrated by demands of the producers, the vast crew sent from hollywood, there were millions of dollars at stake. Can you work with hollywood or not . I can deal with it, and we have interesting points of meeting. There is a borderline, although sometimes, there might be friction. But im better than hollywood in some respects. Hollywood is basically the real big hollywood, the Special Effects star value, all of the stars want to work with me as well. Its an easy position for me now, vis a vis hollywood. But im good at storytelling. I have a suspicion im good at storytelling, and that is a basic and fundamental centre of filmmaking. If you dont have that, big films that are mostly explosions, shootouts, things like that, dont function. And thats why hollywood looks in my direction as well, it is totally fine. Its interesting you say that, hollywood looks in my direction, you say. I dont mean to sound impertinent, the one award youve never won, you won best picture at cannes with fitzcarraldo, but youve never won an oscar for your directing. Does that rankle with you . Number one career i didnt have. If i ever won an oscar or not, it doesnt make a film better or worse. It just doesnt. It has to come as a natural concomittent. You dont spend sleepless nights over this. I enjoy seeing that colleagues of mine who are really good get academy awards, wonderful. I dont need