Werner Herzog continues to work, predicts: “You have to pick me up from a stable place first.” – Blogging Sole

When asked if he had turned off his mobile phone, writer-director Werner Herzog said: “I don’t have a mobile phone. I don’t have to turn off anything. I just want to live and have a real conversation with a real person.”

Herzog got his wish: a real conversation not long ago at his home in the Hollywood Hills.

He is a true visionary in filmmaking, in Hollywood and around the world, having directed more than 20 feature films and better than 30 documentaries – from Journey into the Heart of Darkness in the Amazon, to Life Among the Grizzly Bears in the Arctic.

He put it all in his memoirs with an antiquated title by Werner: “Every man for himself, and God is against everyone.” (Penguin Press).

“The title has to jump out at you one way or another,” Herzog said. “When you walk by some books and you see this, you stop: ‘Man, what is this?’

It is the story of a filmmaker like no other. “Yes, I have experienced so much, it is as if I have lived ten times already,” he said. “And that’s the beauty of a memoir, it’s so intense. When you read it, you won’t get bored.”

Herzog was born in Munich, Germany during World War II, and began making films as a teenager. He was drawn to characters with impossible dreams: as you can see in his 1982 film Fitzcarraldo, with his old collaborator Klaus Kinski. Fitzcarraldo’s character wants to build an opera house in the middle of the Amazon rainforest. To do this, he needs to pull a steamer up the mountain and then down.

“20th Century Fox was interested in financing and producing a movie,” Herzog said. But they wanted to produce it with a small plastic replica of a ship in the forest, a “good” forest. And they thought: “We should do this at the San Diego Botanical Garden.” So I said: No, the film has to be shot in a big forest, big rivers and everything.

Without the benefit of computer imagery, Herzog found his great forest and his great river. He made the amazing decision to tow a real 320-ton river boat over a real mountain and into the Amazon River on the other side.

“It seems to me,” she asked, “that there were moments in Fitzcarraldo that perhaps for the first time, perhaps the only time, you were at least afraid that the crew might have stopped believing in you. Is that so?”

“That’s true,” Herzog replied. “There were moments when it was too risky. And only my fire inside carried us somehow. The power of my vision carried everyone, even though many of them didn’t believe I could move the ship over the mountain.

To watch the trailer for “Fitzcarraldo” starring Klaus Kinski, click on the video player below:

The finished film made believers from the crew and critics. Herzog won the Best Director award at Cannes, even though “Fitzcarraldo” was a very different film. Jason Robards originally led the cast, with Mick Jagger playing his assistant. Then, after about half of the film had been shot, Robards fell ill and had to be evacuated to the United States. The delay also cost them Jagger – the Rolling Stones were on tour.

So, Herzog hired Kinski.

He said that if Kinski had not been able to do the film, he would have played the character himself: “I would have done it. Because the main mission, moving the ship over the mountain, was no longer cinema. It was the mission that I had to deliver. I had to do it. And I was struggling.” “I wouldn’t have been half as good as Kinski, nor half as good as Jason Robards or Mick Jagger’s ‘Thank God, On My Knees’ because I didn’t have to play it.”

This is not to say that Herzog is not a good actor; He was born to play bad. He played a villain in “Jack Reacher” and a villain in “The Mandalorian.” “Well, I’m drawn to acting, but I enjoy it a lot, and I do it well. I know I do it well, but only for very specific parts. And I can deliver. But I swear to God it’s performance,” he said.

But his greatest performance is a love story: his own story. Werner Herzog is a hopeless romantic. He fell in love with photographer Elena Pisetsky in the late 1990s. To seal the deal, he sold everything he owned and traveled from Germany to the United States with nothing but a toothbrush in his pocket and a passion in his heart.

“It’s just me; I’m just me, the man, the person, and that’s all,” he said of his arrival at Pisetsky’s doorstep. “So, I have nothing to offer, it’s just me. And I’m in America and I’m in Los Angeles because I fell so hard in love. And I’ve been very lucky. I’m not here because of Hollywood. “I’m here because I’m in love.”

It is Herzog’s third marriage. He and Elena have been together for 28 years. “I’m a very lucky bastard,” he said.

It’s been 63 years since his first film, and Herzog is still doing it. He promises that there is more to come. “I am working on two feature films,” he said.

“You’re not sated?” I asked.

“Well, who knows?” Herzog replied. “Ultimately, you have to pick me up from a stable place first. That’s what we hope will happen.”

To watch an extended interview with Werner Herzog, click on the video player below:

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The story is produced by John D’Amelio. Editor: Emmanuel Cecchi.