Werner Herzog

Herzog is being admired for being the only director who was able to work with the late and very eccentric Klaus Kinski.

Herzog once promised to eat his shoe if a young American film student went out and actually made the film he was always only talking about. The young student was Errol Morris , who met the challenge with his off-beat 1978 pet cemetery documentary Gates of Heaven (and went on to make The Thin Blue Line and Fast, Cheap & Out of Control ). Herzog makes good on his promise in the film Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe , directed by Les Blank.

Worked nights in a steel factory in 1961 to raise money for his films. In 1966, he was employed by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration..

Brother of Lucki Stipetic.

Has three children from three women: Rudolph Herzog (born in 1973), Hanna Mattes , and Simon Herzog (born in 1989).

When he was thirteen years old, he and his family lived in an apartment in Munich that they shared with several other people. One of them was the actor Klaus Kinski.

Was voted the 35th Greatest Director of all time by Entertainment Weekly.

Claimed to have walked by foot from Munich, Germany to Paris, France (a distance of about 500 miles) in 1974 to prevent the very sick film historian and good friend, Lotte Eisner , from dying (as, applying his logic, she wouldnt dare to die until he visited her on her deathbed). Eisner, indeed, went on to live for 8 more years after Herzogs journey.

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume Two, 1945- 1985". Pages 422-429. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988.

Said in DVD commentary for Incident at Loch Ness that his first book was a Marshal- Plan copy of "Winnie the Pooh", and it remains one of his favorites.

Joaquin Phoenix was in a car accident on a winding canyon road where his vehicle flipped over. Shaken and confused, he heard a tapping on his window and a voice said, "Just relax." Unable to see the man, Phoenix replied, "Im fine. I am relaxed." When he managed to see that the man, he realized it was Werner Herzog , who then replied, "No, youre not." After helping Phoenix out of the wreckage, Herzog phoned for an ambulance and vanished.

In late 2005, during an interview with BBC film critic Mark Kermode regarding Grizzly Man , a sniper opened fire on them with an air rifle. Kermode panicked when Herzog calmly said, "Someone is shooting at us." One of the pellets then hit Herzog. An unmoved Herzog said that the bullet was not a significant one and insisted on continuing the interview.

Herzog claims in a 2006 Bloomberg interview that he had the chance to direct both Brokeback Mountain and One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest .

Invited to join AMPAS in 2006

Lives in Los Angeles.

Was romantically linked to Eva Mattes. They have a daughter together, Hanna Mattes.

Studied at the University of Munich and later earned a scholarship to Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, but dropped out after only a few days.

Only feature-film director to have made a film on every continent.

Has a sister, Sigrid. and two brothers, Tilbert and producer Lucki Stipetic.

Claimed that when he was a few days old, he was nearly killed after Allied bombs caused a skylight in his nursery to shatter. The shards fell around his cot but somehow did not injure him.

Mother, Elisabeth, and father, Dietrich, were biologists.

Claims to have been 17 years old before he made his first first phone call.

When he first took an IQ test as a young boy, he scored 124. He then re-took the test years later and scored an average 101.

Was scheduled to fly on the same ill-fated plane as fellow German teenager Juliane Koepcke in 1971, but was bumped from the flight at the last minute. On Christmas Eve, the plane crashed in the Amazon jungle, and 17-year-old Juliane was the only survivor, after enduring 11 days alone. Her tale was told in 1974s I miracoli accadono ancora .

Frequently directs operas on stage, but never on film, and finds the two forms fundamentally incompatible.

Herzog received a lifetime achievement award, the Pardo donore, from the Locarno International Film Festival in August 2013, only four months after being similarly honored for his lifetime achievement in cinema by the German Film Academy in April 2013.

His documentary entitled "From One Second to the Next," which explores the consequences of texting while driving, had its premiere August 8, 2013 in Los Angeles. It was sponsored by several major mobile phone companies.

(July 2013) New York City: Eight of Herzogs early films will be screened in tribute to his work, at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, from Aug. 16-22.

He was invited to get an honorary doctorate from Cambridge. He refused it, however, because he believes he is not the man for this kind of respectability.

He considers Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens to be the greatest German film ever made. He directed the remake Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht .

In 1968, Lebenszeichen won the German Film Prize and a Silver Bear as Best Debut Film at the Berlinale. The following year, Herzog organized a free alternative to the Berlinale in Wedding, a working-class district of Berlin, showing festival films at no charge for people who wouldnt ordinarily encounter independent and off-beat movies such as his own.

Has shot 5 of his films in Peru: Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes , Fitzcarraldo , Mein liebster Feind - Klaus Kinski , Julianes Sturz in den Dschungel and parts of My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done .

According to Roger Ebert, even his failures are spectacular.

Never uses storyboards.

Writes his screenplays in 4-5 days.

Has a school of guerrilla filmmaking called Rogue Film School.

Franois Truffaut once called him the most important film director alive.

TV uses landscapes. I transform landscapes - I direct landscapes.

Perhaps I seek certain utopian things, space for human honour and,respect, landscapes not yet offended, planets that do not exist yet,dreamed landscapes. Very few people seek these images today.

I love nature but against my better judgment.

Every gray hair on my head I call Kinski.

If I had to climb into hell and wrestle the devil himself for one of my,films, I would do it.

Film should be looked at straight on, it is not the art of scholars but,of illiterates.

Through invention, through imagination, through fabrication, I become,more truthful than the little bureaucrats.

At my utopian film academy I would have students do athletic things with,real physical contact, like boxing, something that would teach them to,be unafraid. I would have a loft with a lot of space where in one,corner there would be a boxing ring. Students would train every evening,from eight to ten with a boxing instructor: sparring, somersaulting,(backwards and forwards), juggling, magic card tricks. Whether or not,you would be filmmaker by the end I do not know, but at least you would,come out as an athlete.

I despise formal restaurants. I find all of that formality to be very,base and vile. I would much rather eat potato chips on the sidewalk.

I have the impression that the images that surround us today are worn,out, they are abused and useless and exhausted. They are limping and,dragging themselves behind the rest of our cultural evolution. When I,look at the postcards in tourist shops and the images and,advertisements that surround us in magazines, or I turn on the,television, or if I walk into a travel agency and see those huge,posters with that same tedious and rickety image of the Grand Canyon on,them, I truly feel there is something dangerous emerging here. The,biggest danger, in my opinion, is television because to a certain,degree it ruins our vision and makes us very sad and lonesome. Our,grandchildren will blame us for not having tossing hand-grenades into,TV stations because of commercials. Television kills our imagination,and what we end up with are worn out images because of the inability of,too many people to seek out fresh ones.

Civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and,darkness.

Everyone who makes films has to be an athlete to a certain degree,because cinema does not come from abstract academic thinking; it comes,from your knees and thighs.

Film is not analysis, it is the agitation of mind; cinema comes from the,country fair and the circus, not from art and academicism.

Coincidences always happen if you keep your mind open, while storyboards,remain the instruments of cowards who do not trust in their own,imagination and who are slaves of a matrix. . . If you get used to,planning your shots based solely on aesthetics, you are never that far,from kitsch.

I invite any sort of myths [about myself] because I like the stooges and,doppelgangers and doubles out there. I feel protected behind all these,things. Let them blossom! I do not plant them, I do not throw out the,seeds. I advise you to read Herzog on Herzog because there you see a,few clarifications.

It is my firm belief, and I say this as a dictum, that all these tools,now at our disposal, these things part of of this explosive evolution,of means of communication, mean we are now heading for an era of,solitude. Along with this rapid growth of forms of communication at our,disposal - be it fax, phone, email, Internet or whatever - human,solitude will increase in direct proportion.

To me, adventure is a concept that applies only to those men and women,of earlier historical times, like the medieval knights who traveled,into the unknown. The concept has degenerated constantly since then. . .

I absolutely loathe adventurers, and I particularly hate this old,pseudo-adventurism where the mountain climb becomes about confronting,the extremes of humanity.

If you truly love film, I think the healthiest thing to do is not read,books on the subject. I prefer the glossy film magazines with their big,colour photos and gossip columns, or the National Enquirer. Such,vulgarity is healthy and safe.

Your film is like your children. You might want a child with certain,qualities, but you are never going to get the exact specification,right. The film has a privilege to live its own life and develop its,own character. To suppress this is dangerous. It is an approach that,works the other way too: sometimes the footage has amazing qualities,that you did not expect.

Our children will hate us for not throwing hand grenades into every TV,station because of commercials.

Of the filmmakers with whom I feel some kinship Griffith, Murnau,Pudovkin, Buuel and Kurosawa come to mind. Everything these men did,has the touch of greatness.

[his first interview question to death-row inmates] Your crime is,abominable and monstrous, but I will treat you as a human being.

There are billions of people who have cellphones. All of them can shoot,a movie on it, if you want to do that. The Internet is spread out into,everywhere, so you have to find your own means, your new outlets, for,distribution.

I make films because I have not learned anything else.

Chance is the lifeblood of cinema.

Day one is the point of no return.

There is never an excuse not to finish a film.

There is nothing wrong with spending a night in jail if it means getting,the shot you need.

We can never know what truth really is. The best we can do is,approximate. . . Truth can never be definitively captured or described,though the quest to find answers is what gives meaning to our,existence.

I work best under pressure, knee-deep in the mud. It helps me,concentrate. The truth is I have never been guided by the kind of,strict discipline I see in some people, those who get up at five in the,morning and jog for an hour. My priorities are elsewhere. I will,rearrange my entire day to have a solid meal with friends.

Perseverance has kept me going over the years. Things rarely happen,overnight. Filmmakers should be prepared for many years of hard work.

The sheer toil can be healthy and exhilarating. Although for many years,I lived hand to mouth - sometimes in semi-poverty - I have lived like a,rich man ever since I started making films. Throughout my life I have,been able to do what I truly love, which is more valuable than any cash,you could throw at me. At a time when friends were establishing,themselves by getting university degrees, going into business, building,careers and buying houses, I was making films, investing everything,back into my work. Money lost, film gained.

Very, very unusual. [March 2017],I always get the very best out of actors. . . Including Kinski, by the,way, who did 205 sy films, but in my films he is really,magnificent.

Do you not then hear this horrible scream all around you that people usually call silence.

Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle,What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.

If you truly love film, I think the healthiest thing to do is not read books on the subject. I prefer the glossy film magazines with their big color photos and gossip columns, or the National Enquirer. Such vulgarity is healthy and safe.

Your film is like your children. You might want a child with certain qualities, but you are never going to get the exact specification right. The film has a privilege to live its own life and develop its own character. To suppress this is dangerous. It is an approach that works the other way too: sometimes the footage has amazing qualities that you did not expect,Look into the eyes of a chicken and you will see real stupidity. It is a kind of bottomless stupidity, a fiendish stupidity. They are the most horrifying, cannibalistic and nightmarish creatures in the world.

In the face of the obscene, explicit malice of the jungle, which lacks only dinosaurs as punctuation, I feel like a half-finished, poorly expressed sentence in a cheap novel.

Am I in the wrong place here, or in the wrong life? Did I not recognize, as I sat in a train that raced past a station and did not stop, that I was on the wrong train, and did I not learn from the conductor that the train would not stop at the next station, either, a hundred kilometers away, and did he not also admit to me, whispering with his hand shielding his mouth, that the train would not stop again at all?,For such an advanced civilization as ours to be without images that are adequate to it is as serious a defect as being without memory.

If you’re purely after facts, please buy yourself the phone directory of Manhattan. It has four million times correct facts. But it doesn’t illuminate.

If an actor knows how to milk a cow, I always know it will not be difficult to be in business with him.

Perhaps I seek certain utopian things, space for human honour and respect, landscapes not yet offended, planets that do not exist yet, dreamed landscapes.

Technology has a great advantage in that we are capable of creating dinosaurs and show them on the screen even though they are extinct 65 million years. All of a sudden, we have a fantastic tool that is as good as dreams are.

I think there should be holy war against yoga classes.

The world reveals itself to those who travel on foot.

I travel without barely any luggage. Just a second set of underwear and binoculars and a map and a toothbrush. .