Werner Herzog
TheBeatGoes
711 Posts
Grizzly Man is my shit, what old Werner Herzog should i check out? It's like getting into p-funk, you know you like that shit but you don't know where you should jump in. also check out this Grizzly Man IMDB trivia:
During a BBC interview about the film, Herzog was shot with an air rifle. The interview was resumed indoors and at the end Herzog was encouraged to check his wound. Though there was "a bruise the size of a snooker ball, with a hole in it." Herzog declared "It was not a significant bullet. I am not afraid."
Comments
grizzly man was great.
i need to unwind where's the party
ALL THE SOUL STRUT...night crewww
i'm going to check out that Aguirre, i am a friend of the library
also here is a link to him on Terry Gross's show this week: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12225074
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0200849/
stroszek
You should also check out his auto-biography, interesting book.
The moment when he explains that indians proposed to kill Kinski for him in the jungle is priceless..
yeah i'm just playing, i liked it too. it was just odd walking into a blockbuster once and seeing a whole wall of grizzly man in the new releases.
Even Dwarfs Started Small doesn't have the best rep, but I like it a lot.
i dig the following:
Fitzcarraldo (esssential, also see the film he did about the filming of Fitzcarraldo) "I WILL BUILD MY OPERA HOUSE!!!"
Aguirre
Nosferatu
Heart of Glass (Herzog had the entire cast hypnotized for the duration of the filming)
Mystery of Kasper Hauser
Stroczek (too lazy to check spelling here)
a ton more...
sure you could find a link somewhere but folks should check out an interview he did w/ terry gross on Fresh Air maybe 7 or 8 years ago... it is seriously beyond fucked. Gross can't deal w/ Herzog and i think she even ended the interview early... Herzog tells of having walked the entire length of the albanian border to prove his love to an albania girl as a teenager (granted the perimeter isn't that long)... also love his anecdote about rewarding his cast w/ a bet when filming (?????) and literally running full speed into a cactus for finishing the filming on schedule...
oh and of course, his statement that he would rather jump off the golden gate bridge than look into his eyes in the mirror...
part of it is his over-dramatic affect... but Kinski and Herzog had such volatile relationship b/c they were both nuts and possibly megalomaniacs.
The documentary about the making of Fitzcarraldo is Burden of dreams and is directed by Les Banks. But Werner referes to Fitzcarraldo as his best doucumentary.
My absolute favorite though is Cobra Verde. The last ten minutes of that movie are heavier than anything I've experienced on a screen before. This is also by far my absolute favorite piece of Popol Vuh music.
I also highly recommend Where the Green Ants Dream, and Herdsman of the Sun. Green Ants is a fictional film about aborigines and mining companies. Herdsman is a doc about some wild dudes in Africa.
Loch Ness is a great one for Herzog fanatics. Not his film, but he has a major role.
You can also check him in Julien Donkey Boy.
I love Herzog, but I thought Incident at Loch Ness was straight dookie. Real low-level, broad, labored spoof of the kind of work Herzog is known for.
His contribution to Julien Donkey-boy worked a lot better for me (although that movie overall is a mess).
I HIGHLY recommend the interview book Herzog on Herzog. One of the best books I've read in my life, and I'm a voracious reader.
'Werner Herzog eats his shoe' is amusing, but not all that entertaining.
i started a thread a few weeks ago about it and it was kinda i hadn't realized it wasn't released in other cities yet
anyway, i enjoyed it. i watched Little Dieter Needs to Fly again after watching Rescue Dawn. Christian Bale got Dieter Dengler down perfectly, and seeing the real press conference footage of Dengler after was weird because i realized that bale really looks like him as a young dude.
i thought Incident at Loch Ness was corny and irritating. if you want to see a film about Herzog's personality then watch Burden of Dreams or My Best Fiend
i also forgot to mention God's Angry Man which is a short documentary he made about Dr. Gene Scott that televangelist. it's crazy intense and funny
grizzly man was the dream subject for herzog who seems to have a fetish for visionary madmen. i like that he approached the brutality of it tastefully so it wouldn't cross the line to snuff, but he didn't shy away from it either. that scene where he listens to the audio with treadwell's best friend standing by was awesome. i think i teared up in the theater. also the film was funny. it always amazes me when people talk about herzog's films hardly one ever mentions his great sense of humor. Grizzly Man was intense and there are beautiful scenes of nature and whatnot but i laughed so hard when that pilot said he thought treadwell was an idiot for acting like those were people hanging out in bearsuits. or when the best friend talks about how she met treadwell at the restaurant. or herzog feeling the need to include that treadwell tried out for woody harrelson's role on cheers.
I don't think it was meant to be taken seriously. I laughed really hard when they were talking about getting footy of the loch ness monster and that dude comes in with the remote controlled loch ness. Or the dude, "I clean my clothes with wind." Priceless.
i know it's a parody. i'm just saying it's about herzog and his idiosyncracies. i just found it kinda hokey and smarmy with all these herzog inside jokes
i thought the whole thing was funny, and i never really felt that bad for tredwell. the 2nd time i watched it i started to really notice how little things he did when he set up his interviews, like how the guy at the museum was standing under the bear while he was being an 'expert' and this giant bear (with a bandage over a stolen paw) was just towering over him.
I don't know if i really got strozek, but i did love the chicken on the hot plate, someone told me that elviis longtime manger "Colonel Tom Parker" was managing a dancing chicken on a hot plate before he found elvis. the music in strozek was great though.