Werner Herzog

Todd Burns

We’re here at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We’re going to talk a lot about film, of course, and music and film, but I wanted to talk I guess at the beginning a tiny bit about art. Is this the first time you’ve been here? I assume you’ve been here many times, right?

Werner Herzog

No, I’ve been quite a few times in New York, but first time ever dared to step across the threshold into this museum. It’s not just this museum. I do have a difficulty to go into museums. My wife actually pushes me sometimes and takes me along and it has always been rewarding and en route here to the theater I’ve seen extraordinary things. I might eventually come without fears, yet I’m a little bit scared because I always have the impression that eternity, a quasi-eternity is staring at you. That’s my problem to get into a museum, which is completely silly.

Todd Burns

Sometimes it basically is at the Met. You have mummies looking at you from eons ago.

Werner Herzog

Yeah, sure. It’s phenomenal what’s there. I’m very privileged that I can be here and talk to you. Thanks, everyone, for the invitation.

Todd Burns

The first clip that we wanted to play, and we’ll be playing a lot of clips throughout the evening to use that as a jumping off point to talk about things, is actually related to something that’s going on at the Met at the moment.

Werner Herzog

Yeah, just upstairs there’s a wonderful exhibition of Hercules Segers’ work. Most of the prints have been lost, his art, there’s something like 120 or so small prints, some of them not much larger than my palm. Wonderful, incredible artist, early Rembrandt time, but so extraordinary that you immediately have the feeling this is a beginning of modernity. Some of these prints, if you put them into a 20th or 21st century exhibition of art, it wouldn’t stick out. He was one of those few ones who was 3/400 years ahead of his time. Rembrandt took him seriously, actually bought a painting, an oil canvas painting from him, which now is at the Uffizi in Florence, but it’s also upstairs here. It’s, for me, a great, incredible discovery. He has become some sort of a brother to me because I had the feeling the kind of landscapes, almost all of it he does are landscapes, he was capable to see the inner soul of landscapes. I had the feeling I had informed him somehow although he’s 400 years ahead of my time and vice versa he has informed me. I owe him a lot. Then there was a strange moment. I was invited by the Whitney Museum to do an installation for their Biennial. I immediately said, “I do not feel very comfortable with contemporary art,” in particular when you look at the art speak and when you look at, for example, the garbage that is sometimes heaped into a corridor and declared art [laughter]. No, it does happen, not that the entire scene of contemporary art is garbage, but I feel uncomfortable. It’s too much cerebral. It’s too my, in my opinion, conceptual. I really do not feel very comfortable with it. I said, “No I’m not going to do it.” On the phone, the curator said to me, “But you are… Aren’t you an artist yourself? Artists love to participate in the Biennial.” I said, “No, I’m not an artist. I’m a soldier,” and hung up.

My wife, Lena, who is here, she overheard it. Very often she is much more intelligent and prudent than I. She said, “Was this the Whitney?” She overheard a little bit. She persuaded me, “Do it, do it.” There’s a lot of things between, let’s say, films and between what I am doing in writing. There are certain areas where I could express things that I could not express neither in literature nor in movies. I called back and I accepted. I wanted to do something about Hercules Segers. Now, what was appalling to me, nobody at the Whitney had ever heard of Hercules Segers. I had the feeling I must do something about it. In a way, this installation had a lot of repercussions and echo. In a way, I think I paved the way or created a climate that was very much in favor of accepting and embracing Hercules Segers.

I would like to show you the beginning of the installation. It’s not the installation itself. It’s an architectural design, but I wanted to start it with music, music actually recorded with Sardinian singers who are shepherds on the island of Sardinia in Italy. They have this very strange, very ancient way of singing. We’ll come back to the Sardinians once or twice more this evening. I wanted to create something strange, and something almost a climate of expectation. You see one or two persons that would give the size of it. Then, only after about a minute of darkness, a minute of darkness, light would slowly come on five screens and elements of Hercules Segers’ prints would show up. Can we please show the first clip…

(video: Hearsay of the Soul Excerpt / applause)

Some of it will be bumpy. We somehow missed the beginning of the music. We faded it out. It’s actually 17 minutes, but you saw a little bit on the five screens some of Hercules Segers’ work. This is 1620s, early Rembrandt time. That’s the most astonishing about the whole thing.

Todd Burns

How big was it? You said it was five screens, but was that life-size people up there?

Werner Herzog

Life-size people to give an impression. The problem of the installation was for security reasons, as it was partially dark, they would allow only 19 or 20 people simultaneously into the show. It was later… It was sold out all the time. At the Getty, where it was shown subsequently I think under the same restrictions, 300,000 people saw it. It has been people lining up around the block.

Todd Burns

You did this in 2012 for the Biennial at Whitney?

Werner Herzog

I think so, yeah. I don’t remember exactly, but you’re probably right. [laughter]

Todd Burns

Have you had more interest into doing these sorts of forays into the art world?

Werner Herzog

Yes. I should do it. I do have a couple of projects, but never had really the time to go into it because I have had a big output of films and have worked nonstop. I’m trying to sit back and look out carefully what I’m going to do next.

Todd Burns

How did you choose the music for Hearsay of the Soul? Was it something that you already had on-hand or that you commissioned for it?

Werner Herzog

No, it was already on-hand. I was there during the recordings. It was recorded in Paris and was actually meant for two films. One was The Wild Blue Yonder, some sort of a science-fiction film, and the other film was a documentary, The White Diamond, about flying between balloon and blimp, an airship, in the jungle of Guyana with a very deep tragedy as a background, and I wanted to have this gravitas in the voices. The cello that you hear together with the Sardinians is Ernst Reijseger, with whom I have worked now on five or so films, a wonderful, great musician. I do believe he is one of the finest composers that we have at the moment. I owe him a lot and will see him a little bit later in person, in fact.

Todd Burns

How did you first run into his music?

Werner Herzog

I was looking into music of Sardinian voices and found a recording of Sardinians together with a cello player. My wife Lena tried a long time to get hold of it. Finally when I heard it I had the feeling, “This is a man with whom I have to work,” and met him. In some of these recordings we did in Paris, that’s interesting, were done before the films were made. The music was first. The cinematographer in Guyana, in the jungle, asked me, “How do we film this? How should the camera move?” I put some earphones on him and I said, “This is how we are filming it.” He heard this kind of music, and I said to him, “It has to float.” I did the same with the Sardinians, actually.

There was also a very fine singer, Mola Sylla. He comes from the Senegal. He was the one who would call out for the faithful from the mosque. He had this incredible booming voice. Mola would sit there and he would have a microphone installed for him. I said to him, “Well, we are going to record now. Shall we do some rehearsing? You don’t know the Sardinians and you don’t know the song.” “No, no, no. Let’s just record.” I said, “Yeah, but how about you?” “I will chime in,” he would say. He sat down in a chair and listened for music, then steps up to the microphone and sings, sings along. We never repeated it. Every single piece that you will hear with Sardinians is unrehearsed and never repeated. It’s just unbelievable musicians.

I said to him, “But Mola, I have changed the text. What the Sardinians are singing is about a lonesome island, but I changed the text into a text of a far out planet and wanting to return to this far planet.” He said, “No, no. You don’t need to explain much to me because I’m also a poet.” He would sing in Wolof. In Wolof, in his native tongue, he would sing along. It was just a wonderful experience.

Todd Burns

Should we go to the next clip?

Werner Herzog

Yes. Let’s see, what do we have? It’s an interesting case, because I’m just talking about very recent work now, Into the Inferno, a film that was released by Netflix. At the beginning of the film you see an ascent of a camera and from a certain point on you look into a volcano and we had this music. And since we had to acquire the rights from the monastery that’s right under the Patriarch, the Orthodox Patriarch, like the pope of a patriarch church, and we had to send this clip, these moments to the archimandrite, the archbishop, for final OK. They had actually sold this music to some other venues and films or whatever, and we immediately got, and it was all settled and mixing was for two days away, and we got a categorical no, we cannot use this music, because, and we tried to find out, in the Orthodox ritual and in these chants, the voices are voices of angels, and you cannot superimpose voices of angels over images of hell, of the inferno. For the Orthodox canon of faith, hell is a physical place on our planet. It’s not an abstract sort of locale. It is physically here. We were told, “No, you cannot use this.” We tried to argue, and then it was clear, no, we cannot use it, so I had to replace it.

Can we show how I actually wanted to show it? I have to stop it before you look into the fire. Can we play it? No, that’s my promise to them.

(video: Into the Inferno Opening Sequence Alternative Cut / applause)

Can we show what’s the film now? This has a very mysterious, very, very ethereal quality is what we saw. What we have now is a little bit more prosaic. It’s also very beautiful, but it’s slightly different. Can we play what we had to do?

(video: Into the Inferno Opening Sequence / applause)

Todd Burns

It’s very interesting to me, it may have been the sound mixing, and it may have been your beautiful introduction, but I undeniably want that first one. That’s so much more powerful and you can see…

Werner Herzog

Yes. Of course, the kind of crescendo builds up until we see the fire. We do have a crescendo. My main concern was, “How do I establish a certain sacrality, something cosmic almost, a religious, deep sentiment?” At the same time, there had to be, with flying up, flying up, and you actually see the entire crew up on the... We were only five or six. You see the entire crew. It was in the Pacific, Western Pacific, on the island of Vanuatu, or in the Vanuatu Archipelago. Of course, how do I place a crescendo correctly? The image itself couldn’t be changed anymore. We had to keep what we had.

Todd Burns

How do you go about finding these things? Like in that case...

Werner Herzog

In an instant. In an instant, I knew this had to be Orthodox church choir. I came across a church choir, which I loved a lot, not knowing that I would run into trouble. When it comes to, somehow, I could have... I could have somehow used it, and then they would have sued me, and for five years, the film would have been played, until I would have been stopped. That’s ridiculous. I do not function like that, so it was clear this has to be replaced. We have to accept the challenge. That’s what we do.

Todd Burns

It seems like, at least in these first two clips, you love choirs. You love these sounds of masses of voices...

Werner Herzog

Sometimes. Sometimes, yes, but we’ll have examples where there’s only one cello doing very strange overtones. The other part of this music, and also with the Sardinians, create space. Sometimes, I would tell Ernst Reijseger... We are doing something now in the desert, in Morocco, and it’s space, space, space. It’s solitude. It’s vastness. It has no horizons. “The music has to create space.” He understands meanwhile pretty much what I’m after. Much of what I do, I do very, very fast. I know pretty well.

We have an example, a young Russian filmmaker who is here, Nastia Korkia, she has made a film for a workshop, which I did in Cuba only some seven, eight weeks ago. Background to this workshop was 55 filmmakers were selected from all over the world. I didn’t do the selection. When they arrived, I gave them something they did not know, a basic set-up. The basic set-up was looking through a window. It could be either from inside out, and something attracts you that you see outside, or you look from the street or from wherever into a window, and something attracts you there. The films shouldn’t be longer than five, maximum ten, minutes. Everybody, everybody there had to find a location, find a person or persons, actors, or for a documentary, participants. They had to concoct a story. They had to film it themselves. They had to edit on their laptops all in nine days. At the latest, on the tenth day, they had to show their films.

Many of them delivered the films after six days. Some of them made even two films. Two of them made three films. That was really a wonderful experience, and very intense. I didn’t teach anything, but I was available for everyone. Now, what is interesting, we’ll see, Forget Everything, by Nastia Korkia, one of the films I liked, really like a lot. When she was pretty much done editing, she said to me, “The husband of the leading lady who is in the film passed away,” and the leading lady, the lady, actually speaks about him. Nastia knew he was Japanese, and thought maybe there should be Japanese music. I said, “No. Don’t do that. Don’t do that. Put in Schubert’s ‘Notturno.’” I just said it like that, and that’s what she did now.

I will play to you some Japanese music without her film. I warned her, it was so deliberately chosen that it couldn’t fit into any movie probably. Please don’t take it personal. Nastia knows it, and she has accepted that we listen to some Japanese music, and you will see the contrast. Can we show Forget Everything?

(video: Forget Everything / applause)

Congratulations to Nastia Korkia. This is a wonderful film. If you’ll understand filming was done in one or two days, and it was delivered very quickly, and it’s a great joy to have young filmmakers whom you can advise a little bit. I like that fact. In fact, I had some experience with Schubert’s “Notturno.” It’s the end of a film that I made in the Central African Republic, Echoes from a Somber Empire, about the dictator and emperor, Jean-Bédel Bokassa, who crowned himself emperor. It was a reign of terror.

When he was ousted and put to prison, all his palaces were crumbling away in the jungle. He left a zoo where he sometimes would throw prisoners to the crocodiles, and have them eaten by crocodiles. There was a lion who was half dead because nobody would feed the lion anymore. There was a hyena, which died only a day after from emaciation, a day after I filmed the hyena in a cage. There was a third animal, a chimp, and drunk soldiers, marauding soldiers had smoked and had taught the chimp how to smoke. The chimp inhales and smokes, and looks with an utmost sadness out between the bars. I said, “Schubert, ‘Notturno.’ That’s the kind of music for it.” I did that, and it’s something where you wish you were never born, when you... It’s so heartbreaking.

I’m not going to show this, but let’s play just a few seconds of Japanese music, just for the heck of it. I said to Nastia Korkia, “I protect you. You would never have taken this music,” and sure, she would never have taken this. I play it to you anyway, because sometimes, a choice of music is… Too much cerebral, and too much ideas behind it. In a few instances, it actually fits. That is Lion King, Hans Zimmer, doing with African music motifs, and it’s phenomenal. It’s phenomenal music, and it’s Hollywood at its best, Lion King. No, it’s...

Todd Burns

I did not expect you to say that. [laughter]

Werner Herzog

No. I really am capable to look at what’s going on, and if there is something so big, anyone would see that. It doesn’t need someone like me to recognize it. Can we please play a little bit of the Japanese music?

(music: Japanese folk music)

Can we stop it there? Yes. It’s obvious for every one of you, if you had made this film that we just saw, you would not have used this music. I tried to find something that was very Japanese, very screechy, very foreign to us, very un-filmic. In movies, normally, normally, you have to have a certain flow, like with Schubert’s “Notturno.” There are exceptions, and we’ll have some of that in a moment later. Can we show, for example, in a moment, Little Dieter Needs to Fly? It’s a film about the only American PAW who managed to escape from Laotians and North Vietnamese captivity during the Vietnam War.

Todd Burns

This film, it seems like people were saying, “You need to have some sort of music that captures the island,” or sorry, “the country, the nationality.”

Werner Herzog

Yes. Exactly, who gets a feeling of Vietnam. I said, “No. Vietnam is so foreign to my understanding of music. It’s way too... It doesn’t have this flow. It’s too screechy and too dissonant.” I said, “You know what I’m going to do? I’m not playing any music of the region, Vietnamese Laotian music.” What I’ll do is I play music from Madagascar, the island of Madagascar, east of East Africa. It is a shellac recording of 1931, which I found through Henry Kaiser, a musician. He found these musics, and had an edition about music of the world. I was so impressed by this collection that I met Henry Kaiser, and worked with him on music. He got me ultimately into Antarctica, where I did a film, Encounters at the End of the World. Can we see the end of Little Dieter Needs to Fly? When he was found, he was almost dead. He was down to 85 pounds, almost had starved to death in the jungle where he had escaped. He was only feeling safe in cockpits. Can we show the clip, please, Little Dieter Needs to Fly?

(video: Little Dieter Needs to Fly End Sequence / applause)

Todd Burns

Before we talk about the music there, I actually wanted to talk about the music of the man who was speaking in a way. I feel like... Well, you called him, in a book, “The greatest rapper I ever met.”

Werner Herzog

Yes, he had the incredible gift of speech, and he actually died from Lou Gehrig’s disease, where one of the first things is that tongue movements are impeded, and he very quickly lost speech and was silent. He would even, without voice, he would tell you dirty jokes with gestures and roll on his carpet in laughter. And I said to him, “Dieter, this is such an injustice because the two greatest rappers... The two greatest with a gift of gab have fallen silent. It’s Muhammad Ali and you.” And Muhammad Ali, having become silent, has given me such a feeling of tragedy and compassion for the man. I always loved Ali, but I loved him dearly, and he’s very, very dear and big in my heart because he, the greatest of all rappers, could not speak anymore for decades.

Todd Burns

You made a documentary in the ’70s about auctioneers, and I also felt like that very much had this lyrical quality to it.

Werner Herzog

This ultra-fast singsong of voice... It’s just amazing, and I always had the feeling it’s... Number one, it’s like music. Number two, it is, in a way, the lyrics or the last poetry or the only poetry of capitalism. And I made a documentary, which is called How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck because some of them trained themselves in speaking it faster and faster and faster, and I found a very deep, beautiful, musical, extraterrestrial quality in this kind of language, and for a long time, I had the feeling I’d like to stage Hamlet, but all of them should be former world champions of livestock auctioneers, and I would like to bring Hamlet down under 14 minutes and on a stage. But those are sometimes dreams, and you don’t... I haven’t done it yet.

Todd Burns

There’s still time. There’s still time.

Werner Herzog

But, of course, Dieter Dengler very close to my heart. I loved him, and we grew up similarly in remote places, he in the Black Forest, I grew up in the mountains in Bavaria and without the presence of a father and in poverty and being hungry, so both of us immediately connected because we knew what it meant to be hungry as a child, so we had a very, very deep rapport.

Todd Burns

I guess that kind of flows into the next clip you wanted to play, which is also about a young child and his relationship with his father.

Werner Herzog

We are referring to Padre Padrone by the Taviani Brothers, a film which won the Palme d’Or in Cannes at the time when it was released, and it’s one of the films very deeply rooted in my soul. And it’s mostly the character, the boy who grows up, in this case, presence, overwhelming presence, of a violent father, uneducated, illiterate people around, and he’s forced out of school when he’s seven or eight. His father takes him out, and he’s forced to look after the sheep. And his father keeps beating him and violently, and it’s a film about a kid that grows up in the mountains, has no clue what the world outside there is. And when he was grown up, he started to learn on his own. He even learned Latin, and he became a linguist, the real protagonist after whom this boy is fashioned. And this is the first time I got across Sardinian music, and what is so astonishing is, for me, it sounds like pre-historic. It sounds like Paleolithic voices, and I will... Let’s play the clip. The boy has neglected some minor task, and his father is beating him for it, preceded by more beatings and we step in at the end of the beating.

(video: Padre Padrone Excerpt / applause)

It is a heartbreakingly beautiful film, very, very deep. And what I find so astonishing with the Taviani brothers, they were capable to, through the music, to make something visible that wouldn’t be visible as if an entire landscape was also singing in this mourning song. Actually, the boy is only unconscious he stays alive. You see around these central characters other shepherds and their boys and all of the violently beaten and illiteracy and poverty and all of a sudden, it bursts out of their souls as if the entire world was mourning and lamenting with them. You do not see the other singers, but you see a landscape, and you would know if you extended into the next valley into the next mountains, all of them would sing.

Todd Burns

This is one of the few clips that you picked that is from someone else this evening, what other filmmakers have you known in the past that you said, “They really do music in an amazing way”?

Werner Herzog

Yes. The most amazing Bengali filmmaker Satyajit Ray and there’s one film, really beautiful, it’s called The Music Room. Jalsaghar is title of it. And it’s a film about an aristocrat who lost all his money by giving concerts for free and inviting everyone and he seats on the roof of his crumbling palace and looks into the sunset. And it’s of phenomenal beauty and Ray really knew how to use music and create a drama around music. Yes, Polanski sometimes has very, very good way to use music. Fred Astaire, of course, Fred Astaire dancing with his own shadow, the music isn’t that great and Fred Astaire isn’t such a great… He’s not a great actor or anything. He’s a wonderful dancer and he dances with his own shadow and all of a sudden the shadows do something else, all of a sudden… And it’s a wonderful film I think. It’s Broadway Melody of 1940 [it's actually Swing Time], I believe, where he dances with his own shadow and it’s one of the greatest moments in cinema because it’s so reduced: movement, light shadow, music, and there’s nothing but that. And all of a sudden two hours of prized cause and effect does not count anymore because he crouches down and all of a sudden his shadow stands on. And he tries to catch up with him and chimes in with him. So it’s just… Fred Astaire is somebody who is an absolute must.

Todd Burns

What’s the next clip that you wanted to show us?

Werner Herzog

We have something... We should speak a little bit about my collaboration with Popol Vuh. Popol Vuh is named, this group, which actually was not a real group, it was one person, Florian Fricke who would play most of the instruments in parallel tracks. Sometimes he would invite other musicians. And he appears in two of my films very briefly as a pianist, in my first long feature film Signs of Life, a man who had an angelic sort of face. Used to be a prodigy on the piano and had to quit this career because of inflamed ligaments and he became a composer.

And he did… We started to work together on Aguirre, The Wrath of God and we would show the opening of Aguirre and it was a predecessor, at that time, of synthesizers. What he had was literally, you have to imagine a machine that runs parallel sound tapes. Each tape has a different pitch of tone and you can access it and play it... A choir organ. And he said, “I would like to do something with a choir organ,” and I said, “Yes.” This will, I heard a little bit, create the space, create the mystery, create something we have never seen or heard. And it’s very opening shot of Aguirre, The Wrath of God. Can we play it?

(video: Aguirre, The Wrath of God Opening Sequence / applause)

Todd Burns

Tell me a little bit about Florian as a person because you worked with him on a number of films. Seems like he’s, along with Ernst later on in your career, he’s one of the great music creative partnerships.

Werner Herzog

Very important. Yeah. Because I made some eight or ten films with him. Later we somehow drifted apart. He was going more into some sort of a new age sort of direction, which I never liked. And, yeah, there’s this kind of pseudo-philosophical babble going around today. I don’t like all that kind of stuff and I told him. But of course it’s his life, it’s his…

Todd Burns

How did he take that?

Werner Herzog

Oh. Well, we would be physical for example right after things like that. We would play soccer, put up two small goals and man would he foul me. I came back with a swollen knee after, when I said something like this. I knew my knee would be swollen like this and I had some bruises and kept limping. But I kicked back sometimes. Hard. But I always liked his presence and we had a wonderful relationship. And I truly miss him. By the way, pretty much every single composition and performance of Popol Vuh now is available in a box set of CDs. His son Johannes Fricke has collected and cured all the rights and put CD collection together. You can find it online easily if you’re interested in Popol Vuh.

And of course sometimes he would do things where there was only, literally almost like one single tone, one single note, and that would be all and he understood it had to be completely minimalistic.

Todd Burns

Tell me a little bit more about Florian as a person. Back before the new age era and when you were working very closely with him.

Werner Herzog

We would listen to music and… He taught me and showed me certain things. And he said to me, “I play Wagner for you.” First time I really listened to Wagner some… Let’s say like the prelude of Lohengrin which I staged later an opera, and he pointed out how it was built up, how the very tender, almost inaudible violins keeping on and unperturbed what is going on. They keep on playing and then other voices come in and it gets into a crescendo. So I learned some sort inner structure of music. And he would play very dirty tricks on me sometimes I remember because I have no… Communication… Let’s put it this way, I have a communication defect. I understand jokes, but I do not grasp irony [laughter] where everything is meant on a different level. And I won for my first feature film, I won the National Film Award, which was also $300,000 in cash, which I had to invest to buy into my next film, and it was issued by the Ministry of Interior because Germany doesn’t have a cultural ministry, because of the federal rules.

And after I received this letter, two days later I get a call at an odd hour, nine in the evening, and the voice says, “I’m the Assistant of the Minister. The Minister himself wants to speak to you.” Then a few seconds later, he identifies, the Minister says, “I’m the Minister and I call you as quickly as I could because, I’m very sorry, we made a mistake. The letter that was sent out to you, awards you this prize, but it’s somebody else. We made a mistake.” And I was completely calm. I mean it was shocking. And I was calm and I said, “Sir, you are responsible for the security of our borders. In what kind of mess is your house?” [laughter] And the Minister started to laugh and chuckle and giggle and all of the sudden I realized, “Florian, you pig, it’s you.” [laughter] It was him, and he never changed his voice from his normal voice. I had heard it. [laughter] Neither in our conversations, nor the assistant spoke in a different voice, nor the Minister. So, those were things we went through and it is as it is. And when I discovered Gesualdo, Carlo Gesualdo, the Principe of Venosa. And I was totally out of my mind because I thought I had discovered a whole continent, early 1600s Madrigals. It’s the sixth book of Madrigals. It’s similar like Hercules Segers, 400 years ahead of his time. Only since Stravinsky we have heard similar sort of tones. And I woke Florian up in the middle of the night, and he laughs and he says, “Everybody who is into music knows who Gesualdo is, it’s not you who discovered him.” And I said, “Yes, I understand. But I still, until the end of my days, I find it unacceptable that anyone else has discovered Gesualdo.” So it was a little bit like this. But can we try to see the…

Todd Burns

Do we have the clip?

Werner Herzog

… the Steiner clip?

(video: The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner Excerpt / applause)

Todd Burns

That was also Florian’s soundtrack works.

Werner Herzog

Yes. Yes, and it’s a minimalistic because although it has to do with ecstasies and Steiner the ski jumper speaks about his ecstasies, and of course he’s in mortal fear, and he’s in terror of crashing to his death, because he was so superior that he would out fly all the competitors and land almost in the flat. And that would mean jumping from Golden Gate Bridge... Jumping from the Empire State Building onto the concrete floor. He would be dead on the spot. So it’s about this ecstasies and fear, and overcoming fear.

Todd Burns

Being very pragmatic, the process… You filmed this and then you gave it to him and said, “Create something.”

Werner Herzog

Yes. He saw very early, and we would sit over the material, and Florian of course knew it was an important film for me because as an adolescent I wanted to become an athlete and be a film... Not a filmmaker, but my first great dream was to be, fly... Without like, like a bird. Fly like in dreams, like Steiner. And my best friend at that time, during training had a near fatal crash. Actually the young jumper who crashes survived it. And you survive it because when you land on the steep slope, all the kinetic energy of the impact is built down over time, so you can survive a crash on on the steep slope. You do not survive when you fly too far.

And now what I also... We would show in a moment the end of the film. And important is Florian again made music which has a crescendo, but it has its crescendo after the real moment is over. It’s a crescendo of utter solitude. And also important. And here we have an example, because there’s a written caption in German, but it’s in subtitle, about solitude, and how image, text, and music interplay. Very often it’s a text that triggers a music. Something that I wait until I hear something in a dialogue, and then I would set in with music. So finding the right moment, finding the moment of the crescendo. Can we show the other Steiner clip?

(video: The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner End Sequence / applause)

Todd Burns

It’s interesting that you talk about that pause or how that climax comes a little bit after than you might expected.

Werner Herzog

And I let him go out of focus.

Todd Burns

Yeah.

Werner Herzog

And I do not show the 50,000 spectators, that just a moment you would see the first spectators. There were 50,000 live spectators in Planica, Yugoslavia.

Todd Burns

For me as a viewer, at least the first that I saw it without your explanation, I almost thought of it as there’s still something that might happen to him. You know, that still, there’s this fear even thought he’s landed. And as a viewer, you’re pulled in and you’re still expecting something. Is that something that you’ve thought about or that you play with, that expectation?

Werner Herzog

Well, I didn’t with his expectations of events. Actually, brought these expectations because he had a crash. He out flew the existing world record by ten meters, almost lands in the flat... Crashes so hard that for an hour he loses his memory. And the Yugoslavia, and at that time still Yugoslavian, judges force him, “Go back,” everybody. There are millions on television. “We have 50,000 spectators here. They want to see you fly a new world record.” And he said, “They want to see me bleed and disintegrate.” He said a very strange Swiss word [inaudible], disintegrate, crash into smithereens. And, every single jump he does he is under jeopardy of losing his life. So, the events itself triggered what... The flow of narration does and it triggers a kind of music that it somehow lifts you up. It’s music and I remember I said to Florian, “It has to be something that makes you forget gravity.” It has to be lifting you.

Todd Burns

Around this time, Florian was among a group of musicians in Germany that’s come to be known as Krautrock. Can, Neu!, Kraftwerk. And obviously you, also, were a part of a group of film directors that came to be known as a very special generation. Were you paying attention to the rest of the musicians around Florian that were known for this stuff or was that just a singular, personal relationship that you had with him?

Werner Herzog

No, it was singular and till today, I hardly know what Krautrock is [laughter] who are the groups. I hardly ever heard them. But, much somehow bypassed me in a strange way. Elvis, most notably. I grew up as a young... As a kid, as an adolescent when there was Elvis and I only got the message when the first Elvis movie came to Munich and I was there at the opening night. And, 20 minutes into the film, the young kids, mostly young men, stood up from their seats and quietly and methodically demolished the theater [laughter]. And I thought, “This is big!” [laughter] And I saw a similar thing. Rolling Stones, for the first time in Pittsburgh, first time in America... And I was picked up by a wonderful family and two twin daughters, 17 years old, and this family they said, “Ha, you have to see the Rolling Stones. And, there’s this singer, Brian…” It was Brian whom they loved but Brian, I think, died fairly soon in a swimming pool after an overdose. “Brian, you have to see Brian.” So I went with them to into the Civic Arena, 12/13,000 people packed. And, after the concert they had this kind of plastic seats that they couldn’t rip out. And when we walked out, I saw every third, fourth of these plastic seats was steaming from urine. The girls had peed themselves and it was steaming and I thought, “This is gonna be big.” [laughter]

Todd Burns

I also recall a story of your reaction to music being a very similar thing when you first heard Wagner at the festival, in the city. You were sitting watching a rehearsal of one of the... I think maybe it was Siegfried or Parsifal. And, you... There was this moment…

Werner Herzog

Parsifal yes.

Todd Burns

… After many minutes of quiet music. And then there was this loud bang.

Werner Herzog

No, not a loud bang. It’s actually Parsifal... The second... No what was it? Yes, Parsifal the second act and there’s Kundry and she’s in this staging. She was hidden amongst rocks. She had a costume that made her gray like the rocks. And for 15 minutes, she’s not moving, not staring and not, of course, not singing. And all of a sudden, she gets up with a scream. And I was sitting in this rehearsal and there was hardly anyone… Five or ten people in there and the seats are quite narrow, plywood, and you sit, I sat, with the knees against the chairs. And I was so shocked. I didn’t expect this. I was so shocked that I jolted and ripped the entire row of seat out of the anchoring like during the Elvis film [laughter] and Wolfgang Wagner, the grandson of Richard Wagner, he said... And it was stopped immediately and lights went on because there was this cracking of seats and he said, “Who!” I said, “Who!” And I said, “Herr Wagner, it was me. I didn’t expect what I heard.” And he shook my hand and he said, “You are my right audience.” [laughter]

Todd Burns

Should we hear the next clip? [laughter]

Werner Herzog

Yes. Shall we… To Ernst Reijseger.

Todd Burns

So this is one of your consisting collaborators?

Werner Herzog

Yes.

Todd Burns

And maybe we can just introduce who he is and what he does.

Werner Herzog

He is a cello player, avant-garde cello player. Phenomenal with audiences. Incredible entertainer of children .He would walk with his cello among the rows and all of a sudden walk out of the door and come back from behind the curtain. Just a quintessential musician and a very, very fine composer. So, I recorded music in the church in Harlem, near Amsterdam, Harlem in the Netherlands. And I filmed it. It’s so amazing what a cello can do.

(video: Shadow, Ode to the Dawn of Man : Making of music to Cave of Forgotten Dreams Excerpt / applause)

Two things that come to mind. Number one, I always ask Ernst, “Take off your shoes, be barefoot.” And he’s always better. I don’t know why, but he is. Secondly, I knew he would play overtones, the highest pitch that you can imagine. By the way, his cello has five strings. He has a very low-pitched fifth string. He had it built by a wonderful violin-maker for himself. The strange thing is I needed this kind of music which had to sound almost extraterrestrial, something that sounded like a fever dream, like something not belonging to our planet, and I used it in Cave of Forgotten Dreams. At the end there’s a postscript, which detours completely from the paintings in the Paleolithic cave, because I had come across a biotope for tourists where they had hundreds of crocodiles at display. This biotope was fueled with warm water from one of the largest nuclear plants in France. Under the pretext that I found radioactive mutant albino crocodiles I filmed an end, a postscript, so wild that I was told various times, “One day your career will end when they take you out in a straight jacket.” It hasn’t come yet. I still plow on. Let’s have a look at it.

(video: Cave of Forgotten Dreams postscript / applause)

Todd Burns

Nothing is real.

Werner Herzog

Yes. I’m going wilder over it and I enjoy it. You see, at the end National Geographic would never allow something like this, but I do it because I want to take the audience with me, my arm around their shoulders, and take them into pure fantasy, into pure poetry, and that’s how they leave the film. That’s how I like music and that’s how I like to do things like this.

Todd Burns

For those who haven’t seen that film, a lot of it’s, you’re in a cave, and it’s a 3D film. I think it’s the only time you’ve done…

Werner Herzog

The only one, yes.

Todd Burns

You talk a lot about silence in the film and in other films that you’ve done. I’m curious to hear a little bit about silence and its use and how you utilize it in your films.

Werner Herzog

Yes, very notable moments of silence in Cave of Forgotten Dreams. One of the scientists, and a couple of others, asks, “Can everybody be silent for a moment?” Because when you really listen well, it is so silent, since 28,000 years silence, you can hear your own heartbeat. You actually can hear your heart beat. In the film Aguirre, the Wrath of God, they are drifting, the Spanish conquistador is drifting down on rafts and you hear these wild ambiences from the jungle. The birds are screeching and singing. All of a sudden the jungle falls silent. That’s a moment where the native Indians shoot with little darts, poison darts, and kill off some of the Spaniards, so everybody’s afraid of the silence. I like this.

For example, in Fitzcarraldo the almost blind captain of the ship who tastes the water of the river, he knows we haven’t reached the Río Pachitea yet because the water doesn’t taste like Pachitea. Again, everything silent, and he says, “There are silences and silences, but this is the one I don’t like.” It has gotten into dialogues, into scenes, into all sorts of things.

I think much of what happens in music originates out of silence. There’s this incredible piece of composition by Beethoven, “Fidelio,” where one voice, a female voice, starts a cappella, and other voices, out of nothing, all of a sudden a quartet or a quintet starts to build up into something gigantic, cosmic in its beauty and its size, and it starts with silence. It starts out of nothing. Beethoven understood that.

Maybe we should show 033, session number 2. What is interesting here is that we had a flute. The flute player, and he and the flute player and Ernst had played very modern jazz, very free and not with any melody and very strange and very screechy. I wanted to have a beginning like this. I kept telling the flute player, “You have to stop this and you have to find the melody,” which was hard. Ernst Reijseger with his cello forces him into a melody. For sound reasons I placed the flute player far away on the balcony inside this Lutheran church. There was no contact. I said, “You have to have to have contact. Be with him.” I said to Ernst, “Force him into the melody. Otherwise we will not get out of this atonality.” Can we play the clip please?

(video: Ernst Reijseger Playing Cello / applause)

What’s my point here, is that I physically interfere sometimes in recordings of music, and I place a flute player with the other musicians, and I ask him, chime in with the melody, whenever you can manage, but chime in and become melodious, which it does.

Todd Burns

And I guess this brings up, kind of a tangential point, but, I’m curious about sound design, in the way that you work in your films. Often times you’ve said in the past, that film, or, sorry, sound can decide the outcome of a film. How do you deal with sound design, and have there been any examples in your films, where you’ve done something specific?

Werner Herzog

Yes. Of course. I started very early in... But it’s very primitive sound design. Signs of Life, the central image is a long pan, an endless 180 degree pan, over a vast field with 10,000 windmills. There are literally 10,000 windmills on the island of Crete, all spinning around like a mad meadow of crazed flowers. I put in as, not a realistic sound, I mean, the most primitive I had, applause of about 1,000 people after a concert. I distorted it in the way that it almost sounds like clapping of wood. Then I super-imposed mixed-in telephone wires, that are singing. As children, we would put our ear on a telephone post, and listen to the angels singing. You probably notice as children you do that, and when the telephone wires are singing. So this was sound design. I have not been as deep into it as, for example, Hollywood action movies. They need to very specific type of sound design, and they mix-out together 120 tracks or so. I try to keep it reduced.

Todd Burns

What do we have next?

Werner Herzog

I’d like to jump over few things. We have too many. Let’s speak a little bit about American folklore, American music. The end of the film, Stroszek, we jump a few, or, one or two, and it’s number 054, the very end, dancing chicken. I actually had the chicken in special training with this music, in their winter quarter, for about three months. Can we play 054 please?

(video: Stroszek End Scene / applause)

Todd Burns

Well, I don’t really know where to start with that one. [laughter]

Werner Herzog

Well, I know where to start, because, you should know a little bit about the preceding, the protagonist in the film, has tried his American dream, which ends in a disaster. His mobile home is repossessed by the bank, and together, with an old half dimwit old man, they both rob a bank but the bank is closed for lunch, so they rob the barber next doors. And with a $34 of their loot, they go across the street, and go to the supermarket, and he buys a frozen turkey. At the end of the film as he’s crossing, it’s like a road movie, driving across America with his shotgun and the frozen turkey, and he ends up in Cherokee, North Carolina, with his last dollar, that he spends in a cafeteria, and it’s this Cherokee nation amusement park, who have these boxes, cages, with dancing chicken or the rapid fire chief. He manipulates, normally you toss in a coin, and then this kind of rattling music starts, and the chicken dance. In this case, he manipulates it with a screwdriver, and takes off in a lift and apparently shoots himself on the lift. Police is called, and they ask for backup, they ask for an electrician, because they cannot stop the dancing chicken. That’s the end of the film.

Todd Burns

OK, well, that’s what happened, but like, still…

Werner Herzog

Yeah, but you should know to make the film as big as it is. I loved the film. It’s a wonderful one.

Todd Burns

Now that we have the context, can we… Why? How? What?

Werner Herzog

I knew it before I was even shooting, that I had seen Cherokee, North Carolina, ten years prior. Briefly passing through, and I knew this was a place I had to come back for filming. I didn’t know for which film. Ten years later, it materialized. I go back to Cherokee, and I knew it was going to be solitary, old lost, John. The chicken were trained with this music. They had to do the barn shuffle dance, and they get rewarded when they do it three or four seconds. A grain of corn pops out, and they take it as a reward. In our case, I wanted to have them dancing, non-stop, as long as we could get them dancing. Meaning, if you return to this place, four weeks later, [the electrician still hasn’t stopped them, and they’re still dancing. That’s how a real film end should be. [laughter]

Todd Burns

So, what do you have against chickens?

Werner Herzog

I have nothing against chicken. I like to eat them [laughter] but otherwise, they are scary because they are so phenomenally stupid. [laughter] When you look from eye to eye, there’s two millimeters of brain in between. It’s staggering, what I have done in two films already, hypnotizing chicken. You can put their beak on the ground and draw a quick straight line with chalk, and they stay on the ground and they are hypnotized by that. That’s some sort of a relief for me. [laughter] Otherwise, I like them roasted. [laughter]

In a way, I did a similar thing, and I think we should show that. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans has another type of creature, iguanas. They are phenomenally stupid. I had a scene with Nicholas Cage, and the significant thing about this scene is that, he, in his haze of drugs, he’s constantly under drugs, he sees iguanas on his coffee table. But his colleagues who are manning an observation outpost checking, monitoring a drug house, they cannot see it. For them, there are no, “There ain’t no iguanas on the coffee table,” and Nicholas Cage says, “Yes there are.”

What is also important in this moment, is we, as an audience, see the iguanas as well. Meaning, the protagonist and we as an audience, are bonding in a conspiracy, only we see it and the others stupid guys, the other detectives do not see it. There’s a piece of music in it, which I do not know what it is. Maybe somebody in the audience will know. Let’s play it.

(video: Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans Iguana Scene / applause)

And I do not remember who sings the song.

Todd Burns

It’s Johnny Adams. He’s a New Orleans Singer.

Werner Herzog

OK.

Todd Burns

Obviously you don’t remember.

Werner Herzog

Long live Johnny. No, I do not remember. But it’s a wonderful piece of music. By the way, things like this, I shoot myself. It was a tiny, tiny lens. As large as a head of a match, and a fiber optic cable. I tried to film the iguanas from only a few millimeters away and approaching their eyes so that they looked startled, and stupid. I had a light established from my camera, which shines straight into the lens, so that had to be, it doesn’t affect the light for the actors, but I wanted to have this crazy light and the crazy iguanas. By the way it was only one iguana, the other one was a very vicious type of desert lizard which bit me very, very hard, my thumb, to the delight of everyone on the set. [laughter] They bite hard, I mean it was like a steel vice. I couldn’t shake it off.

Todd Burns

We’re gonna open it up to questions in a minute so people wanna line up. I do have a couple more questions about iguanas though.

Werner Herzog

Yeah, OK.

Todd Burns

I guess, since you don’t even know that it was Johnny Adams, you weren’t looking to have local New Orleans music for this film in any way.

Werner Herzog

No, but I heard this song, and I immediately said, “That’s the right one for the scene.”

Todd Burns

Why did that one hit immediately for you? It’s just a feeling?

Werner Herzog

I’m very quick in these decisions. I knew it instantly. People said to me, “Oh, try this or that.” I said no, no, no. We put this in, that’s it.

Todd Burns

With films in general, you don’t use an enormous amount of music like that, or am I mistaken?

Werner Herzog

Um...

Todd Burns

'Cause it seems like classical music, wordless music, choir music is something that you gravitate towards.

Werner Herzog

Now it really depends on what sort of film I’m doing. Completely and utterly. That’s the only criterion. The content enforces the shape, it enforces the style of camera. The style of camera with these iguanas is enforced by the craze of the situation. And by creating a strange sort of conspiracy as if we were a mouse sneaking in there and we see the iguanas. Everything you film, it’s a different and new challenge, but I like to go back to certain things. Of course. You cannot find completely new, different music for everything you film.

Todd Burns

Are there any questions from the audience? There are microphones to the left and the right. We already have some coming up over there.

Werner Herzog

There are microphones in the aisles, but we would need some lights. Yeah, OK.

Audience Member

Thank you Werner, it’s always the greatest pleasure to listen to you speak. If Fitzcarraldo brought opera to the Amazon, and the wilderness, and the jungle, if your films, or your spirit can carry us out into the cosmos, what music would you like to have played?

Werner Herzog

Well, that’s a deep question. Actually, I always had a longing to go out on one of the space shuttle missions because they always send out the… Technicians...

Audience Member

Well, you’re friends with Elon Musk now, aren’t you?

Werner Herzog

Yes, but he will never manage to put a colony onto Mars. Number one, it’s an ill conceived idea. We should rather look after the habilability… Sorry, I have to say.

Todd Burns

Habitability.

Werner Herzog

Habitability of our planet than looking to make Mars inhabitable. [applause] It’s ill conceived, and he speaks about up to a million people. Getting hundred people there you have to shoot rapid-fire, machine gun fire of rockets to Mars. Every 30 second, one with hundreds of robots which will build let’s say a cupola and then hundreds of more rockets rapid fire that bring up water, that bring up air for breathing. So it will be so phenomenally costly, and so complex, that it’s not gonna happen. We may land a single astronaut or two of them in a little toilet box, in a phone booth, on there and they will be miserable for three days and return. It’s just not going to happen. It is one thousand times easier to build a colony at the bottom of our oceans than building a colony up on Mars.

Audience Member

Echoes from the deep, thank you.

Werner Herzog

We don’t belong there. We don’t belong there. We belong here. And we’d better look after our planet. [applause] I’ve been asked, because I saw the film that was made with Leonardo DiCaprio, which always focuses, or quite often focuses, what does politics do? Leonardo DiCaprio is at the climate conference in Paris. Then he delivers a keynote speech at the United Nations. He meets the pope and my heart is sinking, because I have the feeling we should not look into what can politics do for us. Under the administration that is governing here in the United States right now, ecological concerns are really the far back burner. Do not wait for that, but for example, in the film with Leonardo DiCaprio, you see a huge herd of cattle, hundreds of cattle. Of course, one pound of cow meat costs, I don’t know, 700 gallons of water. Methane gases are rising. In countries like the United States or in Europe or in Japan or in most countries, 45% of food is being thrown away. This, number one, is an outrage. It shouldn’t happen like this. You could reduce the amount of agriculture that you would need less the amount of cattle that you will raise less and slaughter less, would go down by 40% the moment you really eat one hamburger and you better eat it full. You eat the whole thing. You better look after your fridge and see what is withering away and eat that first. It’s so easy. We don’t even have to change our lifestyle. It’s just a little bit of attention and you will have 40% less food consumption. [applause]

Audience Member

First of all, thank you so much. As a musician, I was curious. You’ve mentioned that you ask your cellist, Ernst, to take off his socks, or shoes…

Werner Herzog

Shoes, yeah.

Audience Member

Shoes, OK.

Werner Herzog

And socks.

Audience Member

And socks. I was curious if you have any other practical suggestions that you’ve given to your musicians to perform better? [laughter]

Werner Herzog

No, it was only for Reijseger. Sometimes, I always like to be with the musicians physically. I’m never in the recording, behind the glass walls. I’m always with the musicians and the microphones. I remember music that was recorded for Grizzly Man, Richard Thompson and Henry Kaiser, who got me into some very fine music. He starts to play the opening music. Immediately after 20 seconds, I stop Richard and I say to him, “Richard, this is the opening of the film. You see vast landscapes and bears and a young man, who will be dead at the end of the film.” We know it from early on. There’s a phenomenal landscape. I said to him, “You’re sneaking with your music into the film. It shouldn’t be this. Keep the tune. Keep the melody. Keep the rhythm. Keep all, but stomp your foot down. This now is the lay of the land.” He said, “I understood”, and bang does he step into it. You see, sometimes it’s good that a filmmaker is, who knows the other side of the collaboration, takes initiatives. What it is in your case, I do not know. People who are drunk normally do not play music well. And people under drugs normally do not play music well, so stay away from it. [laughter / applause]

Audience Member

Thank you.

Todd Burns

I’m curious if it’s ever gone the other way. Where you were making suggestions to the musician, whether someone, like a musician, has brought suggestions to you that you’ve taken.

Werner Herzog

All the time, of course. The suggestions normally come from them, let’s face it. It’s just the nature of the question. They made me also like this. They come all the time. Ernst Reijseger would say, “Now sit down and listen to it.” They would play something. Or Florian Fricke would put on his tape recorder and play me something where there were only two instruments playing. He says, “This is all very naked, very thin. Just imagine there will be a full orchestra, or let’s say, at least seven, eight, ten more voices. Imagine it full blast. That’s what I’d like to do.”

Audience Member

Pleasure. I’m developing a short project about the discovery of Big Foot, and a small doc about the son of Roger Patterson, the man who filmed the original Big Foot footage. I just wanted to ask what your suggestion would be in a documentary of that style. What sort of music you would use?

Werner Herzog

I have no clue, but of course it depends a little bit on what you’re doing, of course. The Big Foot footage is fake.

Audience Member

Yes.

Werner Herzog

Every single piece of aliens being filmed, having been filmed, is fake. It’s a figment of our fantasies. Bring me some film that entices you to wild fantasies.

Audience Member

It’s more about his son being dragged into the woods by his father to find a mythical beast that doesn’t exist. It’s more about his son’s journey.

Werner Herzog

Well then some music that carries some mythical flair in it.

Audience Member

Folk. American folk.

Werner Herzog

[pauses] You’re asking me too much. If we sat for an hour together and I saw a little bit footage, I might have an answer. Unfortunately…

Audience Member

Well, thank you very much.

Werner Herzog

Yeah. I wish you best of luck with the film.

Audience Member

Thanks. That means a lot.

Werner Herzog

Films about aliens are always fascinating. Three million Americans have had encounters with aliens. 300,000 among them were women who were not only abducted by aliens, but also gang raped. It’s in my last feature film, Salt and Fire. The leading character, Michael Shannon in this case, says, “This brings me to two questions: why are all the women who have been abducted and gang raped, why are they always weighing over 350 pounds? Second, why have we never heard of an alien encounter abduction in Ethiopia?” I think it’s a very valid question you should ask yourself when it comes to Big Foot. [laughter]

Audience Member

I’ll dwell on it overnight. Thank you very much.

Todd Burns

Marinate on that.

Werner Herzog

Best of luck.

Audience Member

Hi. I was wondering if you could elaborate a bit on the Cuban piece that you showed. Why are you so adamant that there shouldn’t have been either Japanese music or other music that, I don’t know, whether it was Peruvian Japanese or it didn’t... Or not even the piece that you picked. Why did you feel so strongly that you wanted to recommend that to the filmmaker?

Werner Herzog

The proposal was should I possibly look for Japanese music. I said, “No, that would be wrong. Put in Schubert’s ‘Notturno.’” It was in less than ten seconds that I said that without thinking. I had the feeling, as I was not teaching anything, it was a workshop. A workshop of 55 young filmmakers, very talented young men and young women. Nastia Korkia is one of the finest talents I’ve seen in a long, long time. Where’s Nastia, can I see her?

Nastia Korkia

I’m here.

Werner Herzog

Where is she? Can she stand up? Yeah, that’s her film. [applause] My point was not against Japanese music. My point was we should not be docile and pedantic because the husband was Japanese now we have to fill her emotions with Japanese music. Or, in Little Dieter Needs to Fly, the pilot who was shot down over Laos, and was in Viet Cong and Pathet Lao captivity, why do I not introduce the flair of the region, Vietnamese music or Laotian music? No, because that would be too pedantic, in my opinion. I wanted to have something completely uplifting, where you feel completely exhilarated, where you had a joy of... You’re joined the joy of the leading character, who walks among these mothballed military airplanes. Actually, the shot continues uncut. At the end, you see it’s 40,000 aircraft sitting on the ground, all still usable, and this kind of elation, this kind of cornucopia, the feeling. I said, “I have heard something from Madagascar.” The wrongest corner of the world, but that’s what I’m going to put in there.” It’s not a question of culture. It’s a question of what flows with the film, what lifts the film up, what would not be fitting. That’s why I played... We deliberately looked for some music that, of course, there is wonderful Japanese music, for example, with very soft, flowing flutes. In fact, some of that could have been used, but it didn’t dawn on me at the moment when I gave this advice in five seconds flat.

Audience Member

Up here, up here, up here, up here, up here.

Audience Member

We’re up here.

Audience Member

Hi.

Werner Herzog

Oh, I didn’t know that there was a mic up there. Sorry.

Audience Member

Yes. There are two.

Werner Herzog

OK.

Audience Member

Thank you. Yes. Hello. We love you. I’m wondering, you use a lot of spiritual music, and I’m wondering if you’ve ever had anything like a peak experience. I know you don’t believe in god or anything like that but something spiritual, something out-of-body, something that you felt like the music took you somewhere else?

Werner Herzog

No. Not out-of-body. I’ve always been in my body [laughter] and I like my body when I kick a penalty at the opponent’s goal. But there seems to be some distant echo from my adolescence. I had a dramatic religious, extr emely deep, extremely dramatic religious faith for a very few years, which left me gradually and fairly quickly. In many of my films, you have even the word god in the title. Aguirre, the Wrath of God, or a beautiful one as a title, the Kaspar Hauser film has the title, Every Man for Himself, and God Against All. That’s a title. It has god in it, so there must be something still reverberating inside of my soul. There was...

Audience Member

Yes, Werner. Thank you so much for being with us tonight. My question is there are films that have no soundtracks at all, and one of the good examples would be No Country for Old Men, by Coen Brothers, so do you have any films that don’t have soundtracks at all? What do you think about that idea? On the other side, are you planning on making a musical one day? Something like La La Land-wise?

Werner Herzog

I don’t have talent for La La Land. Others do that much better. Yes, you are pointing out two films that have no... Of course, they have a soundtrack, but no music track. Of course, they are some of the best films that were ever made have no music track. Notably so, for example, Bresson, the French... When you look at Pickpocket, or some other of his films, they are phenomenal. Even what he does with the sound when there is dialogue. Normally, when we are speaking to each other, we would record the silence, the two-second silence, because silence, room ambience, is audible. When you cut it out, there’s only technical silence left, and you notice it. He does films, Bresson, where he cuts, deliberately cuts, even the room tone, the room silence, out in between the dialogs. It creates a very, very strange, deep focus, and I like him for that. It’s not an absolute must, but I’m too baroque, too much like a Renaissance figure. I want it all. I want to have great music in it, and good stuff for the audience, so I’m thinking more primitive than Bresson, for example.

Audience Member

Can we expect a musical from you a couple of years later?

Werner Herzog

No. No. I’ve never seen or heard an entire musical. Actually, I’ve seen La La Land, and I liked the opening shot. It’s really well done. I wouldn’t like to dismiss it, but it needs someone else who is in this culture. OK. Maybe here.

Audience Member

Hi. Has there ever been a generic sound or just generic rhythm, not a song or a piece of music, that has inspired one of your scenes?

Werner Herzog

Generic sound? Can you describe what you mean by generic sound?

Audience Member

Sure. Maybe like the whir of a subway going by, things like that, sort of like found sounds in the environment.

Todd Burns

A bird.

Audience Member

Yeah. Things like that.

Werner Herzog

Well, that’s an interesting question. I do not believe that things like this have occurred to me. Sometimes, in Bells from the Deep, you have a lake in Russia with a thin layer of ice, and pilgrims are crawling out, because deep at the bottom of the bottomless lake there’s a holy city of Kitezh, which was tossed by god, by an archangel, to the bottom of the lake to redeem them from the onslaught of the Tartars and the Huns. They are looking, listening, and looking, trying to catch a glimpse of the sunken city of Kitezh. The entire ice was cracking, and it was a very strange sound, not like ice cracking would normally sound. It was so enormous, that I chose a spot where the two pilgrims were crawling out, where I had these very strange whipping cracks in the sound. It could have, that moment could have inspired the entire film. It could have happened.

Audience Member

Thanks.

Audience Member

Hi, Herr Herzog. I was interested in, earlier, you were describing the conflict that you came into with the Orthodox Church over the choral piece that you wanted to use in the opening scene of the documentary distributed by Netflix. Have there ever been... You’re an artist that’s renowned for your singular and often uncompromising vision. Have there any been any notable instances where you came into a legal or ethical quandary when wanting to use a piece of music?

Werner Herzog

Every day. [laughter] Every day, you run into, when you are doing a film, you have the borderlines all around you. You see, I’m somehow rumored to be the guy who doesn’t take no for an answer. That’s silly. Of course, I take no for an answer. What I do, what you see, for example, in Aguirre, the opening, the film had a grand total budget of $360,000 for the entire feature film, everything. People told me, “This is going to be too expensive. You cannot make it.” I said, “Within the tiny budget, I can do it. I can do the doable,” and I did it, and I’m glad that I did it.

Sometimes... I can give you a simple example. I was filming with inmates on death row in Texas, also in Florida. There’s a whole series of eight films, which was shown on Discovery. I also made another film, a long film, which is I think on Netflix. It’s called Into the Abyss, about a very complex murder case. The leading perpetrator, two of them, the most dangerous of them was executed eight days later. In a similar case, I was just about to leave with my crew for Texas from Los Angeles, and I had the OK from the inmate in writing. I had the OK from the warden, which you have to have. There are certain protocols. It was all set, and I was just about to leave. I get an email from his attorney, and he says, “Please, could you abstain from filming with my client? We still have a last appeal going. My client has a tendency to say stupid things in public. It may jeopardize his chances.” I wrote back two words, “Filming consult.” That was it. Of course, I take no for an answer. It didn’t even come from the leading person, the one who was sitting on death row himself.

Audience Member

Alright. Thank you very much. Thank you for being you.

Todd Burns

I think we have one up there.

Audience Member

Hi there. I have an oddly specific question. Everybody in the room will remember the music that accompanies the dancing chicken at the end of Stroszek. One thing I’ve always been curious about. In Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, there’s a scene where a drug dealer gets shot many, many times. Nick Cage says, “Shoot him again.” The person says, “What for?” He says, “His soul is still dancing.” We cut over and there is the man’s spirit breakdancing over the dead body. The music that accompanies this breakdancing ghost is the same hoedown style music from Stroszek, which is…

Werner Herzog

Exactly, yes. I had no qualms to recycle it [laughter] decades later. Three decades later and 35 or 38 films later. I went back to that music because it fit so wonderfully. Instead of a dancing chicken, you see a guy who is shot, a drug dealer shot dead, and the bad lieutenant asks, “Shoot him again,” to one of the bad guys. He says, “What for?” “Because his soul is still dancing”, and he laughs this crazy laugh. Then the camera pans. You see really a dancing soul and it’s a breakdancer in exactly the same costume, a gaudy red jacket, and doing the breakdance until the dancing soul is shot and collapses. Then the guy’s really dead. So it needs [inaudible].

Audience Member

Here. Here.

Werner Herzog

Up there and then we’ll do here.

Audience Member

I just had a philosophical question about the sublime. You spoke about it after your speech in Lessons of Darkness. I was wondering, can you expand on the cinematic sublime and how music can aid to create that?

Werner Herzog

Lessons of Darkness has a lot of different music in it. It was actually, I filmed the fires in Kuwait after the first Iraq-Kuwait war when all the oil wells were set on fire. There’s notably some music, for example, Wagner “Das Rheingold,” something with a gigantic crescendo. Much of the music is made in a way that it looks like a cosmic crime, a cosmic disaster and catastrophe. I didn’t want to make a regular documentary because in one hour of film in Lessons of Darkness you do not recognize our planet anymore. It’s so devastated. Because of that, there was very specific music. It’s a variety of music. There’s Arvo Part, Richard Wagner. There is Edvard Grieg, the Norwegian. There is, for example, Verdi “Requiem” and a couple of other compositions. They all have a certain amount of sacrality in it, something big and cosmic.

Audience Member

Do you mind expanding on what you mean by creating the sublime in the spectator for that documentary? I’m doing a paper on it.

Werner Herzog

Well, sublime, that’s a good question. I tried to elevate, I always try to elevate the audience very high up. The film actually begins, you’ll remember, it’s probably with a quote from a French philosopher. It’s a very beautiful quote by Blaise Pascal. He spoke, for example, in short aphorisms about the unbelievable, unending emptiness of space makes him frightened. Now I have a quote. It says, “The collapse of the stellar universe will occur like creation in grandiose splendor”. Under it, Blaise Pascal, but it was not him. I made it up. [laughter]

I think Pascal couldn’t have said it better, number one. Number two, I wanted to elevate the audience into a region of the sublime before they see the first image. I’d never let them down for a second. That’s the caliber of the film. I do in order to look into a deeper truth. Into some ecstasy of truth. I would do something. It’s not a forgery. It’s a natural sort of adopting Pascal in my way. I’m not doing that in order to cheat the audience. I do not do that. I want to make them see something deeper. I would like to quote Shakespeare, who says, “The most truthful poetry is the most feigning.”

My other big witness would be Michelangelo with his Pieta, in St. Peter’s in Rome. Mary, the mother of Jesus, holds the dead body of Jesus in her arms, in her lap. Jesus is a man of 33. When you look into the face of Mary, she’s a 17-year-old girl. The mother of Jesus is 17. Did he want to cheat us? No, of course not. Did he want to defraud us? Did he want to lie to us? No, he just gives us a deeper inner truth and music and sometimes a text. Like at the end of The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner, transport us into an area where film sometimes can end up into something where we feel weightless. Where we feel absence of gravity. Where we feel something elevating and exhilarating. Film can do that and music can do that and poetry can do that. I will do that as long as I’m not taken to the next lunatic asylum. Thank you very much. We should stop here. [applause]

Todd Burns

Thank you.