Werner Herzog Interview: Making a Living and Teaching Filmmaking. Werner Herzog is not your average film school teacher. A self- taught director, his globe- trotting adventures and chaotic man- versus- nature dramas are not the easiest projects to transform into a curriculum, but that hasn’t stopped him from giving it a shot. Whether it’s through his Rogue Film School or, most recently, as one of the A- list instructors featured on online learning empire Master. Class, Herzog has no interest in teaching the technical elements of moviemaking.

The German- born filmmaker, whose career includes epics like “Fitzcarraldo” as well as idiosyncratic documentaries such as “Cave of Forgotten Dreams”  wants to create what he calls “soldiers of cinema,” and the path to victory can be stoking his students’ appetites for experiencing life. READ MORE: 1. 2 Things I Learned at Werner Herzog’s Rogue Film School.

He finds his lessons in obscure corners: Herzog touts Icelandic poetry for its ability to teach editing, and believes digging a hole in the ground contains more creative power than any app (more on that later). You might think some of this advice might carry just a teensy element of self- parody from the man who also delighted the world with his audiobook reading of would- be children’s book “Go The Fuck To Sleep.” But that’s not the case, as his Master.

Class clearly demonstrates. Watching Herzog across the 2. However, there’s real power in watching him explain how a set of “laconic, fragmentary, dense” poems can help unlock the mysteries of editing.

And he clearly loves his work: as he breaks down Marlon Brando’s first scene in “Viva Zapata!”, Herzog’s Teutonic features transform into a vision of unfiltered delight. That alone may be worth the price of admission. Indie. Wire spoke with Herzog earlier this week in Los Angeles. You’ve been offering your own educational program through the Rogue Film School since 2. Probably. I haven’t counted the years.

So what makes that cliché unendurable this time? Any sentient moviegoer this past decade has noticed the steady decline of movie craft into TV triteness and. Werner Herzog is not your average film school teacher. A self-taught director, his globe-trotting adventures and chaotic man-versus-nature dramas are not the easiest. Here's the thing with Meek's Cutoff; it's a movie that isn't going to appeal to a large audience and probably not even a small one to be honest. The Hollywood Reporter is your source for breaking news about Hollywood and entertainment, including movies, TV, reviews and industry blogs. Read what all the top critics had to say about The Lost City of Z at Metacritic.com. Werner Herzog's "Fitzcarraldo"is a movie in the great tradition of grandiose cinematic visions. Like Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" or Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey.

I do it very infrequently, very rarely, whenever I have time for doing it, and I have to announce it five months ahead of time. I have to know that I’m not under contract for doing anything, that I’m not shooting a film right now. Since I’m a working man, it’s sometimes not easy to settle on a date far in advance because I’m announcing and I get written applications and I also ask everyone to send a film. So for the Rogue Film School, it’s not just amateurs. They’re all, in a way, professionals already. I watch every single film, so I need my time to go through hundreds and hundreds of films each time I announce it. How much of your film school is reflected in the Master.

Class curriculum? I think much of the content, yes.

Dan Winters for Rolling Stone. Not far from the big round dome atop the Griffith Observatory, leaning on a railing that overlooks the Greater Los Angeles sinkhole.

Although, the Rogue Film School has some completely wild and irreverent sort of content. How to, for example, pick a lock, how to forge a shooting permit and things like this, the Master. Class doesn’t do. Of course, in the Rogue Film School, you do have direct physical contact with a very small, select group of students who can immediately voice their problems, their obstructives, their questions. So it’s a different type, but the spirit of it is the same, although the Rogue school goes much, much wilder.

With HAPPY PEOPLE: A YEAR IN THE TAIGA, Werner Herzog and Russian co-director Dmitry Vasyukov takes viewers on yet another unforgettable journey into remote and. Attention, filmmakers: You'll probably want to take some tips from Christopher Nolan, Wes Anderson, Jane Campion and more.

You’re very quick to point out in the Master. Class that not only did you not go to film school, you didn’t even know that movies were necessarily a thing until, I think you were, 1. And nowadays, we have a world where we literally have babies interacting with screens before they can walk. What do you think that means for the future of filmmaking? Yeah, that’s a big question because we have to see the repercussions in the lives of the babies or the toddlers who are interacting with screens. So ask me this question in 2.

I still believe that children, instead of exploring the world through applications on cell phones, should dig a hole in the ground. Literally dig a hole in the ground?

Yes. I mean what I am saying. Dig a hole in the ground. That’s how you examine the real world. Doing it through screens has certain dangers if you do not have the capability and conceptual thinking to create your filters. I believe that there will be a dangerous absence of filters in these children who are too young to explore the world only through the internet and through screens. What do you think the risks are when you don’t develop the filters?

That you have no clue about the real world and you are not anchored in anything. There’s of course a huge danger.

And by the inverse of that, if you’re digging a hole in the ground, what’s that teaching you? I don’t know. I’m just talking about… and strangely enough, the one who kept talking about this was Roger Ebert. Whenever I met him, he would discuss with me children who should dig a hole in the ground, find a tree and build themselves a treehouse. To actually have some experience and not treat it as an abstract. I just wanted to point out.

I’m not the only one. Roger Ebert was a champion of children who should dig a hole in the ground. And he’s completely right, you don’t have to explain it any further.

Werner Herzog teaches a Master. Classcourtesy of Master. Class. Today, we’re seeing many of the best and brightest filmmakers moving toward television and even blockbusters as their second act. Once they prove themselves in making personal films, they go on to make something for Marvel. What do you think of that? Well, the results are very convincing.

There are very, very good TV series and for the first time, filmmakers, me not included, but filmmakers have a chance to develop big, epic films — big, epic stories with ramifications and different strata in it. In other words, “War and Peace” by Tolstoy all of a sudden is possible again, but now in filmmaking because you have six years of… I don’t know, eight films per year, whole series. And some of the results are very convincing. It’s not the only thing we should do as filmmakers, but it is a fine possibility, no doubt. So you it’s legitimate and a worthy thing to do? Sure. Not for me, but I see a point. Has anybody ever offered you that?

Yes, but the basic, big stories were not good enough. What did you talk about doing? I’m not going to give you details because these projects are still in search of filmmakers and I would diminish the possibilities. I’m not going to give you names. Would you want to work on that kind of scale?

No. Not really. I’d rather make a big epic film that is just something like two hours and a few minutes long, like “Queen of the Desert” or “Fitzcarraldo.” I’ve covered epic filmmaking and I have done it in a format where I feel much more at home. So if someone gives you $1. Not necessarily. If you give me $1. I would deliver something big and beautiful. But when you have to deal with a corporate world and every single line of dialogue has have the approval of a boardroom decision, then you are probably having too many limitations. And it becomes lifeless very easily.

This is why all of these films, many of the big films that the industry creates, are very predictable and very much in a format that is ironclad. It’s not a kind of filmmaking for me. How do you make a living these days? Oh, it’s the same way.

I live a risky life, doing projects that are unusual and quite often or not in the ephemeral trends of the day, but I have always survived somehow. And I do other things in filmmaking. I have earned some money as an actor, as a villain. I have done some teaching. I have done, for example, an art installation, which was at the Whitney Museum and it was followed up by the Getty. It’s called Hearsay of the Soul. I could always make money, let’s say, as a chef.

Are you a good chef? Yes, but my program is very limited. I’m very lousy with soups. I’m lousy with sweet things. I’m lousy with quite a few things, but things I do, I do well.

What do you do well? Fish, meat, solid peasant food. What was considered peasant food 1. What advice would you have for filmmakers in terms of how to make a living, how to continue their work? Nobody has an answer to that.

Werner Herzog - Wikipedia. Werner Herzog[1] (German: [ˈvɛɐ̯nɐ ˈhɛɐ̯tsoːk]; born 5 September 1. German screenwriter, film director, author, actor, and opera director. Herzog is considered one of the greatest figures of the New German Cinema, along with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Margarethe von Trotta, Volker Schlöndorff, Werner Schröter, and Wim Wenders. Herzog's films often feature ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams,[2] people with unique talents in obscure fields, or individuals who are in conflict with nature.[3]French filmmaker François Truffaut once called Herzog "the most important film director alive."[4] American film critic Roger Ebert said that Herzog "has never created a single film that is compromised, shameful, made for pragmatic reasons, or uninteresting.

Even his failures are spectacular."[5] He was named one of the 1. Time magazine in 2. Early life[edit]Herzog was born Werner Stipetić in Munich, to Elizabeth Stipetić, an Austrian of Croatian descent, and Dietrich Herzog, who was German. When Werner was two weeks old, his mother took refuge in the remote Bavarian village of Sachrang (in the Chiemgau Alps), after the house next to theirs was destroyed during a bombing raid in World War II.[7] In Sachrang, Herzog grew up without running water, a flushing toilet, or a telephone. He never saw films, and did not even know of the existence of cinema until a traveling projectionist came by the one- room schoolhouse in Sachrang.[8] When Herzog was 1. Munich. His father had abandoned the family early in his youth. Werner later adopted his father's surname Herzog (German for "duke"), which he thought sounded more impressive for a filmmaker.[9]The same year, Herzog was told to sing in front of his class at school, and he adamantly refused, and was almost expelled.

Until he was age eighteen, Herzog listened to no music, sang no songs, and studied no instruments. He later said that he would easily give ten years from his life to be able to play the cello. At an early age, he experienced a dramatic phase in which he converted to Catholicism, which only lasted a few years. He started to embark on long journeys, some of them on foot. Around this time, he knew he would be a filmmaker, and learned the basics from a few pages in an encyclopedia which provided him with "everything I needed to get myself started" as a filmmaker—that, and the 3.

Munich Film School.[1. In the commentary for Aguirre, the Wrath of God, he says, "I don't consider it theft. It was just a necessity. I had some sort of natural right for a camera, a tool to work with".

He won a scholarship to Duquesne University and lasted only a few days, but lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. During his last years of high school, no production company was willing to take on his projects, so Herzog worked night shifts as a welder in a steel factory to earn the funds for his first featurettes. After graduating from high school, he was intrigued by the Congo after its independence, but only reached the south of the Sudan where he fell seriously ill. While already making films, he had a brief stint at Munich University, where he studied history and literature.

He earned money by participating in preproduction of a documentary for NASA with KQED. Summoned to the immigration office because of a violation of his visa status, he chose to flee to Mexico.

Before leaving school, he bought a house in the UK, in what was likely the Moss Side area of Manchester. There he learned to speak English.[1. In 1. 96. 2, he made his first short film, Herakles. In school there was an emphasis on Latin and Greek, in which he continues to read to this day. In 1. 97. 1, while Herzog was location scouting for Aguirre, the Wrath of God in Peru, he narrowly avoided taking LANSA Flight 5. Herzog's reservation was cancelled due to a last- minute change in itinerary.

The plane was later struck by lightning and disintegrated, but one survivor, Juliane Koepcke, lived after a free fall. Long haunted by the event, nearly 3.

Wings of Hope (2. Werner Herzog's star on the Boulevard der Stars in Berlin. Herzog, along with Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Volker Schlöndorff, led the beginning of the West German cinema movement.

The West German cinema movement consisted of documentarians that filmed on low budgets and were influenced by the French New Wave of cinema. Besides using professional actors—German, American and otherwise—Herzog is known for using people from the locality in which he is shooting. Especially in his documentaries, he uses locals to benefit what he calls "ecstatic truth" (as opposed to the literal or factual truth). He uses footage of the non- actors both playing roles and being themselves. Herzog and his films have been nominated for and won many awards. His first major award was the Silver Bear Extraordinary Prize of the Jury for his first feature film Signs of Life[1.

Nosferatu the Vampyre was also nominated for Golden Bear in 1. Most notably, Herzog won the best director award for Fitzcarraldo at the 1. Cannes Film Festival. In 1. 97. 5, his movie The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser won the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury (also known as the 'Silver Palm') at the Cannes Festival. Other films directed by Herzog nominated for Golden Palm are: Woyzeck (1. Where the Green Ants Dream (1. His films have been nominated at many other important festivals around the world: César Awards (Aguirre, the Wrath of God), Emmy Awards (Little Dieter Needs to Fly), European Film Awards (My Best Fiend) and Venice Film Festival (Scream of Stone and The Wild Blue Yonder).

In 1. 98. 7, Herzog and his half- brother Lucki Stipetić won the Bavarian Film Award for Best Producing for the film Cobra Verde.[1. In 2. 00. 2 he won the Dragon of Dragons Honorary Award during Kraków Film Festival in Kraków. In 1. 99. 9, before a public dialogue with critic Roger Ebert at the Walker Art Center, Herzog read a new manifesto, which he dubbed Minnesota Declaration: Truth and Fact in Documentary Cinema.[1. Subtitled "Lessons of Darkness," the 1.

Cinema Verité is devoid of verité. It reaches a merely superficial truth, the truth of accountants." Ebert later wrote of its significance: “For the first time, it fully explained his theory of ‘ecstatic truth.’”[1. In 2. 01. 7, Herzog wrote a six- point addendum to the manifesto,[1. Herzog was honored at the 4. San Francisco International Film Festival, receiving the 2. Film Society Directing Award.[1.

Four of his films have been shown at the San Francisco International Film Festival: Wodaabe - Herdsmen of the Sun in 1. Bells from the Deep in 1. Lessons of Darkness in 1.

The Wild Blue Yonder in 2. Herzog's April 2. Ebertfest in Champaign, Illinois earned him the Golden Thumb Award, and an engraved glockenspiel given to him by a young film maker inspired by his films. Grizzly Man, directed by Herzog, won the Alfred P. Sloan Prize at the 2. Sundance Film Festival. Encounters at the End of the World won the award for Best Documentary at the 2.

Edinburgh International Film Festival and was nominated for the Academy Award for Documentary Feature, Herzog's first nomination. Herzog once promised to eat his shoe if Errol Morris completed the movie project on pet cemeteries that he had been working on, in order to challenge and motivate Morris, whom Herzog perceived as incapable of following up on the projects he conceived.

In 1. 97. 8, when the film Gates of Heaven premiered, Werner Herzog cooked and publicly ate his shoe, an event later incorporated into a short documentary Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe by Les Blank. At the event, Herzog suggested that he hoped the act would serve to encourage anyone having difficulty bringing a project to fruition. In 2. 00. 9, Herzog became the only filmmaker in recent history to enter two films in competition in the same year at the prestigious Venice Film Festival. Herzog's The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans was entered into the festival's official competition schedule, and his My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?