Original subtitles

It may sound a little bit strange uh to

hear what qualifies me for this because

I'm somebody who has never learned how

to make films. I was never assistant

somewhere in the industry, nor was I

ever at film school. And since I grew up

uh in a very remote uh place in the

Bavarian mountains, we had to flee from

bombardments of Munich, I had no running

water, for example. We had no um yeah,

we had electricity not all the time. We

had only an outouse as a toilet. And uh

I did not see films until I was 11. In

fact, I was not even aware that cinema

even existed until I was 11. It's hard

to say what I hope from from your side.

I do not know who you are. I do assume

that um most of you are younger than I

am obviously and that you are aspiring

filmmakers.

And of course, I know there's something

I can pass on.

The terrible thing is it was like meat

in a butcher shop.

Who are you, Timothy? Who are you, Amy?

And what happened to you?

I'm curious and I still keep learning. I

have done good battle. I mean real good

battle and have my scars and have my

defeats somehow uh you may see me as an

example. How do you survive in in this

industry? How do you still uh against

all adversity are capable to make films?

You see, that's the kind of man you have

to deal with uh if you want uh to look

at my master class about directing

movies.

Ultimately, ultimately my own goal is uh

to be a good soldier of cinema.

And if I can inspire one or two of you

out there to

uh become a good soldier, then I have

done everything I I should do here.

I'm Wa Herzog and this is my master

class.

You should know you have to deal with

someone who has not learned how to make

films.

I'm self-taught.

Um, in fact,

uh, during the end of the Second World

War, Munich was bombed and I was only

two weeks old

and

my mother and my brothers were

displaced. We fled to the most remote

mountain valley in the Bavarian Alps.

So, I grew up without even knowing that

cinema existed. I didn't see films until

I was 11 and I I only noticed that

something like cinema existed. Later

when I was in Munich uh during my

adolescence,

I saw Tarzan and Dr. Fuman Shu and films

like that.

Of course, uh what would be very highly

advisable is watching other films. Uh

it's not really my thing. I've never

watched many films. I see three, four,

maybe five films. Sometimes at a

festival a little bit more. Um, but I

know for example all the French film

directors from the novel vari

and so on. They were sitting in the

cinematic watching three films a day.

Foreign films without subtitles like the

illiterates. They had to learn they had

to learn how to understand the film and

the story. Anyway, it started for me

with a very primitive film when I was

14, uh, Dr. Fumanju, and I noticed uh,

it was one of these BC pictures that in

a gun battle, a guy was shot from a rock

and he somersaults through the air and

disappears in the ravine. And 10 minutes

later, another gun battle. And all of a

sudden, I see these three seconds of the

same guy doing the same kick in midair.

And I knew this was there was something

fake. I always thought it was it was

true what I saw. And I started uh to

tell my friends there was something.

Didn't you notice in this other gun

battle the same guy was shot down from

the rock again? And nobody had seen it.

And I started to see things films a

little bit like this. How uh how was uh

suspense created? Very very important.

How do you do that? Hitchcock is a good

one, but not the only good one. Um, how

do you follow a character and sometimes

lose a character and still have him in

the back of your of your mind? How do

you

analyze I hate to use this word, but how

do you analyze the flow of a picture and

the the technical means with which it

was made? uh and what I see very often

in film schools

even very selective group of of young

people who go to film school when you

are into the very prestigious ones for

them film history starts with Star Wars

they've never heard of Vivat Zapata

they've never heard of David War

Griffith uh in the silent era never

anything they have not heard of Bonuel

or whatever

So um see films I'm speaking to

filmmakers or future filmmakers you have

to watch films sometimes first with awe

you just are floored by it but then see

it again see it again see it again and

try to figure out how it was made

technically uh internally in terms of

story flow and all these things and uh

this precision of of understanding the

flow

uh of a story uh is something I I always

uh would advise

uh anyone who wants to make films.

I have a wonderful film, my favorite by

uh Ilia Kazan

um Vivatapata and we can show here the

opening a delegation of Indians. We are

back in the year 1909.

enters the uh president's palace

and

they come with a quest

of um big land overs invading their

terrain

and this

it is extremely wellcraftrafted uh how

you see

they're entering with humility

and among them is the leading character

Marlon Brand O and he's one of them. You

do not spot him. Even if you try hard to

spot Marlon Brando, you don't see him.

The way the leading character is

introduced is absolutely ingenious. It's

the best opening of a film that I know

in the best introduction to a leading

character and you you immediately are on

his side. The moment he shows up, you

are completely as an audience on the

side. And it's important because the

audience

The audience has to be with a story. It

has to be with the leading characters

and very often it's overlooked.

Uh what's important is inside of the

audience there's very often a separate

independent parallel story that we

develop inside of us. And here this is

one of the cases. You see in in a way we

are very easily on the side of the

peasants here who are coming with a

complaint and now he dismisses them the

president

many other matters to attend

very patronizing my children

for 34 years

it's not an easy job being president

now comes one of the great glorious

thank you

moments in film history now to the right

there's Brando

and he stands his ground.

We can't verify the boundaries, my

president.

The land is fenced and guarded by armed

men. They're planning.

And the authority of Brando is

unmatched.

And I think they gave him long

eyelashes, dark eyelashes to make his

look very sleepy. It's just really

beautiful.

Ever won by country people.

Has your land been taken?

My father's land was taken long ago, my

president.

My children, I'm your father, your

protector. I'm of your blood. But

believe me, these matters take time. You

must be patient.

When we see uh Marlon Brando in this

opening scene,

from that very moment on, we as an

audience start to race ahead.

uh we start to at within minutes of the

opening of the film we uh we know this

is the leading guy we know man is he

powerful

and what an impressive man there is and

it's Emiliano Sapata and we start to

race ahead

how will the conflict with the president

and with the with the big land owners

how is it going to uh develop of course

it does develop And of course things are

happening and the film gives you time

some it's very important that you have

some moments where

um as an audience you have the time to

depart and and the plat platform to

depart when the president makes a circle

around the named Tapata

and when Brando leaves it's very very

quiet and from that moment on we start

to race race ahead because it's not like

uh today where there would be cut cut

action action action action where you

don't have the time to breathe. Here we

have the first moment where you take a

breath and you start to

uh enter into your own story as a

audience.

With your permission, my president,

we make our tortillas out of corn, not

patience.

And patience will not cross an armed and

guarded fence.

You see the force inside of the man.

Do as you suggest.

And you see this is great acting. The

face twisters

as I keep saying and they're real actors

and he is a real one.

I cannot possibly exercise such

authority.

Would you advise it?

I can only advise.

And naturally, my president, we will do

as you advise.

Just when you look at Brando, you know

that's the glory of film making.

Can't get any better.

You

now how he points at himself. Watch

this.

You

just his hand on his chest.

Yes, my president.

What is your name?

Subupata.

What is it?

Emiliano

Subata.

So papa is it's how the film starts. And

look at Brando.

It invites you because it's so awesome.

It's a beginning of such uh great

mastery of of cinema that that you

gladly sort of form your own cinema

parallel to it and uh the film catches

up with you and leads you again into new

uh uncharted territories. So, I really

love this movie and and uh everybody who

should

learn about how to introduce

a character and how to introduce a story

should should watch it.

I think when you are watching films uh

and watch films in film history and

watch films from other countries uh you

notice very quickly yes there's

something universal about them. How does

the flow of a movie uh somehow

articulate itself? How do you create

suspense in a movie? How do you start to

get the audience on the side of your

protagonist? It's very universal, very

simple things and uh you have to work

towards it. We are all in the same basic

profession and film making has universal

rules. Uh whether you are in silent

movie era, we are here shooting in the

Max Senate studio 1916.

it was in operation already and you see

the old walls behind me. So and the

rules of film making were the same and

there is the same in India and the same

in Brazil. Uh it's a little bit like

making children has universal rules. You

do the same thing in Africa and in

Usbakistan to to make children and there

are very simple universal rules and you

adhere to

Read, read, read, read, read, read,

read, read, read, read, read. You have

to read because you develop a sense of

storytelling. You develop a sense of

flow of something. you develop a story

um just uh even if it's completely

remote from what you have read all of a

sudden something sprouts out of it just

very recently I give you an example I

read about Winston Churchill in his

early days when he in 199

or whatever

uh he was in parliament

and uh from the other side of the aisle

a woman, I think the first female uh

member of parliament, she had a very

screechy, unpleasant voice, shouts

across the aisle, "Mr. Churchill, if I

were your uh if you were my husband, I

would put poison in your coffee in the

morning." And he, without missing a

beat, shouts back, "Madam, if you were

my wife, I would drink it."

You see it's it's so beautiful and it's

it will linger. Maybe it will pop up as

something similar as a dialogue. Maybe

it will pop up as a sequence somewhere.

And this is something completely

overlooked. I see film students at very

prestigious film schools and no none

nobody of them is reading. They just

don't read. And uh they will all be

filmmakers mediocre at very best. They

will never make a great film. And you

can tell

some of the truly good great filmmakers

are people who read. Errol Morris for

example, he reads voraciously. Uh Terren

Malik uh he reads reads reads. Uh uh

Francis Ford Copa he has his own

library. Uh recently I've been in closer

contact with uh Joshua Oppenheimer who

made the act of killing one of the most

important films that you have seen in

the last 25 years. He reads reads reads.

So it's my encouragement to everyone

just read.

I was intrigued by um ETA poetry,

a thousand-y old uh thousand-y old u

Icelandic poetry and it's just

unspeakably beautiful.

Uh there's a very very beautiful

translation of it by Lee Hollander.

And um when I was in Iceland, it was all

snow in snow

and my host said, "Ah, we can take you

anywhere uh in Iceland. We have

four-wheel drives." And I looked around,

it was looked boring. And I said, "No, I

should do that in summer going around."

And what else would you like to see? And

I said, I would like to hold uh the CEX

Regio, a crumpled little um crumpled

little CEX, a parchment handwritten

codeex in my hand. And I I actually had

the privilege to be brought down in into

an atomic bomb safe uh bunker under the

central bank and I was shown it and I

held it and recently I held it again. I

even filmed it and it was such an

incredible experience. It's like the

death sea scrolls for for Israel. You

hold it in your hand, you emerge and uh

the barber gives you a free haircut and

the pastry baker gives you his best

pastry and you have to taste it. It's

that kind of thing and uh a physical

approach to it. This awe to hold it in

your hands. It's priceless. some of it

probably predating the writing down

maybe something even five six 700 years

earlier. Um and it begins with with the

wuspa the creation of the world. Just

read a two stanzas. In earliest times

did emir live. Was nor a sea nor land

nor salty waves. Neither earth was

there, nor upper heaven, but a gaping

nothing and green things. Nowhere

was the land then lifted a loft by Bur's

sons who made Midgart. The matchless

earth, the matchless earth. It's just

very good stuff shown from the south.

The sun on dry land on the ground then

grew the greens wart soft and on and on

and and later in the text there are

short

uh almost like fragmentaryary stories of

Verund the Smith uh where a smith uh is

kept captive and his knee senos are cut

so that he cannot run away and he

invites the son and uh uh daughter, the

young adolescent son and daughter of the

king who has kept him captive. He lures

him into his smithy and he kills the son

and makes a golden sort of cup out of

his skull and lets the king drink from

it. And he makes the the young daughter,

the young princess uh pregnant and then

flies away like a bird. And it's so

laconic and it's so dense and so

fragmentaryary and yet beyond all this

you have this enormous sense of a

continuous story and you have have to

fill in the gaps and very often in

cinema you have to fill in you see

somebody entering a house. Uh you do not

have to see him climbing uh four stories

up. You only see him knocking at the

door upstairs. you don't need the the uh

the entire distance. So it's how you

condense, how do you abbreviate,

how do you find a shorthand in a story

that's really really good in the um uh

in the poetic eta

there's one book one book that uh I

would uh ask you to read it is a

paragine

and I'm saying that uh

uh for my rogue film students it's

mandatory

and I believe everyone who is about to

make films should uh read the paragine

it was published 1967 by a obscure

writer we know nothing about him Ja

Baker and he watches paragines but the

intensity of of watching and the the

passion with which he watches is this

very small segment of the world is so

extraordinary and that's exactly how we

as filmmakers should watch people

reality this kind of of incredibly deep

attachment and and also a visionary

visionary language uh I do believe that

since uh Joseph Conrad we have not had

uh pros of this caliber we have not had

it and I will read very short things out

of it because you you are the ones who

have to read it and it's just very very

beautiful. He describes for example a

frozen heron. It was a very cold day.

January 9th the sun shone today from the

first time this year. It was the

clearest coldest day I have ever known.

Uh north of Ford Lane a heron stood knee

deep in snow. The gale did not rock him.

His long gray feathers were unruffled.

Regal and frozen and dead. He stood to

the wind in his thin sarcophagus of ice.

Already he seemed to be dynasties away

from me. I have outlived him as a

gibbering ape outlived the dinosaur.

At 1:00, a pipist trail flittered above

the lane, twisting

and diving as though it were catching

insects. None could be flying on so cold

a day. Perhaps it had been roused by the

sunlight and was hunting in a dream of

summer.

And I read something just a descriptive

part of an owl, the face of an owl. He

has this wonderful mastery of pros. The

helmeted an owl. The helmeted face was

pale, white, aesthetic, halfh human,

bitter and withdrawn. The eyes were

dark, intense, baleful.

This helmet effect was grotesque, as

though some lost and shrunken night had

withered to an owl. As I looked at those

grape blue eyes, fringed with their fury

gold, the bleak face seemed to crumble

back into the dusk. Only the eyes lived

on. The slow recognition of an enemy

came visibly to the owl, passing from

the eyes and spreading over and over the

stony face like a shadow. But it had

been startled out of its fear. Uh, and

even now it did not fly at once. Neither

of us could bear to look away.

In its face was like a mask. Macarber

ravaged, sorrowing like the face of a

drowned man. I moved. I could not help

it. And the owl suddenly turned its

head, shuffled along the branch as

though cringing, and flew softly away

onto the wood.

So it's a caliber of pros but um it's a

all over world view that is so

remarkable in in this book.

It's not so much a book about watching a

bird. It's a book about becoming a bird.

Sometimes Baker writes at the parake

soarses and soarses higher until it is a

dot in the sky and then he he writes and

then we swoop down. we all of a sudden

he has morphed into into a paragrine and

uh he's he crouches over a kill he after

the bird after the paragine has left and

he writes in we live in these days in

the open the same ecstatic fearful life

we shun men. So uh this is a book uh

which if you want to make films you

better read this one and incorporate it

is as as a way to to see the world and

experience the world and morph into the

world and and become

uh become

singular. is a singular element with

your dancing chicken, with your monkeys

on the raft, with uh Emiliano Sapata

with his eyelids. You see, I uh when I

see these films, when I see Vivat

Sapata, I'm uh I'm somehow morphing into

Brando

and my eyelids get get heavy and I I

could give the same answer. So it's

something that becomes alive inside of

us and that's what I uh miss. That's

what I miss among many of the young

filmmakers

and it's important

in uh particular encounters at the end

of the world my voice over doesn't

explain much. It was uh remarkable when

uh Peter Titling and I stepped off the

plane on the ice runway and you have

this step out in this glaring sunlight

uh of of these glaciers in the ice and

it's blinding you and and you're trying

to find a first orientation. Peter said

to me, "Wa, how for God's sake are we

going to explain an entire continent

like this to an audience back home?" And

I said to him, Peter, you know what we

do? We do it like uh the ancient Roman

poet Virgil uh in his church. He doesn't

explain much. He he just names the glory

of the beehive. He names the glory of

pruning the apple trees. He names the

horror of uh the horses invading the

stable. So that's what we'll do. We do

not explain much if necessary. Yes.

Otherwise we name the glory of an entire

continent and we name the glory of uh uh

those people who have chosen to work

there as scientists. my voice in films

of course I've been asked many times how

do you find your own voice I think when

you're a filmmaker you do not need to do

that

um commentary does not really require

your own voice however in in a way I

discovered that uh there was a certain

authenticity

uh when I do the own voice over in my

documentaries in particular and I I know

I do it well. I know the commentaries

that I speak myself are very well spoken

and they have also an intensity in it

and sometimes an almost hypnotic

quality. You really listen and I I know

that my accent is awful but I do not

want to improve my pronunciation any

further. So it's it it is as it is and

audiences got accustomed to it. They

have accepted it. If they wouldn't

accept it, I would I would never do it

again. I have actually learned from uh

American popular television like

unsolved mysteries. The voice was

particularly wonderful. This kind of

sonorous uh sort of of deep sort of

gloom and fear spreading voice. And it

says, for example, and when the dentist

came back home after work, he found the

door to his home, a jar. It was open and

there was blood. He steps in. Blood

everywhere. And that's where he knew

there was something wrong. Pause. Pause.

Pause. Terribly wrong. So, I really love

this. And the penguin marching. Um, I I

tried to imitate the voice a little bit.

it. The penguin is marching towards this

certain death, marching away and into

the mountains and it will perish there.

Pause. But why? So it's it has a certain

humor in it.

These penguins are all heading to the

open water to the right.

But one of them caught our eye, the one

in the center.

He would neither go towards the feeding

grounds at the edge of the ice nor

return to the colony.

Shortly afterwards, we saw him heading

straight towards the mountains, some 70

km away.

Dr. Anley explained that even if he

caught him and brought him back to the

colony, he would immediately head right

back for the mountains.

But why?

Very

often I have had the feeling this whole

uh threeact structure that is being

taught in film schools is kind of

ridiculous. What is a three acts in

Agari and and that the leading character

from a certain point at the end has to

change and has to be a different man.

No, not so not in Agari. Agari is is bad

and he's only worse at the end. So, um

it doesn't function with me like that.

Sometimes there may be something like

five or six acts in a film that I have

made. Uh I think it's brainless. It's

really brainless to structure yourself

and it

uh very often is the signature of

mediocre films. that become very very

predictable and I don't want to make

that kind of films.

How do I psych myself up into writing?

What I do the day before, normally the

day I start to write a screenplay, I

read poetry, but really high caliber,

uh, Roman antiquity, Virgil,

um, old Icelandic uh, eta poetry

thousand years back, uh, tongue poets

uh, from China, uh, 8th, 9th century,

uh, and and other things. and I I read

and read and read and I I get into this

fury of language and it's very the

highest caliber of language and and I

know when I start to write I'm not going

to step down below this or at least I

try never step down below this. The

second thing is I play music to myself

while I'm sitting there. I play normally

it's Beethoven Beethoven symphonies are

ones that have this dynamic and power

and it pushes me along and I play it

loud. My wife uh gets crazy when she

hears it the sixth time in an afternoon

I'm playing the same Beethoven symphony

but it it carries me it pushes me drags

me along. So uh each one of you who

writes uh has to find his or her uh own

way how to write. For me it's fast,

urgent,

high level

and always with a very very clear idea

and vision of a film that's going to be

at the end as a result.

I can read from Cobra Verde just to give

you an impression and it's again uh this

is written in pros uh not with dialogues

only recently I have started to have

dialogue inserted in the names of the

speaking people and it's it starts uh

with an image of heat the notion of heat

the light murderous glaring searing the

heavens birdless

the Dogs lie dazed by the heat. And now

comes a beautiful sentence. Demented

from anger, metallic insects, sting

glowing stones. Who would write that in

a screenplay? Yes, it is a a form of

literature. And you can imagine as an as

somebody who reads this, yes, this is a

climate that we have to create on the

set. Yes, a cinematographer knows what

we have to do. And and it ends uh it

ends I just read a little bit to give

you a feeling for the for the kind of uh

quality and of writing and and the

literary aspect of it. Francisco Manuel

staggers towards us. He seems to be

confused murmuring the slaves will sell

their masters and grow wings.

I want to find snow during the film. He

was frequently speaking about far away

mountains and that there was snow. I

want to find snow. As he passes us,

moving into the distance, we hear him

whispering the snow. The snow. Francisco

Manuel staggers into the light and the

dust and the vultures, the glare and the

nothingness.

So, but it gives it gives a very intense

feeling of

uh how I how I I sense the film and this

kind of sense

um sensing the film has to translate to

the cinematographer. It has to translate

to the person who creates the music has

to translate to the actor.

Um and uh and when you have that when a

screenplay creates that if if a film an

entire film becomes visible then you got

a screenplay and I don't care how many

pages it is. I don't care whether it's

three acts, five acts or no act at all.

It's just uh pushed through it

on the set quite often there's rewrite

rewriting dialogue for example Rescue

Dawn

it's awful sometimes it reads

wonderfully uh Escape of Prisoner in

Laos uh uh American pilots and uh Steve

Zan has to day to Christian Bale when he

uh crawls under under the floorboards

and tries to crawl out. He says

something very silly. I must confess now

uh be God with you. Uh or something like

this. And I see I see Steve turning

purple and red and he was just about

bursting out in laughter. And I say,

"Steve, I know this is somehow it reads

all right, but when you say it, it

sounds awful." And he says it in rolls

in laughter. And I said to Stephen, to

uh Christian Bale, how would you say it?

How would you say? And he just says,

"Good luck. Good luck. Get get out. Good

luck." And that's all there is. So, of

course, I I hear that sometimes uh a

dialogue spoken sounds like paper. And

you better rewrite it on the spot. And

you better do not interrupt shooting

longer than 30 seconds. You see, for you

can write 10 lines of dialogue in 30

seconds. You better deliver instantly.

And that's brings life and and cohesion

into a shoot and cohesion into a story.

There has to be an urgency in in you and

then you can that's the way you should

write and that's the way I actually

film. I I shoot a film like this but the

urgency uh makes me act very quickly.

You leave everything that's not

important. You leave it out. You just go

for for the very very central things.

Agary the wrath of God is a is a good

example. um at a friend's house. I was

poking in his books because he was loves

sick and was on the phone with his

girlfriend who was leaving him all the

time. And I I just went through some

some books and I I come across a book

for adolescents, 13year-old boys or so

about adventures and discoveries. And I

read 15 lines about a man lakiri.

And I walked out. I knew this was a

film. But the same the very next day my

small tiny soccer team left for Italy

and we were on the bus. Everybody was

was drunk. I mean everybody. And they

were chanting obscene songs and we had a

bar barrels of beer on board in the bus

and I was typing at that time the

typewriter on my knees and uh chanting

vomiting on my typewriter

uh obscenities around me and we

traveling and I would write the

screenplay and I would write even at

that time I was goalkeeper even during

the half time uh during halime 10 15

minutes I was furiously

typing on and this is a screenplay I

finished in uh two and a half days.

However, and and normally I do not write

more than five days like Strocheek four

three four days uh recently a screenplay

for my last uh not published yet uh

feature film Salt and Fire 5 days

um because there's an urgency and I see

an entire film in front of me. I wait

until I write. Sometimes these little

elements are coming together. Sometimes

I write only single words or I write

what Churchill shouted across the aisle.

Even if it ends up in the film or not,

doesn't matter. I'm somebody who never

corrects a single word. I write it down

and and I I try to be disciplined that I

don't even need to um erase a single

word or or restructure a sentence. And

and this gives an urgency and also a

precision. There's a precision which you

do not reach otherwise if you brood over

a screenplay for many months.

We are entering into one of the real

complicated questions for young

filmmakers.

How do you um get the finances for a for

a film? Rule of thumb in my case is if

you have a an extraordinary project with

incredible dynamic and a very strong

story,

money will follow you like the common

curr in the street with its tail between

its legs. And the quality of money is

awful. It's abysmal. It is cowardly. It

is stupid. And money is also slow. So

how do you do it? Uh you have to have a

project that uh has

uh a real dynamic otherwise you will

never get anywhere.

I'm somebody and you should know that

because it's so bizarre. I'm somebody

who made his first phone call at age 17.

That was actually to contact producers

who were in in a way inclined to produce

uh a feature film that I had scripted

and they were not completely against uh

me doing the uh being the first time

director. So I made phone calls because

I was still a school kid and looked like

uh I mean like a boy. I was not even

fully grown up yet. And when they saw me

uh it was immediately clear uh this was

not going to happen. They laughed and I

turned around. Important uh in this

encounter was that uh I got angry and I

knew I would never become a filmmaker

unless I became a producer myself. My

advice is uh do it as I did it at the

beginning. Nobody when I was 15, when I

was 16, 17, 18, nobody wanted to produce

or finance any of my films. So it made

me angry and it made me understand

ultimately you have to become your own

producer, your own financeier.

And it means I earned money uh in a

steel factory doing the night shift as a

welder. And I earned enough within two

years of work. I earned enough to do my

first feature. When it comes to

balancing your own vision and the cash,

small amounts of it that you have

available earned yourself.

Um, I think you have to be prudent and

choose a subject that does not require

extravaganzas of building sets or

extravaganzas of having a big name actor

in it and all these things. And uh it

you have to do it like uh somebody like

uh I think his name is Rodriguez

who did um his first feature film on

celluloid for I think under $10,000 and

he published his budget.

I struggle every single film to stay on

budget. I've never been over budget. Not

once, not a single time over budget, but

six times under budget. Bad lieutenant,

a good example. And I was prudent enough

to have in my contract

uh if I were under budget, I would earn

myself a bonus. So I earned a very good

bonus and I really looked and I have the

right in my contracts to look into the

daily cash flow with the accountant. Me

the director I'm sitting with the

accountant in the evening and I'm

checking into into cash flow and all of

a sudden I see where the money flows

that you you spot where the problems uh

are emerging. I see uh costumes all of a

sudden 120% in the first week of

shooting what happened is that they had

a second set of suit of dress for

everyone. Somebody who walks uh through

the frame for 5 seconds I had two suits

made and and I stopped it. No more

duplicate or triplicates of of a costume

only for the leading characters. Yes.

And um so very often

uh you have to do things that are not

really your business

but they have been my survival and what

I have understood very early on is how

can you uh long-term survive

and one of the things is understand

the demands of finances stay on budget

try to stay under budget

be responsible with uh with what you are

doing, with what you are spending.

I've done feature films for very, very

little money. A Gary, the wrath of God,

which looks like a huge production, the

production value on the screen is is

really enormous.

And it's a film that cost

um

$360,000.

What makes a film expensive? Number one,

it's a time of shooting. Reduce the time

of shooting. Celluloid expensive. Every

second that's rattling through your

magazine, you know, costs you uh $45

because it's not only raw stock, it's a

lab, it's a print, it's a post

production. all of this and you learn

very quickly uh the value of every

second ticking by and the value of every

day you have to rent a camera. So you

have to to understand the items of

budget. You have to for example in my

film uh a big epic feature film in the

desert, queen of the desert. Uh and I

wanted to have almost the size of

Lawrence of Arabia. Uh many extras,

dramadaries, uh you just name it. But

before I went into discussing money and

before I even went to do a a competent

budget, I knew how much locally a

dramadary would cost. How much would it

cost to have the wrangler of the

dramadary? I knew the price of gasoline

in Morocco. I knew the price of every

single hotel around. I knew um the

airfares. I knew so I was really

competent to to give answers and I would

say uh 50 dramadaries that's surprise

how do you know and I said because I

have asked because I was there and uh so

you have to base your budget calculation

a part of the big unknowns that they are

always on on real facts that you have uh

researched. Ultimately

ultimately you can do a film with two

persons only sometimes even only one and

I know a one-man film and that was uh

Hubert Saer an Austrian filmmaker who

did uh Darvin's nightmare and recently a

film who was on the Academy Award short

list uh we come as friends and I think

he only had his digital camera with a

microphone on it. So it was a one-man

crew. But I have done I personally have

done films only with uh two persons, one

cinematographer and me doing the sound

and directing the film. Another film

where there were only two men uh was a

film not so long ago in in Antarctica,

Encounters at the End of the World,

where I had um cinematographer Peter

Sidinger and again I did the sound and

uh I directed the film and uh it doesn't

mean this is nonprofessional. The film

in fact had a very good theatrical run

on very big screens, very beautiful

sound. Um, and it had a an Academy Award

nomination, which is kind of odd because

I'm not made for that kind of stuff.

But, um, uh, that's how you you can

actually survive doing a film. So,

two elements. One is uh the amount of

days of shooting and the second is uh

the size of your crew. Reduce it. Reduce

it. Fight back. Ultimately do you can do

a film with two persons only as a crew.

If you are able-bodied,

start to work and it takes you three,

four months or five months, maybe a year

and you will have $10,000.

With $10,000, you can make a feature

film nowadays. A fulllength feature

film. Of course, not with stars. You

have to have a crew of four or five

maximum. You have to shoot within 10

days. You have to edit it yourself. And

you can you can do a feature film for

under $10,000.

Become self-reliant. For your first

films, the first three films,

featuretses that I made or short shorter

films that I made, I knew I would earn

money. I would make them. And my

principle was money lost but film

gained.

And I foraw it correctly when I was 19

years old that I would not sell these

films. And until today I have not sold

these films which is fine because it

creates of course defeats. My film

school was a defeats

of my early films shooting and making

idiotic mistakes.

uh and uh all the stupidities

accumulated to defeats from which I

learned painful lessons

uh and but I had something presentable

and all of a sudden I was somehow

qualified for

uh people who took me serious because I

brought three films to them. Today the

situation is much easier. Uh the cameras

are highly professional, very small and

inexpensive. So you should be able to

afford a camera and you should be

capable to afford some sort of a sound

recording system. One or two good

microphones and that's it. Editing you

can do on your laptop nowadays. You just

do it yourself. What I do not like is

the culture of complaint. Everybody is

complaining. Ah, the financiers are so

stupid. They don't give me the money for

my wonderful project. And it goes all

the way even into some of the most

successful Hollywood filmmakers. I do

not name names now, but some of the

biggest of them I've heard complaining

how stupid the system was and wouldn't

finance a project like this or that.

It's uh it's inacceptable for me. You

have to be able to be self-reliant.

There's no excuse anymore that you don't

do your film. No excuse.

When you are negotiating a budget with

financiers or production companies, you

really have to know what you are doing

and you really have to tell them what

they are getting into it. You have to be

completely candid. otherwise the

problems will accumulate massively

and uh I'm always trying to keep

attorneys out of discussions

was very interesting the discourse I had

with a learner millennium films for the

bad lieutenant uh and I met him for the

first time in my life and he was with an

entourage at five and I was alone and I

asked is there an attorney here and one

said, "Yes, I'm the legal counsel of the

production company." And I said, "Could

you please only listen in

and be I don't want to to chase you out.

Listen in. Do your counseling

afterwards. I do not want to have

attorneys negotiate. That's the end of

of everything when you I never and I

advise you never ever ever ever let

attorneys negotiate.

Uh you negotiate yourself or an agent

may negotiate if you if you're not uh

feeling right to negotiate yourself. uh

the attorneys are uh are poison for for

negotiations

and everybody knows that sometimes in my

very last film uh on the internet I only

had a handshake like in the old days a

handshake uh and those contracts are

more solid in all every single case I've

only functioned on a handshake if you

have a 140 page contract with uh about

your directing. You you know this spells

disaster and it always the longer the

contract gets the more you are prone of

uh running into trouble and everybody

predicted to me

uh this will end in a failure. You

cannot deal with uh such a uh beast of

the industry. And I said let the beasts

come. They are human beings and they

have they also have some sort of vision.

Deal with them. Be responsible.

Make yourself familiar with with the

legal legal basic concepts. It's not

that you have to learn every turn your

term. You have to understand the

concepts.

You have to understand legal terms. You

have to know what you are getting into.

You really have to know. I I had a

contract um offered where it said I'm

here work for hire. And I said to the to

the attorney, work for hire is

inacceptable for me because it means

that I have absolutely no right. I can

be fired at any moment and replaced by

anyone at any moment. My footage can be

used uh because I have nice landscapes

that can be used in a perfume uh uh

advertisement for example. Um it can be

butchered, it can be uh it can be

spliced into you uh YouTube clips. You

can do anything you want. And the

attorney was sitting in front of me and

and he just was completely frozen. I

said, "Can you at least nod?" He did not

even nod. But I knew I knew if I signed

work for hire it meant a lot of

consequences

where you have no position at all.

In my discussion with Millennium Film, I

said to them, and it was already 6 PM, I

said to them, those are the things that

I need to have in a contract. Uh, who is

my cinematographer? I have to have my

own choice. Composer, editor, sound

person, a few things they have to be in

the contract and I name them. And you

have voiced some certain special uh

ideas, have them in a contract. And I

said to the attorney, I turned to him

and I said, "Why don't you take a

standard contract? There's page after

page after page of about transfers of

rights and delivery items and you you

just name it. Take one of those standard

contracts and put in just those few

specific demands of either side and you

can do it in half an hour." And I said,

I would appreciate I would appreciate if

I had the contract if you really want to

do the film with me. I would appreciate

if by tomorrow 8:00 in the morning

somebody brings a contract for signature

and at 8:00 a messenger rings and brings

a contract and wants to leave. And I

said, "Stay."

And I looked through the contract uh uh

less than 10 minutes and signed it and

sent the messenger back with my signed

contract.

If you do not have a deal within 48

hours, within two days, you won't have

the deals in two years either. There has

to be something that brings you

together, an urgency, a vision, an

excitement, and you will get into

business.

Sometimes with actors, I really want to

have one actor and I I tell the actor,

uh, I have no choice.

It's you. I really see you in this role

and you will be wonderful. It's

something you will be you will be really

wonderful in. My budget is very limited

and I will offer your agent a budget

which is certainly lower than you will

get. And in case of Christian Bale, he

had just finished Batman.

And his fee was very very high. And I

said to Christian, I have to offer your

agent a fee which is way way way under

this. but I really would love to have

you there. And he said, I want to work

with you. That's the only important

thing. So I spoke to the agent and I

said, "This is our budget and this is

what I can offer and I cannot even

negotiate. I I cannot if you want 10%

more, I give you the limit that I have.

So this is what I I'd like to do." And

uh normally uh uh if you have a fire

within you and a conviction within you

and on the other end the the actor

um really wanting to work with you on

this project then you will have a deal.

It will come together. If you are vague

and if you don't know and if it's not

this one oh yeah there are 50 other

actors who could who could replace that

one. Christian play bail cannot be

replaced. And you will find these people

if you have a real beautiful project

negotiations about money about timing

about god knows the perks padiums all

this is is is going to work out somehow.

It will fall in place in the wake of the

big dynamic that we are creating.

Not only would I uh direct uh actors or

human beings, I would also direct

landscapes. In a way, opening of Akira

is directed landscape. It's somehow

understanding the essence and doing the

right thing in this landscape and

incorporate it into a dynamic that you

do not normally see in a movie.

Sometimes I have spent uh

uh many weeks scouting like uh Agiri uh

rafting down on Amazon tributaries.

Yes, this is near Machu Picchu,

near Uro Bamba. And here you see this

zigzag

path. It's almost vertical and slippery.

And

many of the native people who come from

the highlands who came from very high up

uh were frightened. Some of them

altitude sick. Some of them had ver no

vertigo vertigo more than anything. And

I would run up and down this zigzag

path. I mean to to exhaustion and tie

some of them onto bushes so they

wouldn't slip down. And I said stay

where you are. We'll we'll get you out

later. Heat. Heat.

It was filmed only once

and

those are moments where I had the

feeling I was blessed.

something fell into my lap

that uh in a way I knew I deserved it

but yet uh you have to be lucky as well

and it's a really

wonderful moment

and you see how steep it is

chicken in there llamas

everything.

It really was a location that I loved

and I had great disputes with Kinsky

about it. He wanted the entire ensemble

because you see the ruins of Machu

Picchu, one of the most photographed

sites on on our planet. And I said, "No,

this is post postcard kit. I want a

detail of and he started to scream and

yell and kick at the camera. And so I

took him out of the shot.

So of course uh

the quality of pre-production

location scouting

made the quality of what you see on

screen. And it's not that you can

organize it quickly and you you say,

"Ah, let's go there." You just can't go

there and and start shooting.

When it comes to location, it is not

only the location that you see on

screen. Yes, that's a key to all. That's

overwhelms every other consideration.

But at the same time you have to

consider logistics. Where do you have

There were no hotels at that time. There

was a tiny hotel, eight rooms up near

Machu Picchu. Nothing else at that time.

So where do you house your uh 450

extras? Where does does the crew stay?

Crew was very small but still. Um, so we

went into a tea plantation uh down at

the river which had a huge uh uh barn

which we emptied out and filled it with

uh sort of hammocks and um and beds on

top of of each other for 450 people. So

So we had to we had to organize that at

the same time. Where does the crew stay?

We were very provisionally housed. I

stayed in a in a hut in a mud hut of a

woman who was actually she had a

hunchback, a very very sweet woman. And

she had six children and something like

200 or over 200 guinea pigs. And at

night the guinea pigs would run around

and run over me. I had to learn how to

sleep with guinea pigs running over me.

There's a point of no return which comes

very early in the film in process of

film making. But uh you always should

look for for the most uh elegant

solutions for logistics for example.

Don't make a choice for a mountain and

you have to have sharpers for 3 weeks

just to carry your camera there and then

uh you might end up in in snow and fog

and you won't see anything.

So you have to be prudent and uh people

sometime think uh I'm the one who gives

himself these crazy obstacles about

filming in the Sahara desert or filming

in the jungle uh just to prove himself.

So it's what what's stupid what a stupid

idea. Uh I still try to to find a place

where uh logistics are functioning where

I do have electricity. I don't have it

all the time. But once you are settled

for doing something, don't be afraid and

do not shy away from uh entering into

real difficult terrain.

When I travel, uh I travel very light. I

try to have only one bag which would be

hand luggage in a on a plane.

And that's how I mostly travel. And uh

adapting

I um try to understand the people with

whom I'm going to work. I try to speak

their language. Uh in practically all

the cases, I use the accommodations that

you find with them. I lived in a hammock

for one and a half year in the jungle

and it was fine. or I would eat the food

that the native uh people would eat. So

I ate alligate, I ate snake, I ate live

maggots. I mean big white crawling

maggots. It was in uh in the jungle and

some of the uh chiefs were poking in a

huge rotten uh tree and it was all uh

coming apart and they dig deep with

their machetes and they come up with a

handful of of these big maggots and they

eat them live and a chief I didn't

expect it. I was just curious. A chief

comes with three or four of them in his

hand and gives it to me and and offers

it to me as a special delicacy. So, and

and they all stand and wait and and of

course you you have to eat them.

You have to be careful with uh permits

and you have to

you have to develop a right sensibility

how to do it. In some cases, Fitz

Karaldo for example, I would I would

just wildly

forge shooting permits. There was a

military coup d'etar uh also in in Peru

and uh very hard to get permits in my

boats were stopped and even a young

soldier was ordered a barefoot 17 year

old soldier uh took a shot at me. I was

in a in a small boat next to to my big

ship and of course you you you better

stop and you go on land. And I met the

colonel who ran this and he said uh you

are not allowed here actually what

happened what nobody of us knew that a a

border war would break out very very

soon and there was a high military

presence nothing was allowed to us

anymore and I said uh Mik Ronell

uh I will be back with my shooting

permit which is in Lima and 3 days later

I brought the shooting permit and he

saluted and said pass on because the

permit was even signed by the Peruvian

president himself. Of course, it was a

fake um a fake signature and a fake

document, but you do that

uh when really necessary.

But at the same time, you really have to

honor a shooting permit and you have to

be loyal to it. Uh just a few months

ago, I had a permit to shoot in North

Korea, North Korea of all places. And I

was filming a volcano at the crater rim.

And there were some soldiers. I was

filming as some of our people. And I

noticed next to me there are some young

soldiers taking photos of each other at

a scenic spot. And uh two or three

female soldiers. And one of the soldiers

tickles one of the females and she

laughs and screeches. And I said to the

cinematographer, "Pan, pan, pan," I

whispered to him and he pans and we see

the soldiers. And immediately one of our

guides stops steps in front of the lens

and says, "Stop this." And of course, we

stop it. And he said, "You have to

delete it." And then they tried to

delete it. And we had systems that were

not compatible with a North Korean

system. So it went on for a few days and

the reason why we were not allowed to

film soldiers was uh in no country I was

told you are allowed to identify an

individual in uniform.

I said I cannot delete this. I just

can't delete it. U but I said I'm not

going to use it in my film. I can

promise you that. And they said to me

what what are your guarantees? what how

do you guarantee this?

And

I just stepped in front of this guide of

us and I very close and I said to him,

uh, I don't have any guarantee, but I

have three things to offer. My word, my

face, and my hand. And I shook his hand.

And of course, I will honor this. I will

not use this shot in my film.

Um so it's a delicate balance which you

have to which you have to find and you

do the rogue things in one situation and

the very

um docsile sort of honoring of a

commitment a mutual trust that you have

to establish.

And

that's something uh you will learn very

very quickly when when you are out

somewhere in the field and you're

shooting

Fitz Karaldo

of course pre-production

I looked at all the possible rivers and

looked at a place where I could move the

ship over the mountain and I had a very

good location

which was fairly

accessible

uh but in this area and I had built a

camp for about thousand native extras.

This area was close to the uh border

with uh Ecuador. And when the border war

broke out between Peru and Ecuador, I

was right in the crosshairs of everyone.

And there were political organizations

among the natives who claimed to be

masters of the territory. And uh uh

there was a political thing going on as

well. And my camp was attacked and

burned to the ground. And I had already

uh left it and only had a medical team

there would which would provide medical

service to the locals. But uh you cannot

predict it uh what what was going to

happen. And so I had to build a new camp

but 2,000 kilometers somewhere else. And

I had to build two ships, identical

ships. What you see in the film uh is

actually an an identical twin. One was

moved over the mountain while this took

a long time. The other ship was filming

with the actors going on the voyage in

the river and a lot a lot of things uh

went into pre-production and the caliber

of the pre-production decided the fate

of the film. Heat.

Heat.

Heat. Heat.

And uh I I was told, yeah, why was he so

stupid to choose such a difficult

location? because my answer it was the

only one uh that I could find. And why

did he not uh shoot in a studio with a

with digital effects? Of course, they

didn't exist in still today. I would

still move a real boat over a real

mountain because I want audiences back

in a position where you would know

um where you could trust your eyes

again. You see everywhere in the films

you know in six-year-old children know

ah this is a digital effect. They even

know how the digital digital effects are

being done. I wanted the audience back

in the very very basic notion you can

trust your eyes again and films normally

do not do that anymore.

Each film is is quite different

and sometimes you cannot scout a

location. You are forced to a location.

I did a series on of films on death row,

death row in uh Texas and one inmate I

filmed in uh in Florida and female

inmates also in in Texas but in a

different facility. So there is there's

one location you allowed 50 minutes to

spend with the inmate. Um they are boxed

in into a into a cage. You have a

bulletproof uh glass window in front of

you between you but you're sitting very

close. I mean you are sitting like uh uh

four or five feet away from each other,

three feet away from each other. And uh

you only can do it there. You are only

allowed uh maximum three people. That's

what the warden tells you. And you can

only film if the inmate has given you

permission in writing that he wants to

talk to you. Secondly, the warden has to

decide and has to give permission. So

the restrictions sometimes are enormous

and you have to you have to deal with

it. Don't complain. You just do it

quickly. Deal with it and and get away

with film. That's what what we are. We

are thieves. We are thieves. We we get

away with loot from from the most

beautiful or the most scary or the most

spectacular places that you can ever

find. That's what we have to do. Bank

robbers

just hit and run.

My doubts always come on the very first

hour of shooting. I'm scared. Oh my

goodness, there is a whole crew. There

is there are the cameras and I try to

look behind and around. Am I really the

one to do this film? What qualifies me?

So, and I I have a ritual to overcome

it. the the assistant uh cameraman has

to glue a yellow stripe of gaffer tape

here on my chest and one longer on on my

back between the shoulder blades and I

kind of I have the feeling oh yeah it's

me now and you better step out and you

do it and it it's a simple ritual and

after 10 minutes into working myself

into a film every sort of question uh am

I the one who is going to do it has

disapp ipated.

I think uh a few things are necessary

there. Number one, your project has to

have a real big clear vision that keeps

people going with you. You have to have

something like authority, but it has to

be natural authority or rather you have

to earn the authority every single day

on the shoot. You have to be competent.

You have to be loyal with your people.

You have to be uh quick in your

decisions. You should know what sound

can do. You should know what a camera

does. You should know what you can do

with costumes.

Um and and many other skills. Uh and

only because of that uh you you have an

automatic authority.

It's not by yelling around. You have to

authority has to has to be something

natural. It it comes partly partly uh

because of your understanding of the

single parts that's that are going on in

uh

in the shooting during the shooting of a

film. And of course authority comes

because of the intensity of your vision.

on the set for example, I listen to

suggestions of the cinematographer. I

listen to

um what the actors uh remarking and it's

uh

it's interesting how far I would uh give

them space for creating their own

architecture of things and I give them a

very short instruction and then I can

leave them alone. I know they have it

all in them and uh do not direct every

single detail. And what really keeps uh

uh this diverse group of people together

which always holds them together on a

set is uh at the end of the day during

or during shooting already you know man

this was great. was this a performance

and we captured it and and this was

incredible and and everybody walks away

and it was a tough day. Uh torrential

rains we are soaked, we are hungry and

everybody walks back and is is somehow

glowing and uh um in this knowledge that

we have done something something

exceptional that others have not been

capable of doing. But it means it means

that a daytoday grinding on of uh film

of filming which is completely

unspectacular.

It's uh it's a grinding on of

banalities. It's an endless chain of

benalities that you are doing

timeconsuming things uh that do not seem

to ever come to anything. You have to

enforce something that is so uh

wonderful that everybody loves what they

are doing. They don't need to love me.

They have to love what they are doing.

I was more formal pre in a way. It had

to do I think uh that I was always the

youngest on the set. I made my first

feature film when I was a kid and I

everybody all the crew was older, 10

years older, cinematographer, actors,

everybody older and uh uh and quite a

few of my cinematographers

were

holding the firm belief that there would

be a much better director than I would

be. Sometimes it's very healthy to to

keep a certain distance

or at least a certain formality.

And until very late in my life uh in my

working life, I have uh uh dealt with

cinematographers always saying uh see in

German, not do. Uh you cannot translate

it in English because you only have you.

But uh uh in French it would be vu or in

Spanish it would be.

And only after I've ended up in in

prison with one of the cameramen and

only after uh we um were sick and

vomited in a vineyard together next to

each other. Only then I said after 10

years why don't we say you to each other

and we just shook briefly hands and that

was it. and from then on you. But the

distance, the respect, the professional

respect among each other is is quite

often helpful.

Today I have changed my my attitudes.

I'm much uh uh easier and much uh

quicker in into offering the more

personal uh you to to anyone who works

with me. when you are dealing with big

stars

uh

case for example Nicholas Cage he said

to me oh I have this very very big uh

mansion in downtown

I have lots of rooms why don't you stay

with me and I I thought for a second I

said Nicholas you know what uh I rather

stay in a hotel because uh it is

healthier to meet only on the set and

both of us uh create an architecture

architecture. You create an architecture

of the character. I create a

corresponding architecture in the

architecture of the camera. It wouldn't

be wise if we sat at breakfast and and

and unshaven and tired and and I see the

yolk of your egg on your on your chin.

Uh it's it shouldn't be like that. Meet

me on the set. and he said, "Wonderful.

Let's meet tomorrow on the set here."

In the film where the green ants dream,

the myth of uh green ants uh who have

their sacred place that has to be

defended by aboriges against the

encroachment of a mining company. And uh

for a while I always saw this very

mysterious image of 400,000 ants all

lined up like uh particles

um that are metal particles that are

under heavy uh magnetic fields. And

these particles line up thousands and

thousands all looking in one direction.

And I thought how can I do it? And I

made a lot of tests with termites and

with ants. The only way to do it was

cooling them down in a cooling house,

but it was so sensitive that one degree

lower and they would die. One degree

higher and they would immediately start

to fight and crawl around.

And it was one of those moments where I

noticed and where I realized this was

undoable. People believe I do not take

no for an answer. Of course, I take no

for an answer. It you have to be

prudent. You have to do what can be

done. And many times I I wanted to this

that or the other and I didn't do it. Um

and there was a no and I had to accept

it.

Same thing with uh Agari the wrath of

God. I had an opening sequence in the

screenplay. It describes

a scene high up in the Andes,

snowcovered peaks, glaciers, and on a

glacier you see all of a sudden moving

in, moving in, flying in, you see a thin

thread of hundreds and hundreds of

people, and then all of a sudden you

move close in on 400 pigs or so. Uh and

the pigs are all staggering and weaving

because of the altitude. Uh they are

they have altitude sickness and they

tumble, they toss around and they

stagger.

And I tested it with uh having pigs uh

injected with uh some sort of

anesthetic. Sometimes um you use

anesthetics for horses or other animals

for operations, but they would just fall

asleep and then get up and sprint away.

And uh this was not doable with pigs. Uh

and besides, when I tested the location,

I took four or five people with me. Four

of them were just down on the ground,

snow white in their face, started to

vomit, couldn't do anything. We had to

quickly get them down to to lower

altitudes

and I realized exactly then and there

this cannot be the beginning of the

film. You have to do the doable and I

preach it to uh my cinematographer who

says ah yeah we could use a helicopter

here and and but the ravine is so narrow

that you cannot fly a helicopter in. I

keep saying to everyone, do the doable.

So as as a person who uh who is

responsible for the crew, I'm the guinea

pig. I would never ask anything from

them that I wouldn't do myself.

For example, Christian Bale had to eat

live maggots. There was a whole plate.

They were starving to death in this

prison camp. And one of the guards

brings him some pieces of rotten meat,

but the entire plate is full of

wriggling maggots.

And I I took the spoon and I said to

Christian, "You know what, Christian?

Uh, I'm going to eat a few spoonfuls

because the locals actually eat it and

it's there's nothing wrong and lots of

protein." And Christian immediately

grabbed the spoon and he said, "Let me

do that. You don't need to do it." But

he knew I would have done it. And um

somehow quietly I said to him, "Uh

we are stopping our camera when you had

enough. You are the one who stops it."

But somehow he didn't hear it. He didn't

listen. He was too much into these

maggots. And he started eating eating

ladling ladling these maggots. And and

then finally he says why don't anyone

say cut?

And I said cut and he was kind of kind

of miffed. He said you didn't call cut.

I said you were the one who should have

who should have given the signal. So

there was that was the second moment of

some sort of moments of irritation and

two minutes later we embraced and we

laughed and uh it was fine. But um

lessons of darkness, we were filming in

uh an area where there was some bombed

out radar

uh screens, gigantic sort of ears

listening into uh the atmosphere for

incoming airplanes all destroyed. And uh

I was told do not move in there. There's

a lot of mines. There are a lot of

mines. And I learned very quickly that

uh putting up a minefield has very clear

logics. It surrounds the area but it

leaves a gate open where some people can

walk in or a truck can move in. And

having understood the uh the the pattern

of of planting mines because I had seen

many mines that were uh visible because

the sand was blown away by the wind. So

I said, "Let's go in and let's shoot." I

said that to the cinematographer,

Paul Barif.

And uh I said, "Uh, you're not going in

first. I go ahead of you. If I step onto

something,

uh you better are not the one who is

doing this."

And this creates a this creates a an

enormous amount of confidence among it's

it's a very specific u confidence among

men. In my way, it is more ladling uh

the maggots or walking into the

minefield and having the camera behind

me, not in front of me.

That's how that's how you you establish

the the right mood for doing

extraordinary things.

Also, concerning real benalities uh in

which sequence are we doing things? Do I

sometimes uh anticipate

uh something that's that might happen

and

save the day because a thunderstorm is

arriving and I do the essential little

element first. So I listen and I see I

see what the weather is doing. I see

that everybody is getting nervous and

our set may be wiped out and I start to

invent uh when a catastrophe happens

like Akiri all of a sudden my set is

flooded and the cannons in water the

horses are standing in water I

incorporate it immediately into the film

as an element of the travails and

tribulations of the concistadores

um it's not only listening to

to uh uh an editor or a composer or

someone. I am very very open and alert

to events around the shoot and events

that may jeopardize what you are doing.

So you anticipate it very very early as

quickly as you can and do the essentials

right away.

By the way, things you cannot uh control

and organize in pre-production is the

unforeseeable. the the craze of an

actor. Kinsky going completely bonkers,

destroying a set in a tantrum and uh uh

demanding uh that I had to fire um the

the boom man because he smiled behind

the you have to dismiss him right right

away. What happened? Kinsky simply did

not did not know his lines. And then he

exploded and and blamed somebody who had

smiled. And of course, the entire crew

would have walked out in solidarity.

And in this very particular case,

because he threatened to leave the set

10 or 11 days before the end of

shooting, he threatened and he packed

his stuff and loaded it in a speedboat

and I had to physically threaten him

with killing him and and it was a

serious quiet, very very quiet

confrontation. I spoke very very softly

to him and he understood this was not a

joke anymore. I would do something he

would both of us would regret. But

sometimes these confrontations had a

funny side. Both of us uh plotted to

murder each other at the same later we

learned it was exactly at the same days

or so. And normally it was beautiful

plots that we concocted and uh at the

same time I must say we had great

respect for each other, great admiration

and we had a a texture some sort of

chemistry that created uh unbelievable

things that otherwise couldn't have been

created.

Uh those things you cannot organize and

pre you cannot prepare yourself. The

only thing to prepare yourself for such

moments is um philosophy.

You have to fortify yourself with enough

philosophy or with a little diary and

and

try to find refuge in language in poetry

or whatever. You all have to find your

own anchors of of safety.

I think we should move to practical

things.

Practical things. We have been into into

ideas and there's lots of more but I'd

like to talk um a little bit about the

most imminent how to organize a set.

Here we have a set uh one, two, three,

four cameras. And I think one camera was

up there. It's still up there. Uh which

I think doesn't help us very far, but

whatever. So, how do I uh organize my

set in first place? I'm basically a one

camera guy. And I think uh you still see

it around in the film industry. You see

it uh for example in the director who

made Batman his name is Nolan. Is it

Christopher? Christopher Nolan. And I

really like him for that. Number one

he's still in Celluloid large format

celluloid. And he's basically a one

camera guy. And I like this attitude of

focus.

I never have a a director's chair. I I

do not like them. I loathe them with

with your name on it. In fact, I never

had one in my life. And it is a it's

some sort of a standard ritual which I

do not like. And and since I always

threw out the idea of having my own

chair, normally the actors or producers

or other people feel embarrassed and

they don't sit in a chair. They said,

"Yeah, but where am I going to sit

then?" I said, "Number one, I'm not

sitting. Normally, I'm standing right

next to the camera. And secondly, um, if

I need to sit, uh, there there's some

apple box or some something next to me,

I I grab an apple box and and sit on it.

I also do not have a trailer. It's one

of these other status symbols uh for

directors which set certain hierarchies

and and if you have a trailer, everybody

in the crew, the heads of department and

the actors are constantly fighting and

squabbbling about the size of their

trailer and the air condition in it and

the plasma screen in it and it all

somehow disappears. Uh, of course actors

have to withdraw and they should have

their trailer. I personally do not need

it and I wave my right to have a chair

or a trailer and I'm I'm doing very well

on a set so I I have no problem not

having that. Uh, and during lunch break

I normally join the camera truck, the

guys there because normally they have

the best beer.

I would not like to have uh the

so-called video village a play out on

video.

Um it's very very distracting. Uh I have

been at a set of a Hollywood movie when

I was shooting uh Bad Lieutenant in

um New Orleans and Forest Whitaker who

was shooting only two blocks away from

us said uh send somebody oh come over I

love your films and let's have a talk.

And so and I arrive at the set and

there's a video village. I bump into

that first. There's 30 people looking at

screens and you only see, excuse the

expression, you only saw asses. You just

only nothing else and everybody staring

at the screens. However, the actors were

very very close by and you could have

watched the actor's life and I think the

impression that you get uh when you

really look at a person in in the real

face for me has much more intensity

and um video play out always gives a a

very very false impression. Uh it's

strange the same thing happened with uh

dailies in the times of celluloid. I

hated to watch dailies because uh they

would um be very very misleading and you

have uh 15 20 different opinions

floating around. It creates a huge

amount of insecurity.

So you have to learn and that's a hard

lesson and uh takes probably long. You

have to learn and you have to understand

this was the best shot I can get and

nothing else. No more. I try to be as

close to the camera as possible. And if

the camera moves, I try to move along

with the camera. I do have nowadays I do

have a video screen on the set, but it's

only an assistant cameraman and he sits

in the corner. He sits in the corner but

he has so that nobody can look at his

screen. He sits like this and watches

the screen and you outside you cannot

see what he sees. And he would come in

and he would say, "Oh yeah, there was

something there was something not right

with the uh with a actor on the on the

left hand of the screen. He didn't enter

fast enough and this or that was

slightly out of focus." And so we have

to repeat. Of course, it's good to have

some sort of control.

Organizing a set also, of course, has to

do with the size of the crew. For many

reasons, I try to

to reduce the amount of crew I'm

battling it. And in bigger films, it's a

constant battle that I that I have with

the production companies. Whenever there

is a a problem, I go to sleep and next

day five new people are hired to solve

the problem. And sometimes you do not

solve it in technical terms. You have to

solve it with intelligence. I try for

various reasons to reduce the amount of

of uh crew.

uh number one uh you are much more

flexible and faster and it really

um brings down the budget. The size of

the crew also has to do with the

possibilities that you had in in early

films Akiri the wrath of God we were

eight or maybe 10 people as as an entire

crew and it's um strange um

when I did Fitz Karaldo

um less blank a wonderful documentary

filmmaker he made burden of dreams and

people when they saw the film which is

really good. They said, "But yeah, but

Les uh has never shown the crew at

work." And I keep saying, "You you

idiots. You see the entire crew much of

the time right there." And it's only it

was only something like 16.

I do the slate myself. I insist being

the one who does the slate. And I have

been accustomed to do that from from the

very earliest days of my of my film

making.

Why do I do it?

I like to be the the last one between

the cameras and sound and lights and the

technical crew on one side and the

actors on the other side. And I'm the

last one who would move out. And I would

as I'm so close to the actors, I would

notice a the actor knows his line and

everything is okay, but he's not there

yet. Sometimes I would procrastinate and

ask the uh camera what what about your

filter?

Can you change the filter? So just to

gain time and and of course it's just a

a ruse or just procrastination

to get the actors ready. And I see it

because I'm that close and sometimes in

the very last moment I say give me the

first line and I say no no no this is

too loud. Give me the the right

inonation of your voice. So I'm the very

last one. Being the last one also uh

prevents one thing which is very very

distracting for actors.

In the last moment before the camera

rolls, quite often, uh, the makeup

person jumps on the set and starts to to

do some some corrections in the makeup

or do some sweat or so. I always have

some few things on me so that I can can

do very last moment touches on an actor.

costume people come jumping uh on at the

actor and they do just before they are

uh starting to to do uh their scene and

it's very very distracting for for

actors and I'm the last one to ward off

the actors from all these intrusions.

When you are on the set and you're very

close to the actors with a slate, you

see very very clearly the eyelines of

actors

and

uh again Forest Whitaker in um New

Orleans,

they did a scene and I was appalled

because crew was moving around in his ey

line and only something I would say

20 30t feet away from him, exactly in

his ey line, there's a production

executive walking up and down with his

cell phone and doing this and whispering

and and and I thought, I mean, why

didn't Forest Whitaker didn't go up,

grab a shovel and and murder the guy

cowardly from behind, bury him? He

didn't do it. And and I said to him,

Forest, how can you take that? I said

well I I have developed some defenses

but an actor should should be defended

there shouldn't be anyone in his ey line

and I do remember

uh Christian Bale uh there's a famous uh

I think a sound recording of him uh

yelling at someone on the set and I have

to say one thing Christian Bale I think

he started his career as an actor at age

11 he has decades of absolutely

impeccable gentlemanlike behavior. He's

the gentlest, the most considerate man

you can ever find. Generous, a wonderful

guy on the set.

At one moment while he was doing a

scene, somebody right in his ey line

apparently worked on a reflector or

doing setting a camera or whatever and

he started to yell and his the opinion

because it became viral on the internet.

The opinion of uh about uh Christian

Bale I is an unbearable character. What?

What an injustice.

I have been on a set of a Hollywood film

as an actor and and it was astonishing

because there were I would say almost

250 people.

200 of them were constantly texting or

on on their phones throughout the day.

50 of them were really working and

sometimes those on the cell phones uh

would be quickly for for 10 minutes be

engaged in something. But you have a set

where you have uh a a lot of people who

are not participants anymore.

And um number one I would uh ask all the

crew members and the actors together at

the beginning of the shoot and I would

explain to them and ask them uh please

do not use cell phones not on my set of

course you can use cell phones but

wherever the camera is if the camera if

the tripod is there and the camera idle

or filming doesn't matter you have to

move at least 200 feet distance make

your phone all and that immediately

clears

it immediately clears a set uh and and

those who are constantly on the phones

they are not really working and they

distract because they in a different

world they are not in the world of of

your set they are not participants

anymore there's this constant uh uh

gossiping on on walkie-talkie talk is of

course they're necessary you have to

call in for example um the uh tracks for

the dolly and they're somewhere a mile

away in a truck. Of course, you you have

to call, but move away at least 100

feet. Move away so there's a quiet zone

around the camera where I can really be

focused and and work

what I do. Uh and I I have heard Ridley

Scott does the same. No matter what

happens, you start, you are on the set

at 8:00,

not later than 9:30, you do the first

shot. The camera is rolling by 9:30. And

I do not care. And he doesn't care. Are

the costumes perfectly done for all the

extras in the background? Is everything

is the track done for the for the dolly

or so? Do the do the essential things

right away. Dolly here. I see the angle

is wrong. It's getting so tight that the

actor at the end of the track will be so

close to the camera and I I notice and I

say change the angle of this. It's

actually the work of a cinematographer

but I see it and I force and my first

slate goes down at 9:30 not later. And

that's otherwise you would everybody

would be fiddling around until almost

midday and then half an hour into

shooting you would have lunch break and

everybody comes back uh tired and sleepy

and uh and they have to start all over

again and it's another 3 4 hours. So do

it. Uh uh create some sort of dynamic

and sometimes

uh you do not make your crew your

friends

and uh but they un they after two three

days of shooting they understand the

principle behind it. They do understand

it and they do understand why there is

no cell phones on my set. They do

understand all these things and uh

that's how uh how you can really achieve

something on a day of shooting.

[Music]

I do not use a story board I think it's

a instrument of the cowards you need it

when you do a a film with digital

effects and part of the screen has to be

a live action and the other part of the

screen has to be ancient Rome for

example and yes you have to know exactly

about positioning and moving then it's

fine if I had had

uh let's say storyboards for most of my

films it would have been lifeless days

of shooting and uh allowing

real um

intense uh life Pura Vita as Mexicans say

not purity of life but the the the full

scope of Life the exuberance of life

into the day of shooting into also the

day of editing uh your films will become

stale very quickly I'm the only

completely unprepared on the set I come

with the actors in uh makeup or costume

or not and I start to Stage the scene

with them and do the basic

choreography and with a cinematographer

I decide in nor

I try to do it in one single shot of

course in continuity always comes to me

and they ask me uh in how many shots are

you going to dissolve this sequence and

I say how do I know I cannot tell you uh

I work myself into it and I work myself

into a a sort of high

intensity um sort of of vision and and

working in Poetic

frenzy all though I'm very calm and I

say at least it will be one shot and

sometimes I try to do one single shot uh

where the camera actually weaves in and

goes to some detail and moves back and

the camera uh is is somehow doing a

choreography in the middle of everyone

of course then I see uh now you cannot

it's a too long away until I reach this

point and I look at the wristwatch of

someone you better cut the fastest

movement or the fastest pan is a cut in

such a case and I start to to organize

Cuts but I come

unprepared and uh it keeps the uh it

keeps the team on edge and it keeps the

the actors on edge they don't know

exactly uh what's coming at them yes

they know let's try to do it in one

single shot you better know your

dialogue you better know your movements

you better know what we are doing doing

here and

um that has been very very helpful for

[Music]

me do not shot much coverage I do not

shoot coverage uh that's one of the

things on my set one camera and I shoot

a scene three four five times and that's

it if it doesn't function after five

times there's something wrong with a

dialogue or with a scene and you better

quickly rewrite something and it

happened in New Orleans with Nicholas

Cage my crew was nervous uh after the

first day of shooting which ended at

3:30 p.m. instead of 6 or 7 without

going into overtime and and somebody

said in the crew yeah but coverage

coverage uh aren't you shooting coverage

and I ignored it and next day again

coverage why is coverage I finished at 2

p.m.

I had it all in the can and I didn't

know know what coverage meant I know

what coverage means in my

um uh car policy in my insurance policy

so and I took my assistant director to

the site and I asked coverage what do

they mean I know what coverage is in my

insurance policy and he said no it has a

shot from this angle and the ultra close

shot only the eyes in the shot from

above there's actually a camera up here

which I think is pretty useless and uh

and you shouldn't uh shoot with too many

different angles anyway so this would be

coverage for example and uh on the third

day coverage coverage all over the set

again Nicholas Cage says give me an

Apple box crew together he stepped on an

Apple box and he said everybody listen

for a moment he said wner is not

shooting C coverage

finally I'm working with a director who

knows what he's doing so uh that was a

wonderful moment for me and uh I must

say I do shoot coverage but very little

yes I do uh in particular in dialogue

scenes I have a reverse shot and I do

things like that uh but not all the

craze that you see on a on a Hollywood

set where they have the scene the

sequence in the can in four or five

hours and then the next 8 hours and

another 3 hours overtime overtime they

spend in coverage that will never end up

on the screen so you have to learn what

do you need for the

[Music]

screen my very last uh feature

film uh salt and fire in Bolivia had an

extremely condensed shooting schedule it

had to do with availability of uh of the

actors and some other elements and it

had to do the leading actress uh was uh

days late on the set because only I

think two days before shooting commenced

her father passed away and I said to her

no matter what there are much more

important things that than Cinema

film making sometimes has to step back

there are big other things you stay uh

you meet your family and only after your

father is

buried then you fly so I had only 16

days of shooting an entire feature film

and I would I would really push the

camera and the actors along from from uh

sequence to sequence to sequence

and try in order to save time shoot the

whole sequence in one single shot move

with him do it and it gives the film a

certain urgency and a certain cohesion

of course there are cuts and of course

there are different camera angles and so

but the tendency was should it uh

condensed leave everything that's not

important left and right away the same

way I write a screenplay

[Music]

if I can I try to keep uh the lighting

equipment small when I do a documentary

you have to be flexible you have to be

quick so I try to avoid to have these

heavy thick cables and big reflectors

and so very often I would just use

something for a a reflecting white piece

to to get some light into the face and

illuminate it a little better or

smaller smaller reflectors that can be

set up very quickly um if you if you

fiddle around too long time around a

person who is already present in her

kitchen for example uh you you lose the

momentum you lose the the intensity

things get lost in in pre-production or

in set in preparing the set sometimes

you have to be very very very quick you

just go out and and you say no matter

how how lousy the background looks but

if you turn the person a little bit to

that side there will be some some sort

of a distant light on him or on her and

uh of course I try to set up lights but

not in a situation like this there's

many reflectors and so and and as a

professional it doesn't uh

really um constitute a a stumbling block

or impediment I I can take it but

sometimes people are are somehow

distracted by too many

lights and uh sometimes you are not

allowed to put any lights on yes on on

death row uh you are allowed to put some

lights but only an amount of light that

you can carry in your own hands and

camera equipment only three persons only

what you carry in your own hands

and you set it up quickly and sometimes

um I set up for things that I can never

do again I set up two cameras where one

lens is wider one lens is closer and

they're almost next to each other it's a

stupid way to film like this but

sometimes you you have to cover it like

that because you can cut from a wider

shot shorten a story and go to a closer

shot uh it allows you that but I would

not advi advise anyone to to work in

such a brainless way but sometimes you

are forced to being

[Music]

brainless there's also a question about

how you place a person in light and how

how do you frame a person and if you

need a clo up in the wider shot uh

there's this uh silly idea going around

now we can film in 4k or in 6K or

whatever and it's so uh so well defined

that you can push in like into a closer

shot but those are all decisions that

come into post- production uh and you do

not push the real decision into post

production uh you better make up your

mind when you're filming that's a Battle

Ground that's where you have to win the

battle or that's where you lose the

battle and many things you cannot fix in

post production you cannot for example

bad acting you just cannot fix in

postproduction and there's a tendency

now shooting shooting shooting all sorts

of angles will decide what we are doing

in in post production and if something

is not right we push in on let's say a

frame and and we get only a small

excerpt of the frame and that's our

closeup it's it's devastatingly stupid

you shouldn't do that take your

decisions right then and

there my feeling is you do some thinking

before you start a movie and and don't

do it uh and don't get into insecure

situations where you accumulate like a

squirrel the the little nuts and and

then you think you'll you'll have a

great film afterwards because you will

find the gems in this whole pile of of

stuff you

won't of course uh I have evolved and I

have uh a long series of films behind me

and I have gotten better at things and

and this is why I can be much more

concentrated than before before I would

collect much more footage and hope I

would get the best but I've never shot

uh more than let's say 20 hours or so

for maybe 30 hours maximum and that was

that in a film like into the abyss on

death row a tragic deep story uh in the

film is 1 hour 45 minutes long or almost

2 hours long the entire footage I shot

was something like 8 hours maybe a

little bit more maybe a little

additional b-roll that's it and you

shoot it in a few days and you edit it

in a few days and you can become

profitable you have to make you see I'm

not uh I I do not want to speak to

amateurs who keep rolling rolling and

don't even look at through the

viewfinder they just roll the camera

somehow and I I I see that's as a as a

waste of of energy is a waste of um of

material and time be be very very

precise and be

focused that's what I want to see but I

think if you are really really a film

maker trying to look deep into things

you you you have to organize these

moments they do not come at you and they

do not come at you when you keep your

camera rolling rolling rolling rolling

nothing is going to happen nothing my

heart sinks when I see young filmmakers

who come excitedly at me and they say oh

I shot 450 hours for my documentary and

it took me three years to shoot this and

since one and a half years I'm I'm

editing my heart sinks because the

market does not allow anything expenses

of that amount and if you shot 350 hours

or 600 hours of footage you normally

these people normally did not know what

they were doing they were just rolling

the camera and I keep saying even to my

most experienced cameraman he wants to

do this and wants to do that I said we

are not garbage colle actors we are

filmmakers listen to me and shut the

camera off and he shuts it off and I say

we do only the truly intense and

remarkable and if necessary we organize

it

[Music]

today I see it very often that uh young

filmmakers at film school they keep

demanding I we need the state of the of

the art camera this uh Sony camera soia

that was that was great three years ago

but is a new one we have to have

it I think that's that's a silly idea uh

you have to be capable to make a photo

with a with a shoe box a needle to to

drill a hole into it and and a plate of

Celluloid at the at the end a pinhole

camera you should be before you ask for

a for the state-ofthe-art camera show me

your photo that you have done with a

pinhole camera and the same thing um by

the way with uh cinematographers I do

not allow them a viewfinder I do not

like it they have they better know what

the projection lines of your 150 mm lens

is I think it is part of their

professional caliber that they don't

need it you just don't need it you know

what is in frame and with this or that

lens and of course you establish the

distance of your camera to the

characters or to your scene at a certain

point or or hear this camera where now

it's shifting it's moving and it will

not lose uh me out of sight but it will

lose my hand out of sight if I grab over

here so I don't even know which lens you

have at the moment but I assume that I

have to be cautious with this lens I

know that with this camera it's probably

a wider lens and and I can even stand up

and I would be uh had to to and it's

interesting uh filmmaker Jean rou who

made one of the finest films

documentaries I've ever seen

Leu the Mad

Masters shot in Africa in Ghana I think

in

1953 or 54 before the independence of

garite was the Gold Coast still and

still a a British colony and he shot the

entire film with I think it was a Buu

camera where you have this hand cranking

sort of thing to because it doesn't have

batteries so the longest shot he could

take was something like 24 seconds or 25

seconds in one lens and he made one of

the finest films ever

made it's about uh street workers who

lay Asphalt in Acra in the capital city

and on the weekends they got out in the

mountains and they drag themselves with

the I think bark of a lyana and they

stagger around and they reenact the

arrival of the British High Commissioner

it's it's just unbelievable intensity in

it and uh uh kind of uh

Insight crazy

completely Stark mad insight into

colonialism

[Music]

very very much uh advisable for young

filmmakers to

see one camera uh hand cranked uh no

batteries one

[Laughter]

lens hold a camera operate with it don't

look at the flip screen look through it

you have to look through it you have to

know what you're are doing and I I will

get up because I will show a few things

you uh what what I do when I do camera

myself which I've done in quite a few

films um and when I do uh

handheld uh number one I grab the camera

and I have my elbows solidly tucked to

my body and I look through the camera

and and everything it's not it's not

that I operate the camera like this it's

always entire body I would

move like this and go

down and come up again and it would be

completely soft so the entire the entire

body and you weave into it into a scene

that you are creating you also have to

understand with your camera how when you

operate it yourself how do you weave

into a ongoing scene into a choreography

[Music]

spee spee foreign speee

oh I do not like zooms either I do not

normally I uh do not allow to zoom in uh

into a scene I want the camera to be so

curious that we physically move in and

we want to know what's going on so I

want the body to move in not a technical

piece of a lens that Zooms in on me

um it it sounds a little bit quirky but

there's a lot of experience behind it a

lot of

thinking um I do have zoom lenses

sometimes on my set because for

complicated scenes where there's lots of

exas and lots of things happening I

would have a second camera uh and it

would normally be equipped with a with a

zoom so they can shift very quickly from

closer shots to wider shots but never

using the zoom only as a as as a array

or a set of different lengths uh of

[Music]

focus Thomas ma who did Signs of Life in

Airi uh I saw him doing a documentary on

German elections and after election

night there's the three main Party

leaders are sitting at one table

pretending to be so much uh liking each

other so much for sharing the basic same

values and and it's all phony completely

and utterly phony and M all of a sudden

spots something and P and tilts and goes

under the table and under the table you

see the knees of the three men the one

on one side is turned like this away the

other one his knees turned so they sit

completely different to the phony sort

of concordance of hearts and agreeing on

on basic values and and he's the one who

sees it and I said that's my

man and uh so we we really we really

like each other sometimes it happens I

made many films with Thomas ma many

films with ymid right when phenomenal

cinematographers now about 20 films with

a

Austrian uh Peter seitlinger

strong physically very very strong man

and um uh sometimes these relationships

exhaust itself and they and and you need

a new impulse and uh sitlinger is is

just a beast of of strength and he's the

one in the middle of the first take puts

the camera down and says this SE wner

has no rhythm and he's right never has a

cinematographer spoken to me like this

and uh and when we did uh filming in

Antarctica we were in in uh some sort of

ferales which are tles of ice created by

steam of the volcano and blue light from

the glare of the sun outside and there's

a crawl space uh I crawled ahead of him

and what he does and he has a camera but

it's not like this bottle here it's a

camera about this this size here four

five kilos heavy and he used to be a

hockey player for Sparta prag one of the

best teams in the world and has a chest

like this and he he goes down softly

goes down and comes down and grabs the

camera in one hand and goes to his belly

without shaking goes to his belly and

crawls after me and when and it was as

low as this as low as this table here or

lower than this table crawls after me at

the other end he comes back up softly

and continues with me man this is good

stuff well he balances across a uh a

log uh that was thrown across a little

Gulch and a little Ravine with swampy

water uh in little deta needs to fly and

he balances behind

uh the um the gilia sap LA and da

dangler the prisoner and they balance

across and he balances filming on on a

log that's about this thick

only and I must say I I I

like I like this kind of physical

attitude and he has done uh wonderful

things

go

[Music]

oh

[Music]

in the feature film of course uh I do

set the general mood of the

light uh meaning for example in uh the

film Los veratu which has a lot to do

with uh Darkness a lot to do with

shadows a lot to do with night how do we

get this and how do we illuminate a face

only with let's say a a candle light and

with the

cinematographer Y Schmid rwine who is

very very elaborate with lights we

studed late medieval paintings uh Gregor

deat a wonderful uh painter who uh

illuminates faces only with one glowing

candle light and look at ver or some

some other great Masters in painting and

we say no no it shouldn't have this

pastel look of ver we should go really

into this very strange mysterious

darkness of that and if we do not have

uh a paintly background we'll we'll just

create it but we talk about it

then all the details are up to the

cinematographer

I don't attach importance to Sunshine

anymore or to glittering fountains which

you are so fond

of I love the darkness and the

Shadows where I can be alone with my

thoughts I'm the descendant of an old

family time is an

abyss profound as a Thousand Nights

[Music]

I think uh when you're are working with

a real cinematographer of some great

caliber you uh have to accept them with

all the background that they bring into

it and you have to show them you are

trusting them but sometimes I uh I voice

my concern sometimes I say we are here

on the set and the actors and I have

actors who are completely into the scene

absolutely there and I'm with a slate

and I just want to film and the

cinematographer all of a sudden stops

everything oh please this light here in

the background can you dim it down a

little bit and you lose all the magic

and I at the end I do not care whether

one little piece of background needed to

be a little bit more dimming you see you

have to you have to also let them know

there is a momentum catch the momentum

of things and from a certain point on

end of the story end of lighting just

let's do it same thing with a track like

this camera moving on a track uh you

better set the track and you set it at

the right distance and do not while we

are in the middle of something uh

reorganize this

track see and and I I'm kind of strict

about this you take your decisions early

on execute it well and we do something

that makes a lot of sense then I like to

to give my films a

certain a certain cohesion a certain

familiarity and it's not that I'm trying

to to give it a certain aesthetical look

that is actually sometimes my friction

with uh cinematographers who want to

incorporate at Aesthetics they want to

put in Aesthetics and I say no

Aesthetics is a natural concomitant of

what we are doing let it seep in you see

when you are when you are writing

something in long hand like like in this

uh uh in these

uh in these log books or in my Diaries

in sub miniaturized uh

handwriting I never think about

stylizing my long hand I couldn't write

a proper sentence anymore it would be

awful if you write a love letter today

nobody writes a letter anymore in long

hand you better do a tweet or something

go on Facebook and declare your love um

but if you look out for style in your

handwriting uh you do not write a good

text anymore I'm fairly convinced of

that and so uh I have my battles this

looks too K too much like organized

Aesthetics and when you are going into

that you're always close to kitch it's

always feels like artsy fartsy to me and

I try to avoid it and and I battle it

back the the look The aesthetical Look

of a film I try to battle back from day

one during my shoots and the strange

thing is all my films have very clear

Aesthetics how

these Aesthetics seeped into the film or

into into practically all my films I do

not

know

and best of all I don't even care

one of the things that is quite often

overlooked by directors is orientation

in film that you know um where you are

as an audience when you are in a

complicated apartment and it's a let's

say a host

uh taking uh film and and you know the

hostage takers because you look down the

corridor come from the right and that's

where the kitchen is so I want the the

audience having a a general pattern of

orientation where are we what's coming

from which window and uh also for

example a

film uh

waterl it's interesting because there

are three different armies and they're

marching all towards a battlefield and

just from the direction the way it's

filmed you know oh those are the uh

French those are the Brits those are the

prussians you know and and it's very

hard to establish that and I want to

have an audience that doesn't need to to

worry about where am I suddenly and of

course it has to do with the basic

principles of um of filming for example

a dialogue if you have two actors the

two faces the and there's an invisible

axis between them uh you better stay on

one side with the cameras of the or with

your camera on the axis you film this

face from there and that face from there

or you can be behind it over the

shoulder but stay behind this axis so

otherwise uh you immediately have a

disorientation but it's such a primitive

law of how we see movies or how we see

configurations

because if you jump the

axis uh you film that actor from this

side of the axis and then the reverse

shot on that from the other side both

actors on screen would look in the same

direction and it would be immediate

disorientation for the audience one

example where you really can learn a lot

is a wonderful film by uh the French

director

Melville uh he did a film The

the second uh breath and there's a scene

a little gangster uh goes up the stairs

to an attic because he's been summoned

to meet some rival gangsters and he

knows they want to kill him and he goes

into this empty uh apartment under the

roof and he looks around and you see

Empty Chairs where are they going to sit

uh if they hold him up where would he

stand and he stands and uh behind uh

an

armoir and he raises his hands so he uh

in the future the the configuration in

space he figures it out he raises his

hands and he takes his gun and places it

only inches away from where his hands

would be and then it's very beautiful

one of the Rival gangsters has watched

him entering the home and he wonders

what did the guy do there and he goes up

into the empty apartment and look his

what did he do there and he sits in one

chair and then in another chair and

walks around and stands against the

armir and he finds the gun so the

configuration which uh is only something

that becomes essential for life or death

of the protagonists in the future

becomes uh uh an architecture of of

possibilities it's beautiful very very

beautiful you should watch the film and

Melville has done some very very fine

movies

anyway there's one

shot which I learned from K Claus kinsky

the madman but he was technically very

very intense and good and he had a way

to step in front of the camera uh and

somehow spiral into frame and he would

stand right next to to the the to the

lens of the camera it would be standing

right next to it and then spiral in

frame but how did he do it you have to

look at my feet as well he would be

there and then he would swing his leg uh

almost the other leg

180° like this here twisted and then the

entire body twists in front of the

camera so it's a phenomenal phenomenal

effect because uh as a

spectator the person who spirals in

front of the camera looks like this

oriented and I have used it I've used it

in and and the real trick is standing

right next to the tripod and the feet

it's not if you step sideways into frame

it doesn't have this kind of enormous

power and tension but if you spiral in

it and it starts with your feet it

starts with with this here

and the body follows

there's also one

shot which I like to mention

Buel I learned from him the film

Narin um in Mexico a man carries a

cross uh in religious furor carries

across all through Mexico a thousand

miles or so and he needs three or four

shots and what does he do he the camera

crouches down

and it looks into the sky and nothing is

there for a split of a second and the

actor moves into frame with a cross so

if I'm the camera I have to follow

him and

look and uh he does this three or four

times out of nowhere the character comes

in walks into the distance and within 20

seconds or so of

film within 20 seconds you have the

feeling uh this actor has covered A

Thousand

Miles very very

mysterious and I have used this uh

myself for example in the film Heart of

Glass where the leading actor cow herd

who has prophetic gift walks down from

the mountain and he spiral he he does

the same thing like in buono's film so

you have to to rehearse these things and

you have to to be aware how to how to

operate a

camera I have no problem sometimes to

give a feeling of dis

disorientation to the audience or show

the

disorientation of an actor the kinsky

spiral spiraling in front of a camera

and and you know the man is disoriented

and he's kind of lost in

space in uh lessons of Darkness I lose

the Horizon when I'm approaching in a

helicopter uh and the camera mounted

under it one of these fires and I fly

over it and the camera just goes follows

the fire and and and turns around and

with his turn around the fire is upside

down

and all of a sudden the effect and I

knew was going to be that uh gravity is

not functioning anymore on this strange

Planet it uh Flames go downwards instead

of upwards and the entire planet is is

rolling in a way it shouldn't

role and it really does not look like

our planet

anymore that was the most stunning for

me and I wanted to get it

across so yes you do those things

sometimes and the Horizon and loss of

The Horizon has a

significance animals yes uh of course

uh I love them and I have done things

like in Bad Lieutenant what is

particular about the scene which we

might show in a moment is there were

iguanas that I saw spontaneous it was

not it was not in the screenplay I wrote

it into it I brought in iguana that I

had spotted the day before in a tree and

I said please please please bring me

some iguanas and I wanted to have the

iguanas in the scene uh in such a way

that we notice them and the Bad

Lieutenant Nicholas Cage in his Haze of

of drugs sees them but his colleagues

the other detectives who are on the

lookout who are observing a house of

drug dealers they cannot see it and the

beauty of these iguanas is that all of a

sudden we as an

audience are conspiring with a lead

character because only he and we as the

audience see the

iguanas and in this case I outed myself

as a cinematographer I had a tiny little

lens tiny little button and the fiber

optic cable and a recording and I would

move this lens

millimet away sometimes millimeters away

from the skin and the face of the

iguanas who were kind of puzzled and

didn't actually the the one on the right

was not an iguana but some sort of a

desert lizard really aggressive it bit

me so hard I cannot explain it was like

a vice and you couldn't shake it off and

the crew was delighted and laughed um

like mad and besides I had established a

reflector which would shine right into

my tiny little lens and I had it

installed and the moment we started to

shoot I said no stop it stop it stop it

where is my light and the

cinematographer says wner wner I took it

away because I noticed it shines into

your into your lens I said Peter that's

a point I want this light in there and

let's roll it because it's a beautiful

scene uh in where animals all of a

sudden are the leading characters for a

20 minutes who else his girlfriend at

least one infant that's as far as we

know what are these [ __ ] iguanas

doing on my coffee table there ain't no

iguana yeah there are there ain't no

iguana what the [ __ ] is that [ __ ]

gu actually he and Val Kilmer together

that's also very good

chemistry I like them together as

detectives well the duty Captain said he

wanted to coordinate with us when we end

is that right is that what you're

[ __ ] doing now reporting back to the

[ __ ] duty I'm telling you what he

said we need SWAT we'll call

him the kind of demented looking now

this is my camera

now and these creatures are so insipid

they are so stupid so

demented oh and I was only I that bit

the camera here at the

moment this time it missed my thumb I

don't love you

anymore this is really something that

you I imagined you would see under

drugs you see it's a beautiful way to

shoot an

iguana look look at the face of the

Iguana I I just love that creature

releas just can't get any better you

don't need me if you don't want

me why don't you let and here you see

the the light the glare of light going

into my lens for moments let's

go okay that's the

scene

uh I love these moments

how beautiful

[Music]

acting and working with

actors well that's the key to what you

do as a

director and I think the first of all

keys is casting you have to have an eye

to do casting right and

um the mistake sometimes and it happens

to big studios they put two of the

greatest uh uh bestselling actors the

greatest stars together uh in a love

story and they don't have any chemistry

and the film somehow does not function

with audiences so for me it's chemistry

understanding chemistry and

understanding chemistry is has a lot to

do with uh understanding the world and

understanding human

beings um in a way I keep saying you

have to know the heart of men you have

to see very deep and do the right

decisions it happens that no matter who

is stepping in front of my little camera

that records them they all have the same

chance and in one film not very very

long ago the casting lady who is a

wonderful woman she said to me I'm so

embarrassed but there's somebody outside

the door and she has come Uninvited but

she's a girlfriend of the main producer

and I said to her bring her in bring her

in when she's here she has the same

chance like anyone else and I had uh

done screen tests with six or seven

other young women and she was so good I

mean she was fantastic and I took her

and there's no embarrassment there's no

rituals there's nothing everyone has the

same chance when when you do these kind

of early selections and uh for the big

roles of course I know that's going to

be in the that person will be in the

film and no tests nothing you will be

the

[Music]

protagonist Enigma of kaspa house I just

had written the

screenplay and I thought who could play

the leading part who has it in him and

by coincidence I watched on TV a short

film by a Berlin uh student filmmaker

about um homeless people in Berlin and

some Street singers among them and there

was Bruno S is one of them and it it hit

me like lightning I knew that's the one

am I lucky that's the one and I have to

say of all actors with whom I have

worked and there are some of the

greatest kinsky had some something

extraordinary about him uh um and uh

Claudia cardinali Christian Bale

Nicholas Cage Nicole Kidman I've worked

with the finest of the fine now Michael

Shannon who

is certainly the best of his

generation but nobody not not one of

them all these great ones had his depth

there was something that is uh that you

never see on a screen again before or

after there's something unique and I'm

glad that I I risked everything my

career my money my reputation my

everything and I had Bruno and I do not

regret it at

all how uh you describe it how you

notice it how you spot it is kind of

mysterious you cannot teach it you

cannot teach it to

anyone but um it's

essential

and I've always tried to look at uh

casting in in that

[Music]

way I've had some some very very fine

moments in

in doing the right casting and and you

are not really allowed as a as a movie

director to make major

mistakes

sometimes uh very funny how I got for

example hold of

kinsky uh by coincidence when I was 13 I

ended up in some sort of uh pension and

boarding house in Munich uh my mother

and my two brothers four of us lived in

one room and the lady who owned the

place had a heart for Starving Artists

brought in kinsky kinsky terrorized

everyone I mean unbelievably he

demolished the place screamed and uh at

that time kinsky had just started with

very small roles in theater and he had

been in Hamlet but he never as Hamlet he

never learned his text so after two and

a half minutes uh he fell silent because

he couldn't remember any of the

text uh and instead of doing anything he

starts to insult the audience screaming

at the audience and throwing a

candelabra with burning candles into the

audience and and and insulting them and

at the end he would roll himself into a

carpet and stay in the carpet would not

emerge from it again he would be rolled

in the carpet until the curtain had to

come down and and everybody had to be

sent back so uh 10 years later or so

when I or more than 10 years later um

when I did uh air I contacted him and I

sent him the screenplay and I ended up

to to work with him but I had seen and

met him as the only one in in

semi-privacy and he was formidable he

was like a tornado everybody was afraid

of the tornado I was only marveling at

him uh very very strange and of course

uh he had become even worse 10 years 12

years later uh more notorious more

volatile more crazed and in the real art

is how do you how do you um somehow

domesticate the the Beast and bring all

the crazy energy uh onto the screen make

the uh

intensity productive for the screen

that's my great achievement uh with

kinsky um and I do not regret a single

day uh of course uh it was awful

sometimes awful unbearable and the team

my technical crew would tell me I cannot

we cannot take this a minute longer we

are uh going on strike how can you do

this again kinsky is a leading character

in fact I made five features films with

him and each of them absolutely stunning

in his caliber of

performance this church remains

closed till this town has its opera

house I want the auah

house I want my overa house

I want to open a house this chch been

closed to this town has its open

house I want my open

house I want my open a house I want my

open a house

[Music]

the only thing that counts is what you

see on the screen and it doesn't matter

whether your uh leading character is the

absolute

pestilence like kinsky or if uh somebody

is illiterate or somebody has spent time

in jail or somebody in front of your

camera who has been sent uh as a

girlfriend of your producer it does not

matter the only thing that counts the

only thing is always what appears on the

screen fore an

audience can you make this a little bit

wider here because I will show something

to the camera for you I we had a suit

for him it had to be very floppy in its

texture and I said to

uh Nicholas you know what I would like

to have you in a way that where your

shoulder line is not horizontal it

should be slightly slanted should be

slanted a slanted shoulder line preceded

by your gaze meaning he he would he

would rehearse it and then just before

shooting he would do this here and that

here shoulder line preceded by The Gaze

very little things and and it gives

the character some strange strange uh uh

feel to it you cannot explain what it

is

Frankie Frankie

hey hey I got something for you I need

to get my clothes now don't worry about

your clothes right now this is uncut

[Music]

dope with kinsky uh we made in aeri we

made his

outfit I wanted to have him uh to to

create a tiny vicious hunch on his back

it all looks stupid and bad so we made

some sort of a slight deformity of his

chest and uh I said to him your um hand

is Left-Handed your left hand is too

short it's shorter than the than the

right hand so he moves always a little

bit like a crab I said you are a crab

you are not a human being you are a

creature out of the Jungle that comes

creeping up at you and since your uh

left hand your main hand is slightly

deformed In Too Short we will not have

your sword here on your hip on the side

we'll have your sword tucked under your

armpit the sheath of it so so that you

can that you can pull it just like that

and you have

it well

men now we've eliminated the

troublemakers we must elect a

leader for me the choice is obvious we

should elect the biggest and strongest

nobleman we have what me yes

you well

gentlemen I propose Guzman as our next

leader who else is for

him and uh he was delighted about those

things and he made suggestions himself

for example he has a

dagger uh uh on his belt in the back and

we had to make a dagger for him that was

so pointed and so sharp he said I need a

g needs a dagger if I stab somebody and

I pull out the blade of the dagger the

person doesn't even

bleed uh he has to to bleed to death

internally that's what aari would do

[Music]

I have done acting in various films

Harmony kin's films and also in a film

um which was widely shown uh a studio

film Jack

Reacher and uh I'm supposed to be the

bad guy and Tom Cruz the leading

character has to kill me last in this

film I do not do much I mean there are

bad guys uh who open fire and they yell

and so but I only speak very very calmly

and um it is really frightening it was

so scary it's still scary enough and uh

it's also an an experience that I have

made as a director it helped me a lot I

knew for example with um a partner in

one scene where I try to force him to to

GW off his thumb or his fingers because

I have lost my own fingers and of course

it's how we watch each other and I see

now he's really trying hard and I let

him try once more and then I come in and

very calmly I encourage him and I say

yes you can do it I know you can do it

just do

it what helped me as a director was uh

the number one the quiet intensity

knowing it was a very big screen and you

do not overact you just keep it

completely low the way for example

Humphrey bogur would keep it low or uh

Gary Cooper would keep it low some real

quintessential people Mal brand opening

of viat saata the kind of reduced uh

Inner Strength that he has

[Music]

sometimes

uh I uh would demonstrate to an actor

and I'm fairly good at that uh because

I'm acting myself sometimes in movies I

would show them uh certain moments or I

would pronounce certain deliveries of

things to them very often the real real

good professional actors you don't have

to do that it would be an embarrassment

but Bruno S for example he would deliver

line he had to deliver it as someone who

just has started to learn language at

age when he's already an adolescent and

he holds a baby out of its of its cradle

and the mother comes in and and he's

shocked and starts to cry silently and

then he says uh mother mother I'm so far

away from everything and he says it and

it it didn't mean anything and I said to

him uh as you learn a language for the

first time it has to be mother say it

like this pause pause pause pause pause

I am taking away pause pause from

everything and he does it and it's

so in a way so tragic and and it was

mechanically counting the pause the

seconds of the PA that I have taught him

[Music]

speeech foreign

[Music]

[Music]

there was one moment with uh or several

moments with one of the henchmen of

agiri fine actor Danny Aris and uh he

has to decapitate a rebellious guy in

the in the Expedition uh group of aar's

men wants to leave and agari says to him

uh this man is a head taller than me

that may

change and perucho understands and he

had his dialogue was not dialogue it was

his should say la la he does it several

times in the film he says la la la la la

la la la la and approaches and

decapitates the guy and Denny Aris uh

when we rehearsed it he said ah yeah

I'll do it and he says la la la la la la

la la I said now stop it Danny it should

be on one level uh and he said yeah

okay I said no no no listen listen

listen listen it has to be

dangerous la

la la la la la la la la la and then you

chop the head

off if we use our heads we can get back

to pizaro

yeah this Expedition is do I tell you we

followed her tracks for about a half a

league into the jungle then lost all

trace of her then one of the men in The

Troop got panicky over that damn silence

it always comes just before someone gets

killed so we came back worse then it is

with this m man believe me that man is a

head taller than

me that may

change I'll tell you my plans I've been

counting the curves of the

river look I've drawn a map here in the

sand it will take us a day for each

curve one two 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

[Music]

on my set there are no stars but whoever

steps in front of my camera is

royalty your royalty and I say that to

the extras as well who pass by in the

background and say a few words and

disappear forever out of the film you

have to have this confidence with with

your actors you have to put them on on a

ground on a

basis where they feel

safe by the way sometimes it's not good

when when they feel safe you have to

organize sometimes a moment where

they're kind of confused and perplexed

and I do the Slate very quickly and I

say action do it and uh and in this

moment of uh of fear and uh insecurity

is needed for the scene so I I do I do

unusual things

sometimes and uh of course uh sometimes

I I push them very cautiously but to the

Limit where I can go with

[Music]

them being an actor myself in the

Hollywood film like Jack Reacher there

was some some reading be first first of

all we would sit around the table and

read the entire screenplay out loud and

I've never done that I've always uh

assembled my actors on the set and

that's why I start to rehearse and

things are completely fresh for

everyone completely and uh it's good

that I do it that way because in my

films my actors are always

Lively uh when they are over rehearsed

uh they lose a spark it happens quite

often I also uh notice that when you do

too many takes of the same uh dialogue

portion um you come to a point where

from from which on it all sinks down

it's slowly slowly SL slowly getting

more and more boring and and

lifeless but some of my great admired

colleagues kubri for example uh would

rehearse 80 uh would shoot 80 times the

same scene and probably he had rehearsed

it with his actors before shooting

started I I do not know exactly but I

assume so there is no clear path of how

how you would do

[Music]

it one thing I'd like to say about malum

brandoo we know that it's some time in

his life he joined the Lee Strasburg uh

acting studio actor Studio which I do

not like at all and I believe I

personally believe that number one

Brando didn't take it really seriously

and number two he was much better before

he was at the actor studio and and this

happens quite often with actors when I

work with actors those who have been too

much into internalizing a role in

motivations and all this they're much

harder to handle it's much more

difficult to deal with him and I'm

saying that because uh very often they

are so much into their motivations good

actors quite often and they do not find

the light they move all of a sudden out

of the light and the light is gone and

they're in the shadow and it would need

only a tiny sort of movement of your

body and you have the light and you have

to teach them certain simple techniques

like uh finding the light staying in

frame simple things sometimes even uh

very professional actors uh step out of

frame and and they don't even notice and

they have to stop it and of course uh

simple things like um if you were a very

long lens very close on me if I just

stand there and I shift my weight only

from one leg to the other half my face

would be out of frame you would see that

only with a long lens and you have to to

explain to some of the actors this here

is a very long lens when you are

standing do not

shift and they have to know

[Music]

this I'm very careful about uh giving an

actor too much motivational background

that's uh normally uh spells Des

disaster some of them need it some of

them need it some in most cases I do not

like it and I would uh say simple things

like uh to Nicholas Cage he came to me

on the second day of shooting and said

to me W uh I'm puzzled about a key

question about my character why is a Bad

Lieutenant so bad I know you hate to

tell about motivations and background of

a

of a character but is it the drugs is it

Hurrican Katrina that destroyed a

civilized society is it the corruption

in the police force is it the drugs is

it your crazy family back dysfunctional

family background and uh I thought about

it all of that had some justification

and I said to him no no let's not

discuss it but there's one thing in the

film which uh you should keep in in mind

there's such a thing like a bliss of

evil go for it enjoy it and he looked at

me and he said I got it yes and man does

he enjoy being bad and it's it's a great

pleasure to watch him so sometimes it's

such a a simple

answer where is he Benny call security

nobody's calling

anybody where's your grandson bding I

don't have to tell you

[Music]

anything yeah you do I haven't done

anything my grandson hasn't done

anything if he doesn't want to be a

witness he doesn't have to be a witness

this is bigger than want

to this was a

massacre

children were

executed well maybe you should have

thought of that before

I need to know where he

is young man I would like to know the

name of your

Superior right now I'm working on about

an hour and a half sleep over the past 3

days and I'm still trying to remain

courteous and I'm beginning to think

that that's getting in the way of my

being effective

[Music]

what are you

doing what stop it what are you

doing I want to know where Daryl is oh

my God nobody saw me come in nobody

knows I'm here this old woman's going to

run out of air and you're going to have

a tough time convincing people people

that it wasn't you who did it to her and

even if and even if you do convince them

that you didn't kill her on purpose

you're still going to have a tough time

selling them that you took care of her

worth a [ __ ] God now listen to me where

the [ __ ] is

he I said where the [ __ ] is he

[Laughter]

on the set uh Fitz Caldo we had a plane

crash uh garbled messages on the radio a

plane is down how many people are on it

can we help where is it kinsky who had

his coffee served at his Hut is the last

one that very day because there was a

certain ritual how we would do it he was

the last one his coffee was lukewarm

only and he screams at the top of his

lungs he hangs on me literally that

close to my face and screams at me Fro

foam at the in his mouth and screams

what kind of pigs delivered him a

lukewarm coffee this morning and I tried

to say clous we have a plane down we

have to listen to the phone and besides

I had to do a rewrite of that scene in

the morning so uh finally how I resolved

this I went to my Hut I had a tiny piece

of Swiss chocol left I came back stepped

into his face and ate it and that was

too much for him he couldn't that that

was beyond him and he's shut up Airi has

one of uh the mutineers in his group

beheaded he um uh delivers a very

strange speech about mad power if I a

want the birds to drop dead from the

trees the birds will drop Dead from the

trees and if anyone eats one grain of

corn more than his ration he will be

trampled upon until we can paint the

walls with him and so and he uh in first

rehearsal he yells it out and he screams

it and I said clous clous clous hold it

hold it this is wrong it has to be

completely subdued and reduced then it's

dangerous no you pig you don't

understand anything about acting and so

and then I provoked him I said uh you

look terrible when you scream like this

it's just stupid and for one and a half

hours he would scream at me until he was

exhausted he was he had yelled himself

empty and then I picked up the slate and

I said clouse now we

shoot give me the first line and I said

no lower lower I should barely hear it

and he said yeah yeah low and he does it

and we shoot it once and that's it one

of the Great Moments in in my uh career

as a

filmmaker for

[Music]

Clem shites has been in a variety of my

films Kasper

Hower Heart of

Glass and he uh he in a way enjoyed to

be under hypnosis the film was made uh

with all the actors under

hypnosis uh and when I say that it

sounds like a circus gimmick but it was

a very uh clear logical sort of decision

I wanted to have a village community

that uh has lost the secret of uh how to

make Ruby glass very precious sort of

glass and

uh in the course of the story the entire

Village lapses into Collective insanity

or in some sort of a sleep walking uh

way of of dealing with what is around

them how do I

stylize this kind ofum bistic way to

deal with each other and thought it

should be why shouldn't we try under

hypnosis and you can actually hypnotize

a person so deep that they can open

their eyes without wak up and two

persons under hypnosis can have dialogue

each one in their separate uh dream like

floating world and things are basically

slowed down in this case I can show you

a short uh moment where you have her

shites Clem

shites who uh is this elderly man I here

on the left and the protagonist one of

the protagonists on the in the films

he's a servant he's a who might

discovered from

this speaks in a very strange

voice and always had difficulties to

keep his eyes open they were heavy

because the suggestions were your

eyelids are heavy you're falling you

come falling asleep and here this young

man see a very strange some numistic

stylization in it

and normally when there was a pause a

change of uh camera position I would

wake them up in between you don't keep

anyone too long under hypnosis it's not

not really good and you have to find

people who uh are not psychotic when

they are woken up so you be very very

careful

what you are doing it was an experiment

uh I think that was worthwhile to do it

and I have not heard of any other movie

director who would hypnotize his

[Music]

actors I never tell uh the actors in the

camera ah let's go on the set and let's

improvise something when we improvise uh

something it is a clear set clear

spaces uh a certain mood and there's a

scene which I'd like to show you Claus

kinsky as a vampire in no verat in Bruno

guns as a visitor who wants uh uh to

offer a house in Del in in vismar to the

to the vampire

now Bruno gun cuts his finger and now

watch the interaction and the timing I

said to K Claus kinsky timing is yours

anything you need to do improvise it uh

the knife is old this drop of blood is

something that you need to to suck from

the

thumb it's your survival and now do

whatever you have to do and just watch

him is really wonderful it it's hardly

worth mentioning just a little

cut and now watch how all of a sudden

how he finds his timing you know watch

him it's coming all from inside it's

only for the

[Music]

best and they both knew it would only

shoot it once and I would shoot it with

one handheld

camera and I would never cut it it's not

going to be cut they knew

this both RIS kinsky and and Nicholas

Cage were the only two actors to whom I

some times said we have shot it four

times two of the takes are really very

very good take number four was almost

perfect

however I have the feeling I we should

take yet another uh one

because I feel there's even more in this

scene what exactly I do not know and I

would say to kinsky

clous we shoot it one more time in this

time you are going to turn the hog

loose same to Nicholas Cage turn the pig

or turn the hog loose I like to work

with actors who have the same

sensibility who who would follow me who

would say uh even though we both of us

cannot articulate what more is in the

scene let's give it a try let's go

completely out of all our experiences

let's turn the walk

loose so it happens in those other great

rewarding moments uh that I have with

actors you have to understand how to how

to

maneuver uh people into doing certain

things and being really good you have to

encourage them to be at their best you

have to give them safety security they

have to know you you watch them with

great sympathy and you you know they are

good even though they fail to do it

right first take second take third take

you tell doesn't matter it doesn't

matter it doesn't matter I know there's

something big in this moment and you

deliver it and they do it they do it

There's one thing that really drew my

attention to sound. It was the very very

first film I made and we were a group of

eight or 10 uh young men

and we said we help each other when you

are doing your film. I I help you with

uh driving the car and I help you with

editing or or so we change things. Of

these 10 or eight eight films, only

three films were actually finished. Two

of these finished films were never shown

in public because I had sound problems.

Sound. And it occurred to me uh this is

important. And sometimes when I when I

watch a film

in the first minute, you know, there's

very very great attention and detail

about sound and you know, you better

watch that one. very often when um when

I'm rehearsing with actors or when I'm

filming with them, sometimes I don't

even look at them because I just listen

and I know this is great now just

listening and of course it doesn't have

to do with sound recording. Uh but uh

sometimes I take more time in organizing

sound than organizing camera and lights.

I had to learn it because of necessity

because there was no money to uh have

anyone paid for doing the sound or so.

You can easily do it because equipment

today is not very expensive. You see,

you can have a fairly small sound

recording device and uh you you just

have to get a good microphone and and

operate with it and listen listen what

does it do when you move it around and

you listen to ambiances.

spend uh spend a whole night out in a

forest and listen to the sounds and

record the moments that are really

wonderful and and listen to how the

birds wake up in the morning and and you

start to feel a day coming. It is good

that you as a filmmaker, as a director

know how to handle sound. You should

know it and you should test mics and you

should you should hear what's going on.

One film where sound was particularly

complicated and problematic was a very

early controversial film of mine. Even

dwarves started small. It was a cast all

cast of uh of little people and of

course their voices are in much higher

pitch than ours. You cannot dub them.

You cannot post sync them. So the direct

sound had to be perfect or at least

presentably in a theater.

Yeah. Yeah.

Hey.

On this island in the Canary Islands,

Lanserote,

all lava fields, there was constant day

and night stiff gales and wind. And of

course, a microphone picks it up and uh

creates problems. the mics rumble and

and I believe I spent more time

organizing and setting up the sound than

setting up the camera and looking at

locations recently in Bolivia.

I shot at a old hienda which was built

in the uh 1560s or so and it was a

wonderful location and I was there with

a cinematographer first alone then with

a cinematographer

and I sat and they all loved it and I

said but there is a problem there is a

problem and they said what what what the

problem was sound they had uh wooden

floors very ancient wooden floors he

couldn't didn't rip them out or do

anything. And they were creaking. Every

step was creek creek creek. Even if and

I said, "Let's put carpets on it. Let's

cover it. Let's do we uh soaked the

floor for days and days so that the wood

would expand and the creek uh would

would diminish and it didn't." And that

was the problem was sound. And you have

to to understand it right away. This

will cause delays. This will cause um

more post-p production like uh post uh

sinking

um

some of the dialogue. I knew it would

come at me, but I knew it from the first

moment on.

In my film, Signs of Life

was how the wind moves. This image was

the central metaphor.

I actually added a very strange sound

which was a

audience applauding after a big concert

and I distorted it uh in a way that it

sounds like clapping of wood and I put

on a a strange sound

uh of wires electrical uh telephone

wires in the wind. So, it's a high

stylization and it's

seemingly endless.

Listening of course uh

in a way also has to do with uh

materials that you have that you stumble

across either music or you stumble

across

uh a piece of sound that is so beautiful

that you want to use it in the film.

I remember I recall um the film in

Antarctica.

Uh there was a wonderful sound designer

who had um submerged microphones

uh under the ice in Antarctica into the

ocean and he had recorded uh Vedell

seals, calls of Vell seals and they

really sound like uh out of space or

like they sound a little bit like Pink

Floyd or completely wonderful and I

wanted to have it hurt in the film and I

organized

scientists who are studying the Vel seal

and I organized please listen to me at

the ice of course we heard nothing and

and I I had them uh three of them

uh on the ground and they are listening

and and the pose they are taking to to

listen and there was a young woman a

scientist from Germany and I said can

you have your can you have your here on

the ice itself. And she said, "Yeah, but

it's very, very cold. It's very cold." I

said, "Please stay on. Stay on." And I

filmed. And I said, "Uh, now in the

background, uh, uh, the man was was just

somehow not not still enough. Can I do

it again? And can you stay there?" And I

filmed it a second time. And uh when we

were done filming after five or six

minutes, uh the uh scientist, the lady

couldn't

raise her head anymore because her ear

was frozen to the ice. So uh I felt

really bad, but I I captured a wonderful

moment.

And uh just for the sake of some

extraordinary sound, I would stage an

entire scene.

Heat.

Heat.

The entire question about music I cannot

really describe. It's beyond

verbalization.

You have to watch and you have to watch

other great ones. Sati Shhatra the uh

filmmaker from India from Bengal

filmmaker

who made a film a wonderful film called

the music room. Uh I think Yal Zagar in

u in Hindi. Uh but watch films and look

at it. Uh Pollanski is very good with

music. The Tavani brothers in Italy

they're great with music. You have to

watch Padre Patron. how they deal with

music is just wonderful.

Sometimes I do have the music before I

even start uh filming. Uh Dancing

Chicken, Sonny Terry, Old Lost John, I

think uh or the uh end of the film um uh

bells from the te deep this deep

resonant voice. And I knew I would have

it at the end. And the ice skaters had

to be majestic.

May peace and happiness and love be with

you. Amen. Amen.

fores

uses

sweaty creepy sweat.

Amen.

Even

Amen.

I try to find the mood in the music but

I'm very very fast in in selecting music

uh from the compositions and very often

like an striigger uh in my last films I

say here I need something very specific

there I need something very specific

give me a bucket of of music pieces that

have this kind of mood and and he

delivers me a bucket with a dozen uh

variations of things and and I find out

very quickly that's the one that fits.

Normally I do not have a composer who

does from minute 20 minutes and 40

seconds to minute 22

and 11 seconds. It's not this exactly

timed sort of things. I normally ask for

something which carries a mood, which

carries a dynamic, which carries uh

something bigger than what you see in on

the screen right away. It enhances

certain things. Uh, I would show them uh

uh key footage in the film like desert

footage from for Queen of the Desert or

Fat Marana some uh basic elements uh of

miragages that I shot or I would show um

some key normally it's the key things

that I show and I say I need here to

create space with music and I need here

something which is very unobtrusive and

somehow seeps into your into your mind

and solidifies it in your memory. let's

say aer the opening music it's some sort

of a choirs that were uh voices in loops

and it was played like like on a piano

on a a predecessor of of today's uh

digital sort of choirs and I said to

Florian Fri who is uh has been very dear

to me as a composer and a collaborator I

said to him uh when he brought me some

first compos positions. I said, "No, no,

no. Doesn't sound right. It's too much

uh average uh music like in a movie. I

need something that has great human

pathos in it. Something that is

grandiose. You have a landscape. Fill

it. Create space.

And what is also remarkable is how music

all of a sudden transforms

the mountain into a lo location of of

great human pos.

On Christmas day of the year 1560, we

crossed the last pass of the Andes.

Below us, for the first time, we can see

the jungle. In the morning, I read mass

and then we descended through the

clouds.

I would always uh be in the studio with

the musicians and anstries or Richard

Thompson uh who were recording in the

studios. I asked him take your shoes

off, be barefoot. This is the law of the

land. Step down, step your set your foot

down, plant it, feel the ground. That's

how the music has to be. And

I have worked with um Sardinian uh

singers who were wonderful, very

ancient, almost prehistoric

sounding voices.

I

do.

For some of the recordings, I

immediately stopped them after 10

seconds because it had too much motoric

drive, but I needed it for the floating

of an airship or for floating inside of

a space capsule. And I just stepped in

front of them, in the middle of them,

and I made this kind of floating

movement to them. And they noded, and

they found the right pace for it.

I

still

love

you.

Hey

mother.

Hey

in White Diamond of course has very

remarkable music and very beautifully

placed it. We were actually looking out

for a white a real white diamond because

the natives around would call the

airship the white diamond and there was

illegal diamond mining by Brazilians.

This is all illegal inside of uh Gana

and very very dangerous men. They were

all armed and when we approached with a

camera there was one guy where we didn't

know would he open fire or not. So I

asked for their boss that's the boss

here and I bamboozled him out of his

wits and I said we are after not after

what you are doing. I want to see a

white diamond. Do you have one? and uh

he showed me a white diamond and I told

him, "Your face is not going to be in

there." Of course, it's gotten in there.

And uh he felt somehow comfortable after

some time of filming with him. And now

watch this here. He's he's insecure. And

now he looks at the camera and that's

where the music starts.

And and it's a very very strange sort of

of a pop sort of thing. I think South

Africans sang this and my sound man Eric

Spitzer com did it and composed it and

did it with Africans. It had to be

something with an enormous drive and an

enormous dynamic in it and and also the

the kind of stupidity of the of the

lyrics.

this young man who is dancing on the

cliff. He said he was dancing better

than Michael Jackson. And I said to him,

you do it for me. You better do it for

me and you will do it on this uh cliff

out there.

the way the music is placed uh is is

really important and you have to develop

uh an understanding where do you do it

and in this case it's a it's this

insecure gangster who all of a sudden

looks at you or I have a scene where

somebody walks into a big hall and comes

towards the camera and I don't start the

music right away when he enters the

room. I let him walk three, four, five

steps and as if he was pulling the music

with him. Uh it starts to blossom and um

it's very mysterious how it functions

and not easy to explain. So

I have to to leave it up to your sense

of uh of music, your sense of

storytelling with music. I only know

it's a very very important part and in

my films a particularly important

It happens quite often that uh you come

back with the impression from shooting,

oh this was a great moment and so but in

context in editing it doesn't really

work out. It doesn't fit. So you have to

uh

be careful that you do not enforce your

will and your structure on your

material. It has happened to some films

where you can tell the the footage was

squeezed into a form and into a flow of

narration that was not within the nature

of the footage. You sense it as an as an

audience. And uh what I'm doing is uh

quite often I consider my footage as if

I found it some somewhere somebody made

it. So let's be curious what's there?

What does a material tell you? What does

it have to offer? And all of a sudden

you discover elements in the in the

footage that you would never have

discovered if you had had a very strong

will to enforce upon the upon the

footage.

What I do prepare during shooting is uh

let's say creating long-term over an

full hour of film a climate which makes

a seemingly unobtrusive shot into

something grandiose

land of silence and darkness. If you see

the scene at the end with a deaf and

blind man who touches and feels the

branches of a tree and by itself it is

insignificant but the film sensitizes

you more than an hour, an hour and a

half almost until you are there. Or for

example in Agaria the wrath of god

throughout the film you see the uh army

or the troop of Spanish concistadors and

they have a clear goal. They move from

left to right when they are floating

in in the water on the raft somehow

imperceptively bit by bit very carefully

planned uh we lose orientation because

they are losing orientation. Listen,

I don't know.

Heat. Heat.

Heat. Heat.

And at the end of the film and we showed

the clip, uh, it seems to go in circles.

In fact, the camera is circling around

it. It's like a vicious circle which is

going into infinity and having a

movement throughout a movie very very

elaborately planned until it ends in an

in an infinite circle.

Uh that's something which was

anticipated for for editing.

The 22nd of February.

Most of the men are so weak and sick

with fever that they cannot even stand.

The soldierto Gonzalez has drunk my ink

thinking it was medicine.

I cannot write anymore.

We are drifting in circles. Heat. Heat.

Heat.

Heat.

When we watch the footage, I write uh

log books and I love this very solid

paper like doing acquirals for for

artists and I write down what I see and

I give it some sort of time code and

when I come across something very very

strong I give it one exclamation mark.

Sometimes you find two exclamation marks

and sometimes you find three of them.

And in thus in these cases I know this

is footage. It is so it is so intense.

It is so strong. If I do not use this in

the film I have lived in vain. So, and

uh I actually uh write down quite quite

a bit. You can see how much there is

written down and how far I follow the

footage of everyone

and sometimes I start to write

commentary

which I do later in editing. But um

because I write it down in longhand, I

can memorize footage for a very very

long time or not very long time but a

lot of footage up to 30 40 hours I know

by heart like learning a poem by heart.

Uh, and I could say to the editor, let's

not go into take one and take two

because uh in both cases there's a

dialogue mistake or in in this there's

something wrong. Let's only go for the

three exclamation marks and um I keep

writing riding riding riding and uh

that's the only time I I look at the

footage. when you watch your footage for

the first time and probably for the last

time for much of it uh you are very very

attentive uh so you cannot do it too

long I do it maybe 6 hours maximum 7

hours and you exhaust yourself and you

do not store anything in your memory

anymore so depending on how much footage

you have and I shoot very small amounts

of footage but sometimes I end up for a

big feature film with let's say 40 hours

of footage. Um,

in this case, it will take me, let's

say, a week to go through the entire

thing. And I do that very systematically

and I do not start to edit until I've

seen it all. It is a process that you uh

cannot learn at once. I just would

advise keep open and try to find out

what did this strange guy deliver here

into my editing room and forget that the

strange guy was yourself.

It depends on how much footage you have,

but uh I have never edited a film all on

my own. Uh because I always found it

very right and very valuable to have a

second set of eyes and a second opinion

or a separate opinion. You see, I'm not

working with uh with yesmen.

Nobody who works with me is a yesmen.

And um so uh it's healthy to look at it

uh uh together with someone else. We

start actually working from the

beginning to the end. We say how should

we begin it and what should come next?

And now we have a long dialogue

sequence. We need some landscape. What

do we do now? We need a moment for

music. We need a moment for uh sitting

back in contemplation for the audience.

So we plow through it from the beginning

like through a big pile of of material

like like the mouse drilling a hole

through it and at the other end we come

out and that's basically the film. I

hardly ever go back into the footage

that I didn't consider as being

worthwhile to end up in the film. I do

it sometimes

and sometimes it made uh my editors

nervous that I was so dismissive of

things. I throw things away at once and

you have to be you have to be ruthless

ruthless with your own material because

otherwise you end up with a with a 9 and

1/2 hour film after let's say half a

year of uh a film being out in theaters

I would throw out all the out takes

forever they would be gone and uh my

argument is that a a carpenter does not

sit on his shavings either. So you just

uh plow through it and you throw away

and forever you have to take strong

decisions. And sometimes um I had to

throw out some of the best I've shot in

the Enigma of Kasparous. There was a

six-minute sequence that was incredibly

strong, but it took attention away from

the leading character. We were so much

involved with him and then all of a

sudden there's a detour and it took you

20 minutes as an audience to step back

into the story and into the character.

So I decided out throw it out and it was

thrown out. So uh it can be it can be

quite painful but you have to learn it.

How can you learn to stay away from

endless uh endless tweaking, endless

fiddling? You just have to have the

nerve. It's a profession. You see, it's

not uh

it's not uh raising a pet. Uh it's not

an animal. It's not a pet. It's a

narrative form of uh somehow which will

show up at the end on the screen.

And uh

you have to have the nerve just be

professional

and and you better deliver and deliver

soon.

Heart of glass which was under hypnosis.

All actors under hypnosis very slow pace

because of that they move all like

movement underwater and and they they

speak slowly

and I showed it to an American

distributor and they immediately

rejected the film. They said ah this is

too slow and the film is going to go

fast. They said to me like this. So I

said fine, yes, but I showed it in

Scandinavia in Norway. Of all my films,

I showed 25 films in Norway. And among

these films was Heart of Glass, the

slowest of the slow, the strangest of

the strange. And the Norwegians were

bonkers over it. They went bonkers. That

was the film of films for them in the

the pace of the film. So there's no

common

there's no common denominator worldwide

how for example uh pace of a film should

go. It changes uh uh the same film is a

different film if you show it in Algeria

or in Brazil or in Russia all of a

sudden the film changes with the

audience. But that's a power of cinema

that it completes complements itself

with an audience. Nobody can really

calculate that. Otherwise, uh studios

wouldn't make such massive mistakes and

wouldn't create such massive flops in

between. And they do a very very very

precise market research, what age group,

what kind of subject, what kind of

music. So there's there's a a whole

science about it. And yet they uh have

gigantic flops. If you start to do that,

you you lose yourself in the labyrinth

of mostly labyrinth of stupidity.

When I show a edited film for the first

time, uh I would invite let's say three

four people but they are not trusted

confidants. You see uh you would get the

yeses and you will get the applause. But

some people who uh would not really find

it wonderful everything that you have

done. My older brother who is the boss

in the family he says ah you have done

this kind of this kind of crap again and

you're just a movie maker and and so

it's all my feet are getting numb and I

see the first two minutes only. This

kind of echo for me has been of greater

value than um let's say uh the echo from

a from a larger test audience.

What is good about a larger test

audience is

things for example humor. I do believe

that there's a lot of humor in my films

and it it seeps through when you have

let's say two three 400 people in an

audience and you hear the ripples from

behind of laughter and and how it

catches on. My feeling has always been

that final cut quite often doesn't

belong to the director. It doesn't

belong to the financiers. It doesn't

belong to the uh production company or

the uh network, TV network.

It ultimately belongs to the audience.

And you see it in test screenings. Uh

all of a sudden, everybody finds your

ending way, way way, way too long and

you better get back into editing and

shorten it. And it happens. You see, uh,

for example, Steven Spielberg, who

always has Final Cut because he's so

successful. He goes into a test

screening and people find his ending way

too long. You know what? 30 minutes

later, he's back in editing and he trims

it down. However, sometimes you have to

ignore it and they have to be

accustomed. They have to get acquainted

to your editing.

And uh sometimes you just hold a shot

way belong what normally anyone else

would do and it sinks in that there's

something special about the length of a

shot.

You have to to absorb things, right? And

you have to take a fresh eye on things.

And of course, since I can rely on

what I have marked down and for example

uh cave of forgotten dreams, there's an

end to it. Maybe we can show it. We've

discovered by coincidence albino

crocodiles. And I said, "This must be in

the film. It has to do with

perspectives, with perception. We have

to have it." And uh uh we filmed it

without knowing exactly what how it was

going to be connected to the film.

Crocodiles have been introduced into

this brooding jungle and warmed by water

to cool the reactor. Man, do they

thrive.

I invented a pretext. This crocodile

tourist place is heated up with hot

water which had cooled a nuclear plant

nearby only half a mile away. There's a

nuclear plant. They brought in three 400

crocodiles. And all of a sudden I see

two small albino crocodiles. In fact,

they are not even crocodiles.

And you see how they split up in

doppelgangers because it's the same uh

but with a water line and the refraction

of light is just totally strange and

beautiful. And Peter Cyclinger filmed it

in a way that is just remarkable. And

here I write three exclamation marks.

Minute 13 for 51. Underwater meeting as

if in mirror.

1401 one exclamation mark left one dives

away. Camera follows and it's great and

un incredible until minute 1537.

Nothing is real. Nothing is certain.

It is hard to decide whether or not

these creatures here are dividing into

their own doppelgangers.

And do they really meet or is it just

their own imaginary mirror reflection?

And we just take this chunk and that

makes a wonderful end of the film. Are

we today possibly the crocodiles who

look back into an abyss of time when we

see the paintings of Shvi cave?

Sometimes I keep saying films are

stumbling into me. Sometimes they are

like uh home invaders. There's something

in the kitchen. I've used this metaphor

quite a few times. You wake up in the

middle of the night and you hear

something starring and in your kitchen

you see five burglars,

uninvited guests. How they crawled in,

you don't know. Through the window,

through the door, through the basement,

you just don't know. But one of them

comes swinging wildly at you, so you

better deal with that one first.

Now, um, let's get serious.

Choice of subjects.

How do I choose subjects for a film?

I can give you a few examples. Uh, my

first feature film that I made uh was

Science of Life. What happened was that

um as a 15 16 year old I traveled to

Greece in order to uh look into the

life's work of my grandfather who was an

archaeologist. I arrived in the

mountains to some sort of a ledge in the

territo in the terrain and I look down

and what I see is indelible in my mind.

There's a valley completely flat and in

this valley there were 10,000 windmills.

I didn't know it existed but actually it

was called the valley of 10,000

windmills. It was like um a field of

flowers completely filled with flowers

from horizon to horizon and all the

flowers spinning with a strange creaking

sound.

The moment I saw it, I knew uh this

cannot be. I must be insane. It became

the central image in my first long

feature film. A German wounded soldier

who is put onto a fortress.

He comes across these windmills and

literally becomes insane. Lays siege uh

on friend and enemy and manages to burn

a a chair and to kill a donkey and he's

actually captured by his own men. This

image was something I I encountered

where I knew immediately this was big.

This was so big that it had to become um

a center of a story. I didn't have the

story yet, but it came later. It fell in

place very easily, but it had nothing

originally, nothing to do with uh

windmills. But in fact, u it was

something physical, something where I I

stumbled, literally stumbled into

something.

What helps uh is uh traveling on foot

for example, you will experience the

world and stories stumble into you all

the time. The world I say is a dictim.

The world reveals itself to those who

travel on foot.

Grizzly Man is also a good example. um a

producer

Eric Nelson uh visited him uh in his

office in his workplace in the valley

and I was showed around and at the end I

sat down with him at his table, lots of

things on this table and at the end when

I took off I was searching for my car

keys. I was standing and it was not in

my pocket. And I had misplaced it

somewhere on the table.

And I was not looking for a movie. I was

looking for my car keys. I swear to God.

And he thought I spotted something and

shaves an article across to me and says,

"Read this. We are doing a very

interesting project."

And I went home, read it, and was right

back at the office. And I I knew it was

so big. There was something so big about

it. I had to do it. And I asked him I

asked him and it was I had the courage

to ask who is directing the film and he

said I'm kind of directing it but I

heard it right kind of directing it. So

I had the feeling he didn't know exactly

how to handle it and I pumped my hand

towards him and I said now I will direct

this film with my worst Bavarian accent

and I ended up making the film.

But I should uh mention

a very moment, a strange moment

where I actually discover in a

documentary

uh a leading character.

It's about uh the aeronautical engineer

Graham Darington who has built an

airship in the jungle. He puts it

together and he's a protagonist in the

film and I discover one of his

Rustafarian local guys and he slips into

the role more and more of the

protagonist

here in the foreground who holds the

rope is Walter Saka one of my most

trusted collaborators and I can show you

the moment I literally discover Mark

Anthony Yak here in this chair I

discover this man and I said to the

cinema cinematographer. Move, move,

move, move, move. That guy interests me.

And I go there and he starts talking.

That is a beautiful view. It has the

sunset and there is the balloon just

floating around aimlessly.

Yeah, it's beautiful.

Yeah, it's just fantastic.

He may have been stoned during this

take but

didn't matter. He had a serenity and

something so extraordinary about him

that I

I decided I had to do much more about

him.

This this is good.

This is real good.

There is this big white diamond just

floating

around in the sunrise.

It's good.

Yeah. I dedicate this to my mom

somewhere in Spain on Lagua. I think it

is.

Yeah, this is beautiful.

Mrs. Enid Abbott. Good morning to you.

What a wonderful moment to discover a a

protagonist in the middle of of filming.

It's one of the discoveries you make

when you're a filmmaker and you keep

yourself open to to the exceptional, to

those things that you hadn't planned.

And I saw a great beauty in in this

character and I introduce him more and

more into the film. in a case like Mark

Anthony Yap how I discover him of course

there is a personal fascination but

that's not everything there's a bigger

thing beyond that and that's a screen on

which he will be shown and it's

something much more universal you're

working for audiences you are not

working for your own fascinations

otherwise uh uh the wife uh

who is married to me whom I love would

be in every of my films as a

protagonist. No, she is not. There's a

clear borderline. It's something

universal. It's something uh that you

have to understand. You always work for

audiences. You never work for yourself.

It's a screen. It's a theater. It's a

magic of a screen and the audience is uh

corresponding with a

A very good example

about the genesis of a film would be

Fitz Caraldo.

It's a film about an Irish man,

Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald. Nobody can

pronounce his name in the Amazon and he

uh wants to bring great opera into the

jungle and he moves a ship over a

mountain. It started out with me looking

for rugged coastlines for a completely

different film. First place I ended up

was in Britany um northwestern corner of

uh France and arrive at darkness at the

place Carnak and Karnak I didn't know

that it existed is famous for its

Neolithic maners that means slabs of

stone uh erected in parallel lines 4,000

of them up the hill down the hill it's

just unbelievable you cannot believe

your eyes in the brochure it uh The

writer claimed that these uh slabs of

rocks could not have been erected by

stone age men uh five six 7,000 years

back that they must have been planted by

alien astronauts. And I said to myself,

what how incipit how grotesque. Of

course it was stone age men and of

course there were no alien astronauts

ever visiting us. So I took a vow. I

said, I'm not going to leave until I

know how as Neolithic man I would uh

move a slab of of stone, slab of rock uh

over let's say 2 miles or 2 kilometers

of distance and how I would put it

upright and then I thought how would I

move this gigantic slab of rock either

on on very big hardened oak logs

uh hardened in fire uh And I would use

ropes. Of course, in Neolithic time we

you can assume they had ropes. And I

would build turn styles where people

would walk around in circles and coil

the rope up. And this is a real strong

machine in a way. So that was one

element. Later in the film, you see

exactly how I used it to move a 300

something ton ship over over a mountain.

The second element was a friend of mine

visited me in Munich and he said uh Wana

you have to come you have to come back

to Peru to the jung I had done ai there

before and uh everybody loves you there

and come back come back and I said I

would come back right away if

um I had a story and he said I came to

you because I have a story it's about a

rubber baron whose name is Fitz Kaggal

Again,

people couldn't pronounce his name. And

he told me a completely boring story

about a rubber baron who was very rich

and had a private army of 3,500 and at

the end uh drowned in a boat accident.

And I said, "But that's not a story for

me. It's boring. It doesn't make sense."

So, it was disappointing. And when he

walked out, he stopped in the door and

turned around and he said, "Whoa,

there's one thing I have forgotten a

detail. Once this guy disassembled a

huge steamboat

uh into hundreds of pieces and moved it

across an istmas, a flat ismas from one

river system to another inaccessible

river system." And I said, "That's my

movie.

these uh

great

uh incredible visions sometimes have to

take root inside of you and the story

has to come to you. It uh is material

that uh is accumulating and very often

that makes you a storyteller. uh these

elements are in a in a way combining

itself and they bring about a story.

A good uh example would be for example

Strochek

with Bruno S.

He is uh actually in a restaurant or

fast food restaurant in Cherokee, North

Carolina.

And what he does now, he has a gun and a

frozen turkey. At the end of the film,

disappointed about America and thinking

that the bank cheated him, he commits a

bank robbery with an old crooked old

man. But since the bank is closed for

lunch, they rob uh the barber store next

to it and they flee and he gets away $32

and he leaves

the car now behind and it's circling.

And this is a very early thing. When I

was uh 16, 17, I worked at the October

Fest. At that time, part of this big

area was a parking lot. And I dealt with

3,000 drunk drivers at night and letting

them out. Sometimes I would confiscate

the keys and carry the driver out of the

car and call an ambulance. And I was at

the end sitting around with a dozen

empty cars and keys. And I would have

them circling around uh let's say uh

this empty vast parking lot and that's a

motive which appears here and another

element which came into it. I was in the

United States. I stopped in uh North

Carolina.

Um and there was this amusement park of

Cherokee uh native Indians and there

were dancing chicken

uh and it was winter and nobody watched

them and nothing was going on and I was

completely intrigued.

The dancing chicken here they come. I

mean, it's just you have to toss in a

quarter

and some sort of very strange gaudy

music starts playing. And now they do

the bar and shuffle dance is just

completely wild.

And you see they do it normally only

four or five seconds, but here they do

it much longer. the piano playing

chicken.

It's a completely demented end,

completely

surreal.

The crew actually hated this. They

thought it was stupid. So sometimes the

most loyal crews have to be convinced

this has to be in the film. I said,

"Don't you see it? This is so big.

Nobody will ever forget this." Now he

switches on electricity.

and

some sort of a ski lift starts to to

move.

And the ski lifts all have some sort of

a caption, some sort of written text on

the back. And I saw one which had as a

text, is this really me? And I said,

let's bring it here and Bruno, you have

to sit in this.

You will see now in a moment here. Is

this really me? You see, you have to

discover these things while you are

there. It's not that I placed it there.

It was there.

And uh

later on you hear a shot. You assume

that he has shot himself. But it's not

important if you know that or not.

And it's an end of a film that I really

love more than much of endings that I

have done in my life.

Woo!

Woo!

Woo!

Heat. Heat.

Woo!

I'm

a little uncomfortable with the term

interview because I'm not a journalist.

I do have conversations and normally

I'm not very well prepared. very often.

Of course, I know a lot of the

background of a person or in death row I

know the entire

um first reports of homicide detectives,

a case file, sometimes thousand pages,

but nothing that really uh

pertains to what I'm going to speak now

on on camera. I do not have a

questionnaire. I do not have a piece of

paper with a catalog of questions. I

have to try to get uh into a deeper

dialogue very very quickly early on and

normally I do not speak uh to the

persons before so that things be be

still remain fresh. I do not have

anything like a

basic standard question that brings me

to the essence of a person. I don't have

it

because you have to somehow uh be aware

that every person has his or her own

structure and her own value system and

her own vision.

So you better explore what's coming at

you and you have to react very quickly.

I try to

have my uh people whom whom I'm covering

in the film uh not uh doing a sort of

statement for a camera and in uh Grizzly

Man for example the coroner who speaks

very eloquently and really in a very

very strange intense way. I had him on

camera Dr. Felico in uh in Alaska in

Anchorage and he in front of the camera

starts to speak about the death and his

findings as a coroner. And he and I

stopped it within 30 seconds and I said

to him, uh, you are not here in front of

a jury. We are not in a courtroom.

You're not the expert witness. You know

what? You studied this case. You had the

remains of Timothy Treadwell and Amy

Huginard on your table. You had them.

And this was something you had to deal

with as a person. So I want to see a

human being that speaks to me.

And I said, "Did you understand that?"

And he said, "Yes, Warner, I know. I

think I know." And I said, "Let's roll

it one more time." And he goes on camera

and he's wonderful.

In the case of Timothy and Amy, what I

had were body parts, just the visual

input of seeing a detached human being

before my eyes makes my heart race,

makes the hair stand up on the back of

my head, particularly in combination

with the contents of a tape, an audio

tape, that is the sound portion of a

video tape. And when I find out from

other investigators that the shoes

neatly placed at the entrance to a tent

and the cap left on a camera so that the

visual part could not be recorded. Yet

the tape is running so that we can hear

the sounds of Amy screaming and the

sounds of Timothy moaning

tells me that this event occurred very

very quickly, suddenly and unexpectedly.

I clearly can hear her screaming, "Stop

and go away."

Maybe run away. There's a lot of

background noise. Timothy is moaning.

And I hear Amy beating on the top of

this bear's head with a frying pan. And

Timothy is saying, "Run away. Let go.

Run away. Run away, Amy. Run away."

Amy had a great deal of conviction. She

had a great deal of conviction in this

relationship. We know that although in

the past she was more standoffish. She

didn't get as close to the bear as

Timothy did. She was more cautious.

However, I know that at the moment of

death, when one is is is being tried to

the maximum of one's ability to be

faithful,

to stick to a situation, to be loyal, if

one can say that, to Timothy, she stayed

there and she fought with Timothy. She

did not run away.

I try to limit the conversations

to under one hour

and that's normally all I I see and hear

from a person because you do not stay

much in contact

uh

with a subject uh on camera. Of course

there there are other films like little

deer needs to fly. I spend much time

with him. I travel with him to Thailand.

I travel with him back to Germany where

he grew up. So you spend something like

four or five weeks with uh uh your

central figure in the film or other

films uh Graham Dorington the aeronautic

engineer. Yes, I travel with him to Gana

into the rainforest and of course we eat

together and we talk about all sorts of

things. We talk about women. We talk

about food. We talk about uh whatever

his dreams and all of this of course is

not in the film. But the key things I

try to keep untouched until I really

film. And quite often I see that uh all

of a sudden my soundman sits in the

kitchen and starts talking about uh his

case or so and I say no no separate

separate. I uh you do not have to feel

like you said it before. Let's just

connect when we are on camera.

And sometimes of course uh I would

repeat things. I would ask uh can you

say but much much shorter. The key to

what you said is only that one element.

Please focus on that. I had cases where

the camera was already set up and uh the

person would walk uh

walk in and I would say, "Hello, I'm the

one who got you into this mess. My name

is Van Herzog." And so um is it all

right that you are sitting here and you

have uh this and that behind you. Is it

okay for you? Uh and if they say yes, I

say let's go right into it. you are in a

situation where you have to talk to me

and I'm next to the camera. Don't speak

to the lens itself. Don't That's very

strange and and uh not the normal thing.

It's like death staring at you when you

look at a camera. It's kind of scary

also. And I would have my face very

close next to to the lens of the camera,

never visible myself. And it's an

attitude of listening also. You see this

kind of enormous amount of of interest.

You sit there and and and you look at

the person and you nod and you want to

your face your face has to show oh yeah

I want to hear it all and and the kind

of sympathy wonderful ah yeah and and

tell me more so it's I don't have to say

it has to come on the face the most

ingenious of anyone whom I know uh in

doing this is Errol Morris the way he's

next to a camera is just fantastic.

The wild blue yonder, I had footage from

1989 with astronauts. 18 years later,

they have aged meanwhile. Uh, I tried to

assemble them all together and I got

them all together in Houston at Johnson

uh, Space Center

and I had to ask him, please, can you

act in my film as if you had spent 850

years in in high velocities, but on our

planet you're only 18 years older. And I

had some real quest and some

embarrassing sort of of request for

them. And uh I was led in and they were

sitting in a semicircle and my heart

sank. I had no idea what do what do I

tell them? How do I start? And I looked

around and I said, "My name is Van

Herzog." And I looked at faces and I

spotted one and I said, "You know, I

grew up in u in the mountains in

Bavaria. And as a as a little kid, I

earned my first bucks by looking after

cows." And I learned how to milk cows

with my own hands. And since then I have

an eye. I know who can milk a cow with

his own hands. And I said, "You, sir."

And it was actually the pilot of the

spacecraft who had uh done test flights

in 50 different jetplanes, who had been

on a submarine. and I point at him and

he screams in laughter and slaps his

thighs and makes his move and says,

"Yes, I I know how to milk a cow." So,

uh, but imagine I had guessed wrong.

What a disaster that would have been and

what I I would have sunk into the

ground. So, you have to have the courage

sometimes to to do the most unexpected

and to to show them that you understand

something about them.

Sometimes you have to crack a human

being open the beginning of uh into the

abyss uh uh the chaplain of the death

chamber. I knew he he had to be in

Huntsville in Texas which has a death

chamber.

And he comes in his car. I had never met

him before in my life like all the other

people in the film. I only met in front

when they arrived on the set. He arrives

and and he's in a hurry and he says,

"Quick, quick, quick. Uh, I have to be

in the death house in 40 minutes." I

said, "In 40 minutes? Yes, I have to be

there." So, it was uh I was wrong with

my timeline.

And uh he starts I barely identified

myself as a director.

uh and we start a conversation and he

speaks like a phony TV preacher about

the beauty of God's creation and that

there was forgiveness and redemption for

everyone for every soul and and I I

didn't know what to do. and he speaks

about the beauty of the golf course

where he's alone on his golf cart and

and he sees some squirrels and a deer

looking at him and a horse sometimes and

he he acknowledges the greatness of

God's creation and I interrupt him and I

ask him a question you cannot learn in

film school or anywhere. I ask him,

"Tell me about an encounter with a

squirrel."

And

for a moment, uh, he accepts the

question and and he starts to unravel

because what happened is that he, uh,

put the brakes on his golf cart and

stopped in front of two squirrels. He

could have run them over. Okay. Okay,

fine. That's nothing particular but it

reminds him of now in a few minutes he

has to be in the death house and he will

touch the the man who is going to be put

to death by lethal injection. He holds

he asks for permission holds the anchor

and is there for him and he says I

cannot stop what is going to happen now.

I cannot stop it. I wish and almost

starts to cry and all of a sudden he's

he's a human being cracked wide open.

Please describe an encounter with a

squirrel. An encounter with a squirrel.

I was driving the golf cart and I was on

the go on the cart path and I saw two

squirrels. Uh they were chasing each

other and as I was getting closer they

were running across the cart path and I

put on my brakes and they stopped in the

middle of the cart path and looked at me

and I said, "How about this? If I

wouldn't have stopped, I could have run

over one of these squirrels. Their life

would have ended." And that reminds me

the many people

that I have been with on their last

breath of life

and due to bad choices

and mistakes out of their life

they their life is taken away in the

moment.

So

life is precious whether it's a squirrel

or a human being.

So I will sometimes meditate on that

experience,

make a little noise and the squirrels

will take off and continue their life.

But I cannot do that

for someone on the gurnie.

I cannot stop the process

for them,

but I wish I could.

emotional attachment. That's also an a

very tricky question. emotional

attachment with your uh with the

subjects in your film in some

very deep moments, deeply emotional,

deeply disturbing.

Uh I do not break down. I know I am a

professional. I have to if I start to

cry now, I cannot

function anymore. I cannot ask a you

cannot ask a question sobbing from

behind the camera.

So it's an enormous

amount of discipline and you uh you

better uh have to remain professional.

We are professionals and the involvement

has to to be only to a certain degree. A

surgeon should not should not operate

his own child. That's uh but sometimes

you get across a situation where there's

somebody as if this was your own child

and you keep on filming.

It is professional discipline

and u

of course sometimes it it has happened

to me

uh that um

I was in fact crying tears coming down

but my voice still completely matterof

fact and firm.

I had a quite a few moments in

the white diamond.

Graham Dorington who had built a new

airship that we were in Gana.

he uh needed for me and I told him at

the beginning, I have to hear from you

the story 10 years back when your um

cameraman, the only person who had

manned the prototype, perished in a in

the most horri horrifying accident.

You have to tell me. He said, "Yes, I I

I'll do it." And then during shooting, I

said, "Tomorrow we have to do it. we are

only four or five days left here and the

weather is good and he and he would he

would not do it he would just refuse it

said no now it's too too difficult too

heavy for me and uh he was then next day

I said we are going to do it he couldn't

do it he was up all night uh pacing up

and down uh in in the jungle and talking

to himself and I I said to him Graham I

know uh we are not going to do it today

and I said but you know what tomorrow

we'll do it. And what is going to happen

is this. There will be only the camera

and only the sound and only me. No one

else and my young uh 12year-old son

because it's a story that's not for me

or or for the cinematographer. It's a

story for for the kids. It's a story for

those who will grow up uh and they will

carry your story to their children and

to their grandchildren and great

grandchildren.

And he said I think I have understood

you and I have this scene I think uh

where Graham Dorington finally tells a

story and it's very hard for him to tell

it. 11 years ago, Gita Plaga

died in Somatra in an accident in a

project where I was working with him.

We're using a a one-man airship, the

small airship to film the forest canopy.

I flew the airship first a few times and

then he flew it and it was going very

well, the project.

On the day of his accident, we woke up

and the atmosphere is very somber.

I said to him, I I don't need any

tearful uh account of all this, just

tell me how you experienced it. It in

all its harshness, in all its horror. We

took off. He took off in the morning a

little bit late. There were lots of

delays. He decided to mount the camera

on the front of the airship looking back

at him.

Took off a little bit late and there was

a slight wind, not much. It was very

calm. The airship flew up a river just

like this. Calmly disappeared over the

canopy.

It circled. We could see it in the

distance going across the canopy while

he was filming, but it started getting a

little bit higher than I expected. And

there seemed to be a problem.

Then we radioed him.

And you see, we we put him or I put him

at the bank of the river that ends up

further down in the waterfall. And I had

the feeling there had to be this flow of

things and I said those are the memories

who will flow

float past us. They will be taken away.

I will shoot it only once only one

single time and we'll do it right.

I was standing

at the base of the canopy and then I saw

something that I'll never forget. I saw

this man coming down, holding his head,

lying on his side, falling through the

air past me. It was like in slow motion.

I can still see that. Even though it

happened very rapidly, I could still see

it falling. And then I hear heard him

hit the ground with a thud.

The terrible thing is it was like meat

in a butcher shop slamming down on the

ground.

The ground was soft and pey and he he we

thought he was dead at first. He was

half buried in this pete.

He had lost an eye and so he looked a

bit of a mess and um one of the guys Rob

was really fantastic. People come into

owning the situations and um I was just

lost. I the first thing I said was just

Jesus Christ and I was just lost because

I didn't believe what had happened. But

Rob, he was like a brilliant nurse and

he went over to this guy and he and and

I and and we assumed he's dead. But as I

looked down at the detail, I realized

this is live alive because his other eye

opened

and then freedom was brilliant because

we just in lightning speed put together

a stretcher. We took off our shirts,

tied the stretcher and very carefully

lifted them onto the stretcher. We got

him across the river with two Indian

Indonesian porters and there was a mud

track on the far side of the bank. We

got him there, but when I got him to the

far side,

it was clear his breathing was getting

worse.

He had this sort of moaning sound, but

then he started sounding calmer. And I

said to him, the last thing I said to

him is that something's very I don't

know. I I just said, "You're looking

better, Da."

which of course he wasn't.

And uh we lifted him up on this mud

path, this very narrow ledge. And there

was a terrible moment at that point

where we actually felt we were going to

slip down the bank and his body would

fall into the river. And and the four of

us were concentrating hard on doing

this. And just as we reached the canopy

height, we heard him stop breathing. We

couldn't I couldn't look back because I

was at the front.

We got to the top of the road and uh I

looked at him and I've never seen a dead

body before in my life.

And I looked at his body and I realized

he was dead.

I washed I washed his blood in the river

from the cloth of my shirt

and I watched the blood go down in the

river. was the last

last I already saw him.

I had to have it in the film because it

was h on him and on the

idea and the dream of flying

uh like in an ancient Greek tragedy and

the punishment the punishment for for

doing so and some sort of redemption at

the end and uh this catastrophe where

this man who was quite close to him and

was a filmmaker for him when he died. Uh

that was a moment that has haunted his

life ever since. And now uh 10 12 years

later that I'm sitting with you, I know

that he's still haunted by what happened

there.

And

you cannot be mildmannered and pretend

this is not somehow the deep epicenter

of everything he's doing.

And a good example would be little diet

needs to fly. Uh the former uh pilot,

Navy pilot Da Dangler was shot down over

Laos. Had an ordeal of six months of

almost starving to death and was rescued

um when he was only

85 pounds. There was nothing left of him

and he was almost dead.

And a key scene in his uh ordeal is the

death of his friend with whom he

escaped, Dwayne Martin. And da tells the

story and he tells it in 35 minutes. I

mean uh I said to him, da uh nobody will

listen to that. And uh then he does it

in 30 seconds. Nothing left any at all.

There was a little detail which was

important in his account. They had found

a sole of a of a tennis shoe or

something um and had tied it with ratan

to the to the one bare

bare feet the four bare feet that they

had together and which was the worst

would would have this uh soul tied to

the foot. When Dwayne Martin was killed,

he actually rips off the sole of his

dying friend's foot.

And it's a very significant detail for

me. And and then I filmed it and he

forgot it. And I said, "Da, I have to do

it again. Please don't forget this

detail." Um, and then he he just told

it. So uh as as if he had spoken it or

had done it five times over already, he

actually had done it five times over. I

said to him, "Da, it's still not good."

I repeat it like with an actor. I said,

"Da, you have to deliver now. Focus.

Focus on the real important things. I do

not want uh to know about which tree you

were hiding and which uh rock was in the

river and you ducked behind. It is all

uninteresting. get me the essential

things. And I sat down with him. And I

have my hand on on his shoulder and I

sat down with him and I said, "Dida, uh,

you have to focus now. Focus and give me

the story. Imagine it had happened

yesterday. Just imagine it. Imagine it.

Imagine it. Imagine it." And then I

moved out and we we filmed.

But then we had to move on because we

were starving to death. In fact, we

couldn't even walk anymore. We were

crawling in lay on our knees down this

small little trail and all of a sudden

there was a small boy on our left. He

was carrying in a water container over

his shoulder and all of a sudden there

was all this commotion. People were

running all over each way. There was

noise. Dwayne and I right away we were

on our knees and we put our hands

together. We said hello Sabai. Dwayne

then start sitting back and started

getting up and all of a sudden I out of

corner of my eye saw son. I looked over

there. A villager was standing there. He

had a machete in his hand high above his

head. He just hesitated for a second.

Then he swung. He swung for me. I

ducked. It missed me by a few inches. He

hit Twain in the upper leg. The blade

was deeply buried in it. Dream screamed.

He reached down. He grabbed his leg

screaming. And with the next swipe,

Dwayne's head came off. Blood squirting

out. I start screaming. I leave toward

this villager. He turned around. He ran.

In fact, they all started running. And

unknowns to me, I had reached down and

grabbed this rubber saw from his foot. I

turned around and ran. when 30 seconds

before I was crawling along.

Dwayne, my friend, he was gone. And from

then on, my own my emotions, my progress

became mechanical.

In fact, I couldn't care less if I would

live or die. What is significant about

this is the the narrative discipline.

And I'm asking much of of my of my

actors. So, in this case, Dita Dangler

was not really an actor. He was the one

who lived through it.

And uh I ask a lot and I know it. And Da

in fact was very a very stable man. I

mean he said fine let's do it. Uh I've

had much worse days than doing a day of

filming. And uh there was a a deep

confidence

in him. I would do the right thing with

my camera and the way I deal with him.

And he would he would accept it. And a

lot of it is how you

uh how you are dealing with people. And

ultimately ultimately it is you have to

know the heart of men. If you do

something like that,

There are no clear rules. Nobody has

clear rules ever established. But of

course, uh you have to find the border

lines yourself. And it has to do with

your position in the world and your

ethical

uh interior and and you have to really

apply it. Maybe for some people the

boundaries are little bit further back.

I'm more advanced in it. But however I

would really respect in grizzly man

the person who um had been eaten by a by

a grizzly bear is not around anymore. he

cannot defend his position but the

ethical boundaries. There's an

interesting moment in the film where I

was uh somehow pushed by both a

production company and the network which

was going to show it and the um

distribution company

uh to address what was known in public

that there was a tape of the moment when

he was attacked and eaten and mauled by

the bear together with his uh girlfriend

Amy Huggenard

And I said, uh,

I'm not so sure whether this should be

in a film, but let me address it. And I

filmed myself. I filmed myself from

behind. This is the moment where I'm

listening and you see me only halfway

from behind. I did not want to shoot to

be in the film. There should be only my

voice. But here, that's the only moment

where I'm actually listening.

And we are zeroing in on Jewel Palovak's

face

and she she reads from my face that this

is horrifying

and uh what I heard uh is beyond any

description.

Can you turn it off?

You cannot you cannot have this in

public.

Truly, you must never listen to this.

I know, Verer. I'm never going to.

And you must never look at the photos

that I've seen at the coroner's office.

You do not have in public, for example,

people who jumped from uh the Twin

Towers uh during the attack on 9/11. Uh

it was filmed by many amateurs and you

do not publish it. I've never seen it

and it should it should stay undercover.

You do not need to see it. And what I do

here, I advise her in in the shock of

the moment, I advise her, you should

rather destroy this. never listened to

it and she slept over it. My advice was

really stupid and she was much more

prudent. She just separated herself from

that tape and put it in a a bank safety

deposit vault. There is such a thing as

a dignity in the privacy of your own

death. And there are certain things that

are untouchable. You just don't even

think about it. You have to have it in

you. And if you don't have have it in

you, you shouldn't make films.

If I can't uh turn around a person who

is unwilling, of course, you have to

accept it. But sometimes in in my films

into the abyss says the father of one of

the two murderers

uh Delbert Burquette and he's also

incarcerated and pretty much for life

and he knows it and he steps into in

front of the camera and I ask him very

quickly very painful questions and he

says you know what I can't really talk

about that I can't really talk about it

and in pause quiet and I say, "Please

try it. Pause. Can you try it anyway?"

And then he starts to bit by bit by bit

give us the most painful sort of account

of his mistakes that he made with uh his

son and how he brought him up. And

afterwards when uh when he left, he said

to me uh he said to me, "Uh, Mr. Herzog,

sir." And I said, "Uh, I'm not a prison

guard. You don't have to say sorry or

I'm I'm WA. This is my name. And he

said, Wera, I'm so glad that I said it

that I have it that I made this

statement on camera. It's yours now.

It's It's for the for people out there.

They should know how not to do all these

mistakes.

Describe the feeling to me when you're

handcuffed

together with your own son in the same

bus.

Can you describe that?

No, not really. It It's um

Try to describe it for us.

Well,

I don't know. I just felt like a total

failure. Total failure as a father.

And you could feel his hand.

We were handcuffed to this hand and his

right hand. And we were sitting there

and it and I was just it was just total

failure. That's what I felt like. I felt

like crap,

you know, and I used a different word to

the jury and and that's and that's what

I meant. You know, he had trash for a

for a father and and then here I was

sitting with with my baby son on a

prison bus. And um I mean, I don't think

it I don't think it gets much lower than

that, you know? You just don't.

The really important thing is that you

have to be capable to uh get to the

essence to get to the bottom of things

to the heart of the person very very

quickly and then hang on and and keep

the conversation going at that depth.

It's relentless. you sit in front of

somebody who will be executed 8 days

later and um you see there's this kind

of vanilla ice cream emotionality is

very much in vogue. I'm not I I'm I'm

trying not be part of that. Uh for

example, Michael Perry who was executed

a few days after I filmed with him.

within I think 2 minutes of talking to

him,

I said to him, "Michel Perry or Mr.

Perry and I would wear a formal suit out

of respect. I'm never visible, but I'm

next to the camera and he sees me there

and in respect for him as a human

being." Uh I tell him, you know, um

your childhood was really, really,

really bad and it was not your fault,

but it doesn't exonerate you. You do not

need to become a murderer because of

that. And I said to him, "And the fact

that I have certain sympathy with

arguments in your last appeal for

clemency, even though I sympathize with

that, I do not have uh to have sympathy

for you.

I do." And and he he just uh freezes for

a moment and says, "Okay, like this.

Nobody has ever spoken to him. I I said

to him, I do not have to like you. And

and of course uh sometimes you have to

deal with someone whose crimes have been

monstrous, but you are never sitting

across a monster. You are always dealing

and I have learned it by seeing many

people on death row. You deal with human

beings.

The the crimes were monstrous, but not

the person. They're only human beings.

Good. Yeah, you're not wired yet. So, we

have to wire you first.

Michael Perry. Now from all of us, the

whole team here, we would like to offer

our condolences.

Your father passed away.

Okay. on the 10th. My dad died 13 days

ago.

13 days ago.

Yeah. On June 10th.

But you will die or you are scheduled

for execution only 8 days.

Yes, sir.

How are you doing?

You know, uh, you know, I'm a Christian.

So, you know, I believe that, you know,

paradise awaits one way or the other.

So, I tell people all the time, I'm

either going home or home. So, I'm

either going home to the world or home

to God. So, I,

you know, as the days get closer, I can

feel the pressure on my shoulders. Uh

they call it clinical depression where I

just start having less motivation to do

things, less energy. Um you get

frustrated at the at the system. How can

they not see you know my situation is

wrong? Uh

you know I I used to write all the time

and have a lot of energy and I just

don't have it anymore. I just feel like

I've been beaten down.

I I have the feeling that destiny uh in

a way has dealt you a very bad deck of

cards. It does not exonerate you and and

when I talk to you, it does not

necessarily mean that I have to like you

but I respect you and you are a human

being and I think human beings should

not be executed

as simply as that

right

into the abyss could have been over in

120 seconds but you have to risk it and

it's a way you are saying that uh and uh

you see when somebody speaks to that

person who is going to be dead very

soon. Family is always tearful.

Attorneys are always uh completely

upbeat. Ah, we have a great chance.

We'll try. And so I am the one who

speaks uh like no one

For me, uh, it's all just movies

and my documentaries are partly staged

or inventive or poetical and not so much

fact-based, although the hardcore

effects I always incorporate.

Um

so I think this distinction is a little

bit too too mechanical and too

brainless. Uh many of my uh

documentaries in fact are feature films

in disguise.

You shouldn't be too pedantic. I I keep

quoting for example the pieta the statue

of Michelangelo in in St. Peter's uh

church cathedral.

It's one of the most beautiful

sculptures that was ever made.

And when you look at uh the dead Jesus

in the arms of uh of St. Mary, Jesus is

33 years old is a 33 years old man. And

when you look at the at the virgin at

his mother, she is depicted as a

17-year-old virgin. So where are the

facts? He he just takes a liberty to

shape it and and form it himself. And

Shakespeare by the way said once in uh

one of his dramas

the most truthful poetry is the most

feigning.

So uh if you read Helder a German great

German poet early 1800s he actually

became insane at the end of his life. He

writes about a storm in the mountains

and of course it is not a weather report

of 1802.

uh it's it's a great poem and what

happens very often what I hear very

often is that uh filmmakers believe that

facts in particular documentary

filmmakers that fact constitute truth

they don't they do not per se facts have

a enormous power they they have the the

power to create norms if let's say uh um

a million or five million When asylum

seekers are streaming into Western

Europe, it will create new norms of

behavior. So that's that's a power of

facts. But they do this doesn't the fact

per se doesn't illuminate you. It

doesn't give you what I call an ecstasy,

something ecstatic, something that

illuminates you. Otherwise, uh I keeps

quoting that quite often, the phone

director of Manhattan would be the book

of books.

4 million 5 million entries all

factually correct but it doesn't

illuminate us. It doesn't tell us

anything about every single person

that's listed there. So I've always

tried to postulate something that is

much deeper and you can find it in

cinema. Some moments where you depart

from let's say historical facts and you

start to invent on your own. I have done

it quite often and I have gotten a lot

of flack for that. But I maintain that

this is something really important for

film making and it should develop. We

should uh divorce

documentaries from journalism from near

mere um investigative journalism. We are

not flies on the wall. That's what what

you hear quite often. You should be like

a fly off the wall. No, that's only the

losers who do that. It's a camera that

you find in the bank. Um, and it watches

the bank for 15 years and not a single

bank robber will ever show up. So, the

those are the losers. You have to step

out. You have to create and only by

imagining and by creating and by

fantasizing and and uh bringing in deep

dreams all of a sudden puts you into a

position where you start to to see

something deeper. You notice something.

You notice something that stays within

you forever.

I have done

things that have to do with uh this kind

of ecstasy of truth and I have started

fairly early in a film land of silence

and darkness. It's a film about a woman

who is deaf and blind at the same time.

So she cannot see any hand signals

because she is blind and she cannot hear

you. And at the end of the film, the

whole film works towards this moment,

sensitizing you as an audience. At the

end, all of a sudden, uh, this

middle-aged man,

uh, kind of fearful, breaks away from

two women who are having a conversation,

and he moves along in an orchard.

And he touches a branch of a of an apple

tree. And he starts very softly and very

tenderly to follow the branch and touch

the leaves. and touches the the trunk uh

of the tree and it's it's

heartbreakingly beautiful.

And then all of a sudden I interrupt the

film with a caption.

If a world war would break out now,

I wouldn't even notice.

It just stops your breath. I invented

this quote. I put it in there and I

think it was right because it's it

really lifts you up into into an area

where the film hasn't been before. And I

just do these things or or for example I

started a film

um about the fires of Kuwait. It's

called Lessons of Darkness. For one hour

there's not a single image where you can

recognize our planet anymore. It's so

strange and everything uh so devastated

and burnt and fires and smoke like like

a science fiction film. Number one, I

declare the film is some sort of a

science fiction film which it is not.

Nothing political in it. And the film

begins with a ri written caption and it

says the collapse of the stellar

universe will occur like creation in

grandiose splendor and under it blaz

Pascal the French philosopher who said

wonderful things about about the

universe.

People

ask me where where did you find this

quote and I keep to mis like at the

beginning I said I it must be in some of

his letters or so not so it was my

invention I invented it and I put blast

pascal because I wanted to have the

audience lift it up to a very very high

level and that's how you enter the film

and I never let you down not an inch I

do not let you down. So, it's a complete

invention, but it's for the sake of

something very deep, something very

compelling, something that illuminates

you. And by the way, I do believe that

Blas Pascal couldn't have said it

better. Anyway,

very good example for something

completely made up invented is a scene

from the White Diamond.

It was filmed at the Cayura waterfalls.

They're gigantic waterfalls, three times

the height of Niagara Falls.

It's a very beautiful location. Really,

really, very special.

And now this is all dialogue I invented

for him.

This is all scripted.

And he says it's foggy at the moment.

And when it rains he comes here and he

sees one drop of water which actually

was put there by myself.

And now he looks through this drop of

water and any image uh is inverted in

it. Uh you see the waterfall here

normal. It is thundering down.

This is Cayur. Very beautiful. Now the

drop of water. You see the water is

going upwards.

But it wasn't even water. It was a drop

of glycerin that we put there because

glycerin has better optical uh qualities

than water.

And now I ask him a stupid new age

question. I cannot hear what

Mark Anthony. Do you see an entire

universe in a singy drop of water? Can't

get more stupid, but I scripted it for

me. And he says, I cannot hear what you

say for the thunder that you are.

Mark Anthony, do you see a whole

universe in this one single drop of

water?

I cannot hear what you see or the

thunder of what you are.

end of scene and you see the airship

rising from there but it's utterly

concocted and scripted and it's a very

beautiful moment in the film in a

documentary uh echoes from a somber

empire about a British journalist who

reported from Africa and mostly of the

central African republic under Bokasa

with Michael Goldsmith I went to the zoo

Zoo Basa Zoo. There was only a crocodile

left uh which uh was used to feed uh

prisoners. Actually, prisoners were fed

to the crocodile. There was a half dead

hyena and there was a chimp and I had

discovered the chimp and drunken

soldiers had taught it how to smoke. And

this is how the film ends now. He hands

a cigarette to the chimp.

And then I play a music uh uh Schumann's

Notron. I mean, it's just

And now a madeup dialogue.

When I I can't see this anymore. Can you

turn this off now?

Uh Mikey, I think this is one of the

shots I should hold.

A scripted line.

When you you promise this will be the

end shot. It'll be the last shot of the

film.

Yes, I promise.

And I'm answering, "No, Michael. I think

uh uh this is one of the shots I should

hold. I knew I should hold it." And he

said, "Only if you promise me that this

will be the last shot in the film."

In the last shot in the film is this

lost chimp in a cage

where

only two more surviving animals in this

zoo were around and drunk soldiers

in the disaster of a whole country and

lawlessness and absence of justice and

absence of many many things that we are

accustomed.

Uh, and it ends like this. And

it was so clear when I discovered this

chimp. This chimp has to be the end of

the film and I must invent a dialogue.

And I did. And uh this is uh a moment

where uh where you are illuminated as an

audience where you look very deep into a

strange world of something completely

surreal. And otherwise if you stood to

fact fact, you would never get a moment

like this.

There's another good example where I

invent a situation.

I did a film on faith in superstition in

Russia.

It's called Bells from the Deep.

pilgrims on thin ice seeking a vision of

the sunken city of Kitesh.

And the ice was really very thin. And

there are pilgrims, I say pilgrims,

quote unquote, crawling on their bellies

and praying. And they try to look

through the ice in in order to catch a

vision of the sunken city of Kitesh.

They also try to listen to to the sound

of the bells from the deep. And here

the lady whom I liked a lot

is talking and and at some point I ask

her

yeah she speaks about the legend and

actually it's a very deep thing for

Russians uh when you try to depict the

Russian soul. Uh it's somehow embodied

to a very good degree uh in the legend

in the religious legends of the sunken

city of Kitesh.

But

of course there were no pilgrims around

and I went to the next country in and

there were two two guys whom you see

here in the background and they had

already drunk a little bit and one of

them

one of them is on his belly they crawl

and I ask him can you do this and can

you listen and can you try to see

something and there's this other one you

see he's motionless he had actually

fallen asleep. He's not he's not deep in

meditation and prayer. And yet this

entire sequence I showed it to audiences

in Russia. Although the Russians know

that this was an organized

kind of scene, they love it more than

any other part of the movie. When they

finished praying, I stopped on the same

spot to say a prayer of my own and then

ran to catch up with them. I kept close

behind them and listened to their

chanting.

You see, I had to take a lot of flack

and and my answer is yes. I I take you

into a certain ecstasy of of images and

I show you something you would not

notice otherwise

something deeper than facts.

And I think those who

uh

start to uh put me down over doing

something like this, I have an answer.

We are all losers. Happy New Year.

I would say if you're not going to film

school, uh, and my general advice is be

skeptical about them. You spend way too

much time in the film school. Uh, it

costs way too much money.

uh and uh you can learn the essentials

of film making on your own within a week

or maybe two weeks. Uh all the rest uh

film school cannot teach you anyway.

For me, short films were my film school.

Uh and it could still be the film school

for many aspiring filmmakers. However,

there are subjects that are calling for

a short format like plastic bag where I

gave my voice uh for the plastic bag in

friendship to a colleague filmmaker

Ramin Bahrani. Um,

at the time I started there was a lot of

uh sense for doing short films because

cinemas would have to pay less taxes if

they showed u a short film ahead of the

regular program.

uh what today is uh commercials. It was

a short film which had some sort of of

evaluations and was considered uh

culturally valuable and I I would have a

film like this and I could sell it

because the theaters would show it. It

that doesn't exist anymore. Uh the short

forms I don't think there is a space in

theaters. There's not a real space in

television. I think the real fertile

ground today is the internet, YouTube

for example or whatever. There will be

formats out there and you can easily

present a short film there and sometimes

the shorter the better. If you have a

crazy cat video, it shouldn't be longer

than 60 seconds. So my advice is uh of

course always read, read, read, watch

films, travel on foot, travel on foot

which opens your perspectives, which

opens the world up to you

initiative.

I think in a way I'm a product of

initiative and the real genius of

initiatives was Gavaspin the colleague

of mine who passed away way too early

and this was something I was uh blessed

enough to grow up in postwar Germany

where there were no real predecessors

filmmakers we didn't have any fathers to

learn from or to be proud of because

either they were exiled like Fritz Long

and others or They sided with a Nazi

barbarism. So we knew we were on our own

and all of us immediately founded our

own production companies. We started our

own festivals. You see it fairly often

when you are speaking to film students

in the United States. They would not

think about founding their own labor

union. They would hardly ever

contemplate to found their own

production companies,

to found their own uh festivals, their

own film subsidy law, their own system

of support. Uh I do not see it very

often.

Rejection.

It has happened to me quite often. It

will happen to all of you who are making

films and you have to to fortify

yourself in a way. I do remember my

first feature film science of life which

won the national film award which won

silver bear at the Berlin film festival.

I was just a kid when I made this film

and it was very hard to to find theater

audiences. And then in the city of

Vbartner, Frankfurt, there was a rave

review of the film, a whole page in the

local paper, photos in the rave review.

And it was so extraordinary

uh that uh the theater owner said, "Oh,

please come to my opening in my

theater." And sent me a a ticket. and I

went uh there and I step out

uh having a Q&A with the audience and

there are seven people there. Seven

people saw the film. So this kind of of

sinking into

a dark hole irretrievably of of

rejection of audiences is something

really extraordinary.

people are yelling at you and booing at

you. Uh the uh the film

uh about Kuwait, Lessons of Darkness at

the Berlin Film Festival. It was was one

storm of rejection and booing and

yelling against me and yelling against

the film. I walked down the aisle.

People spat at me and I heard uh in in

this

chorus of angry screams I heard. Yeah.

Aestheticizing the horror. And and I

grabbed the microphone and I said, "Yes,

aestheticizing the horror." Uh it is not

a political film. It it does something

which others have done before me. Uh and

my witness is uh uh Dante with his uh

inferno and my witness is Goya with

disastrous dilera. My witness is a

painter Heroni Bosch with his hellish

visions. So it didn't silence anyone.

Didn't silence but I had to live with

it. And it's still one of my strongest

films.

So

and and it has outlived all these uh

uproar that it has created. If I showed

the film today, it would be fully

accepted.

And uh

a beautiful example of rejection is uh

little deer needs to fly. one of my most

intense, one of my strongest films I

have made, documentaries

and it was um commissioned by a German

TV station and I edited the film, I shot

the film, edited the film and I knew I

had something extraordinary at my hand.

It was so extraordinary that I later uh

made a feature film Rescue Dawn with

Christian Bale. So there was so much

substance there and the network

executive flies into Los Angeles because

I was editing in Los Angeles and he

watches and is completely silent and

crouches down in this kind of uh uh

really intimidating sort of crouch and

watches it. And at the end uh we turn

the

uh screening off and he turns to me and

he says uh uh where's where's the men's

room? Where's the men's room? And I say

it's out here and to the left to the

right. And he says I have to rush to the

men's room because I have to vomit.

This film is so bad that I need to vomit

now. And he rushes out. Of course he

doesn't vomit. It was all uh this after

a few minutes he comes back and he says

to me Wernner you know I have worked in

this profession as a a commissioning

network executive for 25 years but in 25

years I've not seen such a piece of

garbage like this film

and I said uh well I think it's one of

my strongest uh I my opinion and differs

from yours.

And uh the rejection went so far he saw

you you couldn't repair the film and and

shoot uh wild reenactments and other

things and stupid things that he had on

mind. And he said uh this was meant for

a very successful uh slot uh prime time

slot on German TV. and he said, "I

cannot take this film into this slot.

It still the thought alone makes me

vomit again." And he buried the film at

11:45 at night when most audiences are

soundly asleep.

Yeah. The emotional investment after

rejection. Normally I say, "Oh, this

this guy is is just is just a bozo." I

had to deal with a bozo of this caliber

of this magnitude. The film will outlive

him and it has outlived him. But what

can I tell you as filmmakers? Yes, these

moments will come. They come uh very

very often. It's not I mean there are

significant moments like that but they

do come and they

um are hard hits and really I really got

sucker punches. And how do you how do

you live with it? Um

my

opinion is you you have to create

something that has so much substance

that the film itself can take the

punches and you are only the secondary

target.

And you have to

to be strong enough and philosophical

enough to uh not

um take this rejection uh as a

as a first step into suicide. You just

don't do it. It's it it is what the

industry is all about. It's it's

ruthless.

ruthless and uh um and a hard

a hard field to work in. Prepare

yourself. If you make films, you have to

be prepared for these for these moments

festivals. Uh

I have been at too many

and in the my first uh movies uh many of

them were shown in big festivals like Kh

um but at that time they had a real

significance. There were three, four or

five festivals. Berlin, Venice, Kh

Lardo, maybe one or two others. And now

they have in the last decades they have

uh really spread out. We have over 4,000

festivals around the world. But still we

do not have much more than four or five

real good films per year. Good vintage

years would mean five films, real good

ones. So um this kind of inflation has

uh made the festivals pretty much

selfcentered.

They're only after uh does Kan Film

Festival for example get the right media

bus and and is there a scandal happening

or not irrespective of what films they

are showing and and in fact they do show

some good films there but uh the

festivals have become to a good degree

selfserving entities

however I would say for young filmmakers

you have probably a first real more

international

um audience would be at festivals. Quite

a few of them would be discovered at

festivals and some of them even the

halfway rejected. I think uh Christopher

Nolan who made Batman had a film which

was rejected by Sundance but he showed

it at some parallel festival was it slam

Dance or something like that and that's

where he got discovered and all of a

sudden uh the industry took notice of

him or Darren Areronowski

uh discovered I do believe uh basically

at Sundance Film Festival or any other f

festival in the world and getting into

the festivals. Uh

it's a strange thing. Uh I just had uh

three weeks two weeks ago I had my last

film at Sundance. Um

and I I was really appalled when I heard

there were 12,500 entries. And I said to

everyone uh who was hoping we would get

into Sundance, I said to everyone, we

don't have a chance. There no way. No

way.

And somehow uh it was accepted.

It is actually a film that has a lot

a lot of real real resonance with very

young people who grew up with the

internet. And that's probably what the

what the festival noticed.

Otherwise it wouldn't have been shown.

I've seen uh filmmakers who have

submitted their films to multiple

festival. If if you are not accepted at

the first send out your dogs and someone

will find prey and will will eventually

be shown. But once I've seen filmmakers,

young filmmakers who showed their film

in the festival circuit and they follow

for a whole year or more than a year

their films from obscure festival uh

from one to the next and this is really

devastating. They rather should make

three new films uh instead of wasting a

whole year like that. I've seen a film

by a Russian filmmaker

at a smaller festival and he came to me

and he said, "Have you seen my film? did

you like it? I said, "Yes, in fact, I

like it. It's a good film. It's It's not

great, but it's good." And he said,

"Yes, I showed it at festival." And I

showed it and they all liked it. He

never I I said to him, "Was it ever

theatrically released?" No, no, of

course not. Was it ever shown on f at f

uh on television? No, hasn't been shown.

But he was at 102 festivals and my heart

sank. You see, you have to be careful

that you do not make films for the

festival circuit. That's a great danger.

Submit it to festivals. Show it

somewhere at some festivals. Maybe you

send it out to to a few other festivals,

but don't show up again. Do it once and

that should be that.

Festivals are not necessarily the road

to to find a theatrical release or end

up in theaters. It doesn't uh happen

very often. Uh it's uh other factors

that play a part.

Festivals normally do not provide these

essential ingredients for you to find a

distribute distribution for your films.

I simply love

a movie in a theater where you have

people next to you and in front of you

and behind you and it's this kind of

collective experience and collective

uh dreaming that is going on which you

do not have when you are alone or with

only one or two people in front of your

plasma screen at home. Uh there's

something something magical about it and

uh you have to take your decision. You

have to make it make up your mind. Uh

where do you want to have your films uh

being shown from the first moment on I

made films. It was always clear the

mother of all battles is going to be

have your film playing in theaters. I

have not succeeded all the time or

sometimes a film would be shown years

later in theaters

but uh that is my my goal but today you

should not

underestimate it much of it is moving

into new forms of distribution uh

YouTube Netflix Amazon and it's going to

be uh pay-per-view downloading it and

it's not solid yet. But we see uh for

example how uh internet companies are

spending massive amounts of money to

acquire content.

And of course we'll have new uh ways of

circulating films once we have more uh

360 degree virtual reality. It's funny

because we have the the instrument but

we do not know the content with which to

fill it best. So uh this is in complete

transition

and um I would say

all the young people nowadays uh should

I would say try to get into theaters if

you don't manage find your own platform

somewhere else probably internet found

your own platform maybe with others

be um

be one of the ruthless less ones who

bursts onto the scene and and do not uh

try to walk all the trotten paths that

have been established uh and and they're

not very clear yet. Nobody knows exactly

where it's going to go and it's a

wonderful a wonderful moment of

transition. Just capture the moment.

If you really want to make a film, you

should not say uh I want to be a

filmmaker. Be specific. I want to make

this very project. So if uh you just

want to have it for yeah, it's chic and

it's it's cool to be a filmmaker. No,

it's not cool. Uh it it's a it's a

series of humiliations. It's a a series

of banalities every single day on on a

on a shoot. Many filmmakers are out

there to uh to gain inner growth. I just

can't hear it. It's so stupid, so

embarrassing. Or they want to test their

boundaries. People quite often believe,

yeah, I'm out there in the jungle and

moving a a ship over a mountain to test

my boundaries. No, not so. It's stupid

to think so. I want to move a ship over

a mountain because it's a huge metaphor.

It's a metaphor for something dormant

inside of us. And there's images that I

wake up. I can wake them up as if it

were the dreams that others share or as

as if I had a dormant brother inside of

me with whom I get acquainted. All of a

sudden, there's a twin brother out

there, and I haven't met him until I

made this film. So,

there's something much bigger than than

your own quest for perfection or your

own quest for inner growth and all these

new age crazy things that I just can't

hear. I'm a disciplined worker. I'm a

storyteller. I'm a filmmaker. And that's

that.

long-term survival. It's a profession

where you normally last

I would say 12 15 years and some of the

strongest of the strong have not

survived longer. David War Griffith, the

greatest of all filmmakers of the early

era, the Shakespeare of cinema. Um he

had the most fantastic successes with uh

Birth of a Nation and um uh some other

films and some failures and he was out

and spent the rest of his days as a land

surveyor or let me name Orison Wells

strong like a like an animal powerful in

his imagination in his craft in his

acting in everything and he spends

budgets the entire budget already

halfway through pre-production traveling

lavishly spending money and and the

studio would stop him in his tracks and

they would stop the project. So um it it

hits the strongest of the strong and the

survival of uh I would say of um those

people was fairly short short-lived

and of course long-term survival. Um how

do you establish loyalties?

Loyalties of crews. I do not just hire a

cinematographer for that project and

sound person and costumes. Of course,

quite often it's a it's a mly mix of

people who have never seen each other

before and they disperse and they never

see each other. But I try to build up uh

cinematographers, editors, composers,

some of the key people and enter with

them a long-term relationship.

Or when I'm working with a production

company, I'm not uh someone who wants to

to do just one film. If I like the

company, I would say let's try and let's

develop a long-term

relationship. let's try and and continue

think beyond what you are doing right

now.

So that's all part of the of the

profession that I do

and uh it's not that it was there right

from the beginning. I'm I'm a veteran in

this profession. However, very early on

because Agiri was a film I made when I

was 28 or so and everybody says to me,

ah, I saw your first film and I asked

which one? Ah, Agiri, the wrath of God.

And my answer is it was my 11th film. So

some shorts of course before that but uh

also but what I'm trying to say I walked

into a film like Agari the wrath of God

with a considerable amount of knowledge

and experience

and defeats

and uh mistakes that I made. Um, yeah,

that's that's how I learned it. And in

things like this, you you do not you

really do not learn in film schools. You

learn it when you do it.

And I've always been self-taught.

I have gone through all of this.

I have uh learned it all on my own, all

by trial and error and all the disasters

that I've had. But it's fine. I'm still

I'm still around

structure of daily life. Uh it has never

occurred to me there is no such thing as

daily life. Uh it's not predictable what

is going to happen. And uh for example

when I did uh the film uh on the

internet lo and behold I just had

finished my feature film um Salt and

Fire which I had shot in Bolivia. I just

finished editing and two days later a

call comes oh could you do something

like texting and driving but about the

internet and it will be some small

YouTube clips. And I said oh this is

fascinating uh let's jump in it. when

can we start? Can we start next week? So

it took a little bit longer, 10 days

until we jumped into it. Um and uh so

there's no structure. You never know

what's coming at you

and I keep I keep open to it, but of

course at the same time

I have to have a very very clear idea.

This is what you are not going to do.

You see, I have had

really quite a few very big offers from

from Hollywood, from major companies,

from studios.

And I looked at the project and I had

the feeling the screenplay is not really

good. It's kind of silly. It's totally

predictable and it's it's it's not for

me. And you have to know when in the

onslaught of all that's coming at you or

the rare opportunities that sometimes

you have, you have to have the clear um

sort of structure in your head saying

no, this is not for me.

I think it's very unhealthy to do movies

all the time because uh ultimately it's

illusionists work. Uh if you're a cattle

rancher, this is very solid good uh

daily work and your physical existence

is somehow involved with a cattle and it

has a certain dignity. Cinema very often

uh has to do with silly things. spanel

things. Um, it has to do with uh

undignified sort of stuff and you have

to do it and you better step out once in

a while. And uh I do read. I do not see

many films. I do read. You see I keep my

my curiosity

completely

awake all the time. And I think it is

important for somebody who makes films

to get into wildly other diverging sort

of subjects. I've been fascinated for a

long time about the deciphering

of all things of deciphering of linear

Bcript

of Mikanian uh uh Greece meaning uh

1,400 years before Christ there was a

script uh which couldn't be deciphered

for a long long time and an ingenious

combination of linguistics and um

deciphering methods that were used and

applied for um breaking encrypted texts

made it possible to understand yes this

was a very early proto uh Greek dialect

and has nothing to do with films and it

has nothing to do with films that I that

I'm completely fascinated with the

distribution of prime numbers a

mathematical problem which is the

biggest

uh most significant of all unsolved D

questions.

There are certain things out there that

I do not film. You see, there's such a

thing as real life. Pura vida, the real

essence of life. Uh, you will have a

child. Congratulations. It's a wonderful

moment. I've had three and I did not

film it. I would never go out and film

it. It's it's something that you better

keep to yourself and there's many things

where your personal life uh should not

be uh entangled into film making and

into covering everything. Tourists for

example, you see them stepping on a

plane and everybody starts snapping

photos of uh them sitting down in the

plane and then they're out at the

coliseum or the forum in Rome and snap

snap snap. I do it all the time. You do

not experience a moment in in a in a

some such a deep personal way. If for

example you have your smartphone and you

do your you do your little video clip on

the on the smartphone, you somehow

delegate your memories to this here. So

the very essential things in your life I

would advise experience them be there

enjoy the moment go through all the

fears of

of childbirth. Of course it's it's a

radical

painful

essential moment in in a life and at the

end you will have a child and you will

hold it in your hand and and you should

not film it. You just better hold the

babe and enjoy the moment.

Fitz Caraldo

where I had to build two identical ship

twice a a um camp for many many people

almost thousand

um where I had to build infrastructure.

There was no shipwarf. We had to build

some sort of a provisional shipwarf. We

had to um shoot the film one and a half

times because I started filming with

Jason Robarts and Mick Jagger of the

Rolling Stones. He was the sidekick of

Fitz Caraldo.

And uh after half way through shooting,

Robots fell ill and we had to fly him to

the States. His doctors would not allow

him to return to the jungle. So you had

to stop everything and start all over

again.

And that's terrifying. I mean, it's a

film of this size and with these risks,

terrifying. And you have to have the the

inner strength to do it. And you have to

have the flexibility and capacity to

keep costs so low. And and not only I

mean all the adversities, we had two

plane crashes, small planes. Uh thanks

God nobody got killed, but we had

severely critically injured people. And

um we had uh an incident where lumber

men would cut uh trees in the forest uh

cut a swath in the jungle where we would

move the ship and and they work the

local people, the natives, they work

barefoot and they have these chainsaws

and they create so much noise that

snakes flee for miles

into the distance and they snakes do not

like they exhaust fumes of these

chainsaws And yet one of them, the only

one ever I have have witnessed, I wasn't

there personally, was bitten twice in

his foot. And he sees it and the snake

disappears and it's a chuchup, the most

dangerous, most lethal of all snakes.

Your heart will stop within minutes. Uh,

your breathing stops within 60 seconds.

So it goes very very fast. Yet our camp

with medicine with antidote against this

venom was something like 20 minutes

away. So he just looked at it and he

picked up his chainsaw that he had left

on had fallen to the ground. He was so

shocked. Picks it up and starts it. You

start it like an outboard engine in a of

a speedboat. You just pull the cord and

it starts and it cuts off his foot. And

only because of that he survived.

Only because of that. So what I'm trying

to say there were

numerous

uh unforeseeable things

uh cataclysmic events

and you cannot calculate them in a

budget. It's totally impossible. In 20th

century, Fox in a way was right that

they as a Hollywood studio did not

produce and finance the film. With a

film like that, you are alone.

And here you can see the monster

of a ship.

And again, adversity. Uh when we had it

up on the hill, we had to release it

down and the um

dry season had started very early and it

was the driest in um

in living memory

is good for

and we couldn't put the uh ship into the

water because the water which was

normally 30 ft deep was only as shallow

as this like a foot. So I had another

five months of that ship sitting up on

the mountain with a family living on it

until we actually could bring it down on

the other side. And here you see how we

carved into the into the terrain

because it was simply too steep.

in the next town where you could buy a

torch light battery would be thousand

kilometers away and you had hardly any

uh communication. It was some sort of

shortwave radio which sometimes

functioned.

So, and I knew this was the central

metaphor.

Everybody tried to talk me out of it and

I said if that doesn't happen I would be

a man without dreams. I do not want to

live like that.

You have to be ready to run all the

risks. Of course, no insurance company

would cover it. No completion bond would

cover it. No finances could guarantee

how much a film would cost. So, you

really have to know what you are doing.

Despite all the voices that you hear,

this is impossible and nobody has done

it and you want to do it for a movie.

Yes, I wanted to do it for a movie and I

did it for a movie.

And you have to know, you have to know

that you are the one who can move a ship

over a mountain.

I have a text I'd like to read for you

and the text is from the late medieval

mystic Thomas Ampis a very important

figure in deep thinking a mystic and

it's in a film of mine

it is only the pilgrims who in their

travails of their earthly voyage do not

lose their way.

Whether our planet be frozen or

scorched,

they are guided by the same prayers

in suffering and fervor and woe.

You may have guessed meanwhile

uh that it is not Thomas Ampis I I wrote

this text I did this in a way we have to

leave things incomplete uh lots of

things we haven't covered but uh it

would be adnauseium just to have me

there and trying to explain in my craft.

Thank you and best of luck to all of

you.