On Friday, as torrential rain storms were hitting Los Angeles, we talked by phone with legendary filmmaker and first-time Oscar nominee (for ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD) Werner Herzog, about his recent work and the perception that his longtime questioning of documentary "standards" has made him somewhat of an outsider in the documentary community.
Since his much lauded, Antarctica documentary feature, Herzog has directed two narrative films - a new version (not a remake, all insist) of BAD LIEUTENANT, with Nicholas Cage in the Harvey Keitel role, and a short film based on Puccini's La Boheme that was shot in Ethiopia. He is prepping for his new narrative feature, MY SON, MY SON, WHAT HAVE YE DONE, to star fellow Oscar nominee Michael Shannon and to be Executive Produced by David Lynch.
ATWT: I’m always enthusiastic about this idea that you can make a film, a documentary film, in a relatively short period of time and I was always curious about GRIZZLY MAN because you did that from start to finish in less than a month, correct?
Werner Herzog: Yes.
ATWT: And is that something you like doing?
WH: In substance it is correct. But, of course, I didn’t have final music yet and that took about two or three months more until we had the music, and then we did the mixing and in the time while we were waiting for the music, I made some slight modifications. But very minor modifications. But I would say the shape of the film, shooting the film was something like eighteen days and editing and writing commentary and recording commentary and doing a primitive mix was nine days.
ATWT: That’s obviously not the norm in documentary, to do something in such a short period of time.
WH: It was so evident what had to be done. And I work fast. I do not make twenty parallel versions of the edit and then cannot decide which one would be the best. I just do it once and then plow on until I’m through the film and then that’s the film then.
ATWT: You know, over the last few years there’s been a lot of attention paid to this notion that you’re somewhat of an outsider amongst documentarians.
WH: I’m dead center.
ATWT: I think that’s true. But especially recently, I think that the debate that you’ve been having, your calls to expand the idea of what documentary can be – if that’s been a debate, it seems to me that you’ve won.
WH: No, come on, it’s not winning or losing. We are not in horse races. No, it is just finding, how shall I say, finding an adequate answer to the massive onslaught on our sense of reality. And I’m speaking of digital effects in cinema and photoshop and virtual realities on the net and video games and reality TV, you can continue on. In the last decade a massive onslaught on our sense of reality and we, as filmmakers, are called upon to redefine our sense of reality. That’s what’s behind it. And cinema verite’s the answer of the ‘60s.
It’s not about winning or losing, it’s about finding new answers.
ATWT: Now it seems that the films that are out there, certainly the films, including WALTZ WITH BASHIR in another category, that are nominated this year, these are films that correspond more to how you’ve been talking about documentary and nonfiction then perhaps what was common perception five, ten years ago.
WH: Yeah. But I have postulated it for feature films as well, I don’t make so much of a distinction. I think filmmakers are called upon to respond to this challenge of virtual realities. I just do not want to hear that it’s about winning or losing. It is a totally necessary sort of excitement going on and I happen to be one of those who have pushed the debate early on.
Let me put it this way – twenty, twenty-five years ago, I said the same things. But now, of course, they resonate more because the situation has changed so dramatically.
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