Werner Herzog

Werner Herzog (; born 5 September 1942) is a German film director, screenwriter, author, actor, and opera director, regarded as a pioneer of New German Cinema. His films often feature ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams, people with unique talents in obscure fields, or individuals in conflict with nature. He is known for his unique filmmaking process, such as disregarding storyboards, emphasizing improvisation, and placing the cast and crew into similar situations as characters in his films.

Herzog started work on his first film ''Herakles'' in 1961, when he was nineteen. Since then he has produced, written, and directed more than sixty feature films and documentaries, such as ''Aguirre, the Wrath of God'' (1972), ''The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser'' (1974), '' Heart of Glass'' (1976), '' Stroszek'' (1977), ''Nosferatu the Vampyre'' (1979), ''Fitzcarraldo'' (1982), ''Cobra Verde'' (1987), ''Lessons of Darkness'' (1992), ''Little Dieter Needs to Fly'' (1997), ''My Best Fiend'' (1999), ''Invincible'' (2000), ''Grizzly Man'' (2005), ''Encounters at the End of the World'' (2007), '' Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans'' (2009), and ''Cave of Forgotten Dreams'' (2010). He has published more than a dozen books of prose and directed many operas.

French filmmaker François Truffaut once called Herzog "the most important film director alive". American film critic Roger Ebert said that Herzog "has never created a single film that is compromised, shameful, made for pragmatic reasons, or uninteresting. Even his failures are spectacular." He was named one of the world's 100 most influential people by ''Time'' in 2009.

Life

Early life

Herzog was born Werner Stipetich in Munich, Germany, to Elisabeth Stipetich, an Austrian of Croatian descent, and Dietrich Herzog, a German. When Herzog was two weeks old, his mother took refuge in the remote Bavarian village of Sachrang in the Chiemgau Alps, after the house next to theirs was destroyed during an Allied bombing raid in World War II. In Sachrang, Herzog grew up without running water, a flushing toilet, or a telephone. He recounted, "we had no toys, we had no tools", and said that there was a sense of anarchy, as all the children's fathers were absent. He never saw films, and did not even know of the existence of cinema until a traveling projectionist came by the one-room schoolhouse in Sachrang.

When Herzog was twelve, he and his family moved back to Munich. His father had abandoned the family early in his youth. Herzog later adopted his father's surname ''Herzog'' (German for "duke"), which he thought sounded more impressive for a filmmaker. Herzog made his first phone-call when he was seventeen; two years later, he started work on his first film, ''Herakles''. Herzog says that when he eventually met his father again, "fairly late in life", his mother had to translate Werner's German into the Bavarian dialect which his father spoke so the two could communicate. Herzog, aged thirteen, was told by a bullying music teacher to sing in front of his class at school in an effort, Herzog said, "to break my back." When he adamantly refused he was almost expelled. The incident scarred him for life. For several years Herzog listened to no music, sang no songs, and studied no instruments, but when he turned eighteen he immersed himself in music with particular intensity.

At an early age, he experienced a dramatic phase in which he converted to Catholicism, which only lasted a few years. He started to embark on long journeys, some on foot. Around this time, he knew he would be a filmmaker and learned the basics from a few pages in an encyclopedia which provided him with "everything I needed to get myself started" as a filmmaker—that, and the 35 mm camera he stole from the Munich Film School.Bissell, Tom. "The Secret Mainstream: Contemplating the mirages of Werner Herzog", '' Harper's'', December 2006 In the commentary for ''Aguirre, the Wrath of God'', he says, "I don't consider it theft. It was just a necessity. I had some sort of natural right for a camera, a tool to work with".

During Herzog's last years of high school, no production company was willing to take on his projects, so he worked night shifts as a welder in a steel factory to earn the funds for his first featurettes. When he finished school, but before he formally graduated, he followed his girlfriend to Manchester, England, where he spent several months and learned to speak English. He found the language classes pointless and "fled". After graduating from high school, he was intrigued by the post-independence Congo, but in attempting to travel there, reached only the south of Sudan before falling seriously ill. While already making films, he had a brief stint at Munich University, where he studied history and literature. Herzog subsequently moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in order to study at Duquesne University.

Early and mid-career: 1962–2005

Herzog, along with Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Volker Schlöndorff, led the beginning of the New German Cinema, which included documentarians who filmed on low budgets and were influenced by the French New Wave. He developed a habit of casting professional actors alongside people from the locality in which he was shooting. His films, "usually set in distinct and unfamiliar landscapes, are imbued with mysticism." Herzog says his Catholic upbringing is evident in "something of a religious echo in my work".

In 1971, while Herzog was location scouting for ''Aguirre, the Wrath of God'' in Peru, he narrowly avoided taking LANSA Flight 508. Herzog's reservation was cancelled due to a last-minute change in itinerary. The plane was later struck by lightning and disintegrated, but one survivor, Juliane Koepcke, lived after a free fall. Long haunted by the event, nearly 30 years later he made a documentary film, '' Wings of Hope'' (1998), which explored the story of the sole survivor.

Herzog and his films have been nominated for and won many awards. His first major award was the Silver Bear Extraordinary Prize of the Jury for his first feature film '' Signs of Life'' (''Nosferatu the Vampyre'' was also nominated for Golden Bear in 1979). Herzog won the Best Director award for ''Fitzcarraldo'' at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival. In 1975, his movie ''The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser'' won the '' Grand Prix Spécial du Jury'' (also known as the 'Silver Palm') and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at the Cannes Festival. Other films directed by Herzog nominated for Golden Palm are: ''Woyzeck'' (1979) and ''Where the Green Ants Dream'' (1984). His films have been nominated at many other festivals around the world: César Awards (''Aguirre, the Wrath of God''), Emmy Awards (''Little Dieter Needs to Fly''), European Film Awards (''My Best Fiend'') and Venice Film Festival (''Scream of Stone'' and ''The Wild Blue Yonder''). In 1987, Herzog and his half-brother Lucki Stipetić won the Bavarian Film Award for Best Producing for the film ''Cobra Verde''. In 2002 he won the ''Dragon of Dragons Honorary Award'' during Kraków Film Festival in Kraków, Poland.

Herzog once promised to eat his shoe if Errol Morris completed the film project on pet cemeteries that he had been working on, in order to challenge and motivate Morris, whom Herzog perceived as incapable of following up on the projects he conceived. In 1978, when the film '' Gates of Heaven'' premiered, Herzog cooked and publicly ate his shoe, an event later incorporated into a short documentary ''Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe'' by Les Blank. At the event, Herzog suggested that he hoped the act would serve to encourage anyone having difficulty bringing a project to fruition.

In the winter of 1974, upon learning of the impending death of his friend Lotte H. Eisner, Herzog began a three week pilgrimage, traversing the route from Munich to Paris on foot. He believed this act of devotion would prolong Eisner's life. Durning these travels Herzog kept a diary which would eventually be published as '' Of Walking in Ice''.

Werner Herzog moved to Los Angeles with his wife in the late nineties. "Wherever you look is an immense depth, a tumult that resonates with me. New York is more concerned with finance than anything else. It doesn’t create culture, only consumes it; most of what you find in New York comes from elsewhere. Things actually get done in Los Angeles. Look beyond the glitz and glamour of Hollywood and a wild excitement of intense dreams opens up; it has more horizons than any other place. There is a great deal of industry in the city and a real working class; I also appreciate the vibrant presence of the Mexicans."

Later career: 2006 onwards

Herzog was honored at the 49th San Francisco International Film Festival, receiving the 2006 Film Society Directing Award. Four of his films have been shown at the San Francisco International Film Festival: '' Wodaabe – Herdsmen of the Sun'' in 1990, ''Bells from the Deep'' in 1993, ''Lessons of Darkness'' in 1993, and ''The Wild Blue Yonder'' in 2006.

''Grizzly Man'', directed by Herzog, was awarded the Alfred P. Sloan Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. In 2006, Herzog was shot in the abdomen while on Skyline Drive in Los Angeles. He had been giving an interview on ''Grizzly Man'' to Mark Kermode of the BBC
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