by Paul Cronin
Do you offer Rogue participants any general advice?
A few things come up again and again during our sessions.
When it comes to organising your set, it’s important to maintain close physical contact with your crew at all times. There are often a dozen people hanging around, talking on their phones, paying no attention. I insist that all non-essential conversations take place far from the camera and actors, which means no walkie-talkies within a hundred feet of my set and no cellphones within three hundred feet. Once people realise they have to step away from the centre of activity to make a phone call, they inevitably decide most conversations aren’t that important. During heart surgery nobody is standing on the periphery talking on the phone; everyone is present and paying close attention, or at a distance doing something else. Absolute concentration, quiet and focus are required from everyone, at every moment, on my set. The only way for someone to respond to unexpected things is to be completely aware of what everyone else is doing. The cameraman has to listen to what’s going on around him before making his move; being able to attune his ears to his surroundings is as important as seeing what’s happening. A dolly movement is often triggered by a line of dialogue, but I’ve seen a dolly operator move too early because he wasn’t listening carefully enough. One way of creating this climate of absolute professionalism on day one, and making it clear to everyone how your set is going to function, is to start filming within ninety minutes of everyone arriving, no matter what. Roll the camera even if the gaffer is still in shot; he’ll realise fast enough that he needs to get out of there. Your attitude should always be as if you have only two days to make the entire film. Think of Roger Corman, who wouldn’t spend much more time than that shooting an entire feature.
During the shooting of a non-fiction film, don’t show footage to anyone you have been filming with because they often become self-conscious and complain about how they look. My response to these requests is simple: I tell them I might throw the entire thing out or use just 10 per cent of what we recorded, so it would only be confusing and disappointing for them to look at it now. “Just leave me in peace and thank God you don’t have to wrestle with this material. That’s my job.”
Within every film is some sort of unique inner timing that must be discovered and respected. What’s important to understand is that this can never be established retrospectively while editing, only during shooting. You might be able to alter a film’s pace during editing, but never its fundamental rhythm. Never delegate decisions down the line to post-production that should be handled on set during filming; by that point many problems can never be adequately resolved. Bad acting, to give the most obvious example, can never be fixed.
There is often a separate, parallel story playing out in the hearts and minds of everyone watching your film, which means an audience will collectively anticipate certain things and race ahead of the actual narrative building on screen. With a romantic comedy we intuitively jump to the end of story and hope that the lovers will overcome all obstacles and find each other. You have to pay attention to these parallel stories; if you don’t understand and develop a sense for them, you’ll never grasp the essence of storytelling for cinema. It’s the same thing as the inaudible overtones beyond a musical chord. We don’t necessarily hear them, but if you aren’t able to listen, you’ll never fully understand that chord.
One final thing. I carry two texts when I am about to embark on a film I know will give me trouble: Luther’s translation of the Bible and Livy’s account of the Second Punic War. The Book of Job acts as consolation, Livy gives me courage. His book is a description of Carthage’s war against Rome, a war that Rome almost didn’t survive. Livy tells the story of two of my favourite historical figures: Hannibal and Fabius Maximus. Hannibal was a leader of extraordinarily bold designs, moving across the Alps with his army and elephants trained for battle. But Maximus is an equally fascinating character, someone who refused to do battle against Hannibal’s armies, and because of this was considered a hesitant coward. Why did he act in this way? To save Rome. He knew that after the two most catastrophic disasters Rome had ever endured – the defeats at Cannae and Lake Trasimene – another open-field battle against Hannibal would mean the end of the republic. Fabius Maximus waged a war of attrition instead, attacking stragglers in the rearguard, devastating Hannibal’s supply lines and luring him into places where there was nothing for his army to eat. There is a striking passage in the book where Hannibal, who has been leading campaigns in Italy for years, learns that his brother Hasdrusbal’s supply fleet has been destroyed off the coast of Sicily. Hannibal knows he has been cut off from his ships, and after a long moment of silence utters the phrase “I know the destiny of Carthage.” That was his only response to the situation. He knew Carthage was lost and would be destroyed, inevitably disappearing into the abyss of history.
Although he was vilified and derided by Roman historiography, called a coward and dubbed Cunctator, the delayer, the cowardly hesitant one, Maximus’ far-sighted tactics are why he is the greatest among the leaders of his era. He defeated Hannibal and saved Rome not by demonstrating the kind of brainless bravery shown by his predecessors – men who lost decisive battles – but by following a different path. We owe him a great debt. If Hannibal had prevailed, today we would all be living in a very different culture; the world around us would be Phoenician and North African. Maximus is one of my idols, someone who followed a vision no matter what anyone thought of him, who refused to align himself to pre-existing traditions. When the boat was slipping back in the mud during the shooting of Fitzcarraldo, Fabius Maximus had a hand on my shoulder.
There is often great frustration in this work. I say this not to discourage anyone; it’s just a way of life. One way to get through it is sheer discipline. This isn’t about physical discipline, rather a certain psychological state. Plough on no matter how many spectacular humiliations and undignified defeats you suffer. Under normal circumstances, when a human being leaps into an abyss, he shrinks back. But when a ski jumper takes off, he leans forward, head first, into the void. If he doesn’t, he rotates backwards. A downhill racer might be able to brake if he needs to, but when a jumper starts down that ramp, nothing can stop him. The same could be said of filmmaking. Learn to overcome your fears and shepherd your project to completion, no matter what. It’s the essential moments of struggle over the decades that I have learnt from and which have brought to me this point. When I think back to my earliest years in this business, I see I am nothing today but a product of my defeats. When I was burnt I learnt about heat, and when I was belittled I learnt about power structures. Instead of going to film school, for me it became a process of trial and error, and for the first few years it was mostly error.
Writers and filmmakers are all alone; there is usually no one to help you, so just get off your ass and start walking. When you make a film or write a book and roll it out to audiences, be prepared to deal with either kicks to the stomach and slaps to the face or complete indifference. Most of the time no one cares about what you’re doing, except you. A filmmaker’s existence is different from that of a train conductor or bank teller. You have made certain choices about your life, which means you need to learn to overcome the despair and loneliness. Stay focused, quiet and professional at all times. Face what comes at you. You can never be irresolute, not for a single second. Plant yourself into the ground and move for no one. Make films only if there is a natural urge within. Switch off your Internet connection and get to work.
Has it been easy to finance your more recent films?
A natural component of filmmaking is the struggle to find money. It has been an uphill battle my entire working life. People think it’s easy for me to finance my films these days, but the basis of operations is continually shrinking when it comes to distributing the kind of work I produce. Raising money might be even tougher today than it ever has been, certainly when it comes to feature films, and audiences seem to be getting smaller and small
er. But this is all unimportant. Fifty years ago, when I walked out of the office of those pompous producers and established my own production company, I knew I would never shoot a single frame of film if I continued wasting my time with such people. If you want to make a film, go make it. I can’t tell you the number of times I have started shooting a film knowing I didn’t have the money to finish it. I meet people everywhere who complain about money; it’s the ingrained nature of too many filmmakers. But it should be clear to everyone that money has always had certain explicit qualities: it’s stupid and cowardly, slow and unimaginative. The circumstances of funding never just appear; you have to create them yourself, then manipulate them for your own ends. This is the very nature and daily toil of filmmaking. If your project has real substance, ultimately the money will follow you like a common cur in the street with its tail between its legs. There is a German proverb: “Der Teufel scheisst immer auf den grössten Haufen” [“The Devil always shits on the biggest heap”]. So start heaping and have faith. Every time you make a film you should be prepared to descend into Hell and wrestle it from the claws of the Devil himself. Prepare yourself: there is never a day without a sucker punch. At the same time, be pragmatic and learn how to develop an understanding of when to abandon an idea. Follow your dreams no matter what, but reconsider if they can’t be realised in certain situations. A project can become a cul-de-sac and your life might slip through your fingers in pursuit of something that can never be realised. Know when to walk away.
Many years ago I decided I wanted to publish my screenplays and prose texts, so I approached a respected German publishing house. When they turned me down, I immediately realised there was no point spending time sending out letters to other publishers asking the same question. I set up my own publishing house, Skellig, and issued Heart of Glass and two volumes of screenplays. I printed a few thousand copies of each, and whenever I was invited to talk at a cinema would load a couple of hundred copies into my car so they could be sold at the box office. They cost something like $3 each to produce and I sold them for $4, so I even made a small profit. If another publishing house had produced the book and sold it in a store, it would have cost eight times as much, but I had no need of advertising and a complex system of distribution, the things that make books expensive. The technical costs of printing have always been minimal. Once it was clear how successful the books were, Carl Hanser Verlag in Munich asked if they could continue publishing the texts. I agreed, but insisted the cover had to be exactly the same as the Skellig editions – a simple design of orange lettering on a black background above a monochrome photograph – and no film stills inside.
Have your films made money for you?
I don’t function in the way traditional film producers do. From the very beginning I have taken a long-range view of things, always looking beyond everyday financial arrangements. Short-term survival was never my plan. For years in Germany I worked in a vacuum with few financial returns. When Aguirre was screened on television the same day it was released in cinemas, and in both cases did badly, I asked myself, “How can I survive this disaster? How can I continue working in this way?” Though I still carry these questions with me, I have always had faith in my films and the belief that one day they would be seen and enjoyed. Perseverance has kept me going over the years. Things rarely happen overnight. Filmmakers should be prepared for many years of hard work. The sheer toil can be healthy and exhilarating.
Although for many years I lived hand to mouth – sometimes in semi-poverty – I have lived like a rich man ever since I started making films. Throughout my life I have been able to do what I truly love, which is more valuable than any cash you could throw at me. At a time when friends were establishing themselves by getting university degrees, going into business, building careers and buying houses, I was making films, investing everything back into my work. Money lost, film gained. Today I can earn money on films I made forty years ago by releasing them on DVD and screening them on television and at retrospectives. At an early age I understood the key to this business is being your own producer. I never thought twice about taking a salary for writing and directing when I first started out. I worked out of my small apartment, with my brother and wife as close collaborators. We cobbled money together from revenues of previous films, subsidies and pre-sales, and used it for only the bare essentials, like travel costs, raw stock, lab fees and costumes. You could see every penny up there on the screen.
In the early days I made a living, but only just. I lived with very few possessions, most of which were the tools of my trade: an Arriflex camera, a car, a typewriter, a flatbed editing machine, a Nagra tape recorder. My material needs have always been limited. So long as I have a roof over my head, something to read and something to eat, all is fine. I own one pair of shoes, a single suit, and once I finish a book I pass it on to a friend. I’m just a man from the mountains who isn’t very interested in owning things. I’ve been driving the same car for nearly twenty years, and have to hand-crank the window and lock each door individually. A few years ago I closed down the small Werner Herzog Filmproduktion office I maintained in Munich, and around the same time my brother Lucki started methodically collecting all the audio tracks, negatives, scripts and paperwork of my work, going back to the sixties, which we gave to the Deutsche Kinemathek Museum für Film und Fernsehen in Berlin. The plan is to establish a non-profit foundation, at which point I’ll no longer even own my own films. Even if I went broke, I wouldn’t be able to sell anything to the highest bidder. What makes me rich is that I am welcomed almost everywhere. I can show up with my films and am offered hospitality, something you could never achieve with money alone. You saw how that stranger insisted on paying the bill for our lunch yesterday. “Thank you for Woyzeck,” he said. For years I have struggled harder than you can imagine for true liberty, and today am privileged in the way the boss of a huge corporation never will be. Hardly anyone in my profession is as free as I am.
Have you always made films for audiences rather than for yourself?
In making Aguirre I purposely set out to create a commercial film for a wide audience, even if the end result was as personal as anything I had done before. The art-house circuit was a lifeline for me during my early years of filmmaking, but I never felt I belonged there, and Aguirre was always intended for the general public. If I could have been guaranteed an audience for Aguirre, perhaps I would have made it differently, rougher and less genre-orientated. As it is, the film is probably easier to follow than my previous work. The sequence of action is less subtle than in Signs of Life and there’s a clear line of demarcation between good and bad, like in classic westerns, so the audience can choose which side they want to root for. At the time the film drew a lot of criticism from my peers, which I can still hear ringing in my ears. From a perspective of forty years it’s extraordinary to think that Aguirre was considered a commercial sell-out, as if I had sold my soul to the Devil. People close to me turned away. “He’s gone commercial,” they said. It was the worst of all sins.
I never set out to make cloudy and complicated films. Every one has been born out of my deepest interests and beliefs, but at the same time every one – from the smallest television documentary to Bad Lieutenant, which stars some of the biggest names in Hollywood – was made for the largest possible audience. I don’t have much of an idea about what audiences want because I’m so out of touch with contemporary trends and culture, but when asked I’ll always customise a film to fit the television schedule; it’s always been a necessary part of the process. In some cases, like Little Dieter Needs to Fly, I had to deliver a film of exactly fortyfour minutes and thirty seconds, and decided to produce a featurelength version at the same time, which is over eighty minutes. Most people saw the film in its truncated form. I didn’t mind changing the title of the television version to Escape from Laos because it’s essentially a different film. This was all on my mind while we were making the film, which we shot simultaneously in English and German.
The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner was originally an hour long, but the television executives asked me to cut it down to exactly forty-four minutes and ten seconds so it would fit in their schedule. I never felt I was compromising anything by editing the film down to that length. Filmmaking is a craft, and as far as I’m concerned being a craftsman is about producing work that people will see. It has always been important for me that my films reach their audience. I don’t necessarily need to hear what those reactions are, just so long as they’re out there. Making a film and not releasing it would defeat the purpose. Even if my films haven’t instantly found audiences, they have been on a steady upwards curve. Forty years after Aguirre, people around the world want to see it and talk about it. These days I get emails from seventeen-year-olds about films I made when their parents were in diapers. I have always been mainstream. The secret mainstream.
Some might call me eccentric, but by comparison it’s everyone else who deserves that label. Consider someone like Peter Alexander, a wildly popular singer, actor and television star who for thirty years was one of the biggest stars in Austria and Germany, a repulsive chanteur and charmeur similar to Maurice Chevalier. He was also one of those in public life always talking about the good old days, forever in denial of the catastrophes that Germany had so recently brought to the world. Although Alexander might have stood at the centre of culture fifty years ago and appealed to the masses, today it’s clear that everything he did is laughably stupid. Although millions of people watched Alexander every week, he was the master of collective insanity, and as the decades tick on he will become ever more irrelevant. Most of what we see around us is the ephemeral mainstream, mass-produced populist commercial trash, designed to go straight through us. Look instead at Robert Walser, an outsider who lived at the edge of the world and spent his final decades in a madhouse, formulating ideas in his writings that a hundred years later retain startling power and validity. Walser had a talent for penetrating the hidden anguish of those around him, and his ideas will be with us for generations to come. Someone like Kafka – who worked for years in an insurance company and was appreciated by only a tiny handful of people while he was alive – was also on the edge of things. He was so embarrassed about how unpopular his work was that he visited the bookshops of Prague and bought up copies himself. Today we acknowledge that Kafka was the secret mainstream, very much at the centre of his time.