It's Only a Movie: Reel Life Adventures of a Film Obsessive

by Mark Kermode

  This latter question particularly troubled David, who is both a brilliant director and an Olympic-level worrier. If David can find a way to take the responsibility (or more precisely the blame) for something then he will do so. That’s what makes him such a terrific person to work with – if it all goes well, I get the glory; if things screw up (which they never do with David), it’s all his fault. Perfect!

  We swiftly resolved that we wouldn’t do anything with the footage without Herzog’s permission. Nor would we talk to anyone about what had happened – although word was already leaking out that ‘something really weird’ had happened during the interview. After all, if Herzog wanted the issue to remain private, then that was his right.

  As it turned out, we needn’t have worried. A few days after our return to the UK I started getting emails from people in LA who had heard all about Herzog and the ‘crazed sniper’ – from Herzog himself. One particular contact sent me a digital photo of Herzog on the set of Harmony Korine’s new film (in which he played a small role) proudly displaying the wound to all and sundry. By now the bruise surrounding the hole had started to go a bit manky, and looked a lot larger and angrier than when I had last set eyes on it. But Werner seemed happy and otherwise unharmed, and was clearly enjoying regaling the assembled masses with tales of his fearlessness in the face of adversity.

  As the weeks went on the story grew, appearing first in the Hollywood Reporter, and then in newspapers back here in the UK. A couple of journalists rang me to check the details, and I confirmed that yes, Herzog had indeed been utterly unflapped by this sudden unexpected violation of his person. And as the story grew, two interesting things happened. Firstly, an ‘axis of terror’ began to emerge, growing in stature and imbalance with each subsequent retelling of the tale. Within this economy of fear, Herzog’s own stoical response to the shooting became increasingly matched and even outdone by a growing hysterical cowardliness on the part of the BBC crew. The braver he got, the more whimpering we became. By the time Herzog recounted the story to Henry Rollins on American TV a few months later, the assembled Brits had been reduced to the status of mere quivering wrecks, fleeing at the first sign of danger while the Bavarian legend impassively took incoming fire.

  ‘Oh yes,’ announced Werner proudly when questioned about the press reports.’I was shot on camera while being interviewed by the BBC. It was up near Lookout Mountain … But it was not such a serious bullet anyway. It was probably only a small-calibre rifle. Or a high-powered air rifle. So I was only slightly wounded. I didn’t even realise what had happened. I thought that the camera had exploded and something had hit and burned me. And I only realised when I saw the soundman ducking and hitting the ground and then part of the crew fled …!’

  ‘Was anyone ever apprehended?’ asked Rollins.

  ‘No, I didn’t want to have police called because they would have overreacted and I thought this was not a serious bullet, this is part of the folklore of out here. This is something we can laugh about later on. And we laughed a lot.’

  So at least he found it funny.

  Quite funny.

  Rollins put his head in his hands.

  ‘But I’ve been shot at with much more serious bullets before in my life,’ continued Werner.’And what I’m trying to say is that it is something very … exhilarating … for a man to be shot at with little success!’

  The second result of all this press interest was a perhaps inevitable conspiracy theory which grew up on the internet (where else?) suggesting that the whole thing was a stunt designed to make Werner look brave, and orchestrated by David Shulman and myself. Key to this interpretation was the offhand phrase which I had used to describe the effect of the bullet hitting Herzog’s trousers – that it looked as though a firecracker had gone off in his pocket. I had evidently repeated this phrase a few times on my return to England and through the usual process of half-heard Chinese whispers it had transmogrified into a private confession that I had planted a firecracker in Herzog’s trousers to make it look like he’d been shot. I had, in effect, blown up Werner’s boxers.

  This latter development came as no surprise. When faced with any random irrational event, conspiracy theorists will invariably seek to replace ludicrous chaos with reassuring order, convincing themselves that all the nutso things that happen in the world are actually carefully planned and calculated. Personally I think this helps them feel safer, more secure. Hey, I used to take solace in Gail Brewer-Giorgio’s bonkers books Is Elvis Alive? and The Elvis Files which argued that a fit and healthy Presley had carefully planned and faked his death in 1977, fled Graceland in a helicopter and then restarted his life in privacy and seclusion. Why? Simply because it was less depressing than believing that my hero had got too tired, sloppy and drug-addled to live. And as the King himself said, ‘If I can dream, then why can’t my dream come true?’

  And in some perverse and twisted way it did come true in the wake of the Herzog shooting – sort of. After years of being on the outside looking in I suddenly found myself at the centre of my very own conspiracy theory, an all-access pass to a richly cinematic fantasy world in which Nixon killed JFK, Bush blew up the Twin Towers, Elvis was alive, and I shot Werner Herzog. I could go on the internet and read thrilling accounts of how I had secreted explosives in the region of Werner’s crown jewels. One astute viewer noted that if you look closely at the footage of the interview you can clearly see that Werner’s head turns the wrong way in response to the alleged angle of the ‘shooting’, adding a Zapruder-style ‘back and to the left’ analysis to the events.

  In the end I thought I might as well join in the madness and recorded a video blog on the BBC’s Kermode Uncut site in which I confessed to having set up the whole Herzog shooting.

  If everyone says I did it – maybe I did.

  Maybe ‘real life’ is only a movie after all …

  Since then, my path has continued to cross with Herzog’s, and every time we are together the story of the Lookout Mountain sniper and the ‘insignificant bullet’ comes up. In 2009 I hosted an onstage Q&A with Herzog to celebrate him receiving the BBC4 World Cinema Award for Outstanding Achievement. Backstage he was in his usual dourly ebullient mood, repeating his life-defining mantra that ‘the poet must not avert his gaze’ no matter how ugly and putrescent the subject matter. At one point he told me in grave tones that a ‘respectable’ newspaper in the US had recently referred to him as ‘certifiably mad’.’They were writing about the fact that David Lynch’s company was involved in producing my film,’ he explained.’And they said “the certifiably mad Werner Herzog and the probably mad David Lynch”. Can you believe it? “Certifiably mad”? Me?’ He sounded genuinely hurt.

  On stage we talked about Herzog’s latest documentary film Encounters at the End of the World in which he travelled to Antarctica with the specific intention of avoiding ‘fluffy penguins’ in his search for ‘deeper truths’. We touched on his non-remake of Bad Lieutenant, the original of which was about the burden of guilt while Herzog enticingly described his version as being about ‘the bliss of evil!’ It sounded great. Eventually the conversation turned to Grizzly Man, and the subject which continues to trouble me most about Herzog’s declared world view.

  ‘The thing is,’ I said in my most stentorian fashion, ‘I have something to say about your theory of the universe being nothing but “chaos, hostility and murder”.’

  In fact, I had a lot to say about this theory which had haunted me ever since our first meeting amid the chaotic, murderous hostility of LA. But in a rare break from tradition I had managed to condense my shambling incoherent thoughts into a single punchy sentence, and I had waited until now to tell Werner (and you, dear reader) what I really thought of his films and his philosophy. This was it – all or nothing.

  ‘One of the things that convinces me that that is not the case,’ I ventured tentatively, ‘is the beauty that I see in your films, and I just can’t see how “chaos, hostility and murder” could produce someth
ing that beautiful.’

  Herzog looked up at me with a glint in his eye, smiling slightly with either compassion or despair – I couldn’t rightly tell. He’d been to the end of the world and looked death in the face – more than once – and now here he was in the cosy surroundings of London’s South Bank being told by some woolly-headed English halfwit that his films were too ‘beautiful’ to be the product of an essentially godless universe. Still, at least I’d told him what I thought – at least I’d been honest with him, which is just about the only thing I think any film critic can be. Stupid, but honest. He could laugh at me if he wanted.

  But he didn’t. Instead, he put his hands together on his knees, let a smile break over his face, leaned in closer toward the microphone, and very quietly said:’Well … I stem the tide.’

  There was a moment’s silence before the audience burst into ecstatic applause. Werner was grinning, the crowd was hooting, and the room was filled with a life-affirming vigour which thrummed through the auditorium like the sound of God laughing. And in that one fleeting moment, I experienced something akin to the ‘ecstatic truth’ which Herzog had made his life’s pursuit; we were alive, together, and conscious, aware of our own mortality, but thrilled by the fact of our own ridiculous existence.

  Afterwards, when the crowds of adoring fans had all shaken hands with the maestro and basked briefly in his oddly radiant presence, I found myself alone in a corner waiting for a car to take me home. Werner wandered over to say how much he’d enjoyed himself (as is traditional) and to ask if I was going to be back in LA anytime soon.

  ‘Yes, I’ve got to go and interview Coppola next month,’ I replied, at which he seemed unimpressed.

  ‘Incidentally Werner,’ I added, ‘have you still got a scar from where that bullet hit you during our interview?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he replied, although this time he declined to get his trousers off to show me.

  ‘Does it ever hurt?’ I asked

  ‘Only when I laugh,’ he replied.’If I laugh really … profoundly … then I suddenly get a searing pain in my abdomen.’

  And with that we went our separate ways.

  On the journey home I thought about Herzog and that magic bullet and the peculiar way in which it had bonded us together; the visionary secularist Bavarian film-maker and the dewey-eyed God-bothering liberal critic from Barnet. And I thought about the fact that every time Herzog, with all his rigorous anti-sentimentalism, was really enjoying himself he would feel an annoying pain in his side.

  And, in some poetically appropriate way, that pain would be me.

  EPILOGUE

  Angelina Jolie likes my hair. She said so. In those exact words.

  ‘I do like your hair,’ she said, looking at my hair.

  ‘Do you?’ I replied, pretending not to care, like Pooh Bear.

  ‘Yeah,’ she confirmed – just in case there was any doubt.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ I replied.’I like my hair too.’

  And then, almost as an afterthought, Ange added, ‘I must get Brad to do that …’

  ‘Well of course he already did,’ I burbled.’In that film Johnny Suede.’ This was true. Before becoming officially the Sexiest Man in the World Ever, Brad Pitt had starred somewhat self-deprecatingly in a little New York indie-pic directed by Tom DiCillo who famously shot Jim Jarmusch’s black-and-white cult favourite Stranger than Paradise. The titular character was a somewhat dorky fifties throwback who worships Ricky Nelson and sports a bouffant pompadour on which you could balance your hat, coat and shoes and still have space for a compact Wurlitzer jukebox. I really loved that movie, and indeed the British poster consisted of a picture of Brad’s hair with the quote ‘Quifftastic! – Mark Kermode, Q Magazine’ emblazoned across it.

  ‘Oh right,’ said Angelina, nonplussed.’I never saw that movie …’

  So that was that.

  I still wonder from time to time whether, in between bouts of photogenically physical interaction, Ange ever turned to her beloved and said, ‘Hey, I met this weird middle-aged English journalist with really great hair and I think you should try to look more like him …’

  Probably not.

  Still, it’s something to tell the grandchildren.

  My grandchildren, not hers, obviously.

  I mention this incident only because I’m pretty much done here, and I realise that I haven’t mentioned it before. This is fairly typical – I’ll spend ten pages talking about Krakatoa: East of Java and then fail to mention one of the very few events in my life that might actually constitute a bona fide ‘celebrity anecdote’. I’m rubbish at those, as you’ve probably noticed.

  But having pitched this book to you as the reading equivalent of a TV Movie of the Week I feel I that should attempt to stay true to its generic roots. I could always take a steer from The Karen Carpenter Story which starts with our heroine pegging out to the strains of ‘Rainy Days and Mondays’ but somehow manages to end with her telling her mom that she loves her and then breaking out into a great big cheese-eating grin. So even though Karen died of heart failure at the age of thirty-two, the film still manages to have a happy ending! Brilliant!

  As for Ange’s comments about my hair, they are perfect ‘Chubby? Hmmm…’ fodder, providing a neat narrative bookend which I wish I’d thought of when I started writing this, but it’s far too late to go back and fix it now.

  Picture the scene: we open on a sepia-toned shot of an awkward young kid with stupid unruly hair being mocked at school and called ‘Mr Pineapple Head’, which was just one of the terms used to deride my upstanding hair when I was young. Other insulting sobriquets included ‘Spiny Norman’, a reference to the imaginary twelve-foot hedgehog from Monty Python’s Piranha Brothers sketch, and ‘Bogbrush’ which I think is fairly self-explanatory.

  The camera follows this scrawny kid home, alone, passing en route a cinema (showing a double bill of The Exorcist and Mary Poppins) and a desolate barber’s shop, the window of which showcases a handsome array of male hairdressing products and pomades. Cut from here to the kid at home, spooning wax into his hair, with Elvis playing on an orange plastic Decca Dansette, his mum shouting from downstairs for him to come and have his tea, but his attention entirely gripped by the sleekly handsome quiff which he has skilfully crafted from his previously ragtag spikes.

  The camera closes in on said quiff, delving into the hair like David Lynch’s extreme lawn close-up at the beginning of Blue Velvet which foretells great horrors to come. Then we pull back to reveal that very same hairstyle, utterly unchanged, although now it adorns the head of our adult star (Jason Isaacs to the set, please) whose barnet has remained immovable despite the passage of time and the ageing of his face.

  After which we’d get the movie, which would be pretty much what you’ve just read – or ‘skimmed’, as is apparently popular. Then, as the end approaches, we’d come to the crucial scene in which La Jolie (played by herself – as a favour to me) compliments Jason’s hair in the most fulsome manner. He laughs nonchalantly but then, unexpectedly, seems to retreat into his own inner world. As the crowd of technicians and cameramen scuttle on the outskirts of the frame, we follow Mr Isaacs back to his dressing room where he sits silently in front of a mirror and takes out two old battered tins – one red, one blue – and places them on the table before him.

  Slowly, the music starts to swell and as it does so we see Jason staring at his own reflection in the mirror, the distorted sounds of childhood taunts echoing around his head like the creepy kids’ nursery rhyme (‘One, two, Freddy’s coming for you …’) in A Nightmare on Elm Street. As we watch, the reflected image of Jason’s face dissolves into a nostalgic scene of the previously awkward kid striding boldly through the school corridors, ignoring the jeers of his classmates, safe in the knowledge that his hair is immaculate and they are all just idiots.

  He is right, they are wrong. End of story.

  At some point the kid looks over his shoulder, straight into the eyes of his olde
r self, and winks. Then the camera pans down from the mirror on to the tins of pomade, and the credits roll …

  ‘Sponsored by Dax and Sweet Georgia Brown Fine pomades for a life free from frizz’

  THE END

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Despite its rampagingly egotistical nature, this book has benefited hugely from the input of others so, in the manner of Kate Winslet’s Golden Globes speech, I would like to ‘gather’ and say thank you to:

  Linda Ruth Williams, who lived this movie with me, and then had to live it all over again (and again) as my uncredited producer, script-editor, assistant director, sound mixer, and test audience.

  Hedda Archbold at Hidden Flack, for her wise guidance and repeated use of the phrase ‘don’t worry, I’ll sort it out’ – which she invariably did.

  Sophie Lazar at Random House, for being an exemplary editor who endured endless ‘tweaks’ and demands for ‘a bigger chainsaw’ with unflappable finesse.

  Geoff Andrew, Mariano Baino, Nick Cooper, Nigel Floyd, Ed Glinert, Nick Jones, Simon Mayo, Saul Rosenberg, David Shulman, Andy Spinoza, Sarah Ward, and Tim Worman for reading (and correcting) the parts of the story which they remember far better than I do.

  Craig Lapper and Sue Clark at the BBFC for being constantly available to answer ‘just a very quick question…’

  Kim Newman, for his encyclopaedic film-fact checking; and Alex Archbold Jones for knowing his cannibals.