On August 16, at the Filmmaker’s Alliance annual Vision Awards, the legendary director Werner Herzog got a lifetime achievement award. He was introduced by writer Zak Penn, whose initial introduction was sarcastic and hilarious. Although I don’t think he’ll be getting any Christmas cards
from Brett Ratner … Jesus! What in hell happened between the two of them as to X-Men 3? Gotta be some hard feelings there… or else they’re such close friends that Penn can pretty much call out Ratner as a spoiled hacky shitmeister without there being any hard feelings. Or maybe there are. Whatever.
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First: you gotta love that Herzog showed up even though he had been shot in the stomach during a BBC interview that week. OK, OK, it was just with a pellet gun. But in true Herzogian (is that a word? it is now) fashion, he insisted that they continue with the interview.
I’ve added "Burden of Dreams" to my netflix queue – the documentary about how he made "Fitzcarraldo" – a deeply flawed film, but still an awe-inspiring undertaking, and one of the greatest allegories ever for what it feels like to be a movie director. The image of the boat being dragged uphill – the whole Sisyphean nature of it – really captures what it feels like
to roll out of bed in the morning, groaning with the weight of a film production on your shoulders. A million things swirling around your head, worries, questions you can’t yet answer, concerns over all the squintillion things that you just KNOW are going to go wrong, already trying to come up with contingency plans for when the shot doesn’t come together, trying to figure out what else you know you can shoot so that in post you can cut around the looming disaster … and then wondering what the day will hold after lunch.
Yeah. And the Jesus/martyrdom complex. I’ll cop to that one as well.
But Herzog has reached a place, I think, where a kind of holy calm has settled over him. He spoke in a soft, kind voice, he was relaxed and self-deprecating.
And he was filled with some kind of – I have to relate it to the kind of spirit that I’ve seen in people like my old friend from high school, Bill Cayley, who goes into the prisons in Ethiopia and Somalia and provides medical treatment to the political prisoners there. I met Bill at my 20th high school reunion, and there was a sort of preternatural calm to him. It was as if his feet no longer completely touched the earth.
Herzog had that. I think it comes from surviving so much trauma, from seeing so many epically amazing things go so thoroughly wrong, and still managing to maintain your basic human optimism, rather than sinking into pessimism and drunkenness. Or if not optimism, then perhaps a kind of quiet strength that just exists and endures.
His parting words were that because digital technology has made it possible for us to make movies on smaller budgets, as little as $10,000 for a feature, that there is no longer an excuse not to follow your dreams. "There is no excuse anymore." Hell, click on the link above and listen to the man.
He may be calm, but he is not removed. Oh no. He is very much present still in this world and committed to achieving his art – and to inspiring other people to do so as well; and to do so with honesty and utter integrity.