Werner Herzog – A Guide for the Perplexed: Conversations with Paul Cronin

The images in my films are your images too. Somehow, deep in your subconscious, you find them, dormant, lurking, like sleeping friends; they correspond with the inner landscapes inside us all and strike directly into the soul of man. Occasionally – perhaps only a dozen times throughout my life – I have read a text, listened to a piece of music, wat

“Of course, we can’t disregard the factual; it has normative power. But it can never give us the kind of illumination, the ecstatic flash, from which truth emerges.”

What does it mean to transform a whole world into music? That’s what opera is about. The idea of staging an opera seemed a strange thing for me to do, until I realised that since my earliest days as a filmmaker I have sought to transform every action, every word into images, so I thought, “Why shouldn’t I try at least once in my life to do the same

If you watch Fitzcarraldo and have the courage to push on with your own projects, then the film has accomplished something. If one person walks outside after watching one of my films and no longer feels so alone, I have achieved everything I set out to achieve. When you read a great poem you instantly know there is a profound truth to it. Sometimes

What I like about film is that you never immediately know what has been shot. When I feel in my guts we have the best we can possibly get, I stop. I don’t want to be able to push a button and check there and then what we’ve been working on. This is why you won’t find video-assist monitors on my set. I feel the same way about dailies, which I always

“I have fortified myself with enough philosophy to cope with anything that’s been thrown at me over the years,” says Herzog. “I always manage to wrestle something from the situation, no matter what.”

The most important thing to say about editing is that it isn’t a technical process. It comes from something much deeper, from an understanding of the vision behind the images and the story you need to tell. If you don’t have that, your work will be subject to whims and continual fumbling. The danger of digital non-linear editing is the ability to c

I truly liked Kinski for the attitude he brought to that hotel room, though once he arrived at the site where the boat was to be pulled over the mountain and saw how steep the terrain was, his heart sank. He was convinced it couldn’t be done, and became the strongest negative force on the film.

Everything we’re forced to learn at school we quickly forget, but the things we set out to learn ourselves – to quench a thirst – are never forgotten, and inevitably become an important part of our existence.