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

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

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

The overwhelming quality of the universe is monumental indifference and lack of order.

What films do you screen at Rogue? Who said anything about watching films? I tell the Rogues to read, read, read, read, read. Those who read own the world; those who immerse themselves in the Internet or watch too much television lose it. If you don’t read, you will never be a filmmaker. Our civilisation is suffering profound wounds because of the

“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.”

I saw myself as the captain in the joke about Italian soldiers in the First World War trenches. For weeks they’re being bombarded, day after day, until their captain grabs a rifle and shouts, “Up, men! Attack!” Enemy fire cuts him down before he has gone two steps, and he falls back into the trench, stone dead. The soldiers, none of whom have follo

“As someone who has given literally thousands of interviews over the years, as well as filmed many conversations for my own films,” he told me, “it has been forever clear to me that journalists who rely on tape recorders inevitably get the story wrong, but those who sit, listening carefully, writing down the odd word, taking in the bigger picture,

A Fu Manchu film I saw was a revelation for me. A man was shot and fell sixty feet from a rock, did a somersault in mid-air, then a little kick with his leg. Ten minutes later, because of this little kick I recognised the same shot when it appeared in another gun battle; they had recycled it and thought they could get away with it. I spoke to frien

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 y