Werner Herzog has a strange reputation, because of his formal and very German way of speaking, but deep down, I think he’s just a sweet old man. Here’s Herzog reacting to a skateboarding video.
Slightly skewed, but charming, and he has a nice smile.
Tangentially, when I was a teenager, if you’d asked me who my favorite actor was, I would have said Oskar Werner, because I’d seen him in a handful of films and like his manner and that faint accent. It might have been in reaction to my peers who would have said someone like John Wayne, and I despised John Wayne from an early age. There’s some of that same quality to Werner and Herzog…
Wayne was also a fearless draft dodger
I am of the belief that nobody actually likes John Wayne as an actor, they like John Ford and Howard Hawks as directors and some of that shine rubs off on Wayne. Wayne was a one-note instrument and they knew how to play that instrument.
And I’d love to hear Werner Herzog spout his opinions on John Wayne, because I think he’d be hilariously insulting, in the politest way possible.
I remember watching Aguirre, the Wrath of God way back when.
If we mention “Aguirre” and Herzog, we must mention Klaus Kinski.
He was marvellous at playing creepy monsters, what no one outside his family knew was that he was a monster for real.
You know, someone should have put Wayne and Kinski in the same film, and provoked them into killing each other.
Kinski eating Wayne’s liver would have made a perfect scene for the ‘giallo’ films of the seventies.
remyporter@2
That sounds believable, though I’m not familiar enough with John Wayne movies. I never tried to watch Westerns and I don’t think I made it far enough into either The Long Voyage Home or The Quiet Man to develop a strong opinion.
Folk singer Phil Ochs was an admirer of John Wayne’s acting and persona (but not his politics). He also referred to the “John Ford/John Wayne” combination. Wayne does seem like more of an empty vessel than a strong personality.
I was going to say I don’t know Oskar Werner from an Oscar Mayer Wiener (and I guess I just did) but his face looks familiar. He was in both Ship of Fools and Voyage of the Damned? Now there’s some highly specific type-casting.
Weird news: Steve Mnuchin’s wife Louis Linton plays a cannibalistic killer in a weird new film.
(This reminds me: All American cannibals- from the Donner party to Jeffrey Dahmer- have been white)
Re. Herzog. Actors often make a more memorable impression when they play really bad guys :-)
I’m a fan of Westerns, and I’m proud to say that none of my favorites star John Wayne. He was such a boring actor. Every performance he gave was the same and interchangeable. A John Wayne film usually means a bombastic story line and shallow dialogue.
I admire Herzog because he is a daring filmmaker and seems genuinely interested in the subject matter of his films.
And Oskar Werner was the perfect choice for the film adaption of Fahrenheit 451.
Herzog was a man with a sense of wonder. I loved his Cave of Forgotten Dreams. He and his team were given access to a recently discovered cave with ancient wall paintings and, given the restrictions on filming and presence, made a wonderful movie about it. You could tell he was happy and amazed at such a find and such a connection with our ancestors. The sections about the discovery of the cave were great. The icing one the cake, the mutant white alligators over at the local nuclear reactor. They were amazing too, but fitting them into the movie was pure Herzog.
His answer to the soundtrack question was not at all what I expected, but seems like it would work really well.
…mutant white alligators over at the local nuclear reactor….
At least it wasn’t mutant spiders!!!
Sadly I have procrastinated on this one that is kinda a companion piece to Lawrence of Arabia. Still so relevant to our times too:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_of_the_Desert_(film)
One of these days. It’s gotta be an important film because Kidman as Bell. Emo Vampire guy as Lawrence. To do lists…I will…
Any opinions?
This past week I recommended Cave of Forgotten Dreams to my intro students! I’ll have to follow up and see if any watched it.
Cave of Forgotten Dreams is brilliant. Hope the students thought so, too.
Herzog was in The Mandalorian and he too was smitten with Grogu/Baby Yoda. That’s good enough for me.
What a cool video, thanks for sharing.
In madalorian I first heard him talk english (german here). I think he has a nice distinctive voice.