Werner Herzog, the revered German auteur behind “Fitzcarraldo,” “Aguirre, the Wrath of God,” “Nosferatu the Vampyre,” and “Grizzly Man” – among dozens of other titles – gave some very practical tips to aspiring directors on Thursday during a Venice Film Festival masterclass.
“You have to know how to forge a shooting permit in a country with a military dictatorship, how to pick locks,” he said. “To make films you have to be a borderline criminal. If you do not have that [in you] don’t even think about starting to become a filmmaker.”
Other pearls of wisdom provided by the 82-year-old New German Cinema giant to the room packed with young film buffs ranged from “read a lot of books” – Herzog only watches five or six films per year – to don’t get too hung up on a specific project.
“Of course there are projects I have not been able to make,” he said, recounting how with Francis Ford Coppola in the 1990s they we wanted to mount a lavish production about the Spanish conquest of Mexico, seen and narrated from the perspective of the Aztecs. “We spent many sleepless nights over it but it never materialised because it could not be financed.”
“The industry functions in a specific way,” said Herzog. “But instead of trying to push for financing without success for the next twenty years I actually made 28 films [since then] and I wrote seven books in that time. That’s what I did. That unmade script? It doesn’t matter.”
The prolific helmer also pointed out that one year, two of his films pulled off the unique feat of making the cut for the Venice competition. In 2009, Herzog premiered both “My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?” and “Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans.”
Herzog also noted that for him “Independent cinema does not exist. You are dependent on production systems, you are dependent on distribution. You are dependent on permits,” he said.
“But there is such a think as self-reliance,” Herzog went on to note. “Make some money somehow. But don’t rob a bank, because that’s counterproductive. They usually catch you.”
At Venice this year, Herzog is premiering his new documentary “Ghost Elephants,” about the search for a herd of elusive elephants in a virtually uninhabited swathe of the Angola highlands that is as large as England. “Ghost Elephants” is screening out-of-competition.
Meanwhile he’s been busy shooting his next feature film, “Bucking Fastard,” in Ireland, which stars sisters Kate and Rooney Mara. And Herzog is developing an animated film based on his novel, ‘The Twilight World,’ and has been cast as a voice actor in Bong Joon Ho’s upcoming animated film about deep-sea creatures.
“I never stop working and always have more than one project in mind,” he said. “But if there is too much on, I cannot follow it all the time. So I follow whatever comes at me with the greatest urgency.”
