Werner Herzog says it's not good to circle 'your own navel' but writes a memoir anyway

Transcript

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. My guest, Werner Herzog, is a writer and director who makes films about extremes - extreme personalities, predicaments and places. He's made two films in the Amazon jungle - "Aguirre, The Wrath Of God," about a mad conquistador in the 16th century, and "Fitzcarraldo," about a European opera lover in Peru obsessed with bringing opera to the Amazon, but in order to do it, he needs to get a steamship over a mountain to get to the river. The actor who starred as a madman in both films was Klaus Kinski, who Herzog describes as a madman. Kinski also starred in Herzog's version of "Nosferatu." Herzog's documentary "Grizzly Man" is about a man who lived in Alaska among grizzly bears, thinking he was protecting them until one ate him and his girlfriend. The list of films about and shot in extreme circumstances is a lot longer.

Herzog grew up in extreme circumstances. He was born in Munich during World War II. After Allied bombs were dropped, decimating nearby homes, his mother found him in his crib, covered with shattered glass and debris. He was uninjured, but his mother took him and his brother to an extremely remote part of Bavaria in the mountains where they lived a life of poverty. Over the years, he survived many injuries sustained while ski jumping and while making films. Some members of his casts and crews have suffered illness and injury, too. Even people who don't know Herzog's films know him for his sinister portrayals in "Jack Reacher," "The Mandalorian" and "The Simpsons." Werner Herzog now lives in LA and Munich. He's written a new memoir called "Every Man For Himself And God Against All," which is also the subtitle of his film "The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser."

Werner Herzog, welcome back to FRESH AIR.

WERNER HERZOG: Thank you for having me again.

GROSS: Oh...

HERZOG: Yeah.

GROSS: ...It is always my pleasure. Do you know why you're attracted to extremes in your life and in your films?

HERZOG: I don't see that much as extremes. You see, when you move a ship over a mountain, it is doable. And I knew it was doable, although quite hard. But I think it is such a big metaphor. Like, in literature, you have it, for example, the white whale, Moby Dick and the hunt for it or Don Quixote attacking the windmills with his lance. So there are big metaphors, a big vision out there. And then it doesn't matter if it's becoming difficult or not. And of course, I disagree a little bit about what you said about risking things. Yes, I have risked, personally, things. I test the problems and the obstacles and the dangers. But in 80 or so films, not a single actor was ever injured. Not one.

So it's my proof that I must be circumspect, that I must be careful. Of course, sometimes crew members were hurt, but they would volunteer, even push me, for example, let's go through the rapids with a ship. And it's a big one. I mean, 320 tons. And if it crashes into the rocks, it has a momentum and a kinetic energy that's enormous. And of course, almost everyone who was on board for filming - and they pushed me, let's go on board and let's film this. Almost everyone was injured. But that does happen. And it's a risk that we knew, and we accepted it.

GROSS: But my question still stands. Why do you think you're attracted to making films that put you in risky situations and that put you in extreme situations? It's one thing to have in the film a metaphor like dragging a ship over a mountain, but it's another thing to actually have to do it in your film (laughter), you know? At that point, it's not a metaphor. At that point, it's something your crew has to do.

HERZOG: I hear you, yes. But I'm not searching for finding my boundaries or some - the extreme mountain climbers do that. That's not my thing. I know my boundaries, and I accept them. And I take no as an answer, for example. And I'm a professional person. I'm a filmmaker, and I want to come back with a film, and I want to come back alive because I want to edit the film, and I want to show it to audiences. So, for example, at the edge of a volcano, yes, there were certain dangers, and there was an eruption, and glowing slabs or blobs of lava came down on us, raining down, and some of them very large, I mean, the size of a car, the size, even, of a truck. So you better flee quickly. You get out of it. But I'm not searching the dangers. The nature of my storytelling sometimes requires to go into extreme situations, yes, but I think to look deep into our human nature, to look deep into the darkest recesses of our soul or the hidden things deep in our soul, you have to put human beings at some sort of an edge.

GROSS: You grew up in extreme circumstances during World War II in Munich and then in a remote part of Bavaria in the mountains where you were poor. And there was one time where your mother, when you were living in Bavaria during the war, took you and your brother up a slope to get a better view of Rosenheim, a city in Bavaria that had been bombed and was on fire. And you describe it as (reading) a vast inferno, tracing the terrible pulse of the end of the world on the night sky. I knew that outside of our tight valley there was a whole world that was dangerous and spectral. Not that I was afraid of it. I was curious to know it. A lot of people would have been afraid of it. Why were you more curious to know it?

HERZOG: Well, I was too young. You see, number one, when my mother fled Munich, I was only 2 weeks old. 14 days old when there was carpet bombing on Munich. Of course, there's no memory - anything. The childhood was very, very closed and very beautiful. But when I was 2 1/2 - and it's my very first memory - my mother wakes us up abruptly in the middle of the night. It must have been April 1945, and she says you have to see it, boys. Wraps us in blankets, rushes up on a slope, and at the end of the valley, the entire sky was red and orange but not flickering because it - Rosenheim is 40 miles away, so the entire sky is pulsing slowly, red and orange, and that somehow is embedded in my memory forever.

And of course, I knew all of a sudden there's something out there. There's a world out there. There's war out there. There's a conflagration out there. And I became curious. And it's strange because my two brothers who grew up with me did not move out and were that curious. They were very successful in their professions but not like me. I was one who would move to Antarctica or to the jungle or to the Sahara desert to do my work.

GROSS: So when you were young, you got into a fight with your older brother, and you stabbed him in the wrist and the thigh. There was blood all over. And you write that you realized you urgently needed some self-discipline. What did you do to acquire that self-discipline?

HERZOG: It was from one moment to the next. I knew that something like that cannot happen again. And that's how a character is being formed - defeats catastrophes that I created. And, of course, that shaped my character. And from one moment to the next, I knew you have to control what is wild in you. You have to be disciplined. And until today, 90% of what you see when you meet me is discipline. People think, yeah, I'm the wild guy out there. And so, no, it's - I'm a disciplined professional. And at that time, family, of course, was important because we grew up with our mother who raised us. We were three brothers and one mother. We lived in one single room in a sort of pension, we called it. It's a boarding house. And, of course, we had clashes, like brothers would have. And until today, it's mysterious to foreigners.

Not long ago - a few years ago - I visited my older brother in Spain, where he had built himself a big house, and he had a wonderful sailing boat. And we were at a fish restaurant, and I studied the menu. And he put his arm around my shoulder, and all of a sudden I feel some stinging thing in my back and I smell smoke. And I realize he has set my shirt on fire with his cigarette lighter. And we laughed so hard, and everybody around on the table was appalled. But sometime that's how brothers sometimes function. And I love him dearly, and we do mischievous things to each other. It does happen, and it's not that serious. You see, somebody gave me his T-shirt and we cooled my back with a few glasses of prosecco, and that was that.

GROSS: That strikes me as slightly less than hilarious and kind of dangerous.

HERZOG: No, it was hilarious. I mean, come on, a shirt doesn't really burn. I mean, it glows and glimmers a little bit. But that was his joke.

GROSS: You know, you talk about wanting to see the dark recesses of the soul, but you also write when it comes to your soul that you'd rather die than go to an analyst because it's your view that something fundamentally wrong happens there. And you say it's a mistake to light up your soul, shadows and darkness and all. Why do you not want to light up your own soul but want to explore the dark recesses of other people's souls?

HERZOG: Well, that's my profession. That's my profession as a poet. And you look deep into who we are and you describe it. But you shouldn't make the mistake to believe that memoirs are confessional. I'm not into that business, and I never liked too deep introspection. There's enough in my memoirs. There's enough introspection. There's no doubt it's in there, but to a certain limit. And I do not want to step beyond a certain threshold. It is not healthy if you circle too much around your own navel, and it is not good to recall all the traumata of your childhood. It's good to forget them. It's good to bury them - not in all cases, but in most cases. So psychoanalysis is doing that. I do not deny that it is good and necessary in a very few cases. Yes, I admit it. But it's not my thing. And I keep telling men - so, you see, rather dead than going to a psychiatrist, but at the same time, rather dead than ever wearing a toupee.

GROSS: (Laughter).

HERZOG: So, you see, my hair is thinning, and I just accept it as it is. So no thing - rather dead. Yeah.

GROSS: It's nice to know you have your values straight.

HERZOG: And women would immediately agree with me. You can't - you cannot live with a man who starts to wear toupee and thinks he is handsome now and rejuvenated.

GROSS: Are you afraid of what you'd see if you shone a light on your soul?

HERZOG: No, no. I know who I am and I know where I come from, and I know where I'm heading to - toward. No. No fear and no regrets. Sure, I made massive mistakes, and I'm, in a way, a result of my own defeats. So be it. They formed me. They made me thinking beyond what I normally thought before.

GROSS: Well, let's take a short break here, and then we'll talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is filmmaker and writer Werner Herzog. His new memoir is called "Every Man For Himself And God Against All." We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF DAN AUERBACH'S "HEARTBROKEN, IN DISREPAIR")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with writer and filmmaker Werner Herzog. His new memoir is called "Every Man For Himself And God Against All."

One of the films that made you famous is "Aguirre, The Wrath Of God." And this is a film about a conquistador leading a Spanish expedition in South America, searching for El Dorado, the city of gold. And he goes mad along the way. He calls himself the wrath of God. What interests you about a mind that makes you want to write about it or, you know...

HERZOG: Yeah. Well, they're somehow touching a chord that's in us - something mad or borderline mad, something of power and dementia and madness. And through such figures, all of a sudden we have it spelled out. We can feel it. We can touch it. We can read it and sense it and start to compare it. Where I am standing, how mad am I myself?

GROSS: Do you feel like you are mad?

HERZOG: No, no. I'm the only one in the entire profession who is clinically sane.

GROSS: Oh. Explain that.

HERZOG: Oh, come on. I wouldn't have made some 80 films without having my wits together and my sanity and my professionalism. I'm the only one, when you look at the craze of Hollywood and all these red-carpet events, in the statements at the red carpet, which are all performative. It's all performative, borderline insanity in a way, or a saccharine-pink sort of vanilla-ice-cream emotions. I'm the only one who is sane - the only one.

GROSS: All right. I'm definitely taking your word for it.

HERZOG: Please make sure. And you can read it. Every single line in my memoirs shows you that I'm absolutely sane in an ocean of craze.

GROSS: "Aguirre" is about a Spanish conquistador who goes mad. And you can argue that "Fitzcarraldo" is a little mad, too. And the actor who you got to play both of them is Klaus Kinski, who you describe as a madman. And you knew him since you were 13 and he was 36, and you were living in the same boarding house. And you knew he'd go into rages. You'd witnessed his rages. Was it - did it seem like a good idea to you to have somebody who seemed mad play madmen? I mean - or was it just your confidence in him as an actor?

HERZOG: We have to be careful. I said it, yes, he was mad or in moments of paranoia. But he had splendid moments of friendship and warmth and insight. So he was - had quite a few facets. And, of course, since I lived in the same boarding house with him - directly with him and saw the tornado laying waste to the entire apartment, so I knew what was coming at me when some nine or 10 years later, I invited him to play the leading part in "Aguirre, The Wrath Of God."

I knew it was going to be difficult. But I said to my - so what? The real task now is, since he's such a incredible actor, since he has such a presence and dynamic and authority on the screen, I have to domesticate the wild beast somehow. All his crazy attitudes should not explode outside of the screen during a dinner or after dinner, where he opens fire at a hut full of extras. It shouldn't happen. It should be all somehow organized for the screen itself. And I think that that was my achievement.

GROSS: Outside of him actually firing into the tent - you know, into the hut, which happened. So I guess you were partially successful with that?

HERZOG: No, not partially successful. I was successful because I made five films with him. And they all, when you look at them - and forget about Kinski, and forget about his private, crazed personality and his egomania; forget about all this - there are five films out there that have something that you normally do not see in a movie, a presence and an intensity of a leading character that's unprecedented. I have only - a few precedents are there, like the young Marlon Brando, for example, and no matter how difficult it was to tame him, to domesticate the beast, it doesn't matter. The only thing, the only, only thing that counts - what do you see on a screen?

GROSS: Well, you can't argue that his presence isn't remarkable on screen. I mean, you can't take your eyes off of him. But there is that thing, that one person had part of his finger shot off when Kinski fired into the bamboo hut. So I mean, that matters, too. I mean, I understand that what really matters to you as a filmmaker is what you see on screen. But there was some collateral damage.

HERZOG: Yes. But that was the most serious thing that ever happened. And, of course, it is serious, and you have to cope with it. And I threatened Kinski. I was - actually, there are wild rumors about it that I had a gun in my hands. And so - that's not true. But I threatened him, and he understood this was not a joke anymore. And he had to be disciplined from now on. And through all the other films I made with him, never anything of this magnitude ever happened.

GROSS: Let's take a break here. If you're just joining us, my guest is filmmaker Werner Herzog. His new memoir is called "Every Man For Himself And God Against All." We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with writer and filmmaker Werner Herzog. He makes movies about extremes - extreme personalities, situations and places. His films "Aguirre, The Wrath Of God" and "Fitzcarraldo" were both set and filmed in the Amazon jungle. "Rescue Dawn" is about an American fighter pilot who was shot down over Laos and managed to survive. His documentaries include "Encounters At The End Of The World," shot in Antarctica, and "Grizzly Man," about a man who lives among grizzly bears in Alaska, thinking he's protecting them, until he's killed and eaten by a grizzly.

You grew up - well, your very early years were during World War II, and then you grew up in the aftermath. Your father was a Nazi, and he fought in the war. But he was mostly, like, in the supply room, I think.

HERZOG: Yeah.

GROSS: Yeah. And your mother was briefly a National Socialist. Did they talk with you ever about Nazism?

HERZOG: We didn't talk that much. My mother, it was obvious she was, very early on, embarrassed about being - having been misguided and she practically - of course, she had to raise, all alone, three children. There was no money. My father never paid anything to support us. And she became a completely different person. And, of course, it was always lingering out there. And, of course, I was fascinated by what happened to Germany. How is it possible that within a few years, such a cultured nation lapses into - transforms into a world of barbarism?

GROSS: Well, even your father. Your father was from an academic family. I mean, he was from a very...

HERZOG: Yeah.

GROSS: ...Educated family. He was an academic himself.

HERZOG: Yes.

GROSS: So you must have wondered the same about your father. How could...

HERZOG: Exactly. Yes.

GROSS: ...Somebody who was educated, from a very educated family...

HERZOG: Yes. And it happened to many other educated families. There was no one spared. I mean, Germany was almost 100% Nazi. The dissidents - yes, they were out there, but they ended up in concentration camps very quickly.

GROSS: You know, your mother took you to Bavaria in the mountains to escape the bombing. But in retrospect, she also escaped the Nazis. She escaped her own country - I mean, her own people.

HERZOG: In a way, yes. But, of course, in this village, there were also Nazis in the...

GROSS: Oh, sure. I hadn't thought of that. Did you know that?

HERZOG: Yes, there were also Nazi - I - well, much later. It took some time. I thought - I didn't even know what Germany was. It was the valley where we grew up, in this remote place, and the waterfall in the gorge behind the house. That was our world. And, of course, the daily struggle - we had no running water. You had to go to the well with a bucket. We didn't have any running water in the house, so my shower was the ice cold water of the waterfall, deep in the gorge. And hardly any electricity. I didn't know of the existence of cinema until I was 11. I think the first time I noticed that there was something like Germany, I must have been 7 or 8 years old. For me, the world was around me, and that was it. And, of course, I started to question and I started to understand, how does chaos and barbarism invade a fairly organized country? And that's why I wanted to go to the chaos of eastern Congo after its independence, which I never reached, and I probably wouldn't have survived it.

GROSS: Your parents had to undergo denazification after the war.

HERZOG: Yes.

GROSS: Did they ever tell you what that entailed?

HERZOG: My mother. My father was always outside of my life. I hardly knew him.

GROSS: Your father you hardly knew. Did your mother tell you?

HERZOG: Yes, but not very much. It was fairly laconic. And she said, look at me. That's me now. And I did a very, very severe mistake in my life, and my character had to readjust. I'm a different person. I think differently now. And so I accepted it. And, for example, she was never a racist, never deep into Nazi ideology at all.

GROSS: How do you think growing up during the war affected you, even though you were at a remove from it in the mountains - in the war and its aftermath?

HERZOG: It is more the aftermath and the restrictions. For example, I noticed that we were hungry. That was the only thing that was really hard to take. Otherwise, that we lived in very deep poverty. I didn't notice. It was a normal thing, and everyone around us was impoverished. And so it was nothing really special. Only much later I understood what poverty meant, but that I had gone through it never affected me.

GROSS: Although you say that - I'm wondering if you're thinking at all about the children in Israel and in Gaza. Like, children in Israel were kidnapped. There's been missile attacks. Children in Gaza have getting (ph) bombed. Many children have been killed. I'm wondering if you're thinking about that a lot now.

HERZOG: It's - yes. You have somebody talking to you who grew up in a war. We were bombed out. There were - there was a foot of glass shards and bricks and debris on my cradle when I was 14 days old. So I - and then, of course, I grew up in post-war time - starvation, poverty. And since I had this experience, for me, it's obvious that there shouldn't be any war. I'm against any war at all. And, of course, it is terrible what we are witnessing now. It is terrible. It is terrible and it shouldn't be. And I hope it will come to a quick end. But what can I do? I cannot fight as a volunteer in this war.

GROSS: Well, would you if you could? It sounds like you're against war and wouldn't want to participate in one.

HERZOG: You know why I would participate? If, in Germany, all of a sudden, neo-Nazis started a rebellion - an armed rebellion, a coup d'etat - you would know who would be first one to rush back and pick up a weapon. It would be me. I would fight.

GROSS: Because?

HERZOG: Because something like times of the barbarism of the Nazis must not repeat itself. You see, as long as there is breath in me, I would fight.

GROSS: I understand that.

HERZOG: And of course, having caused - having created the Holocaust, Germany has specific attention to Israel. There's no doubt. But we also, now, since it will be terrible what's coming, we also have to look after all the casualties on both sides.

GROSS: We need to take another short break here, so let me reintroduce you.

If you're just joining us, my guest is writer and filmmaker Werner Herzog. His new memoir is called "Every Man For Himself And God Against All." We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF JOHN COLTRANE QUARTET'S "OUT OF THIS WORLD")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with writer and filmmaker Werner Herzog. His new memoir is called "Every Man For Himself And God Against All."

The first time you narrated a film was when you made a film for a production company in Germany that specialized in extreme subjects, and you did a film for them about ski jumping, which you knew a lot about having grown up in the mountains in Bavaria. And you used to, like, build a - God, what are they called? Like, platforms to jump off - to ski off of.

HERZOG: Yeah. Ramps. Yeah.

GROSS: Ramps. Yes. And got...

HERZOG: Yeah.

GROSS: ...Terribly injured during one of those. And a friend of yours got terribly injured on one of his jumps. But anyway, so you made a documentary about that, and they told you you have to narrate it 'cause that's what everybody does, they narrate their own films. And you've been - become famous for your narrations in films, in your documentaries, and you've had some movie roles, including in "Jack Reacher," in "The Mandalorian," which is, like, a "Star Wars" spinoff, parodying yourself on "The Simpsons," and they're all, like, sinister roles. What do you think it is about your voice that gets you cast in sinister roles? Maybe it's the content of what you're saying.

HERZOG: Yes. The content, of course. And since then, I narrated my own writings, my own commentaries, and I had found my voice. But it's a stylized voice. When I'm talking to you, I'm talking like me. In commentaries, there's a certain stylization, a certain performance in it, a certain hypnotic voice in it. I can't describe it easily, and it has caught on. Audiences love it, so I do it for them, as well. I do films for audiences. I write my book for readers. So I'm enjoying it. And I have been good in parts, in roles where I have to play the bada**, bad guy, like in "Jack Reacher," or where, for example, in a film by Harmony Korine which is called "Julien Donkey-Boy," I play a hostile father who harasses his dysfunctional family, and I'm good at that. It's - but it's all performance. Don't believe - don't ever believe...

GROSS: (Laughter).

HERZOG: ...I'm like that as a private person.

GROSS: That's good to know. Can you quote...

HERZOG: Yeah.

GROSS: ...Any of the lines?

HERZOG: No, not really. But, you know, when "Jack Reacher" was released, it was released in France, as well. My wife immediately gets frantic calls from her girlfriend in Paris and she says, Lena, are you really married to that man? We can give you shelter. You can, if you need to, flee. We are only an overnight flight away. Lena laughed so hard and told me about it. And of course she will testify that I'm a mild-mannered, fluffy husband. She came up with that, and I live with her happily now since 28 years. She will give you the right testimony.

GROSS: Good. So we're about at the end of the interview, and I have to say, you made it through without being shot at 'cause you were shot at at the BBC, or at least you were shot and only mildly wounded. Like, what was that about? Do you have any idea what had happened?

HERZOG: No, we do not know, because I just heard somebody across the street on a veranda ranting like road rage. And all of a sudden, I heard some sort of a mild explosion and something like a glowing piece of metal, like a kilo weight of glowing metal heat hits me at my belt or near my belt. And I thought something in the camera had exploded, but no. And I saw, then, the man with a rifle ducking down and disappearing. And I did not know because I did not want to call police. I said to the crew, BBC people, you are frantically now dialling 911. Consider it - we'll spend the next six hours filing reports at a police station, and we will have a helicopter over us and a SWAT team arriving in five minutes flat. Do we need that? Do you want that? And so we decided we'd just continue shooting but at a safer place.

GROSS: Were you outside when that happened?

HERZOG: Yes. It was outside. And you can still see it on YouTube. It's funny because people think, oh, yeah, it was all staged and made up. No, it was not. It was reality. It was the real world. And of course, in a world of fake news and inventions and embellishments and so - people believe that being shot and hit - not seriously, but anyway - that it must have been made up, or having moved a ship over a mountain, that must have been a digital effect, and we are only pretending. No. I moved the ship. So you have to connect yourself to the real world. And then all of a sudden, my memoirs become the most natural thing - a man who lived a very normal life with a few things that were exceptional. And I think it's not exceptional to move a ship over a mountain. Every grown-up man should do something like that.

GROSS: Did you go to the emergency room after you were shot?

HERZOG: No, because we could see I was bleeding, but I could see it was - the bullet went through all my leather jacket and a folded-up catalog and all my shirt and T-shirt. But it did not perforate my abdominal - it did not perforate and go into my abdomen. If it had been inside of me, lodged in my intestines, in that case, I would have gone to the emergency room. So - but I can distinguish what is serious and what is - what can be taken and tolerated. So I do my best, and I think, in this case, I did my best as well.

GROSS: Well, I should I hope you would have gone to the emergency room if it penetrated your intestines.

HERZOG: Well, I would have gone. Sure. Yes.

GROSS: OK. So what's next for you?

HERZOG: Well, I just finished another book, "The Future Of Truth," which will be released next spring, but in its German original. What you have in front of you is a very fine translation of my memoirs, but it always takes until it's been translated. So it will take about a year. And I made also two films that are not fully released yet, and I'm working on some poetry. And I'm working on a translation of poetry by a Canadian writer, Ondaatje. And, well, I'm just plowing on wildly.

GROSS: Do you ever stop working?

HERZOG: Yes. I am - I have long hours of sleep. I'm fairly lazy. My days of shooting are brief. My hours of writing are brief. I do my tax returns three hours in the morning, then I write three hours memoirs, and I go to the pharmacy or whatever. So - but I write 15 pages. It goes fast. And next day another 10, 15 pages. Because it's my life. I have lived it and it's in me. You see, it's not foreign. It's in me. And because of that, I can describe it for you, and you will not be disappointed.

GROSS: Thank you so much for coming back to our show. I really appreciate it, and I really enjoyed our conversation.

HERZOG: Oh, so did I. I enjoyed it. Thank you.

GROSS: Werner Herzog's new memoir is called "Every Man For Himself And God Against All." After we take a short break, Lloyd Schwartz will review new releases of recordings by the late opera star Maria Callas. December marks the centennial of her birth. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF GEORGE FENTON AND PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA'S "MISS SHEPHERD'S WALTZ") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.