Werner Herzog is one fuck of a human being.

just saw "signs of life" and "even dwarves started small" (my wife is over herzog) and watched the latter with commentary on. herzog's discussions of chickens entertain me to no end. the dude was obsessed with chickens.

i was ROFLing, really.

i'd read some quotes of his but to hear the words in his voice is soooo much more entertaining. LOL, i'm laughing out loud, as i write this, imagining herzog staring into the eyes of a chicken.

enframed wrote:i'd read some quotes of his but to hear the words in his voice is soooo much more entertaining. LOL, i'm laughing out loud, as i write this, imagining herzog staring into the eyes of a chicken.

You should listen to the commentary for Stroszek, where he talks about the dancing chicken at the end.

"All the crew thought it was a bad idea, and I was there alone with the chicken, filming it, and was fascinated." Something like that. Fuckin' hilarious.

mattw wrote:

enframed wrote:i'd read some quotes of his but to hear the words in his voice is soooo much more entertaining. LOL, i'm laughing out loud, as i write this, imagining herzog staring into the eyes of a chicken.

You should listen to the commentary for Stroszek, where he talks about the dancing chicken at the end.

"All the crew thought it was a bad idea, and I was there alone with the chicken, filming it, and was fascinated." Something like that. Fuckin' hilarious.

i have stroszek at home, but for my wife i need to chill on the herzog.

in "even dwarves" he talks about how stupid chickens are, how you cannot know true stupidity until you stare into the eyes of a chicken. the he says something like "when you stare into the eyes of a chicken it's just..(long-ish pause)...REALLY weird."

Incidentally, the method they use to train those chickens to dance is torture. They put the bird in a cage with an electric hot-plate under the floor, and then occasionally play the music while turning up the heat on the hot-plate. The chicken is thereby conditioned to "dance" whenever it hears the music.

I felt that the ridiculousness of that ending just emphasized the tragedy even more.

the closing scene of stroszek is pretty sensational:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUcTvhyof8I

One of my favorites directors. Not crap, no waffle.

So far, the only movie I didn't enjoyed that much was Kaspar Hauser. There are so many that are not just good but greats, amazing pieces. Stroszek, Nosferatu, Cobra Verde, Aguirre, Fitzcarraldo, Heart of Glass, Fata Morgana, Grizzly Man. Herzog is obviously a genius and his ability to deliver visually amazing and touching images and ideas never ceases to amaze me. He's a fascinating character too. I'm yet to hear a story about Herzog that isn't great.

Between my favorite Herzog scenes it is the ending of Cobra Verde, with Kinski crawling in the sand and the waves. It's a breathtaking performance.
the endings of Stroszek and Aguirre are so classic that I don't even have to mention it.

I haven't yet seen Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe but what he says there is great and really sums up his ideas. That's what he did. He just started directing without knowing shit about making movies. He was never involved in the production of a movie before starting filming himself.

Herzog über alles.

stroszek is brilliant, i loved bruno s. in it.

saw encounters at the end of the world this weekend. another corker by herzog. beautiful footage, herzog is dark and comical as usual. my wife and i laughed so hard when he said that there being yoga there was "an abomination."

a few of the people he interviewed were interesting and it was really fun to try to figure out what these people really thought/said vs. what herzog had them say.

apparently the film was made for discovery channel and was produced by guitarist and antarctic diver henry kaiser.

Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6696106694952949285