The New York Times spoke to our dearly beloved nutcase Werner Herzog about his upcoming film “Rescue Dawn,” which ironically opens up on July 4 (it’s about capture POW’s essentially and stars Christian Bale). The German director was basically regurgitating his whole “ecstatic truth” campaign and “accountant’s truth” rhetoric he loves to retell ad nauseum, but it’s Herzog, so at least something fascinating or hilarious will be said.
It’s admittedly also a good primer piece on those that don’t know Herzog and want to learn something about his rich history and notorious past (i.e. Actor Klaus Kinski attacked Herzog before quitting the then-unfinished “Cobra Verde,” while on the set of “Fitzcarraldo” in South America, one native chief’s offer to murder Kinski was declined by Herzog.)
The Q&A excerpts after the jump.
NYTimes: You made the 1997 documentary “Little Dieter Needs to Fly” about this subject. Why did you also want to explore the material through a feature?
Herzog: In a way “Rescue Dawn,” the feature film idea, was always first. When I met Dieter, I had the feeling this was a very big epic story with a character larger than life. But since it took quite a while to get the money together for the feature, we did the documentary first.
NYTimes: How would you compare your working relationship with Christian Bale to the one with Klaus Kinski?
Herzog: It’s hard to even try to compare. With Kinski it was always: How can I domesticate the wild beast, and how do I survive his next tantrum where he destroys the whole set? How do I make his utter madness and irresponsibility productive onscreen? This was not so with Christian. He was the most disciplined, wonderful man. And he has great emotion of depth. Christian was so dedicated to this film. He did things that an actor of his caliber normally would not do, like eating maggots or catching a live snake. You just name it. It’s unbelievable.
NYTimes: You’ve been known for improvising parts of your movies in the past. Was this done with “Rescue Dawn?”
Herzog: We need a definition of improvisation. It is not like in free jazz where some musicians meet and they start improvising in a jam session. Improvisations and modifications are possible, but always within a very clear framework of perspective regarding the content of a sequence. For example, there’s a scene with Jeremy Davies [who plays the P.O.W. Eugene DeBruin] and Christian Bale where I tell him, “You need to silence Christian down,” but I don’t give him a dialogue line of how to do it. He’s so lively because he doesn’t have the strictures of written dialogue.
The rest of the interview, including the controversy surrounding the DeBruin family and Herzog’s depiction of their son (they didn’t like it), is here.