From the "People" Archives:

by Stephen Garrett

One of the giants to emerge from the New German Cinema of the 1970's was director Werner Herzog, with wild visions like "Aguirre, the Wrath of God," "Fitzcarraldo," and "Nosferatu" -- a dreamlike cinema that, with these films in particular, explore the nature of obsession in revelatory ways. His muse for this batch of movies was Klaus Kinski, a notoriously difficult and eccentric German actor renowned for his temper tantrums, violent, erratic outbursts and refusal to take direction from anyone.

In a collaboration that lasted for almost two decades and resulted in five movies, Herzog molded Kinski's madness into some of the most hypnotic performances ever captured on film, with an almost palpable intensity that to this day is rigorously unique. Whether a Spanish conquistador, a European bourgeois, or bloodsucking creature of the night, Kinski always lost himself in his roles and emerged closer to what Herzog refers to as "Ecstatic Truth," a poetic reality with more veracity than any documentary.

Herzog's latest film, "My Best Fiend," is his very personal portrait of his professional collaborator. Their pairing pushed both of them to creative extremes, and even thoughts of murder; but time and again the result was always their best work. New Yorker Films is distributing "My Best Fiend," currently screening at New York's Film Forum.

indieWIRE: The footage in "My Best Fiend" of Kinski ranting on the set of "Aguirre" is one of the high points of your documentary.

Werner Herzog: That was Les Blank, and those were some out-takes from his documentary "Burden of Dreams." And also, I have to point back to Les Blank again: some of the finest stuff in the film -- like at the end, with Kinski playing with the butterfly -- that was his footage, which was also out-takes, and I do not understand why he overlooked such unbelievable footage and he didn't use it in "Burden of Dreams."

iW: I guess he had so much good stuff on Kinski.

Herzog: Well, yes, let's face it: the man really had too much good stuff. He would have ended up with a three-hour movie.

iW: I was recently watching Blank's film "Werner Herzog Eats his Shoe"...

Herzog: Which was actually meant for the family album [laughs], but he released it anyway.

iW: And I found it fascinating that the reason you literally ate your shoe was because you bet Errol Morris that he would never make his first film. What do you think of Morris' documentaries, especially in light of your own recent work and your own particular philosophy about documentary film?

Herzog: I'm very pleased - he's one of the finest we have anywhere around, and he has never let us down, has never made a bad or mediocre film. Everything he makes is very, very good.

iW: What do you think of his approach to the documentary film?

Herzog: Thank God he does it that way, because I've always postulated a new position in documentary filmmaking - but let's say filmmaking generally, because I'm sick and tired of what I see on television. And I'm also sick and tired of cinema vŽritŽ, because it confounds fact and truth. And they claim to have the truth and I keep saying, "This is only the accountant's truth." And of course you always influence your subject. There's no such thing as cinema vŽritŽ per se. You've got to be very careful. And when you look at "My Best Fiend," it is a totally and absolutely subjective point of view. It's MY -- and I say "my" in capital letters -- "MY Best Fiend!"

And you must seek out and search for deeper strata of truth that are possible, for example, in great poetry. When reading a great poem by Robert Frost, you sense there's a deep, deep truth inherent in it, and you can never name it. It's the same thing as what I call the "Ecstatic Truth." An Ecstatic Truth is possible in documentaries and of course in my feature films - I've always striven for that. It is something deeply inherent, where you recognize yourself as a human being again, where you find images that have been dormant inside of you for so many years and all of a sudden it becomes visible and understandable for you -- you read the world differently, your perceptions change.

And Errol is one of those who is going for the Ecstatic Truth, and stylizes and invents. And a very fine example of that would be "Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control." Thank God, there's a comrade in arms! There are a couple of others - few so far, but he's become a true source of joy.

iW: Your relationship with Kinski seems so unique. Did Kinski always act just as outrageously with other directors?

Herzog: He hated all directors without exception. But nobody had the kind of experience I did, because in most all his films - some people claim that he made 165 or 200 films - but in all these films he has very short appearances. Including, for example, "Dr. Zhivago," that he's in for two minutes. His appearances are never longer than 1 and a half or two minutes. And that would translate into one or two days maximum of shooting. More than that, no director on earth ever tolerated his pestilence! You see, that's the difference. And the same thing with producers, of course.

iW: Yet his performances in your films come across as so controlled.

Herzog: And I controlled it! [laughs]. And I contained all his mad raving and raging madness for a framework of a cinema screen. It had to be brought into some shape, it had to be a disciplined performance within the framework of a whole narrative film. And that was the hard thing to do. And everything, every single part of his performance, serves a purpose.

iW: To what extent did his intensity affect the other actors' performances?

Herzog: You push each other to limits that you have not imagined before. And that always happens when there is real filmmaking. But it happened in particular between Kinski and me - we pushed each other onto some terrain that others have not stepped on yet. And it was a dangerous terrain, life threatening - and I mean that literally.

iW: But yet you kept going back to work with him, why?

Herzog: Because it was so good! Because it was so worthwhile to shoulder this raging madman and to have this pestilence around on the set. But it was a very delicate thing to read him right and to trigger him into doing the things I wanted to have done. And you see, the difficulty was that two days into shooting, the entire other cast would be in open rebellion and say, "We are not going to continue to work with this asshole. We are not going to take it one minute longer!" And I had to keep talking to them with angels' tongues. And the entire technical crew would say, "How can you do this to us again!"

iW: So the crew never got used to it?

Herzog: You never get used to it, no. I say, "So what? So what." What's remaining are these films; and whether it was difficult or not, who cares? I mean nobody cares.

iW: What do you think of Kinski's autobiography? His passages about you are very vitriolic and insulting.

Herzog: Well, it's very hilarious and I get a lot of joy reading that kind of stuff. But let's put it this way: some of it is outright stupid and it's not great writing and it has a sexist attitude which was trendy and in vogue when he was writing it. But he describes his childhood in particular with such dire poverty that he had to fight with the rats over the last bread crumbs on the floor and he had to steal and rob and wash corpses in the morgue - all of this of course is not true and his brothers really got pissed and went public. And what really happened is that Kinski grew up in a well-to-do pharmacist's household. What is interesting now is the distance between his reality and his invented, imaginary life - the life that he wished to have led. That's the only interesting thing to me - seeing the projection of his wishes.

iW: Your acting was one of the high points in Harmony Korine's "julien donkey boy." Do you like being an actor?

Herzog: Sure, it's fun. And I do it well; it's a joy for me to do it. And I'm particularly good when I have to be fiendish, hostile, destructiveÉ[laughs].

iW: Do you think of Kinski?

Herzog: No, different than Kinski. I don't try to imitate him. And I am the anchor of dysfunction in Harmony's film, so there was a certain responsibility and weight on me, and it had to be done well, or at least credibly. I even got a good review in Variety for my performance! And the funniest thing is that agencies are trying to sign me up now as an actor.

iW: What's your impression of "julien donkey boy," now that it's finished?

Herzog: I like it because I think it's such a relief to see very young people move into totally new forms of imagery, of narration and storytelling. I was particularly glad because I just saw the film a week ago for the first time; and the day before I had seen "Double Jeopardy," which is so totally phony --

iW: Really?! "Double Jeopardy"? Why did you see that?

Herzog: I just do that to myself once and a while [laughs]. No, every so often I want to see what the industry is doing. I check it out. And, of course, I want to see what the overwhelming majority of audiences want to see on the screen. It's not about the bad taste of studio producers and the stupidity of the Hollywood industry - it is the overwhelming demand of an overwhelming majority worldwide that makes such films possible. And that's interesting for me, I'm fascinated by it. And I derive a lot of strength from it because even intelligent people like Janet Maslin label me the "Patron saint of eccentric filmmaking," or whatever; and when I see "Double Jeopardy," I know that I'm not eccentric: I am the center. And all the filmmakers who make films like "Double Jeopardy," they are the true eccentrics.