The Rogue Film School is not for the faint-hearted. It is for those who have travelled on foot, who have worked as bouncers in sex clubs or as wardens in a lunatic asylum, for those who are willing to learn about lock picking or forging shooting permits in countries not favoring their projects. In short: for those who have a sense of poetry. For those who are pilgrims. For those who can tell a story to four year old children and hold their attention. For those who have a fire burning within. For those who have a dream.
Werner HerzogWhen we speak about trespassing, we speak about artistic trespassing. You have to be prudent and have common sense and a sense of responsibility when you're trespassing. I think you haven't seen a film on volcanoes like that before. It's not National Geographic. It is wildly imaginative and very poetic and has a sense of awe that you normally do not see in films.
Werner HerzogI have not seen a film as powerful, surreal, and frightening in at least a decade unprecedented in the history of cinema.
Werner HerzogI think it is a quest of literature throughout the ages to describe the human condition.
Werner HerzogWe do not see the danger clearly enough that we develop images adequate to our state of civilization. When you watch TV, you know instantly that there's something wrong with the images. When you open a magazine and see the ads, you know there's something wrong with the images. And it's unhealthy and not good and outright dangerous, in my opinion.
Werner HerzogMy contacts with the film industry can be described in very simple terms: The industry does not really need me, and I do not really need the industry.
Werner HerzogWhen you look at the paintings at Chauvet Cave, they're not primitive or like children's little scribbles, it bursts on the scene fully accomplished and when you look through the faces of cultural history, art history, it has never gotten any better.
Werner HerzogWe live in a society that has no adequate images anymore, and if we do not find adequate images and an adequate language for our civilization with which to express them, we will die out like the dinosaurs.
Werner HerzogIf you want to propose marriage to your girlfriend and you live in England and she is in Sicily, do the decent thing and walk down there. Travelling by car or aeroplane wouldn't be right at such a moment.
Werner HerzogSometimes bad luck hits you like in an ancient Greek tragedy, and it's not your own making. When you have a plane crash, it's not your fault.
Werner HerzogMost of the volcanoes are pretty far away. You have to go to, God knows, Alaska. Or you have to go to the Southern Indies or you have to go to a specific island.
Werner HerzogAll of a sudden it's twelve-year-olds who are contacting me, fifteen-year-olds, and they have very, very fascinating questions. However, they speak in a language of their age group which I have to learn first.
Werner HerzogChauvet Cave is rather like the awakening of the modern human soul or I would say the awakening of modern human culture. Because Neanderthal men who still rode the landscape parallel to the people who did these paintings didn't have culture. There's no evidence of culture, no symbolic depiction, no evidence of music, no evidence of sculptures, no evidence of religious beliefs.
Werner HerzogCenturies from now our great-great-great-grandchildren will look back at us with amazement at how we could allow such a precious achievement of human culture as the telling of a story to be shattered into smithereens by commercials, the same amazement we feel today when we look at our ancestors for whom slavery, capital punishment, burning of witches, and the inquisition were acceptable everyday events.
Werner HerzogIt's very enigmatic because of course, the population [of North Korea] has no contact with the world outside or it's very, very limited. They don't have any telephone connections, no radio, no TV, no movies, no newspapers - nothing from the outside world. This is very strange and there's the very strict, unifying government that forces you to be in step. You see it in the stadium where the spectators create, by flipping cards, an image of the dear leader, or of the volcano, and it's made of a 100,000 human pictures.
Werner HerzogRoger Ebert was a very valiant soldier of cinema who passed away, and we miss him. It's over with serious discourse about cinema in the print media and on television. It has been replaced by celebrity news. So we are speaking in his spirit always.
Werner HerzogI have worked for YouTube like texting and driving because I was curious to test what's out there and how does it function, can I release something like about texting and driving to very young audiences, at the age where they do their drivers test? And the response was phenomenal, millions of people saw it.
Werner HerzogEverything you see in North Korea, it's all propaganda, but it's all connected to the volcano.
Werner HerzogSimilar thing until today, with digital cameras you look after something like that as robust as they can be.
Werner HerzogWhen I see a face, I see a face in general and I see you are curious, I see the curiosity but I don't not look after a dermatological report of your cheeks, and that's what you see when you're too high-resolution. And now desperately in post-production, in color grading, they are trying to wipe out the precision of the dermatological report.
Werner HerzogIt's not because nature is angry, it's rather that we are stupid. We're not doing the right thing with our planet.
Werner HerzogPerseverance has kept me going over the years. Things rarely happen overnight. Filmmakers should be prepared for many years of hard work. The sheer toil can be healthy and exhilarating.
Werner HerzogIt's curiosity, and always a sense of poetry. You see it in particular in the chapter "Iceland" where I'm reciting ancient Icelandic poetry. It has this very beautiful gravitas in conjunction with the volcanoes.
Werner HerzogMy non-fiction films are pretty much fiction, or at least close... It's all "movies" for me. I never have searched for a subject. They always just come along. They never come by way of decision-making. They just haunt me. I can't get rid of them. I did not invite them.
Werner HerzogIf I had to climb into hell and wrestle the devil himself for one of my films, I would do it.
Werner HerzogI have never been one of those who cares about happiness. Happiness is a strange notion. I am just not made for it. It has never been a goal of mine; I do not think in those terms.
Werner HerzogI think a state should not be in the capacity of killing anyone with the exception of warfare.
Werner HerzogYour film is like your children. You might want a child with certain qualities, but you are never going to get the exact specification right. The film has a privilege to live its own life and develop its own character. To suppress this is dangerous. It is an approach that works the other way too: sometimes the footage has amazing qualities that you did not expect.
Werner HerzogI'm one of the few reading and thinking people who loves Las Vegas for the vulgarity and omnipresence of the dream. The collective dream. There's something enormous about it. Let me say one thing: Las Vegas and cinema have similar roots. The country fair. The magician at the country fair. The vulgarity of the country fair.
Werner HerzogAt the end [when I speak about] magma under us everywhere, how it's monumentally indifferent to scurrying roaches, recoiled reptiles, and vapid humans alike. You see, you would never hear anything like that in a National Geographic or a PBS movie. This is clearly a transgression when it comes to being politically correct with your commentary.
Werner HerzogFacts do not convey truth. That's a mistake. Facts create norms, but truth creates illumination.
Werner HerzogOtherwise [digital revolution] hasn't changed my way of filmmaking, I'm not nostalgic in postulating we should still make films on celluloid. I love celluloid but I don't need to continue on celluloid.
Werner HerzogI must say, the people who started this whole Masterclass series have been very helpful and very intelligent to point out certain things and also give me some guidance, "isn't there something missing, shouldn't we address this or that?" so it's not completely alone out of the blue. It's very well thought through.
Werner HerzogYou will learn more by walking from Canada to Guatemala than you will ever learn in film school.
Werner HerzogI function better in the jungle in Amazonia or Antarctica or Alaska or the Sahara desert. An artificial environment like a studio has never attracted me. I could work in a studio, but I would never really feel at home.
Werner HerzogYou have to be very prudent with what you are doing and what sort of tools you are utilizing. Drones have become a wonderful new tool in filmmaking.
Werner HerzogI find it interesting that there are impostors out on the Internet pretending to be Werner Herzog.
Werner HerzogIf an actor knows how to milk a cow, I always know it will not be difficult to be in business with him.
Werner Herzog