What Do Movies Say When They Say Nothing at All: A Video Essay

in Film | August 18th, 2016

Some­times less is more. Some­times silence says more than words or sound itself. John Cage knew it. Dit­to our finest film­mak­ers. That’s the take­away from When Words Fail in Movies–a new video essay that stitch­es togeth­er 15 scenes from icon­ic films by Hitch­cock, Kubrick, Felli­ni and oth­ers. Cre­at­ed by David Verdeure at Film­scalpel, the clip lets us med­i­tate on “the mean­ing­ful use of silence” in the sound-film era. Fan­dor has pulled togeth­er a list of scenes used in the mon­tage. Find them below:

The Matrix, dir. Lana Wachows­ki and Lil­ly Wachows­ki. Sil­ver Pic­tures, USA, 1999. 136 mins.
The God­fa­ther: Part III, dir. Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la. Zoetrope Stu­dios, USA, 1990. 162 mins.
Mon Oncle, dir. Jacques Tati. Spec­ta films et al., France, 1958. 117 mins.
2001: A Space Odyssey, dir. Stan­ley Kubrick. Stan­ley Kubrick Pro­duc­tions, UK / USA, 1968. 149 mins.
Lost in Trans­la­tion, dir. Sofia Cop­po­la. Amer­i­can Zoetrope et al., USA, 2003. 101 mins.
On the Water­front, dir., Elia Kazan. Hori­zon Pic­tures et al., USA, 1954. 108 mins.
The Grad­u­ate, dir. Mike Nichols. Lawrence Tur­man, USA, 1967. 106 mins.
The Lone­li­ness of the Long Dis­tance Run­ner, dir. Tony Richard­son. Wood­fall Film Pro­duc­tions, UK, 1962. 104 mins.
North by North­west, dir. Alfred Hitch­cock. Metro-Gold­wyn-May­er, USA, 1959. 136 mins.
In the Mood for Love, dir. Wong Kar-Wai. Block 2 Pic­tures et al., Hong Kong / Chi­na, 2000. 158 mins.
The Mar­t­ian, dir. Rid­ley Scott. Scott Free Pro­duc­tions et al., USA, 2015. 144 mins.
The Dis­creet Charm of the Bour­geoisie, dir. Luis Buñuel. Green­wich Film Pro­duc­tions, France, 1972. 102 mins.
The Con­ver­sa­tion, dir. Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la. Amer­i­can Zoetrope et al., USA, 1974. 113 mins.
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, dir. David Lynch. Twin Peaks Pro­duc­tions et al., USA, 1992. 135 mins.
La Dolce Vita, dir. Fed­eri­co Felli­ni. Ria­ma Film et al., Italy, 1960. 180 mins.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book and BlueSky.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cage Per­forms His Avant-Garde Piano Piece 4’33” … in 1’22” (Har­vard Square, 1973)

Thomas Edison’s Silent Film of the “Fartiste” Who Delight­ed Crowds at Le Moulin Rouge (1900)

101 Free Silent Films: The Great Clas­sics

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When Steve Buscemi Was a Firefighter — and Took It Up Again After 9/11

in Film, History | August 18th, 2016

Steve Buscemi’s roles in movies like In the Soup, The Big Lebows­ki, and Ghost World have asso­ci­at­ed him for life with a cer­tain kind of char­ac­ter: awk­ward, inef­fec­tu­al, and even slight­ly creepy, but nev­er­the­less strange­ly endear­ing. But types and the actors who play them can, and usu­al­ly do, diverge, and that goes espe­cial­ly for Busce­mi. He may have made his name por­tray­ing a host of los­er-ish men, but his skill at bring­ing them and oth­er char­ac­ters to dis­tinc­tive life have kept him a high­ly suc­cess­ful per­former for decades now. And what did he do before that? Why, he fought fires — and he did­n’t hes­i­tate to do it again after becom­ing famous.

steve-buscemi-fdny

Uni­lad’s Alex Watt quotes a post on the Broth­er­hood of Fire Face­book page which reveals how the Board­walk Empire star entered his oth­er pro­fes­sion: “In 1976 Steve Busce­mi took the FDNY civ­il ser­vice test when he was just 18 years old,” became a fire­fight­er a few years lat­er, and for four years “served on one of FDNY’s busiest, Engine Co. 55.” He returned to that very same engine after Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001, “and for sev­er­al days fol­low­ing Broth­er Steve worked 12-hour shifts along­side oth­er fire­fight­ers dig­ging and sift­ing through the rub­ble from the World Trade Cen­ter look­ing for sur­vivors.”

Though he avoid­ed pub­li­ciz­ing his brief return to fire­fight­ing at the time, Busce­mi has spo­ken open­ly about it since, as he does in the CBS Sun­day Morn­ing clip at the top of the post. Many who hear the sto­ry of a high-pro­file actor putting his life on hold and rush­ing right into a dis­as­ter site might rush right to the urban leg­end site Snopes, which does­n’t just ver­i­fy it, but also col­lects some of Buscemi’s own words about his fire­fight­ing days. He start­ed, he recalls, when he “was liv­ing in Man­hat­tan, work­ing as a fur­ni­ture mover dur­ing the day, doing stand-up com­e­dy at night and look­ing for a change. I liked the job — the guys I worked with and the nature of the work. I think I would have been hap­py doing it if I had­n’t had a greater pas­sion for act­ing.”

Buscemi’s fire­fight­ing expe­ri­ence and abil­i­ty to appear onscreen come togeth­er in A Good Job: Sto­ries of the FDNY, the doc­u­men­tary just above. Co-pro­duced by Busce­mi him­self, the film goes “behind the scenes” of the New York City Fire Depart­ment, show­ing just what it takes to put out the blazes of Amer­i­ca’s most demand­ing city. (You can see Busce­mi talk­ing about his expe­ri­ence dur­ing 9/11 around the 43 minute mark.) The “good job” of the title, one retired fire­fight­er explains, means “a real­ly tough fire.” And no mat­ter what kind of “job,” Busce­mi says, “they’re all fright­en­ing. Any time you go into a burn­ing build­ing, there’s the poten­tial for dis­as­ter. I nev­er had any real close calls, though there’s no such thing as a rou­tine fire.” No doubt he keeps him­self men­tal­ly pre­pared for anoth­er — just in case.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Steve Buscemi’s Top 10 Film Picks (from The Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion)

Quentin Taran­ti­no & Steve Busce­mi Rehearse Scenes for Reser­voir Dogs in 1991 (NSFW)

William S. Bur­roughs’ Home Movies, Fea­tur­ing Pat­ti Smith, Allen Gins­berg, Steve Busce­mi & Cats

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Hear Marc Maron’s Long Talk with Werner Herzog

in Film, Technology | August 17th, 2016

herzog and maron

Image by Erinc Salor and The Nec­es­sary Evil, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Heads up: In the lat­est episode of the WTF pod­cast, film­mak­er Wern­er Her­zog pays a vis­it to Marc Maron’s garage in Los Ange­les, and they get into a wide-rang­ing con­ver­sa­tion, talk­ing about Her­zog’s upbring­ing in war-torn Ger­many, his upcom­ing film projects and a good deal more. But inevitably they focus on Her­zog’s new film, a med­i­ta­tion on the inter­net and tech­nol­o­gy called Lo And Behold: Rever­ies Of The Con­nect­ed World, which opens in the­aters this Fri­day. You can also watch it at home.

Feel free to stream Maron and Her­zog’s con­ver­sa­tion below. It starts around the 33:30 mark. Or hear it over at Maron’s web­site.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book and BlueSky.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wern­er Her­zog Will Teach His First Online Course on Film­mak­ing

Wern­er Herzog’s Rogue Film School: Apply & Learn the Art of Gueril­la Film­mak­ing & Lock-Pick­ing

Wern­er Her­zog Picks His 5 Favorite Films

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Watch Sunspring, the Sci-Fi Film Written with Artificial Intelligence, Starring Thomas Middleditch (Silicon Valley)

in Film, Sci Fi, Technology | August 15th, 2016

This past spring the streets of Seoul, where I live, felt more like a sci-fi movie than usu­al. Large over­head video screens kept the pop­u­la­tion post­ed on the progress of a series of Go match­es between 18-time world cham­pi­on Lee Sedol and Alpha­Go, a piece of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence devel­oped by Google Deep­Mind. Com­put­ers have long had a spe­cial dif­fi­cul­ty mas­ter­ing that tra­di­tion­al game, but before long it became clear that this com­put­er would win most of the match­es, despite the human’s for­mer­ly unshak­able pre­dic­tion of the oppo­site out­come. What would arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence achieve next?

“In the wake of Google’s AI Go vic­to­ry, film­mak­er Oscar Sharp turned to his tech­nol­o­gist col­lab­o­ra­tor Ross Good­win to build a machine that could write screen­plays,” say the video notes for the new short film Sun­spring. They assem­bled hun­dreds of sci­ence fic­tion scripts, most­ly from 1980s and 90s tele­vi­sion shows and movies, and fed them into the arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, which even­tu­al­ly named itself Ben­jamin, so as to teach it the mechan­ics of screen­writ­ing. “Build­ing a team includ­ing Thomas Mid­dled­itch, star of HBO’s Sil­i­con Val­ley, they gave them­selves 48 hours to shoot and edit what­ev­er Ben­jamin decid­ed to write.” Ben­jamin decid­ed to write eight min­utes’ worth of its own inter­pre­ta­tion of the tropes of a cer­tain kind of sci-fi enter­tain­ment.

It did come up with, fair to say, some dia­logue a human screen­writer could only dream of — that is to say, words with the kind of uncon­scious log­ic that, deliv­ered by liv­ing, breath­ing actors in phys­i­cal spaces, take on weight, humor, and even an askew kind of mean­ing. (Mid­dled­itch’s despon­dent “I am not a bright light” will sure­ly stay quotable for years to come.) You can learn more about the mak­ing of Sun­spring from this Ars Tech­ni­ca piece by Annalee Newitz. Ben­jamin won’t put any sci-fi scribes out of work just yet, haunt­ing though it may seem for a pro­gram to have come so close to doing some­thing clas­si­cal­ly human as telling a sto­ry about the future. But remem­ber, peo­ple had to write that pro­gram, just as peo­ple had to cre­ate Alpha­Go; every achieve­ment of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence thus also counts as an achieve­ment of human­i­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Soci­ety of Mind: A Free Online Course from Mar­vin Min­sky, Pio­neer of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Two Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Chat­bots Talk to Each Oth­er & Get Into a Deep Philo­soph­i­cal Con­ver­sa­tion

Noam Chom­sky Explains Where Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Went Wrong

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch collective:unconscious, the Acclaimed Indie Film Where 5 Filmmakers Adapt Each Other’s Dreams for the Screen

in Film | August 12th, 2016

What an irony that, when you have a vivid, fun­ny, ter­ri­fy­ing, elab­o­rate dream, you dare not tell any­one for fear of bor­ing them. But what if you could let some­one else expe­ri­ence your dreams first-hand? The group of inde­pen­dent film­mak­ers behind this year’s collective:unconscious (not to be con­fused with the New York artist group of almost the same name) have put their wak­ing heads togeth­er to come as close as pos­si­ble to doing just that. Daniel Patrick Car­bone, Josephine Deck­er, Lau­ren Wolk­stein, Frances Bodomo, and Lily Bald­win have cre­at­ed a port­man­teau film by adapt­ing one anoth­er’s dreams for the screen, which you can dream along with them by watch­ing free on Vimeo.

“I remem­ber back when I was a teen, watch­ing Mul­hol­land Dri­ve for the first time in the the­ater,” writes collective:unconscious’ pro­duc­er Dan Schoen­brun in an essay on the mak­ing of the film at Indiewire. “I remem­ber my mind being blown. I remem­ber think­ing, ‘Movies can do that?’ ”

David Lynch has made his name with pic­tures, Mul­hol­land Dri­ve and oth­ers, that feel dream­like in the rich­est, most haunt­ing sense of the word. But rather than a set of Lynch homages, each of the five film­mak­ers con­tribut­ing here come at the project of cin­e­ma­tiz­ing the uncon­scious expe­ri­ence dif­fer­ent­ly. Some may feel just like your own dreams; oth­ers may feel noth­ing like them.

Rolling Stone sum­ma­rizes the “hyp­not­i­cal­ly sense­less” results neat­ly: “a gor­geous sketch about a wood­land sniper drifts into a Mal­ick-esque por­trait of an ex-con’s first day of free­dom; a gym teacher pre­pares his class for a vol­cano drill; a young moth­er who’s giv­ing birth to an ele­men­tal mon­ster; the grim reaper hosts a TV show about mur­dered black chil­dren.” The film has already made an impres­sive cir­cuit around the fes­ti­vals, includ­ing his year’s South by South­west (where the New York­er’s Richard Brody named it as a favorite), so clear­ly their review com­mit­tees saw some­thing much more inter­est­ing going on than the kind of recount­ing of dreams that goes on over break­fast. As they say, there’s much more going on in the uncon­scious — more of artis­tic use, any­way — than we under­stand.

collective:unconscious will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Dreams That Mon­ey Can Buy, a Sur­re­al­ist Film by Man Ray, Mar­cel Duchamp, Alexan­der Calder, Fer­nand Léger & Hans Richter

David Lynch Presents the His­to­ry of Sur­re­al­ist Film (1987)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Bob Geldof Talks About the Greatest Day of His Life, Stepping on the Stage of Live Aid, in a Short Doc by Errol Morris

in Film, History, Music | August 11th, 2016

I remem­ber being a teen in the UK when the news broke that Bob Geld­of was assem­bling a group of pop stars to record a Christ­mas sin­gle to help the starv­ing in Africa, par­tic­u­lar­ly Ethiopia, which had been rav­aged by famine since 1983. It was pre­sent­ed like “break­ing news” around tea time—possibly dur­ing one of the music shows air­ing then—and made to sound like some­thing world chang­ing was about to hap­pen. The super group of British pop singers was dubbed Band Aid.

I’ll nev­er know whether that reporter was get­ting an accu­rate sense of the future, or was try­ing to do her best to pro­mote Band Aid’s sin­gle, but just over half a year lat­er, on July 13, 1985 Band Aid had turned into Live Aid, a mas­sive dual-venue con­cert held at Wem­b­ley Sta­di­um in Lon­don and at John F. Kennedy Sta­di­um in Philadel­phia. (Phil Collins played one set, back­ing Sting, in Lon­don and then hopped on a Con­corde over to New York to play his solo hits.) The set list for both sides of the Atlantic is a who’s who of mid-80s pop and rock–Madon­na, Led Zep­pelin, U2, Queen, David Bowie all played that day–though the Amer­i­can side was both more eclec­tic in genre and more mid­dle­brow in taste. For tele­vi­sion view­ers, it took up an entire day of broad­cast­ing (I should know, I watched it at my friend’s house dur­ing a very hot sum­mer day.)

Cre­at­ed as part of a series of mini-doc­u­men­taries by mas­ter film­mak­er Errol Mor­ris, the short film above puts Geld­of cen­ter stage and revis­its what Geld­of calls “the best day of my life,” step­ping onstage at the begin­ning of Live Aid.

It’s an odd inter­view. Geld­of says he’s still a man dis­ap­point­ed in himself—Morris calls him out on it at one point—and gets emo­tion­al when he remem­bers vis­it­ing Africa and how he was asked to appear in pho­tographs along­side the dying vic­tims of star­va­tion. Band Aid had giv­en him the fame to do some­thing about the prob­lems in the world, but it has made him self-con­scious about being turned into just anoth­er celebri­ty. (His pal Bono han­dles it much dif­fer­ent­ly, as he says.)

He talks about his poor upbringing—with dead or absen­tee par­ents, he was raised by the radio and it was rock music that saved him. He saw those rock leg­ends and rock’s fans as a lob­by­ing base to get change to hap­pen, and made it hap­pen through will pow­er. He want­ed to use the plat­form that are­na rock afford­ed and did so. From an ini­tial guess of rais­ing $100,000 from the sale of the sin­gle, the entire Live Aid event raised $140 mil­lion instead and was viewed by 1.5 bil­lion view­ers.

Though oth­ers have ques­tioned the effec­tive­ness of char­i­ty events like Live Aid, Geldof’s take­away is still pos­i­tive and broad­er than assum­ing one con­cert can change events—it’s more about how a con­cert can pro­mote an issue and give orga­niz­ers the mon­ey to change the world.

“The para­dox at the heart of indi­vid­u­al­ism,” Geld­of says, “is that it only works when we act in con­cert for the com­mon good.”

Bob Geld­of: The Moment will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fred­die Mer­cury, Live Aid (1985)

Watch the Rare Reunions of Pink Floyd: Con­certs from 2005, 2010 & 2011

Pink Floyd’s The Wall: The Orig­i­nal Live Show & Behind-the-Scenes Footage of the 1980 Tour and 1982 Film

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Werner Herzog Tells a Book Club Why The Peregrine Is One of His Favorite Books, a 20th-Century Masterpiece

in Books, Film | August 9th, 2016

In the past, we’ve told you about Wern­er Her­zog’s Rogue Film School, which offers an uncon­ven­tion­al crash-course in auteur­ship, teach­ing stu­dents every­thing from “the art of lock-pick­ing,” to “the cre­ation of one’s own shoot­ing per­mits,” to the “ath­let­ic side of film­mak­ing.” As with any good cur­ricu­lum, Her­zog pro­vides a required read­ing list, which asks stu­dents to pore over some unex­pect­ed books. When was the list time a film pro­fes­sor asked stu­dents to read Virgil’s Geor­gics, Hemingway’s “The Short Hap­py Life of Fran­cis Macomber,” or J.A. Baker’s The Pere­grine?

If you haven’t heard of it, Her­zog con­sid­ers The Pere­grine one of the great mas­ter­pieces of the 20th cen­tu­ry. First pub­lished in 1967, this clas­sic of British nature writ­ing has “an inten­si­ty and beau­ty of prose that is unprece­dent­ed, it is one of the finest pieces of prose you can ever see any­where,” says Her­zog. Ear­li­er this year, the film­mak­er paid a vis­it to Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty and had a wide-rang­ing con­ver­sa­tion with Prof. Robert Har­ri­son (host of the pod­cast Enti­tled Opin­ions) about what makes The Pere­grine such a won­drous work. The event was host­ed by Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies and “Anoth­er Look Book Club,” which intro­duces you to the best books you’ve nev­er read.

The con­ver­sa­tion with Her­zog offi­cial­ly begins at the 3:00 minute mark.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book and BlueSky.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent

Wern­er Her­zog Cre­ates Required Read­ing & Movie View­ing Lists for Enrolling in His Film School

Wern­er Her­zog Will Teach His First Online Course on Film­mak­ing

Enti­tled Opin­ions, the “Life and Lit­er­a­ture” Pod­cast That Refus­es to Dumb Things Down

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Werner Herzog Narrates Pokémon Go: Imagines It as a Murderous Metaphor for the Battle to Survive

in Animation, Comedy, Film, Games | August 5th, 2016

Like film­mak­er Wern­er Her­zog, I have exist­ed in near total igno­rance of Poké­mon Go, a vir­tu­al real­i­ty game that pur­ports to get play­ers on their feet and out in the real world.

With­out a smartphone—an item Wern­er refus­es to own for “cul­tur­al reasons”—one can­not par­tic­i­pate.

I have a smart­phone, but my data plan is so small, I’m afraid I’d blow it all in hot pur­suit of a Bul­basaur, what­ev­er the hell that is. My kids nev­er got into Poké­mon and thus, nei­ther did I. Reports that some car­toon was caus­ing seizures in Japan­ese child view­ers was my intro­duc­tion to the world of Poké­mon. Epilep­sy runs in the fam­i­ly. It wasn’t hard for me to steer clear.

I have noticed a large num­ber of Face­book friends prais­ing the game’s non-vir­tu­al aspects. Their chil­dren are emerg­ing into the light, gam­bol­ing through parks and pub­lic squares, find­ing com­mon ground with neigh­bors and oth­er play­ers.

Does Wern­er have Face­book friends?

I think we all know the answer to that.

We both got an unex­pect­ed crash course in Poké­mon Go, when Wern­er was inter­viewed by The Verge’s Emi­ly Yoshi­da about his online Mas­ter­Class in film­mak­ing and Lo and Behold, his new doc­u­men­tary about the tech­no­log­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion.

Yoshi­da explained the Poké­mon Go phe­nom­e­non to him thus­ly:

It’s basi­cal­ly the first main­stream aug­ment­ed real­i­ty pro­gram. It’s a game where the entire world is mapped and you walk around with the GPS on your phone. You walk around in the real world and can catch these lit­tle mon­sters and col­lect them. And every­body is play­ing it.

Her­zog was most inter­est­ed in what hap­pens when the Poké­mon appear in the vir­tu­al crosshairs:

When two per­sons in search of a Poké­mon clash at the cor­ner of Sun­set and San Vicente is there vio­lence? Is there mur­der?… Do they bite each oth­er’s hands? Do they punch each oth­er?

He declined Yoshida’s offer to bor­row her cell phone in order to try the game out, at which point Slate’s Daniel Hub­bard and For­rest Wick­man stepped in, cut­ting togeth­er footage of the game and the ani­mat­ed series with some of the most mem­o­rable nar­ra­tion from Herzog’s oevure.

Seen through the above lens, Poké­mon Go becomes a reflec­tion of our ongo­ing bat­tle for sur­vival, rife with for­ni­ca­tion, asphyx­i­a­tion, and rot. The trees and birds are in mis­ery, and the pen­guins are insane.

It almost makes me want to play! Though in truth, I think anoth­er of Herzog’s activ­i­ties —ven­tur­ing into the coun­try­side “to look a chick­en in the eye with great intensity”—is more my speed.

Read the com­plete inter­view on The Verge.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wern­er Her­zog Offers 24 Pieces of Film­mak­ing & Life Advice

Wern­er Herzog’s Rogue Film School: Apply & Learn the Art of Gueril­la Film­mak­ing & Lock-Pick­ing

Start Your Day with Wern­er Her­zog Inspi­ra­tional Posters

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her lat­est script, Fawn­book, is avail­able in a dig­i­tal edi­tion from Indie The­ater Now.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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