Image by Erinc Salor via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

There are few film­mak­ers alive today who have the mys­tique of Wern­er Her­zog. His fea­ture films and his doc­u­men­taries are bril­liant and messy, depict­ing both the ecstasies and the ago­nies of life in a chaot­ic and fun­da­men­tal­ly hos­tile uni­verse. And his movies seem very much to reflect his per­son­al­i­ty – uncom­pro­mis­ing, enig­mat­ic and quite pos­si­bly crazy. How else can you explain his will­ing­ness to risk life and limb to shoot in such for­bid­ding places as the Ama­zon­ian rain for­est or Antarc­ti­ca?

In per­haps his great­est film, Fitz­car­ral­do — which is about a dream­er who hatch­es a scheme to drag a river­boat over a moun­tain — Her­zog decides, for the pur­pos­es of real­ism, to actu­al­ly drag a boat over a moun­tain. No spe­cial effects. No stu­dios. In the mid­dle of the Peru­vian jun­gle.

The pro­duc­tion, per­haps the most mis­er­able in the his­to­ry of film, is the sub­ject of the doc­u­men­tary The Bur­den of Dreams. After six pun­ish­ing months, a weary-look­ing Her­zog described his sur­round­ings:

I see it more full of obscen­i­ty. It’s just — Nature here is vile and base. I would­n’t see any­thing erot­i­cal here. I would see for­ni­ca­tion and asphyx­i­a­tion and chok­ing and fight­ing for sur­vival and… grow­ing and… just rot­ting away. Of course, there’s a lot of mis­ery. But it is the same mis­ery that is all around us. The trees here are in mis­ery, and the birds are in mis­ery. I don’t think they — they sing. They just screech in pain. […] But when I say this, I say this all full of admi­ra­tion for the jun­gle. It is not that I hate it, I love it. I love it very much. But I love it against my bet­ter judg­ment.

His world­view brims with a hero­ic pes­simism that is pulled straight out of the Ger­man Roman­tic poets. Nature is not some har­mo­nious anthro­po­mor­phized play­ground. It is instead noth­ing but “chaos, hos­til­i­ty and mur­der.” For those sick of the cyn­i­cal dis­hon­esty of Hollywood’s cur­rent crop of Award-ready fare (hel­lo, The Imi­ta­tion Game), Her­zog comes as a brac­ing ton­ic. An icon of what inde­pen­dent cin­e­ma should be rather than what it has large­ly become.

Below is Herzog’s list of advice for film­mak­ers, found on the back of his lat­est book Wern­er Her­zog – A Guide for the Per­plexed. (Hat tip goes to Jason Kot­tke for bring­ing it to our atten­tion.) Some max­ims are pret­ty spe­cif­ic to the world of moviemak­ing – “That roll of unex­posed cel­lu­loid you have in your hand might be the last in exis­tence, so do some­thing impres­sive with it.” Oth­er points are just plain good lessons for life — “Always take the ini­tia­tive,” “Learn to live with your mis­takes.” Read along and you can almost hear Herzog’s malev­o­lent Teu­ton­ic lilt.

1. Always take the ini­tia­tive.
2. There is noth­ing wrong with spend­ing a night in jail if it means get­ting the shot you need.
3. Send out all your dogs and one might return with prey.
4. Nev­er wal­low in your trou­bles; despair must be kept pri­vate and brief.
5. Learn to live with your mis­takes.
6. Expand your knowl­edge and under­stand­ing of music and lit­er­a­ture, old and mod­ern.
7. That roll of unex­posed cel­lu­loid you have in your hand might be the last in exis­tence, so do some­thing impres­sive with it.
8. There is nev­er an excuse not to fin­ish a film.
9. Car­ry bolt cut­ters every­where.
10. Thwart insti­tu­tion­al cow­ardice.
11. Ask for for­give­ness, not per­mis­sion.
12. Take your fate into your own hands.
13. Learn to read the inner essence of a land­scape.
14. Ignite the fire with­in and explore unknown ter­ri­to­ry.
15. Walk straight ahead, nev­er detour.
16. Manoeu­vre and mis­lead, but always deliv­er.
17. Don’t be fear­ful of rejec­tion.
18. Devel­op your own voice.
19. Day one is the point of no return.
20. A badge of hon­or is to fail a film the­o­ry class.
21. Chance is the lifeblood of cin­e­ma.
22. Guer­ril­la tac­tics are best.
23. Take revenge if need be.
24. Get used to the bear behind you.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Por­trait Wern­er Her­zog: The Director’s Auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Short Film from 1986

Errol Mor­ris and Wern­er Her­zog in Con­ver­sa­tion

Wern­er Her­zog Picks His 5 Top Films

Wern­er Her­zog and Cor­mac McCarthy Talk Sci­ence and Cul­ture

Wern­er Herzog’s Eye-Open­ing New Film Reveals the Dan­gers of Tex­ting While Dri­ving

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

If you call your­self a film fan, you may have heard of Trail­ers from Hell, a video series where­in famous direc­tors intro­duce and pro­vide com­men­tary on trail­ers of the films they love, the films they’ve made, or both. You’ve def­i­nite­ly heard of it if you call your­self a fan of schlock film, since some of the Trail­ers from Hell include that of The Giant Claw with com­men­tary by Joe Dante, that of Teen Wolf with com­men­tary by Ti West, and that of One Mil­lion Years B.C. with com­men­tary by John Lan­dis.

Lan­dis, direc­tor of come­dies like Ani­mal House, The Blues Broth­ers, and (some­how, his favorite of the bunch) Com­ing to Amer­i­ca, has record­ed a great many episodes, and no sur­prise, since he enjoys schlock so much that he actu­al­ly made a film of that name at the age of 21 — and then did a Trail­er from Hell on it at the age of 63. But as one of those film­mak­ers pos­sessed of a cinephil­ia as strong as his mas­tery of the craft itself, his love for movies extends to the widest pos­si­ble spec­trum of theme and sen­si­bil­i­ty: hence his episodes here on the decid­ed­ly non-schlocky Cit­i­zen Kane, Sun­set Boule­vard, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and La Stra­da.

Much about Lan­dis makes him exact­ly the kind of guy you want to hear talk­ing about movies, be they movies like Felli­ni Satyri­con or movies like King Kong vs. Godzil­la. Not only does his sheer enthu­si­asm for film­go­ing come through in his every obser­va­tion, but he brings to bear plen­ty of expe­ri­ence with the nuts and bolts of film­mak­ing. He dis­cuss­es, in the brief time these trail­ers allow, not just the qual­i­ties of the fea­tures but of the trail­ers them­selves. He also throws in, when rel­e­vant, fas­ci­nat­ing anec­dotes from his life as a movie­go­er and moviemak­er. And above it all, he does it with a wonki­ly cinephilic sense of humor, as you’ll under­stand right when you hear him intro­duce him­self in each episode — and as you’d prob­a­bly expect from the guy who direct­ed Ken­tucky Fried Movie.

You can watch all the Trail­ers from Hell from Lan­dis, Dante, West, Karyn Kusama, Mick Gar­ris, John Bad­ham, and oth­ers on their Youtube chan­nel.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Moviedrome: Film­mak­er Alex Cox Pro­vides Video Intro­duc­tions to 100+ Clas­sic Cult Films

Watch Orson Welles’ Trail­er for Cit­i­zen Kane: As Inno­v­a­tive as the Film Itself

Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey Gets a Brand New Trail­er to Cel­e­brate Its Dig­i­tal Re-Release

Watch 25 Alfred Hitch­cock Trail­ers, Excit­ing Films in Their Own Right

700 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Film fans have few stronger vices, I would sub­mit, than the mak­ing of lists. But we can take some small mea­sure of con­so­la­tion from the fact that cer­tain auteurs have occa­sion­al­ly done it too. Yes they make their own lists of favorite films. Quentin Taran­ti­no has done it. So have Stan­ley Kubrick and Woody Allen. Same with Andrei Tarkovsky, Susan Son­tag and Aki­ra Kuro­sawa. And then there’s one of the most inter­est­ing lists — that of Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, which orig­i­nal­ly appeared in Sight and Sound. It runs as fol­lows:

1. The Cir­cus/City Lights/Monsieur Ver­doux (1928,31,47, Charles Chap­lin)
2. Any Marx Broth­ers or Lau­rel and Hardy
3. Stage­coach (1939, John Ford)
4. Rashomon (1950, Aki­ra Kuro­sawa)
5. The Dis­creet Charm of the Bour­geoisie (1972, Luis Bunuel)
6. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Stan­ley Kubrick)
7. Paisan (1946, Rober­to Rosselli­ni)
8. The Birds (1963, Alfred Hitch­cock)
9. Wild Straw­ber­ries (1957, Ing­mar Bergman)
10. 8 1/2 (1963, Fed­eri­co Felli­ni)

Nev­er a slave to restraint, Felli­ni bends the tac­it rules of list-mak­ing in a few dif­fer­ent ways here. He includes not one but three films, all by Char­lie Chap­lin, in the top spot, ranks the com­plete comedic works of both the Marx Broth­ers (whose 1928 The Cir­cus you can watch above) and Lau­rel and Hardy in third place, and, in the most auda­cious act of all, adds a movie of his own to the list. Maybe the fact that he puts it at num­ber ten scores him a humil­i­ty point?

Then again, the direc­tor of La Dolce Vita, Satyri­con, and Juli­et of the Spir­its could have found his dis­tinc­tive­ly grotesque and cel­e­bra­to­ry world­view real­ized nowhere but in his own work. And upon reflec­tion, putting 8 1/2 in last place looks over­mod­est. “I have seen 8 1/2 over and over again, and my appre­ci­a­tion only deep­ens,” wrote Roger Ebert in a piece on the film. “It does what is almost impos­si­ble: Felli­ni is a magi­cian who dis­cuss­es, reveals, explains and decon­structs his tricks, while still fool­ing us with them. He claims he does­n’t know what he wants or how to achieve it, and the film proves he knows exact­ly, and rejoic­es in his knowl­edge.” And he knew he was damn good.

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.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andrei Tarkovsky Cre­ates a List of His 10 Favorite Films (1972)

Ing­mar Bergman Eval­u­ates His Fel­low Film­mak­ers — The “Affect­ed” Godard, “Infan­tile” Hitch­cock & Sub­lime Tarkovsky

Woody Allen Lists the Great­est Films of All Time: Includes Clas­sics by Bergman, Truf­faut & Felli­ni

Mar­tin Scors­ese Reveals His 12 Favorite Movies (and Writes a New Essay on Film Preser­va­tion)

Stan­ley Kubrick’s List of Top 10 Films (The First and Only List He Ever Cre­at­ed)

Roger Ebert’s Final List of His Top 10 Favorite Films (2012)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

In 2013, Steven Soder­bergh told me dur­ing an inter­view that he was retir­ing. “Five years ago, as we were fin­ish­ing Che, I said, ‘OK, when I turn 50, I want to be done. I’m going to jam in as much as I can, but when I turn 50, I want to be done.’ ”

Yet Soderbergh’s con­cept of retire­ment must be dif­fer­ent from most mor­tals. In the past year, he not only exec­u­tive pro­duced the Show­time series The Knick but he also direct­ed all ten episodes. Using the han­dle @Bitchuation, he wrote an entire nov­el on Twit­ter called Glue. And he pro­duced and direct­ed a Broad­way show star­ring Chloë Grace Moretz called The Library. And in his copi­ous free time, he’s been pro­duc­ing var­i­ous cin­e­mat­ic exper­i­ments on his web­site Exten­sion 765, which includ­ed a piece that spliced togeth­er Alfred Hitchcock’s Psy­cho with Gus Van Sant’s bizarro shot-by-shot remake, a black and white ver­sion of Raiders of the Lost Ark and an edit of Michael Cimino’s famous­ly bloat­ed Heaven’s Gates.

In his lat­est work, Soder­bergh takes a crack at Stan­ley Kubrick’s mas­ter­piece 2001: A Space Odyssey. You can watch it here. As he writes on his site:

i’ve been watch­ing 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY reg­u­lar­ly for four decades, but it wasn’t until a few years ago i start­ed think­ing about touch­ing it, and then over the hol­i­days i decid­ed to make my move. why now? I don’t know. maybe i wasn’t old enough to touch it until now. maybe i was too scared to touch it until now, because not only does the film not need my—or any­one else’s—help, but if it’s not THE most impres­sive­ly imag­ined and sus­tained piece of visu­al art cre­at­ed in the 20th cen­tu­ry, then it’s tied for first. mean­ing IF i was final­ly going to touch it, i’d bet­ter have a big­ger idea than just trim­ming or re-scor­ing.

What that big­ger idea is, how­ev­er, isn’t imme­di­ate­ly clear. Soderbergh’s ver­sion is a good 50 min­utes short­er than the orig­i­nal. Unlike the orig­i­nal, which unfolds in a delib­er­ate pace, Soderbergh’s ver­sion moves briskly. Most of the cuts aren’t imme­di­ate­ly missed.

But there is one clear, and jar­ring dif­fer­ence between the two – he drops HAL’s unblink­ing elec­tron­ic red eye into unex­pect­ed scenes. It pops up right in the begin­ning, then again when the tribe of ear­ly humans first encounter the mono­lith, and then again dur­ing the film’s trip­py light show deep at the end. Where­as Kubrick used the HAL’s eye as a sin­is­ter exam­ple of the per­ils of tech­nol­o­gy and mankind’s hubris, Soder­bergh turns it into some­thing else, some­thing more spir­i­tu­al. Does it work? I don’t know. But it’s inter­est­ing.

Soder­bergh goes on to argue that Kubrick, were he alive, would be a big fan of dig­i­tal video and he makes a pret­ty com­pelling case.

i believe SK would have embraced the cur­rent crop of dig­i­tal cam­eras, because from a visu­al stand­point, he was obsessed with two things: absolute fideli­ty to real­i­ty-based light sources, and image sta­bi­liza­tion. regard­ing the for­mer, the increased sen­si­tiv­i­ty with­out res­o­lu­tion loss allows us to real­ly cap­ture the world as it is, and regard­ing the lat­ter, post-2001 SK gen­er­al­ly shot mat­te perf film (nor­mal­ly reserved for effects shots, because of its added steadi­ness) all day, every day, some­thing which dig­i­tal cap­ture makes moot. pile on things like nev­er being dis­tract­ed by weav­ing, splices, dirt, scratch­es, bad lab match­es dur­ing changeovers, changeovers them­selves, bad fram­ing and focus exac­er­bat­ed by pro­jec­tor vibra­tion, and you can see why i think he might dig dig­i­tal.

Again, you can watch Soder­bergh’s re-edit of 2001 here. More films can be found in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Steven Soderbergh’s Cre­ative Mashup of Hitch­cock and Gus Van Sant’s Psy­cho Films

Steven Soder­bergh Cre­ates Silent, Black & White Recut of Raiders of the Lost Ark to Explain the Art of “Stag­ing”

Steven Soder­bergh Cre­ates a Big List of What He Watched, Read & Lis­tened to in 2014

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.