Metafilter Highlights a Trove of Werner Herzog Films Online

in Film | May 6th, 2014

“To steal a char­ac­ter or a sto­ry isn’t real theft. But to steal a land­scape, that is a very, very seri­ous crime.” There we have one of the propo­si­tions agreed upon by film­mak­ers Wern­er Her­zog and Errol Mor­ris in a con­ver­sa­tion they had for the Believ­er. Though their fil­mo­gra­phies may not look ter­ri­bly sim­i­lar — Mor­ris with his inter­view-based doc­u­men­taries on pet ceme­ter­ies, emer­gent sys­tems, and old Sec­re­taries of Defense, Her­zog with his bare­ly defin­able, dis­tinc­tion-between-fact-and-fic­tion-repu­di­at­ing stud­ies of aggres­sive dwarfs, doomed nat­u­ral­ists, death row inmates, and con­quis­ta­dors and rub­ber barons aggran­diz­ing them­selves in the jun­gle — their work has much in com­mon under the sur­face. Don’t believe me? First watch through the list we pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured of 30 Errol Mor­ris movies stream­able online, assem­bled on Metafil­ter by a mem­ber known as “Going to Maine.”  Then watch Going to Maine’s new list of 43 Wern­er Her­zog movies stream­able online, com­pare, and con­trast.

At the top of the post, you can spend nine min­utes watch­ing Her­ak­les, Her­zog’s very first cin­e­mat­ic effort, a mash-up (if it does­n’t stretch the def­i­n­i­tion too far to apply the word to some­thing made in 1962) of mus­cle men and rac­ing-car wrecks. Just above, we have 1969’s Pre­cau­tions Against Fanat­ics, anoth­er ear­ly exer­cise in Her­zo­gian form-bend­ing which repur­pos­es footage of real peo­ple, real places, and real ani­mals to absurd ends — in this case, to envi­sion a real­i­ty in which hired men work tire­less­ly to pro­tect hors­es from “horse fanat­ics.” The list also rounds up a few shorts that even true Her­zog fanat­ics may nev­er have had the chance to see, includ­ing 1976’s No One Will Play With Me (part one, part two) below, the sto­ry of a preschool social out­cast based upon expe­ri­ences relat­ed by the real chil­dren them­selves — the sort of thing we’d all have grown up watch­ing on tele­vi­sion, in oth­er words, if Wern­er Her­zog had made after-school spe­cials. If works like these don’t give you quite enough insight into the mind of this inim­itable, uncom­pro­mis­ing, and seem­ing­ly tire­less, Bavar­i­an film­mak­er, don’t for­get to check out his own favorite films as well.

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 Favorite Films

30 Errol Mor­ris Movies That Can Be Streamed Online

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture 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.

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Sigmund Freud Appears in Rare, Surviving Video & Audio Recorded During the 1930s

in History, Psychology | May 6th, 2014

Sigmund Freud

What, I won­der, would Sig­mund Freud have made of Han­ni­bal Lec­tor? The fic­tion­al psy­cho­an­a­lyst, so sophis­ti­cat­ed and in con­trol, moon­light­ing as a blood­thirsty can­ni­bal… a per­fect­ly grim rejoin­der to Freud’s ideas about humankind’s per­pet­u­al dis­con­tent with the painful repres­sion of our dark­est, most anti­so­cial dri­ves. While Freud’s pri­ma­ry taboo was incest, not can­ni­bal­ism, I’m sure he would have appre­ci­at­ed the irony of an ultra-civ­i­lized psy­chi­a­trist who gives full steam to his most pri­mal urges.

Freud—who was born on this day in 1856, in the small town of Freiberg—also had a care­ful­ly con­trolled image, though his pas­sion­ate avo­ca­tion was not for the macabre, sala­cious, or pruri­ent, but for the archae­o­log­i­cal. He once remarked that he read more on that sub­ject than on his own, an exag­ger­a­tion, most like­ly, but an indi­ca­tion of just how much his inter­est in cul­tur­al arti­facts and rit­u­al con­tributed to his the­o­ret­i­cal expli­ca­tion of indi­vid­ual and social psy­chol­o­gy.

In the film above, we see Freud in con­ver­sa­tion with a friend, a pro­fes­sor of archae­ol­o­gy, whom the psy­chi­a­trist con­sult­ed on his exten­sive col­lec­tion of antiq­ui­ties. Lat­er, we see Freud with his dog, then reclin­ing out­doors with a book. Over this footage we hear the nar­ra­tion of Freud’s daugh­ter Anna, who only allowed this film to be viewed by a small cir­cle until her death in 1982.

Though Freud lived many decades into the era of record­ing tech­nol­o­gy, pre­cious lit­tle film and audio of the founder of psy­cho­analy­sis exists. While the home movies at the top may be the only mov­ing image of him, per­haps the only audio record­ing of his voice, above, was made in 1938, the year before his death. At 81 years old, Freud’s advanced jaw can­cer left him in con­sid­er­able tor­ment. Nonethe­less, he agreed to record this brief mes­sage for the BBC from his Lon­don home in Mares­field Gar­dens. Read a tran­script of the speech, and see Freud’s hand­writ­ten copy, below.

I start­ed my pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ty as a neu­rol­o­gist try­ing to bring relief to my neu­rot­ic patients. Under the influ­ence of an old­er friend and by my own efforts, I dis­cov­ered some impor­tant new facts about the uncon­scious in psy­chic life, the role of instinc­tu­al urges, and so on. Out of these find­ings grew a new sci­ence, psy­cho­analy­sis, a part of psy­chol­o­gy, and a new method of treat­ment of the neu­roses. I had to pay heav­i­ly for this bit of good luck. Peo­ple did not believe in my facts and thought my the­o­ries unsa­vory. Resis­tance was strong and unre­lent­ing. In the end I suc­ceed­ed in acquir­ing pupils and build­ing up an Inter­na­tion­al Psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic Asso­ci­a­tion. But the strug­gle is not yet over.  –Sig­mund Freud.

Freud-BBC-Manuscript-1

Freud-Manuscript-2

The Library of Con­gress online exhib­it Sig­mund Freud: Con­flict & Cul­ture has many more pri­ma­ry doc­u­ments includ­ing a holo­graph page from Freud’s man­u­script of Civ­i­liza­tion and its Dis­con­tents, in which he the­o­rized the bedrock impulse of ser­i­al killers, fic­tion­al and real: the so-called “Death Dri­ve,” our “human instinct of aggres­sion and self-destruc­tion.”

Many impor­tant texts by Freud can be found in our col­lec­tion, 600 Free eBooks for the iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices. And you’ll inevitably find a few cours­es cov­er­ing Freud’s thought in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy Cours­es, part of our list of 950 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How a Young Sig­mund Freud Researched & Got Addict­ed to Cocaine, the New “Mir­a­cle Drug,” in 1894

Jean-Paul Sartre Writes a Script for John Huston’s Film on Freud (1958)

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy & Neu­ro­science Cours­es

Down­load Sig­mund Freud’s Great Works as Free eBooks & Free Audio Books: A Dig­i­tal Cel­e­bra­tion on His 160th Birth­day

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

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Global Breakfast Radio Lets You Listen to Radio Broadcasts From Wherever the Sun is Rising

in Radio | May 5th, 2014

global breakfast radio

“The sun is always ris­ing some­where; break­fast is always just about to hap­pen. Din­ner time in Dakar is break­fast time in Bris­bane.” Enter Glob­al Break­fast Radio, a web site that aggre­gates and streams radio sta­tions from around the world (over 250 sta­tions from more than 120 coun­tries), air­ing broad­casts from wher­ev­er it’s break­fast time right now. “As the sun ris­es on the Green­wich Mean Line, you’ll hear break­fast pro­grammes from around the UK, Ice­land and West Africa; the broad­cast then moves west­wards, fol­low­ing the sun­rise across the Atlantic islands, sweep­ing over Amer­i­ca and then into the Pacific.” That’s how Daniel Jones, one of the co-founders of Glob­al Break­fast Radio, explains the project to Wired.

Right now, in Cal­i­for­nia, it’s near­ly 11:30 pm. But, with a click of the mouse, I can lis­ten to pro­grams kick­ing off the day in Assisi, Italy.  You can start lis­ten­ing right here on your com­put­er. The streamed broad­cast should work in any mod­ern web brows­er. It should also run just fine on your iPhone, iPad and oth­er mobile devices. Enjoy.

via Mefi

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Four Charles Bukowski Poems Animated

in Animation, Poetry | May 5th, 2014

The poet­ry of Charles Bukows­ki deeply inspires many of its read­ers. Some­times it just inspires them to lead the dis­solute lifestyle they think they see glo­ri­fied in it, but oth­er times it leads them to cre­ate some­thing com­pelling of their own. The qual­i­ty and vari­ety of the Bukows­ki-inspired ani­ma­tion now avail­able on the inter­net, for instance, has cer­tain­ly sur­prised me.

At the top of the post, we have Jonathan Hodg­son’s adap­ta­tion of “The Man with the Beau­ti­ful Eyes,” which puts vivid, col­or­ful imagery to Bukowski’s late poem that draws from his child­hood mem­o­ries of a mys­te­ri­ous, untamed young man in a run-down house whose very exis­tence remind­ed him “that nobody want­ed any­body to be strong and beau­ti­ful like that, that oth­ers would nev­er allow it.” Below, you can watch Moni­ka Umba’s even more uncon­ven­tion­al ani­ma­tion of “Blue­bird”:

With­out any words spo­ken on the sound­track and only the title seen onscreen — a chal­leng­ing cre­ative restric­tion for a poet­ry-based short — Umba depicts the nar­ra­tor’s “blue­bird in my heart that wants to get out.” But the nar­ra­tor, “too tough for him,” beats back the blue­bird’s escape with whiskey, cig­a­rettes, and a pol­i­cy of only let­ting him roam “at night some­times, when every­body’s asleep.”

You’ll find Bradley Bel­l’s inter­pre­ta­tion of “The Laugh­ing Heart,” a poem that advis­es its read­ers not to let their lives “be clubbed into dank sub­mis­sion,” to “be on the watch,” for “there are ways out.” “You can’t beat death,” Bukows­ki writes, “but you can beat death in life, some­times.” In Bel­l’s short, these words come from the mouth of the also famous­ly dis­so­lu­tion-chron­i­cling singer-song­writer Tom Waits, cer­tain­ly Bukowski’s most suit­able liv­ing read­er (and one who, all told, comes sec­ond only to the man him­self). Only fit­ting that one inspir­ing cre­ator deliv­ers the work of anoth­er — in the sort of labor of enthu­si­asm that, too, will inspire its audi­ence to cre­ate.

At the bot­tom the post, you will find “Roll the Dice,” an ani­ma­tion sug­gest­ed by one of our read­ers, Mark.

You can find read­ings of Bukows­ki poems in the poet­ry sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Last (Faxed) Poem of Charles Bukows­ki

Lis­ten to Charles Bukows­ki Poems Being Read by Bukows­ki, Tom Waits and Bono

“Don’t Try”: Charles Bukowski’s Con­cise Phi­los­o­phy of Art and Life

Charles Bukows­ki Sets His Amus­ing Con­di­tions for Giv­ing a Poet­ry Read­ing (1971)

Charles Bukows­ki: Depres­sion and Three Days in Bed Can Restore Your Cre­ative Juices (NSFW)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture 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.

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What Was It Like to Have Philip Roth as an English Prof?

in Literature | May 5th, 2014

Image by Thier­ry Ehrmann, via Flickr Com­mons

Writ­ing in The New York Times this week­end, author Lisa Scot­to­line remem­bers her days at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, back dur­ing the 1970s, when she took sem­i­nars with then-vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor, Philip Roth. One course the famous nov­el­ist taught was called ““The Lit­er­a­ture of Desire,” which prompt­ed stu­dents to think, “Who wouldn’t want to read dirty books with Philip Roth?”  It turns out the class did­n’t get very sexy. But stu­dents did learn quite a bit. Scot­to­line writes:

Look­ing back, I’ve come to under­stand that he was the best pro­fes­sor I ever had, not only because of his genius, but also because of his dis­tance. We were a group of girls eager to please, to guess at what he want­ed us to say, and to say that for him. We all want­ed to hear about him, or have him tell us how to write, but that was some­thing he stead­fast­ly denied us. By with­hold­ing his own per­son­al­i­ty, thoughts and opin­ions, he forced us back on our own per­son­al­i­ties, thoughts and opin­ions. He made us dis­cov­er what we want­ed to write about, and to write about it the way we want­ed to.

You can read the rest of her account here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties

Watch Philip Roth, Now 80, Read from His Irrev­er­ent Clas­sic, Portnoy’s Com­plaint

Philip Roth Pre­dicts the Death of the Nov­el; Paul Auster Coun­ters

Philip Roth Reads “In Mem­o­ry of a Friend, Teacher & Men­tor” (A Free Down­load Ben­e­fit­ing a Pub­lic Library)

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James Franco Reads 6 Short Poems from His New Collection

in Creativity, Film, Poetry | May 5th, 2014

James Fran­co, like Ethan Hawke before him, is one of those movie stars who gets bashed left and right for dar­ing to behave like any oth­er arty young man. How dare he think he can write a nov­el, or paint, or make short films? What a pre­ten­tious idiot, right?!

I would counter that these activ­i­ties out him as a pas­sion­ate read­er who cares deeply about art and movies.

His celebri­ty opens doors that are barred to your aver­age arty young men, but it also ensures that he’ll be scape­goat­ed with­out mer­cy. (An arty young man of my acquain­tance earned some nice pub­lic­i­ty for him­self per­form­ing a one-man show titled “Bring Me the Head of James Fran­co, That I May Pre­pare a Savory Goulash in the Nar­row and Mis­shapen Pot of His Skull.” )

I rarely feel sor­ry for celebs who tweet their wound­ed feel­ings, but I was rather moved by Franco’s poet­ic take on what it’s like to be on the receiv­ing end of all this vit­ri­ol. It’s the first of six poems he reads in the video above, when he shared the stage with his 74-year-old men­tor Frank Bidart, who no doubt enjoyed per­form­ing to a sold out crowd of 800. Franco’s debut poet­ry collection’s title, Direct­ing Her­bert White owes some­thing to Bidart. His poem, “Her­bert White,” is the inspi­ra­tion for a short film direct­ed by Fran­co.

Those who would con­sid­er all that just more evi­dence of Franco’s insup­port­able pre­ten­tious­ness should con­sid­er the oppos­ing view­point, cour­tesy of non-movie star poet Bidart, who told the Chica­go Tri­bune:

 “I’m almost 75. At some point you know the para­me­ters of your life. The ter­ri­fy­ing thing about get­ting old­er is the feel­ing that every­thing that hap­pens from now on will be a species of some­thing that has already hap­pened. Becom­ing friends with James changed that: I no longer feel I can antic­i­pate the future. Which is lib­er­at­ing.”

Per­haps all that fran­tic, cross-media cre­ative expres­sion can result in some­thing more than a snarky one-man show.

Because

Because I played a knight,
And I was on a screen,
Because I made a mil­lion dol­lars,
Because I was hand­some,
Because I had a nice car,
A bunch of girls seemed to like me.

But I nev­er met those girls,
I only heard about them.
The only peo­ple I saw were the ones who hat­ed me,
And there were so many of those peo­ple.
It was easy to for­get about the peo­ple who I heard
Like me, and shit, they were all fuck­ing four­teen-year-olds.

And I holed up in my place and read my life away,
I watched a mil­lion movies, twice,
And I didn’t under­stand them any bet­ter.

But because I played a knight,
Because I was hand­some,

This was the life I made for myself.

Years lat­er, I decid­ed to look at what I had made,
And I watched myself in all the old movies, and I hat­ed that guy I saw.

But he’s the one who stayed after I died.

You can see James Fran­co and Frank Bidart’s Chica­go Human­i­ties Fes­ti­val appear­ance in its entire­ty here. Find more poet­ry read­ings in the poet­ry sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Fran­co Reads a Dream­i­ly Ani­mat­ed Ver­sion of Allen Ginsberg’s Epic Poem ‘Howl’

James Fran­co Reads Short Sto­ry in Bed for The Paris Review

Lis­ten to James Fran­co Read from Jack Kerouac’s Influ­en­tial Beat Nov­el, On the Road

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is a  Freaks and Geek diehard who gets all her Lohan-relat­ed intel from the poet­ry of James Fran­co and  d‑listed. Fol­low her@AyunHalliday

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Vintage Footage of Leo Tolstoy: Video Captures the Great Novelist During His Final Days

in Film, History, Literature | May 5th, 2014

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“My life came to a stand­still,” wrote Leo Tol­stoy in his 1882 con­ver­sion mem­oir A Con­fes­sion, “I could not breathe, eat, drink, and sleep, and I could not help doing these things.” So Tolstoy’s described his “arrest of life,” a peri­od of severe depres­sion that led to a very deep, per­son­al brand of faith in his late mid­dle age. The tow­er­ing Russ­ian nov­el­ist renounced world­ly desires and came to iden­ti­fy with the poor, the for­mer serfs of his aris­to­crat­ic class. Tolstoy’s rad­i­cal reli­gious anar­chism in his final years spread his fame far among the peas­antry just as his lit­er­ary achieve­ments had brought him world­wide renown among the read­ing pub­lic. So famous was Tol­stoy, William Nick­ell tells us, that Russ­ian crit­ic Vasi­ly Rozanov wrote that “to be a Russ­ian and not have [seen] Tol­stoy was like being Swiss and not hav­ing seen the Alps.”

Nick­ell describes the occa­sions that Tol­stoy appeared on film, the new medi­um that allowed the author’s mil­lions of ador­ing fans to get a glimpse of him. Just as his life was punc­tu­at­ed by a rad­i­cal depar­ture from his ear­li­er atti­tudes, his medi­um was in for a shock as film for­ev­er changed the way sto­ries were told.

In those ear­ly days, how­ev­er, it was very often sim­ply a means of record­ing his­to­ry, and we should be glad of that. It means we too can see Tol­stoy, at the top on his 80th birth­day. We see him vig­or­ous­ly saw­ing logs and pious­ly giv­ing alms to the poor. Also includ­ed in the ini­tial footage are Tolstoy’s wife Sofya, his daugh­ter Alek­san­dra, and aide and edi­tor Vladimir Chertkov. Then, at 1:04, the scene shifts to Tolstoy’s deathbed and scenes of his funer­al. The remain­ing 11 min­utes give us some uniden­ti­fied footage of the author. (If you’re able to read the title cards in Russ­ian, please let us know!).

Just above, see a more com­plete film of Tolstoy’s death and funer­al pro­ces­sion. The author died at age 82 after he abrupt­ly decid­ed to leave his wife, tak­ing only a few pos­ses­sions and his doc­tor. Read the dra­mat­ic sto­ry of Tolstoy’s last ten days in this trans­lat­ed excerpt from Pavel Basinsky’s award win­ning Leo Tol­stoy: Escape from Par­adise.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare Record­ing: Leo Tol­stoy Reads From His Last Major Work in Four Lan­guages, 1909

The Com­plete Works of Leo Tol­stoy Online: New Archive Will Present 90 Vol­umes for Free (in Russ­ian)

Study Finds That Read­ing Tol­stoy & Oth­er Great Nov­el­ists Can Increase Your Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

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All of Bach for Free! New Site Will Put Performances of 1080 Bach Compositions Online

in Music | May 4th, 2014


Bach wrote 1080 com­po­si­tions dur­ing his life­time. And now thanks to the new and cer­tain­ly ambi­tious All of Bach web site, you can even­tu­al­ly watch the Nether­lands Bach Soci­ety (found­ed in 1921) per­form each and every one of those com­po­si­tions. The site fea­tures 13 per­for­mances so far (see below), which means there’s only anoth­er 1067 to go. A new Bach record­ing will go live every Fri­day. So you mark your cal­en­dars and check in week­ly for the next 20 years. Thanks to Erik for send­ing this our way!

First record­ings:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Big Bach Down­load: All of Bach’s Organ Works for Free

The Genius of J.S. Bach’s “Crab Canon” Visu­al­ized on a Möbius Strip

Video: Glenn Gould Plays the Gold­berg Vari­a­tions by J.S. Bach

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Neil deGrasse Tyson Moonwalking

in Dance, Physics | May 4th, 2014

A cou­ple weeks ago, we showed you the Pre-His­to­ry of Michael Jackson’s Moon­walk, high­light­ing a med­ley of the fan­cy foot moves of Cab Cal­loway, Sam­my Davis Jr., Fred Astaire and some less­er-known fig­ures like Rub­ber­neck Holmes and Earl “Snake­hips” Tuck­er. Some­one could just as eas­i­ly make anoth­er mon­tage, a Post-His­to­ry of Michael Jack­son’s Moon­walk, and it would sure­ly have to include the clip above. It fea­tures our favorite astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson strut­ting his stuff at StarTalk Live last year. In the back­ground, you can see anoth­er great moon­walk­er, Buzz Aldrin, on the stage.

Episode #9 of Tyson’s Cos­mos reboot airs on Fox tonight. US view­ers can watch episodes 1–8 on Hulu here. The orig­i­nal Cos­mos with Carl Sagan appears here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) eBooks Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

Watch Episode #1 of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cos­mos Reboot on Hulu (US View­ers)

Neil deGrasse Tyson on the Stag­ger­ing Genius of Isaac New­ton

Neil deGrasse Tyson Talks Aster­oid Physics & “Non New­ton­ian Solids” with Inspir­ing 9‑Year-Old Stu­dent

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Werner Herzog Picks His 5 Top Films

in Film | May 2nd, 2014

If one can char­ac­ter­ize Stan­ley Kubrick by his com­plete con­trol over the medi­um and his dogged insis­tence on stay­ing with­in 30 miles of his house when shoot­ing a movie, even if it means dress­ing up a Lon­don fac­to­ry to look like Hue, Viet­nam as he did for Full Met­al Jack­et, then Wern­er Her­zog can be char­ac­ter­ized as his oppo­site.

Herzog’s movies are strange, messy and ecsta­t­ic, a far cry from the chilly aloof­ness of Kubrick. In both his fea­ture films and his doc­u­men­taries, Her­zog uses his cam­era to uncov­er new lay­ers of nature, expe­ri­ence and the human psy­che. And there have been few film­mak­ers more will­ing to shoot films in rugged, exot­ic places as Her­zog — from Antarc­ti­ca to the Ama­zon­ian rain­for­est. In fact, a num­ber of his most noto­ri­ous shoots seem more designed to test the endurance of the cast and crew than to pro­duce a movie.

WERNER HERZOG TEACHES FILMMAKING. LEARN MORE.

His film Fitz­car­ral­do, for exam­ple, is about a guy who has the vision­ary idea to haul a river­boat over a moun­tain in the Ama­zon rain­for­est. Her­zog decid­ed, for the pur­pos­es of real­ism, that he would actu­al­ly drag a river­boat over a moun­tain. The pro­duc­tion, which is in the run­ning for the most mis­er­able film shoot ever, is the sub­ject of the absolute­ly riv­et­ing doc­u­men­tary The Bur­den of Dreams. At point one in the doc, Her­zog quips, “I should­n’t make movies any­more. I should go to a lunatic asy­lum.” And by the end of the movie, you think that he’s prob­a­bly right.

Of course, that crazed bravu­ra has always been at the cen­ter of Herzog’s mys­tique. After all, this is the guy who actu­al­ly ate a shoe after los­ing a bet with doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er Errol Mor­ris (find 30 of his films online).

In 2009, when Her­zog released Bad Lieu­tenant: Port of Call New Orleans, he was asked by the folks over at Rot­ten Toma­toes to list his top 5 movies. This is a direc­tor who once said, “I believe the com­mon denom­i­na­tor of the Uni­verse is not har­mo­ny, but chaos, hos­til­i­ty and mur­der.” So it’s a pret­ty safe bet that The Lion King didn’t make the cut.

The list starts with Nos­fer­atu from 1922 (up top). Her­zog liked this movie so much that he shot his own ver­sion in 1979.

In my opin­ion, the great­est of great films is Nos­fer­atu by [F.W.] Mur­nau, which I should include in the great­est five films of all time.

Intol­er­ance (1916)

D.W. Grif­fith’s epic was his response to the pub­lic out­cry fol­low­ing his epi­cal­ly racist Birth of a Nation. The movie also hap­pened to rev­o­lu­tion­ize film­mak­ing.

Every­thing that [D.W.] Grif­fith made: Bro­ken Blos­soms, Intol­er­ance, Birth of a Nation, you just name it. Every­thing. He’s the Shake­speare of cin­e­ma. Peri­od. Watch his films and you’ll know instant­ly.

 

Next is Freaks, Tod Brown­ing’s 1932 cult mas­ter­piece that fea­tured actu­al cir­cus per­form­ers and dwarves. No doubt the movie was an influ­ence on Her­zog’s 1970 film Even Dwarves Start­ed Out Small. “It’s just for­mi­da­ble, it’s phe­nom­e­nal,” says Her­zog. “You’ve got­ta see it. It would take me an hour to explain.”

The last two films on Her­zog’s list? Where Is The Friend’s Home? (1987), Abbas Kiarostami’s qui­et tale of a kid who is just look­ing to return a note­book to his friend. And Rashomon (1950), Aki­ra Kuro­sawa’s first true mas­ter­piece, the film that intro­duced Japan­ese film to the west­ern world after it won a Gold­en Lion at the 1951 Venice Film Fes­ti­val. The movie also clear­ly impressed Her­zog:

It is prob­a­bly the only film that I’ve ever seen which has some­thing like a per­fect bal­ance, which does not occur in film­mak­ing very often. You sense it some­times in great music, but I haven’t expe­ri­enced it in cin­e­ma, and it’s mind bog­gling. I don’t know how [Aki­ra] Kuro­sawa did it. It’s still a mys­tery to me. That’s great­ness.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Errol Mor­ris and Wern­er Her­zog in Con­ver­sa­tion

Wern­er Her­zog Has a Beef With Chick­ens

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.

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Watch the Talking Heads Play a Vintage Concert in Syracuse (1978)

in Music | May 2nd, 2014

We’ve brought you Talk­ing Heads shows from New York’s CBGB in 1975, Dort­mund, Ger­many in 1980, and Rome that same year. Now we’ve got one more valu­able live find from that for­ma­tive, busy era for the David Byrne-led, Rhode Island School of Design-forged new-wave band: their Novem­ber 1978 per­for­mance in Syra­cuse. The exact venue? Per­haps some­where at Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty, per­haps not, though a col­lege per­for­mance space would make sense, giv­en how many insti­tu­tions of high­er edu­ca­tion they played in 1978. The Talk­ing Heads Con­cert His­to­ry blog has a com­plete list, and the total num­ber of shows in that year alone comes in, aston­ish­ing­ly, at over 130, a fair few of them at schools like NYU, Brown, Berklee, Berke­ley, UCLA, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ari­zona. “It was real­ly an edu­ca­tion for us,” the page quotes drum­mer Chris Frantz as say­ing of the 1978 tour. “I’m afraid we bit off more than we could chew. We thought that we could play every night, and we found that after four months we were feel­ing pret­ty unin­spired.”

Yet this Syra­cuse gig, which came ten months in, sounds pret­ty inspired to me. It looks it, too, at least from what I can dis­cern from the lo-fi footage. What the image lacks in crisp­ness, though, it makes up for in tech­no­log­i­cal inter­est; it has the sig­na­ture look of the Sony Por­ta­pak, one of the very ear­ly portable con­sumer video record­ing sys­tems beloved of the 1970s’ video ama­teurs and video artists alike. Who­ev­er manned the Por­ta­pak for these 92 min­utes in Syra­cuse cap­tured a valu­able chap­ter in the Talk­ing Heads sto­ry, one the band spent work­ing as hard as pos­si­ble — which, of course, meant play­ing as hard, and as often, as pos­si­ble — and refin­ing their inim­itable sound and sen­si­bil­i­ty in con­cert spaces that, while often low-pro­file, nev­er­the­less pro­vid­ed them with excit­ed and appre­cia­tive audi­ences. Col­lege stu­dents and oth­er­wise, came eager to hear some­thing new — and giv­en that the 70s, that decade of slick dis­co and smooth rock, had almost come to a close, some­thing a bit askew. The Talk­ing Heads, as we see them here, could glad­ly deliv­er.

Set list:

  1. The Big Coun­try
  2. Warn­ing Sign
  3. The Book I Read
  4. Stay Hun­gry
  5. Artists Only
  6. The Girls Want to Be with the Girls
  7. The Good Thing
  8. Love Goes to Build­ings on Fire
  9. Elec­tric­i­ty
  10. Found a Job
  11. Take Me to the Riv­er
  12. I’m Not in Love
  13. No Com­pas­sion

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Talk­ing Heads Play Live in Dort­mund, Ger­many Dur­ing Their Hey­day (1980)

Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club that Shaped Their Sound (1975)

Live in Rome, 1980: The Talk­ing Heads Con­cert Film You Haven’t Seen

Talk­ing Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” Per­formed on Tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese Instru­ments

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture 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.

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