The essential truth (sort of) about the mercurial director of Rescue Dawn
1 HE SUFFERS FOR IS ART.
While filming 1970’s Even Dwarfs Started Small, one member of the all–little person cast caught on fire and was run over by a car, but emerged unharmed. Herzog vowed to dive into a cactus patch if the rest of them survived filming without injury. When they did, he did, going in headfirst.
2 YOU JUST CAN’T QUIT HIM.
According to legend, Herzog threatened to shoot Klaus Kinski when the actor tried to leave the snake-infested South American jungle where they were filming 1972’s Aguirre: The Wrath of God. Kinski later wrote of Herzog, “Huge red ants should piss into his lying eyes, gobble up his balls, penetrate his asshole, and heat his guts!� The two made four more films together.
3 HE’S NOT ABOVE BENDING THE LAW.
As a fledgling filmmaker in the 1960s, Herzog stole a 35-mm camera from the Munich Film School and used it to make his first seven films.
4HE’S A LIFESAVER.
Last year he helped Joaquin Phoenix escape from his overturned car. When Phoenix turned to thank him, Herzog had vanished.
5 HE’S WAS SANDBAGGED BY KUWAIT.
In 1992, Herzog told the Kuwaiti government he wanted to shoot a film extolling the heroism of the country’s oil-well firefighters. When authorities discovered his real motive— a “documentary� with a sci-fi twist that showed real acts of torture—Herzog was expelled from the emirate.
6BULLETS APPARENTLY CAN’T KILL HIM.
Last year Herzog was shot in the abdomen by a sniper during an interview in L.A. He shrugged it off, claiming a catalog in his pocket kept him from being seriously injured.
7 HE’S DOESN’T WELSH ON A BET.
He told his onetime assistant, Errol Morris, that if Morris ever made a movie he’d eat his shoe. After Morris finished Gates of Heaven, he did just that.
—By Daniel Nemet-Nejat
