Photo by Flickr user Steve Rhodes, used under a Creative Commons Share-Alike license.
So I assumed that everyone around me at any given moment had seen much of the work of the amazing Werner Herzog who, not incidentally, will be reading in our cafe this Friday, June 26. He’s the greatest poet of man v. nature we have right now, after all, the only real descendant of German romanticism’s fascination with alpine peaks and supermen. Turns out I was wrong. I met someone just yesterday who hasn’t seen a single one of the man’s films. Needless to say I won’t be associating with him anymore, because he’s a cretin and as a rule I only speak to other film-snob assholes. Also when I talk to them I like to make that rectangle with my thumbs and forefingers, like make-believe directors do. Also all my hats are always turned backward so that I can fit imaginary camera equipment up against my face, and I only sit in tall chairs and I’m so sorry and please love me. What? Okay.
If you don’t know then, let me just say that Herzog’s subject matter consists of, in no real order, flames, ice, crashes, madness, futility, bears, death, leeches, escape, more madness, film, opera, himself, the grandiose and the grotesque. It’s magnificent and, as much as the man is fascinated with myth and megalomania, it’s really inevitable that he write about the making of Fitzcarraldo, maybe his most mythic undertaking. That’s the movie, filmed in the Amazon, on whose set people were killed. He’ll be reading at 7, but I’ve invited all my film asshole friends so you might want to get here early if you want a seat in front of them and their tall canvas chairs. I’ll see (but not talk to you) there.
You were not joking about inviting all your friends, were you? I couldn’t get near the damn door and all the tall and sweaty hipsters somehow beat down my love for all things Werner. Podcast, yes?