This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

When the film director, Werner Herzog, was just 11 years old, this was in the mid-50s,

a man with a mobile movie projector came to his

one-room school in Bavaria and showed a film. The first film that young Werner had ever seen,

he was not terribly impressed. But film became his calling, and now at 81 he's made more than

70 features and documentaries, including early epics like Fitzcaroldo,

and documentaries like Cave of Forgotten Dreams and Grizzly Man,

which never quite leaves my mind.

Perfection belonged to the bears.

But once in a while, Treadwell came face to face with a harsh reality of wild nature.

This did not fit into his sentimentalized view that everything out there was good and the universe

in balance and in harmony.

And although acting was never his focus, Werner Herzog has become an in-demand character

actor in Hollywood,

largely because of that unmistakable and menacing voice. He's popped up as a villain in

blockbusters like Jack Reacher and the Star Wars TV series The Mandalorian. A few weeks ago in The New Yorker,

we published an excerpt from Werner Herzog's new memoir,

which is called, and it's a great title, Every Man for Himself and God Against All,

to title from one of his early films.

And we sat down to talk about that book and his unconventional approach to truth-telling.

Let's go back to your beginnings,

...