Werner Herzog

Fresh Air

NPR

Tv & Film, Arts, Society & Culture, Books

4.4 • 34.4K Ratings

🗓️ 25 October 2023

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Herzog reflects on the curiosity that's fueled his career in the new memoir, Every Man for Himself and God Against All. The filmmaker and writer is drawn to extremes: extreme characters, extreme settings, extreme scenarios. But don't mistake him for a mad man like some of his film subjects: "You have to control what is wild in you. You have to be disciplined. And people think I'm the wild guy out there but I'm a disciplined professional," he tells Terry Gross.

Later, Lloyd Schwartz reviews new releases that celebrate the late opera star Maria Callas's singing and acting.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Support for NPR and the following message come from
0:03.1	live-right publishers of Emperor of Rome.
0:05.8	Historian Mary Beard, named the world's most famous
0:08.8	classicist by the Guardian, chronicles the lives of Caesar,
0:12.0	Caligula, Nero, and more.
0:14.0	Emperor of Rome, available now.
0:16.9	This is Fresh Air, I'm Terry Gross.
0:19.3	My guest Werner Herzog is a writer and director
0:22.7	who makes films about extremes, extreme personalities,
0:26.0	predicaments, and places.
0:28.2	He's made two films in the Amazon jungle,
0:30.6	a Gary the Wrath of God, about a mad conquistador
0:33.7	in the 16th century, and Fitzgeraldo
0:36.2	about a European opera lover in Peru,
0:39.0	obsessed with bringing opera to the Amazon,
0:41.4	but in order to do it, he needs to get a steamship
0:44.2	over a mountain to get to the river.
0:46.8	The actor who starred as a madman in both films
0:49.5	was Klaus Kinski, who Herzog describes as a madman.
0:54.4	Kinski also starred in Herzog's version of Nosferatu.
0:58.1	Herzog's documentary Grizzly Man is a bad a man
1:00.8	who lived in Alaska among grizzly bears,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.