Werner Herzog
The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss
Lawrence M. Krauss
4.4 • 592 Ratings
🗓️ 24 July 2024
⏱️ 105 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This is my second dialogue with filmmaker extraordinaire and force of nature, Werner Herzog. But after I read his amazing new memoire Every Man for Himself, and God Against All, which takes its name for the German title of his 1974 film The Enigma of Kasper Hauser, I had to have Werner back.
I have known Werner for almost 20 years. We met when I was a judge at Sundance and we gave his film Grizzly Man an award, and Werner, his wife Lena, and I have been fast friends ever since. He even allowed me to be a villain in the movie Salt and Fire, which we shot in Bolivia with Michael Shannon and Veronica Ferres. So, after all of this time I thought I really had a good handle on him. I was wrong.
So many people ask me about Werner, who has a reputation of being larger than life, and I always say what a kind, generous, pleasant man he is. All of that is true, but after reading his new autobiography, I realize that he IS larger than life!!
If it weren’t Werner, I would never believe all of the amazing stories and events. That he is still alive is alone almost a miracle. For this dialogue I decided that rather than following his story chronologically, I would read him various quotes from the book and ask him to elaborate. What followed was a rollicking conversation that is one of the most amazing I have recorded to date, and that I think presents Werner has perhaps few other interviews ever had. In the process we covered territory from science to philosophy to history to religion and beyond. And in the end, what arose most clearly from our discussion was that while he is a world famous filmmaker, what he really is at heart, is a poet. And we are all lucky to have him. Enjoy!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi and welcome to the Origins Podcast. I'm your host Lawrence Krause. It's such a pleasure to have Werner |
| 0:15.1 | Herzog back on the podcast again. In this case, on the occasion of his new book, Every Man for Himself and God Against All, |
| 0:22.6 | which is a wonderful phrase that he created and is actually the title of the German version of |
| 0:27.9 | his movie, The Enigma of Casper Hauser. Werner is a remarkable human being, and I've known |
| 0:36.0 | him for almost 20 years, and I've known him as a friend and |
| 0:39.5 | interesting man there are many stories around the world about how wild and crazy he's been and |
| 0:45.0 | and I've only experienced an insightful poetic and very intelligent human being and a good friend and a good and loyal friend. |
| 0:57.0 | But in fact when I read the book, I was astounded. His life is perhaps the most interesting life I've ever read about. |
| 1:05.0 | And if it weren't Werner, I wouldn't believe half of the things in the book, but knowing Werner, it makes it even more |
| 1:13.5 | interesting. His life has been a remarkable circuitous saga from his childhood on through his |
| 1:24.9 | eventually becoming a filmmaker and a writer and a poet, as I say. |
| 1:29.7 | And the stories are amazing. |
| 1:32.2 | And we had a wonderful hour jumping through his life history and some of the stories in the book. |
| 1:39.1 | I did it by basically taking quotes out of the book and asking him about them and allowing them to elaborate on those quotes. |
| 1:47.0 | And it was a remarkable discussion, one of the most fun discussions I've had recently. |
| 1:52.0 | And I think if you enjoy the discussion, you'll find the book perhaps even more remarkable. |
| 1:57.0 | But the discussion itself, I think you'll find entertaining and almost awe-inspiring. |
| 2:04.1 | So I hope you enjoy this podcast with Werner Herzog. |
| 2:07.9 | You can watch it ad-free on our Critical Mass Substack site. |
| 2:14.0 | You can do that by subscribing, and your subscriptions go to support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation |
| 2:20.8 | that produces this podcast. Or you can watch the podcast on our Origins podcast YouTube site |
| 2:29.0 | and I hope you'll subscribe to that or of course you can listen to it on any podcast listing site. |
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