0:00:04 > 0:00:08Now on BBC News, it's time for HARDtalk
0:00:08 > 0:00:09Welcome to HARDtalk.
0:00:09 > 0:00:13I'm Stephen Sackur.
0:00:13 > 0:00:16Draw up a list of the greatest living filmmakers,
0:00:16 > 0:00:19and my guest today would surely occupy a prominent place.
0:00:19 > 0:00:23Werner Herzog is reponsible for some of the most wildly beautiful
0:00:23 > 0:00:27images captured on celluloid.
0:00:27 > 0:00:30If you have seen Fitzcarraldo, you won't have forgotten the steamship
0:00:30 > 0:00:34being hauled over a mountain.
0:00:34 > 0:00:41He is seen as the film industry's obsessive genius, the director who
0:00:41 > 0:00:44once threatened to shoot his lead actor to prevent him quitting.
0:00:44 > 0:00:51After five decades making movies, is Werner Herzog's love of film
0:00:51 > 0:00:56as intense as ever?
0:01:19 > 0:01:21Werner Herzog, welcome to HARDtalk.
0:01:21 > 0:01:21Thank you.
0:01:21 > 0:01:23Let's start with the word "passion".
0:01:23 > 0:01:26You have been making films for the best part of five decades.
0:01:26 > 0:01:29Does your passion for film burn as bright as ever?
0:01:29 > 0:01:33It hasn't stopped.
0:01:33 > 0:01:37There is some sort of a fire within, and in a way,
0:01:37 > 0:01:44I can say I haven't had a career.
0:01:44 > 0:01:47Because career means planning, and "what do I do after that step?"
0:01:47 > 0:01:51It is always, I keep saying, it is like burglars in your kitchen
0:01:51 > 0:02:00in the middle of the night.
0:02:00 > 0:02:03You wake up at 3:00am in the morning, and something stirs,
0:02:03 > 0:02:04and there are five burglars.
0:02:04 > 0:02:08And the one who carries the most vehemence at you, with an axe in his
0:02:08 > 0:02:13hand, or a knife or a gun, so you have to deal with that one first.
0:02:13 > 0:02:15And that is how my film projects are coming at me.
0:02:15 > 0:02:19And I have, in recent years, I have made more films.
0:02:19 > 0:02:20And just counting them, which is silly.
0:02:20 > 0:02:24We have made more films than before, and some of them bigger.
0:02:24 > 0:02:26You mentioned Fitzcarraldo, I am just releasing now a big,
0:02:26 > 0:02:29epic film, which was shot in the desert in Morocco.
0:02:29 > 0:02:31Queen of the Desert, with Nicole Kidman.
0:02:31 > 0:02:34I have done documentaries, but I have done other things,
0:02:34 > 0:02:35which are overlooked quite often.
0:02:35 > 0:02:39I have written books, and I have a suspicion that my prose may
0:02:39 > 0:02:42outlive my films, like Conquest of the Useless, or Of Walking In Ice.
0:02:42 > 0:02:48I have run my own film school.
0:02:48 > 0:02:51I am going to stop you there, because there is so much...
0:02:51 > 0:02:54And acting as a villain...
0:02:54 > 0:02:57I will stop it.
0:02:57 > 0:03:00I will get to the acting as a villain later on too.
0:03:00 > 0:03:04Even the list you have just given me of the artistic endeavours you are
0:03:04 > 0:03:07still undertaking, so many of them, I am just wondering
0:03:07 > 0:03:20whether your style has changed?
0:03:20 > 0:03:23Do you think - there is this word "mellowed,"
0:03:23 > 0:03:24and people often attach it to age.
0:03:24 > 0:03:27Do you think you have mellowed, as an artist, with age?
0:03:27 > 0:03:29It doesn't look likely.
0:03:29 > 0:03:33Because if you look at the films I have made just a few years ago,
0:03:33 > 0:03:36Bad Lieutenant, people think I am this possessed filmmaker who has not
0:03:36 > 0:03:38an ounce of humour in all my films.
0:03:38 > 0:03:40There is humour, including Fitzcarraldo, including the instance
0:03:40 > 0:03:44when I came close to shooting my leading actor, or Grisly Man.
0:03:44 > 0:03:46There is an intensity which has not been there before.
0:03:46 > 0:03:49You have also mentioned, you have started teaching young filmmakers.
0:03:49 > 0:03:52And I wonder - imagine I am one of your young students,
0:03:52 > 0:03:55who has gone through a very severe selection process, and is now
0:03:55 > 0:03:58listening to Werner Herzog?s view of the fundamentals of making movies.
0:03:58 > 0:04:02If there are just a few words that you could give to
0:04:02 > 0:04:05a student like me, as to what matters most for successfully making
0:04:05 > 0:04:13a good movie, what would you say?
0:04:13 > 0:04:31I think self-reliance.
0:04:31 > 0:04:33Everybody is complaining how the industry is stupid,
0:04:33 > 0:04:35they cannot get the money together.
0:04:35 > 0:04:39And so I say roll up your sleeves, work as a bouncer in a sex club,
0:04:39 > 0:04:41in a lunatic asylum, half the year.
0:04:41 > 0:04:44You earn ten or $20,000, and you can make a feature film today.
0:04:44 > 0:04:46There is no excuse anymore.
0:04:46 > 0:04:48And then, of course, read, read, read, read, read.
0:04:48 > 0:04:51If you don't read, you will never make a great film.
0:04:51 > 0:04:54And I do have mandatory reading lists, but it has
0:04:54 > 0:04:55nothing to do with cinema.
0:04:55 > 0:04:59It has to do with poetry, beginning in antiquity, in Rome, Virgil,
0:04:59 > 0:05:00Georgics, about life in the country.
0:05:00 > 0:05:03At even the report about the assassination of Kennedy.
0:05:03 > 0:05:19So a broad mind matters?
0:05:19 > 0:05:20Yes, conceptual thinking.
0:05:20 > 0:05:24And those who are ready to break the rules, who are ready to learn
0:05:24 > 0:05:28from me how to pick a safety lock, how to forge a document.
0:05:28 > 0:05:31You see a film like Fitzcarraldo would never be possible without
0:05:31 > 0:05:49massive forgery.
0:05:49 > 0:05:51At the time Peru was a dictatorship.
0:05:51 > 0:05:55All of a sudden, along the river, I had to move my ship.
0:05:55 > 0:05:56I was stopped, shot at.
0:05:56 > 0:05:59And I demanded an explanation, and I didn't get an explanation.
0:05:59 > 0:06:01I was only told, "Where is your shooting permit?"
0:06:01 > 0:06:06And I said - of course, I made it up - "It is in Lima, and it will
0:06:06 > 0:06:10take me three or four days until I can bring it to the jungle."
0:06:10 > 0:06:13So four days later I come with a very elaborate, beautiful document,
0:06:13 > 0:06:16written in antiquated chancellery sort of diction, in Spanish,
0:06:16 > 0:06:19on notary paper, and it says the El Presidente de la Republica,
0:06:19 > 0:06:20the President of the Republic.
0:06:20 > 0:06:21It allowed me literally...
0:06:21 > 0:06:39And a complete fake.
0:06:39 > 0:06:40A complete fake.
0:06:40 > 0:06:43It was signed by the President of the Republic, stamped, the Notary
0:06:43 > 0:06:45of the President signed it as well.
0:06:45 > 0:06:47And the Interior Minister signed it.
0:06:47 > 0:06:49So then I said, "You let me pass now?"
0:06:49 > 0:06:52And he looks at me, and looks at the document,
0:06:52 > 0:06:54and salutes and says pass on.
0:06:54 > 0:07:02So rule-breaking is a part of the recipe for successful filmmakers?
0:07:03 > 0:07:04Yes.
0:07:04 > 0:07:06And you have constantly, through your career,
0:07:06 > 0:07:07focused on this word "courage."
0:07:07 > 0:07:09And you have juxtaposed courage against cowardice in
0:07:09 > 0:07:11the way you go about making a film.
0:07:11 > 0:07:14At what I want to push you on, you mentioned Fitzcarraldo,
0:07:14 > 0:07:17is that you can take courage to an insane extent.
0:07:17 > 0:07:20You can push your crew, your actors, the people around you,
0:07:20 > 0:07:23to the point where they are putting their lives on the line.
0:07:23 > 0:07:26And many would say you did that with Fitzcarraldo.
0:07:26 > 0:07:28I did that with my life, with no-one else?s.
0:07:28 > 0:07:30That is a myth which has been created.
0:07:30 > 0:07:36But let's put it into normal terms.
0:07:36 > 0:07:39Yes, I have done films that nobody else would have done.
0:07:39 > 0:07:43How do you move a very, heavy steel boat over a mountain,
0:07:43 > 0:07:45with the help of 1,100 "savage," in movie terms, native Indians?
0:07:46 > 0:07:49But it was not insanity, because I knew I could move it over
0:07:49 > 0:07:58the mountain.
0:07:58 > 0:08:02Correct me if I'm wrong, but I have read, and maybe it was
0:08:02 > 0:08:04folklore, that one of your cinematographers had his hand
0:08:04 > 0:08:07smashed when filming the steamship, when he was going over the rapids.
0:08:08 > 0:08:19Another was bitten by a deadly snake, and lost part of his leg.
0:08:19 > 0:08:23Chopped off with a chainsaw, because it was one of our lumber
0:08:23 > 0:08:26men, who worked barefoot, cutting trees for moving the ship over the
0:08:26 > 0:08:28clear part, strip of the forest.
0:08:28 > 0:08:31He was bitten by the most venomous snake in the world.
0:08:31 > 0:08:34And you have something like, very few seconds to make up
0:08:34 > 0:08:35your mind what to do.
0:08:35 > 0:08:38Our doctor and our medical camp was too far away
0:08:38 > 0:08:40for reaching it within minutes.
0:08:40 > 0:08:42It was something like 20 minutes away.
0:08:42 > 0:08:45So he picked up the chainsaw that had stopped,
0:08:45 > 0:08:48and started it up again, like an outboard engine of a boat.
0:08:48 > 0:08:51And just looked at it, and chops off his foot.
0:08:51 > 0:08:55Oh my God.
0:08:55 > 0:09:03And survived.
0:09:03 > 0:09:06No movie is, surely, worth that sort of trauma.
0:09:06 > 0:09:10It is not, and when you do a film, you have to be very, very careful
0:09:10 > 0:09:12that these things are not happening.
0:09:12 > 0:09:14But things happen when you build a bridge, for example.
0:09:15 > 0:09:24Yes, you have accidents.
0:09:24 > 0:09:27But none of them was directly related to the shooting of the film.
0:09:28 > 0:09:29There were extreme precautions.
0:09:29 > 0:09:44For example, some of the horses snapped,
0:09:44 > 0:09:48and when that happens there is some sort of a whiplash effect, that can
0:09:48 > 0:10:03decapitate one or several persons.
0:10:03 > 0:10:06So when we moved the ship, there was, far and wide, nobody around.
0:10:06 > 0:10:08I was around, nobody else.
0:10:08 > 0:10:11Well, when you talk of extremes, and things snapping, another thing that
0:10:11 > 0:10:15famously snapped on one of your sets was your own temper, with your good
0:10:15 > 0:10:18friend and lead at that time in some of your most famous films, Klaus
0:10:18 > 0:10:21Kinski, where he threatened to leave before the end of filming,
0:10:21 > 0:10:25and you said if you leave now, I will shoot you before you get
0:10:25 > 0:10:27around the first bend of the river.
0:10:27 > 0:10:30And I am just wondering whether, actually, that was entirely
0:10:30 > 0:10:33facetious, or whether there was a part of Werner Herzog that could
0:10:33 > 0:10:34imagine shooting an actor?
0:10:34 > 0:10:38I have never done it, and the funny thing is that both of
0:10:38 > 0:10:40us simultaneously plotted to murder each other, with beautiful plots.
0:10:40 > 0:10:43Like great screenplays of detective and crime stories, we plotted.
0:10:43 > 0:10:56But in this case, well, I was unarmed.
0:10:57 > 0:10:59I didn't have a rifle in my hand.
0:10:59 > 0:11:01However, I had confiscated his Winchester, a really serious
0:11:01 > 0:11:03Winchester, a few nights before.
0:11:03 > 0:11:07He had a hut a little bit higher than the extras and, you have to
0:11:07 > 0:11:08imagine, a thatched roof.
0:11:08 > 0:11:11And the extras, 45 of them, are laughing in this hut after shooting.
0:11:11 > 0:11:14And they are playing cards, and Klaus Kinski has a tantrum.
0:11:14 > 0:11:17These people are laughing.
0:11:17 > 0:11:21And all of a sudden, nobody knew what got into him, he
0:11:21 > 0:11:24shot through, he fired three shots through the hut, through the walls.
0:11:24 > 0:11:26That he didn't kill anyone was a miracle.
0:11:26 > 0:11:29He only shot the middle finger away from one of the extras.
0:11:29 > 0:11:41That is when I had to confiscate the rifle, and I had it.
0:11:41 > 0:11:42Did you?
0:11:42 > 0:11:44Honestly, now, it is many years later,
0:11:44 > 0:11:48did you ever consider going to get that rifle and pointing it at him?
0:11:48 > 0:11:51That is hard to say in retrospect, I find it very funny.
0:11:51 > 0:11:54I find it very funny, it is a hilarious incident.
0:11:54 > 0:11:57There was a grain of seriousness about it, and he realised,
0:11:57 > 0:12:00he realised there was a task there that was beyond him and beyond me.
0:12:00 > 0:12:03We had to fulfil a duty which was way beyond us.
0:12:03 > 0:12:06So in light of it, we laughed and talked and drank
0:12:06 > 0:12:08champagne over all of this.
0:12:08 > 0:12:12And you see, you have to - I think the important thing is how
0:12:12 > 0:12:14do you walk away from such a thing?
0:12:14 > 0:12:20Ten minutes later.
0:12:20 > 0:12:21You did.
0:12:21 > 0:12:33We walked away from it and embraced and laughed, and
0:12:33 > 0:12:35laughed until the end of history.
0:12:35 > 0:12:38And of course, that movie, like so many of your best-known films,
0:12:38 > 0:12:40was set in an extreme environment.
0:12:40 > 0:12:53A very harsh environment.
0:12:53 > 0:12:56And that seems to me to be a theme of your work.
0:12:56 > 0:12:58Not just in your movies, your fictional films,
0:12:58 > 0:13:00but also in your documentary work.
0:13:00 > 0:13:02You love pushing yourself, and featuring subjects who are
0:13:02 > 0:13:05pushing themselves, to the very limit in terms of their relationship
0:13:05 > 0:13:06with the natural world.
0:13:06 > 0:13:09Only if they are willing to do this.
0:13:09 > 0:13:11You see, I would never force anyone.
0:13:11 > 0:13:15That is a myth that I am pushing people to the brink of what they can
0:13:15 > 0:13:16do, to their physical existence.
0:13:16 > 0:13:18Yes, when you are shooting in rapids,
0:13:18 > 0:13:22we saw the ship going through the rapids, there was nobody on board.
0:13:22 > 0:13:24It looked spectacular, and then it didn't look that dangerous.
0:13:24 > 0:13:27And we said, let's be onboard the ship with cameras.
0:13:27 > 0:13:30So whoever wants to, under that free will, come with me.
0:13:30 > 0:13:34And one of us had this camera on his shoulder, and flew through
0:13:34 > 0:13:37the air and smashed down on the deck, with the camera in his
0:13:37 > 0:13:41hand, which was something like 20 kg, and its split his hand apart.
0:13:41 > 0:13:42Yes, this happens.
0:13:42 > 0:13:52But I suppose...
0:13:52 > 0:13:57And he never minded.
0:13:57 > 0:14:00He never minded.
0:14:00 > 0:14:02That was part of a bigger deal.
0:14:02 > 0:14:18Yes, we do risk certain things, but we do not impose it on anyone else.
0:14:18 > 0:14:22I suppose I am also thinking in the context of a more recent documentary
0:14:22 > 0:14:25film you made, Grizzly Man, which took the home movie material filmed
0:14:25 > 0:14:28by the extraordinary figure, Timothy Treadwell, who lived for years in a
0:14:28 > 0:14:30remote part of Alaska with grizzly bears, and
0:14:30 > 0:14:33tragically ended his life eaten, along with his girlfriend, I...
0:14:33 > 0:14:35Nobody deserves to die like this.
0:14:35 > 0:14:38But what I am getting at, and so many
0:14:38 > 0:14:41of your movies wrestle with this, is your view of the natural world.
0:14:41 > 0:14:47Because clearly you love it.
0:14:47 > 0:14:52You have spent so much of your life working in it, and yet yours is not
0:14:52 > 0:14:53a sort of benign view of nature.
0:14:54 > 0:14:57Yours is a very raw, dangerous - sometimes you have even talked
0:14:57 > 0:14:58about the murderous capacity that there is within nature.
0:14:59 > 0:14:59showers
0:14:59 > 0:14:59are
0:14:59 > 0:15:02It is unsentimental, it is not a Walt Disney World view
0:15:02 > 0:15:07of nature,
0:15:07 > 0:15:08it is not romantic.
0:15:08 > 0:15:09That is quite obvious.
0:15:09 > 0:15:13I can say it in short, I love nature, I love wild nature,
0:15:13 > 0:15:17but most of the time, against my better judgement.
0:15:17 > 0:15:23It seems to me, unlike a lot of modern moviemakers,
0:15:23 > 0:15:27they are somewhat obsessed with computer-generated images, special
0:15:27 > 0:15:30effects, and the extraordinary fake, breathtaking visions that can be
0:15:30 > 0:15:31created by man and computer.
0:15:31 > 0:15:43You get your breathtaking visions and your beauty and your stunning
0:15:43 > 0:15:44visual effects from nature itself?
0:15:44 > 0:15:54Yes.
0:15:54 > 0:15:56It is how you experience nature and approach it.
0:15:56 > 0:15:58Sometimes, I say it is a metaphor.
0:15:58 > 0:16:02Those films made on foot, I have those images within me that
0:16:02 > 0:16:03come from travelling on foot.
0:16:03 > 0:16:06You know, we are all alone and exposed in the world.
0:16:06 > 0:16:10It is a strange attitude to the world, it somehow reveals itself
0:16:10 > 0:16:23to those who travel on foot.
0:16:23 > 0:16:24It is hard to communicate it.
0:16:24 > 0:16:25Nobody travels on foot nowadays.
0:16:25 > 0:16:33But I have done it, and I'm not like a movie now,
0:16:33 > 0:16:34a trail hiker.
0:16:34 > 0:16:36You are not talking about Wild.
0:16:36 > 0:16:37Not like a backpacker.
0:16:37 > 0:16:38I travel, basically, without luggage.
0:16:38 > 0:16:40One walk I know you did many years
0:16:40 > 0:16:45ago, which has lived in my memory, was a walk around the border of
0:16:45 > 0:16:46Germany.
0:16:46 > 0:16:51Yes.
0:16:51 > 0:16:53I briefly want to talk about Germany.
0:16:53 > 0:16:56You came to fame, I guess, in the 1960s and the 1970s
0:16:56 > 0:16:59as part of a German new wave of filmakers, like
0:16:59 > 0:17:00Fassbinder and Wim Wenders.
0:17:00 > 0:17:02You looked unflinchingly at the post-Nazi Germany that was
0:17:02 > 0:17:03emerging.
0:17:03 > 0:17:05Now, you don't seem to really make films about Germany,
0:17:05 > 0:17:07your native land, at all.
0:17:07 > 0:17:08Have you lost interest in Germany?
0:17:08 > 0:17:10No, it has always interested me.
0:17:10 > 0:17:17Although, I must say, I'm more Bavarian than German.
0:17:17 > 0:17:19Like Scottish and British!
0:17:19 > 0:17:25I'm more like the Scotsman for the Bavarians.
0:17:25 > 0:17:29I've always been fascinated by the country, and fascinated by the,
0:17:29 > 0:17:31somehow, incomprehensible barbarism.
0:17:31 > 0:17:33I still have not fully understood it.
0:17:33 > 0:17:46And I'm trying to come to grips...
0:17:46 > 0:17:49Does that mean, as an artist, when you think about Germany,
0:17:49 > 0:17:51you are still thinking about Nazis, Hitler's legacy, rather than
0:17:51 > 0:17:57about some of the challenges facing Germany today? For example, its
0:17:57 > 0:18:00place in the modern European Union?
0:18:00 > 0:18:01Or the role of immigration?
0:18:01 > 0:18:02Germany is embedded.
0:18:02 > 0:18:06It's very funny, seeing it from the outside,
0:18:06 > 0:18:09from the West Coast of the US, when the European Union was awarded
0:18:09 > 0:18:17the Peace Nobel Prize, I remember the German press was grumbling,
0:18:17 > 0:18:19they all wanted a photo opportunity.
0:18:19 > 0:18:26It was self celebratory.
0:18:26 > 0:18:30The euro is in chaos, Greece is giving everyone a difficult time.
0:18:30 > 0:18:35It was just grumbling and mumbling, and discontent.
0:18:35 > 0:18:36And I thought, you idiots.
0:18:36 > 0:18:42You blaring idiots.
0:18:42 > 0:18:46The European Union is the largest, biggest practised peace project
0:18:46 > 0:18:55that this history of this world has ever seen to.
0:18:55 > 0:18:56Period.
0:18:56 > 0:18:57You think people forget that?
0:18:57 > 0:18:57Celebrate it.
0:18:57 > 0:19:01And yet you, as you've alluded to, you've decided to live your life in
0:19:01 > 0:19:03California, in the United States.
0:19:03 > 0:19:07To me, that's interesting.
0:19:07 > 0:19:11Obviously, it is the home of the biggest movie industry in the world.
0:19:11 > 0:19:13But Europe has so little in common with Hollywood.
0:19:13 > 0:19:18I thought, could Werner Herzog ever make Fitzcarraldo II?
0:19:18 > 0:19:21Could he ever make, what they call in Hollywood, a 'star vehicle
0:19:21 > 0:19:21movie'?
0:19:21 > 0:19:25Built around one of the world's biggest Hollywood stars?
0:19:25 > 0:19:28They can't do what I did.
0:19:28 > 0:19:32Let's caution. I do live in Los Angeles, I don't say Hollywood.
0:19:32 > 0:19:37In 20 years, I'm happily married in Los Angeles.
0:19:37 > 0:19:43In California, my wife and I lived in San Francisco.
0:19:43 > 0:19:47We thought, we have to go to the place, the city with the most
0:19:47 > 0:19:50substance in the United States.
0:19:50 > 0:19:53It was very, very clear, Los Angeles, very quickly, it was clear.
0:19:53 > 0:19:59It is the most honest place.
0:19:59 > 0:20:02It has the glitz and glamour of Hollywood at the surface, but look
0:20:02 > 0:20:12under it, in Southern California, many things that decide the world,
0:20:12 > 0:20:15the trends of the world, I don't speak of trendy things, but serious
0:20:15 > 0:20:21things, like collective dreams of the world in cinema,
0:20:21 > 0:20:27video games, computer, Internet, free speech movements, accepting
0:20:28 > 0:20:30gays and lesbians as an integral part of a dignified society.
0:20:30 > 0:20:33So you see California as a very vibrant,
0:20:33 > 0:20:34contemporary place...
0:20:34 > 0:20:37Yes, but all of the stupidity is there as well.
0:20:37 > 0:20:40Ah well, let's get to stupidity in a moment...
0:20:40 > 0:20:40Five-year-old children
0:20:40 > 0:20:42going to yoga classes...
0:20:42 > 0:20:43Hippies and new age...
0:20:44 > 0:20:47Pseudo-philosophy.
0:20:47 > 0:20:50You talk about all of that as though you aren't part of it.
0:20:50 > 0:20:53But it seems to me you have a dilemma.
0:20:53 > 0:20:54Hang on, let me finish.
0:20:54 > 0:20:59You have made movies from time to time that have involved Hollywood
0:20:59 > 0:21:00money, studio money.
0:21:00 > 0:21:03I'm thinking of Rescue Dawn, the extraordinary story of an
0:21:03 > 0:21:05American German pilot captured in Vietnam.
0:21:05 > 0:21:13When you made that movie, the New Yorker wrote
0:21:13 > 0:21:16a fascinating piece about how time and again you were frustrated
0:21:16 > 0:21:20by demands of the producers, the vast crew sent from Hollywood, there
0:21:20 > 0:21:27were millions of dollars at stake.
0:21:27 > 0:21:29Can you work with Hollywood or not?
0:21:29 > 0:21:35I can deal with it, and we have interesting points of meeting.
0:21:35 > 0:21:37There is a borderline, although sometimes, there might be friction.
0:21:37 > 0:21:39But, I'm better than Hollywood in some respects.
0:21:39 > 0:21:42Hollywood is basically the real big Hollywood, the special
0:21:42 > 0:21:46effects star value, all of the stars want to work with me as well.
0:21:46 > 0:21:48An easy position for me now, vis-a-vis Hollywood.
0:21:48 > 0:21:52But I'm good at storytelling.
0:21:52 > 0:21:54I have a suspicion I'm good at storytelling,
0:21:54 > 0:22:00and that is a basic and fundamental part of filmmaking.
0:22:01 > 0:22:03If you don't have that big films, that are mostly explosions,
0:22:03 > 0:22:06shootouts, things like that, don't
0:22:06 > 0:22:22function. That is why Hollywood looks in my direction as well,
0:22:22 > 0:22:23it is totally fine.
0:22:23 > 0:22:25It's interesting you say that, Hollywood looks in my direction,
0:22:25 > 0:22:26you say.
0:22:26 > 0:22:30I don't mean to sound impertinent, the one award you've never won,
0:22:30 > 0:22:33you won Best Picture at Cannes with Fitzcarraldo, but you've never won
0:22:33 > 0:22:36an Oscar for your directing.
0:22:36 > 0:22:46Does that rankle with you?
0:22:46 > 0:22:47Number onem career I didn't have?
0:22:47 > 0:22:58If I ever won an Oscar or not, it doesn't make a film better or worse.
0:22:58 > 0:22:59It just doesn't.
0:22:59 > 0:23:01It has to come naturally.
0:23:01 > 0:23:02You don't spend sleepless nights over this.
0:23:02 > 0:23:06I enjoy seeing that colleagues of mine who are really good get
0:23:06 > 0:23:06Academy Awards, wonderful.
0:23:07 > 0:23:21I don't need it.
0:23:21 > 0:23:24Because, you see, I've made enough films.
0:23:24 > 0:23:25I don't need it really badly.
0:23:25 > 0:23:42Like some 24-year-old kid, I've made 70 films now.
0:23:42 > 0:23:44At the beginning, you said you haven't stopped.
0:23:44 > 0:23:47Not so long ago, you said "I think cinema can express our collective
0:23:47 > 0:23:49dreams more than any other medium."
0:23:49 > 0:23:50Is that still true today?
0:23:50 > 0:23:53In the world you described of special effects and computer games?
0:23:53 > 0:23:54Whatever it is, yes.
0:23:55 > 0:23:56There is a great bandwidth of cinema,
0:23:56 > 0:23:59including all of the big action movies from Hollywood, from films
0:23:59 > 0:24:01like Star Wars, you just name it.
0:24:01 > 0:24:03It is good to see that.
0:24:03 > 0:24:15It is good for me to see that there is a wonderful type of movies
0:24:15 > 0:24:17weird films, they are wonderful.
0:24:17 > 0:24:19So movie magic, for you, that lives on?
0:24:19 > 0:24:22There is awe, magic, and I am going to hang on in.
0:24:22 > 0:24:23Werner Herzog, we hope so.
0:24:23 > 0:24:25Thank you for being on HARDtalk.
0:24:25 > 0:24:26Thank you very much.
0:24:26 > 0:24:35Thank you very much.
0:24:53 > 0:24:54Hello there, good morning.
0:24:54 > 0:24:57The week that lies ahead will be very different from the week just