Wener Herzog Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Alice Kelikian, a professor at Brandeis and Chair of their Film Studies Program just pulled off one heck of a feat: she's convinced Werner Herzog and Errol Morris to reunite for the first time in almost 30 years, according to And the Winner Is. The talented filmmakers will come together on October 22 at the Edie and Lew Wasserman Cinematheque on the Brandeis campus in Massachusetts. Unfortunately, we won't all get to see the event -- it's open to some students and invited guests. Hopefully they'll record it, because this is a pretty big deal.

The dispute between the filmmakers dates back three decades. Morris had told Herzog that he was going to make a documentary about pet cemeteries. Werner didn't think he could do it, and told Morris that if he pulled it off, he would eat his own shoe. True to both their words, Errol made 1980's Gates of Heaven, and Herzog was left with a big meal of tasty shoe. To make good on his promise, Herzog did it at the premiere of the doc, boiling and eating his shoe, which later became Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe. That, apparently, angered Morris and the two have been at odds since. Will they talk about the feud? Will they remain civil? Or, will this become a live action celebrity death match?

Thanks to the rise of digital video and the increase in box office, documentaries have become far more plentiful in recent years. In some ways that's a good thing; it means more worldly, educated moviegoers walking around. But it's also a bad thing for anyone who has to see more than a half dozen over a year's time. You start to notice the exact same techniques employed: talking heads, archival clips, filmed photographs, perhaps a narrator, and perhaps -- if we're lucky -- some actual new motion picture footage exposed just for the project.

Public television (not to mention Humphrey Jennings and his World War II-era industrials) years ago defined the format and rhythms for documentaries, and most filmmakers slavishly follow them, even if it flies in the face of their subject matter. I've seen documentaries on groundbreaking, and even indefinable artists such as John Cage and Syd Barrett filmed in exactly this same format. You'd think that the filmmakers would get inspired by their subjects and break out of the routine. Even more frustrating was the recent doc An Unreasonable Man, which told the story of Ralph Nader, and used Ralph Nader as one of a series of talking heads -- in his own movie. If the filmmakers had access to Nader, why not actually utilize him?