By ALI NADERZAD - Everyone (I hope) should know Werner Herzog (and if you don't, well, you should). He was mostly famous earlier on for films like 'Fitzcaraldo' and more recently 'Grizzly Man.' I see him (as anyone else) as the calmer alter-ego of that venerable (and schizo) German actor named Klaus Kinsky. Herzog directed him for several of his films, eventually making a documentary about their self-destructive friendship called 'My favorite fiend.' If you know what happened on the set of Terry Gilliam's 'Man from la Mancha,' during which everything that could go wrong does go wrong, then you might imagine similar circumstances but perhaps two times worse on the shoot for 'Fitzcaraldo,' (1981) an absolutely fascinating odyssey about a rubber baron (played by Kinsky) who sets out to build an opera--his favorite musical genre--in the middle of the Peruvian jungle. The gargantuan task is eclipsed only by what it will take to fund such an undertaking: dragging an entire steamship through to the jungle to bring it to the heart of rubber territory, in order to better exploit it. Herzog kept notes during the entire filming and it is only recently that he went back to re-read, edit and supplement them for a new book he called "Conquest of the Useless." TIME is currently running this video about Herzog giving a brief interview on the genesis for the book and some interesting anecdotes. Nothing new is revealed, but there's something that's always fascinated me about Herzog, a very quiet (and quieting person) inside whom some storm always seems to be gathering. And while he hasn't renewed his opus for ever, tour-de-force films like Fitzcaraldo, which earned Herzog Best Director award at Cannes in 1982, bear watching again. Herzog (pictured here on the set of Fitzcaraldo) has always struck me as enamored of himself as much as his craft but perhaps that's not such a bad thing after all when you have given the world such pleasurable and long-lasting works.
WERNER HERZOG INTERVIEWED ON TIME
