The Talks - 1

WERNER HERZOG: TRUST IN MY WILD

FANTASIES

January 30, 2013
Mr. Herzog, do you think someone would ever be crazy enough to hire you to direct an epic
blockbuster?
It wouldnt be crazy at all, because I am capable of producing huge films for a fraction of the money that
Hollywood would spend. A big epic film like Aguirre, the Wrath of God, if Hollywood started to
contemplate this film, they wouldnt think under 50 million dollars. That is the scope, no one would dare to
touch it. However, the grand total budget of the film was 360,000 dollars, at the time in 1970. Lets just say
that today it would be twice as much, lets say 700 or 800 thousand dollars.
Would you say that you are more popular today than youve ever been before?
I dont know. I cant really judge, because I do not relate to things such as popularity. It is completely vague
and unknown to me what it means. I still live basically the same life. I do not have and I do not need
material things. My material world is extremely small and limited.
It cant be that small.
I own one single suit that Im wearing right now and in the last 25 years Ive never had another suit. And
the shoes that Im wearing Ive been wearing for 3 years and they are my only pair of shoes. I need to
replace them because they are starting to come apart.
Really?
I dont need 20 pairs of shoes. I have a car that Ive had for 12 years. Its fine, I enjoy life and things are
very basic. I dont have social networks in the Internet for example. I dont even have a cell phone. Im
probably the last holdout.
I know a few people like that Everyone hates them because you can never get in touch with
them.
I just dont want to be available all the time. I love to connect with people but in a more fundamental way. I
never go to parties, but I invite friends and I cook for them. We sit around a table, maximum 6 people,
because if there are more people there is no space around the table. And when we speak to each other,
everyone speaks about the same topic. Whereas when you are at a party, there are 200 people and loud
music and in each corner there is a different topic, and small talk.
What do you like cooking at these parties?
Theyre not parties, I cook meals for friends or for people for whom I care. I cook with my wife, but
sometimes when it comes to a solid steak I do that myself. Its a great joy to have discourse and while this is
going on I take the steak and serve it and have a good bottle of wine. Its more fundamental, the kind of
social networking that I do.
Your films seem to prize human connection as well. Would you say that all of your films are
in some way about what it means to be human?
Im cautious about giving you any sort of category. Of course I have always been fascinated by our human
condition, and I think that literature and painting does the same, if you are seriously into any of that it
always has to do with our human condition.
But is there a spiritual dimension that connects humanity that you are in search of?
Maybe. Deep at the bottom of all art and I say it with necessary caution because I dont think Im an artist
but deep at the bottom of what Im doing is something that illuminates us, that goes deeper than just
The Talks - 2

superficial entertainment. Yes, my films are all entertaining and in a way I make one mainstream film after
the other
I wouldnt really call you mainstream.
My stories are wonderful and easy to understand and you can show them in Algeria, in Moscow, in Buenos
Aires, all of them will understand it. And very young people understand the films. I have 15-year-old kids
now writing excitedly about Aguirre as if I had made it yesterday. In a way, even though I have not had a
200 million dollar blockbuster domestic box office film, it doesnt really matter. They are mainstream.
You are a director who moves from documentary to fiction with more ease than most
There are hardly any other directors who do feature films and documentaries. In fact, at the moment would
you know of anyone?
Michael Winterbottom?
Ah yes, he does documentaries and feature films. Who else? Its less than a handful. But you have to be
cautious anyway because I try to blur the borderlines between the two and I am very inventive in
documentaries. Who would expect that in my film about cave paintings that you would see Fred Astaire
dancing with his shadow in swing time?
Or albino crocodiles.
Exactly. Who would expect that I would have radioactive mutants and albino crocodiles in my film? So the
amount of going wild, its not just my fantasy, its something collectively that we have just go wild and go
rampant! Ill keep saying that until the producer has me carried out in a straight jacket. Thats the joy of
filmmaking, the joy of storytelling, the joy of us witnessing cinema.
But because of that I feel like youre someone we shouldnt trust 100 percent, like youre an
unreliable narrator. Is that true?
No, you can always trust in my wild fantasies. And when it is a wild fantasy, it is absolutely clear this is
going wild now. And we love that as an audience. Why do I have albino crocodiles in my film? Yes its so
wonderful and in a way its fitting. I do invent things, but its always clear when Im inventive.
I felt the crocodiles were a statement about human influence on the environment. Am I in
the ballpark?
Im convinced that our presence on this planet is not sustainable, so we will be extinct fairly soon.
You dont think even a part of our species will be able to adapt?
Yes, we will be extinct. Human beings will be extinct, because cockroaches and reptiles have a much better
survival chance. The human race is not sustainable and there are too many things that can wipe us out.
Microbes are really after us, and a meteor and a massive volcanic explosion. The last really big one in New
Zealand 72,000 years ago nearly wiped out everything and there are much more massive ones still looming
out there.
You dont think we are intelligent enough to adapt?
No, because if you have a power failure for a month, what are you going to do? All of Canada, all of the
United States, all of the civilized world, you cant go shopping anymore because there is no way to enter the
supermarket because it opens with a motion detector, you cant pump gasoline, you cant do anything
anymore. How would you feed yourself? You cannot decide from one day to the next, Oh, Ill plough the
land and grow my food.


The Talks - 3

Does our impending extinction worry you?
It doesnt make me nervous that well become extinct, it doesnt frighten me at all. There is a wonderful
thing that Martin Luther the reformer said when he was asked, What would you do if the world would
disappear tomorrow in the apocalypse? And Luther said, Today, I would plant an apple tree.
Do you believe in a superior being?
Oh, dont ask that but if I knew that tomorrow a meteorite would destroy our planet, I would start
shooting a new film today.

QUENTIN TARANTINO: ITS A CORRUPTED
CINEMA
October 28, 2013
Mr. Tarantino, judging from your movies I have to ask: are you obsessed with womens feet?
Im not shying away from that. If you think about the directors that have been accused of being foot-crazy,
it would have been Alfred Hitchcock, it would have been Buuel, Samuel Fuller its pretty good company.
And it suggests they were pretty good filmmakers because they knew where to put their camera. But I think
legs and ass get pretty much equal time in my movies.
As does violence.
Im just telling my stories and doing my thing. I like dealing inside of genres and getting inside of
subgenres. The genres that I have been dealing with have sensationalistic, violent material be it crime
movies, Kung fu movies, samurai movies, slasher movies, car chase movies so they naturally lend
themselves to it. When it comes to thrilling cinema those genres lend themselves to heart-stopping, violent
cinema. I like that. But in the case of Jackie Brown, its not violent, its all about character.

What is your recipe for writing such vivid characters?
This is not in any way a facetious answer to this, but: I am a writer. Thats what I do. Its a writers job not
just to write about himself but to look at the rest of humanity and explore it other peoples way of talking,
the phrases they use. And my head is a sponge. I listen to what everyone says, I watch little idiosyncratic
behavior, people tell me a joke and I remember it. People tell me an interesting story in their life and I
remember it.
And if you dont remember it?
Then it was probably not worth remembering. The thing is, its in there whether its six months or fifteen
years later, when I go and write my new characters, my pen is like an antenna, it gets that information, and
all of a sudden these characters come out more or less fully-formed. I dont write their dialogue, I get them
talking to each other.
Going back to violence, what are you personally afraid of?
My number one fear hands down its probably the only super-fear that I have, one of those irrational
things I am afraid of rats.
Really?
Its the only thing I would call debilitating. If a rat were on this table, I would be in some girls lap. I would
probably be standing on her shoulders and screaming like a bitch.


The Talks - 4

Do you ever have nightmares?
I havent had nightmares in a long, long time. When youre a little kid and you have a nightmare, you go
and climb into your parents bed, but my mother was strict with me. After at a certain age they sent me
back to my own bed and I realized I didnt have the luxury to have nightmares anymore because I couldnt
go running to mommy. So I stopped having them after that for the most part.
Do you want to have children of your own one day or would they only take away from your
energy for filmmaking?
We will see what happens, but I dont intend to make movies forever. I want to stop around 60.
Are you sure about that?
No, but thats kind of the plan. I dont want to be an old-man filmmaker, making old-man movies who
doesnt know when to leave the party. And I dont want to fuck up my filmography with a bunch of old-man
stuff. I could change my mind. If I want to make a movie and I can at 62, I will. But I want to leave the ring
triumphant. I want this guy, this guy you see right now, I want him to be the guy who makes the movies,
not the autumn dude. At that time Id rather just write and be a man of letters. Write cinema books, write
novels, have children.
How many movies would you estimate youve seen in your life?
I have no clue, I couldnt venture to guess. But from 17 to 22 I used to make a list of every movie I saw in a
given year in the theaters, including revival theaters. If it was a new release I circled the number. And I
would pick my favorite movies and give out my little awards. It was always the same amount back then, it
was 197 or 202. And thats when I was broke and I was paying for these movies myself. Back at my most
voracious moviegoing, 200 was the average.
I think it is safe to say that the number is high. What are your 3 favorites?
You ask me today, in this specific situation, Ill tell you three. You ask me tomorrow, or six hours from now,
and it will be different.
So what are they right now?
I would say Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein because I saw that when I was a little boy and it was
my favorite movie at that time. Part of the reason was the combination of genres The Abbott and Costello
stuff is pretty funny and when Frankensteins monster shows up its pretty scary. I didnt know I was
making genre distinctions when I was five, but I was. But thats whats I have been doing my whole career,
mixing genres together. I would also put Taxi Driver as one of those films. Why is a little harder to say. You
cant quite boil Taxi Drivers power down to one or two sentences. I will say it is probably the most
novelistic, complex character study for my money in the history of cinema. Its only in novels where you
find a character treated like that. But at the same time, its a very entertaining movie. There are laughs all
through Taxi Driver. And the last movie, as I always say, is The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Are there any genres that you dont like?
I dont like everything. I like historical movies, but I am not a fan of the costume drama. Another genre I
have no respect for is the biopic. They are just big excuses for actors to win Oscars. Its a corrupted cinema.
Why?
Even the most interesting person if you are telling their life from beginning to end, its going to be a
fucking boring movie. If you do this, you have to do a comic book version of their whole life. For instance,
when you make a movie about Elvis Presley, you dont make a movie about his whole life. Make a movie
about one day. Make a movie about the day Elvis Presley walked into Sun Records. Make a movie about the
whole day before he walked into Sun Records, and the movie ends when we walks through that
door. Thats a movie.
The Talks - 5

If they made a movie about your life would that be boring, too?
I might be flattered, but I wouldnt watch it.
GUS VAN SANT: YOU ALWAYS WANT IT TO BE
DIFFERENT
August 21, 2012
Mr. Van Sant, do you still take photos?
If I see something good, yes.
What might that be?
I used to take photographs just to remember people. I would take a Polaroid picture just against the wall in
the light the window was always right next to the person. I would take photos of somebody and there
would be just this one photo that I would take so that I could remember them.
You couldnt remember people otherwise?
Well we didnt have digital photography and you couldnt find pictures of people unless they brought them
in. So when I met interesting people not only actors but also kids like Flea or Anthony Kiedis I would
take a picture or else Im going to have to go find a rock magazine and cut it apart to find a photo of them.
Nowadays you just google them and hundreds of pictures appear. But at the time, in the 80s, I used my
camera. I used Polaroids so that I had the picture instantly; I could put it in a group and I could see how
the group looked.
Is the book of portraits you published a long time ago the result of these photos?
Yes. I just started using 665 Polaroid film, which has a really nice negative that goes with it, with the idea
that I could later scan the negatives and have a show. Or not scan, because you didnt scan at the time, but
blow them up and have a photography show. And then later I did have a photography show and a friend
also made a book called 108 Portraits. So that was really the book made from the photographs.

How do you feel about being photographed yourself? Ive seen pictures that Hedi Slimane
took of you.
Oh yeah, the ones that were on his website? Well, those pictures are so I think theyre bad looking.
You dont like them? I think he has a great eye.
Hes really good. Hes a friend, so he just took those pictures over at my house. We were going on a hike. I
dont mind if he takes pictures. I dont really mind pictures so much, but I really dont like posing for
pictures. Only because you become a part of a project, of someones art project. Its harder than being
interviewed.

Its easier to be yourself in an interview than it is in a picture.
Yeah.
Unfortunately we will photograph you as well.
Thats good. I dont mind when people take my photo. But a lot of times they go, Can you do this, can you
do that. You have like seven different places that youre supposed to look at and it just gets too much.
Who are the photographers that inspire you?
Eggleston is one of the big ones for me and my cinematographer. We always kind of have him in mind.


The Talks - 6

So do you use specific photographers as references for the look of a film?
When youre planning a film youre imagining all these fantastic things. If youre using Metropolis or
something as inspiration you see all this stuff and then by the time you get to shooting your film it looks
like something different. Its always weird how you end up losing your inspiration.

Why do you think that happens?
You have to be quite strict in order to not lose your original vision. Im always giving in to certain things. So
a lot of times its like, Well, its going to take too long, so lets just do it the way we normally do it. Which
is strange because you always want it to be different. So pretty much all my films look alike. Theyre not
super different. But mostly because we keep giving in and just going for the characters.
Speaking of characters, why does youth play such a big role in your work?
Somehow it was always the young characters that I related to the most. I remember how even when I first
started I was writing stories that were set in high school. At that time, in the 70s, there werent any youth-
oriented films at all except for a Disney film or something.
There must have been a few.
Okay, films like Oliver, but it wasnt a genre that really existed. So when I was showing that script around
the response was, Well, this isnt really a film that people make; its a thing people experience.

Its not just your stories that are often centered around youth culture, you also tend to work
with young screen writers.
True. But Ben and Matts script, for example, was really, really good, too. I think that all three of us
benefited from that collaboration even though I had already made some films. Still today if somebody asks
me what films Ive made, the only one they know is Good Will Hunting.

How did you get involved with them? It was their first script, after all.
Matt had tried out for To Die For, so I knew him and he was really good. I really wanted to use him, but I
was unwilling to bend the rules of how I cast the film. He looked too much like the jock and I needed more
of a dispossessed boy, which Joaquin [Phoenix] played well in the end. I wanted to use Matt so much, and I
could have gone that direction, but I felt it might actually destroy the movie. So I knew him from that
experience, sort of working with him, hanging out with him.

When did they approach you with the script for Good Will Hunting?
Hed written the script back then, but somehow I didnt read it. Then it was later, like two or three years
later, that a friend at Miramax gave me the script. When I read it I thought, Wow, Ive known about their
script for three years and its actually really good. So I called them right away and said, This is good. If
you want a director, Ill do it. But at the time they were trying to do all kinds of stuff with it. Jim Sheridan
was going to direct it, then they wanted Redford to do it, Mel Gibson, and all these people. Finally they just
ran out of people and I was the only one left.
Why did everybody else pass if the script was so good?
Because Matt and Ben were starring in it and all these people were like, Yeah, but if it was Leo and Brad it
would be better.
Well, nobody knew them back then.
But they were unwilling to step down from the roles, which was smart. They had to fight, apparently really
hard. So that was the thing that saved them. And I was the guy who wanted to have them. The other people
I think were just a little bit on the fence.
The Talks - 7

Did you ever see the off-Broadway play Matt and Ben where theyre played by two girls?
The script for Good Will Hunting falls from the sky while they are writing a terrible science
fiction story and they just put their names on it and pretend they wrote it.
No, but I remember reading it. It would be really cool to make a film of that. It was funny. That was in the
90s, right?
The early 2000s. How would somebody go about landing a script on your desk these days?
It depends. It just depends on I mean I lot of times theyre just friends of friends or people who get my
email address from somebody or whatever. What, have you got a script for me?
Nope, not at all.
Too bad.
DARREN ARONOFSKY: I WISH I COULD BE
MORE MANIPULATIVE

July 31, 2013
Mr. Aronofsky, do you enjoy torturing your audience?
Well, people have different levels of what torture means. Some people actually really enjoy it, so it is a fine
line. I just try to get as far as I can. I think it is probably that I am still trying to annoy my sister to get
attention from her. In todays world it is very hard to create images and ideas that people remember more
than right in the moment so you want to create an experience that lasts. That usually has to be a pretty
intense journey.
Your films are often polarizing as a result. Is that intentional?
Id rather not, to be honest. (Laughs) Id love everyone to love it and dig it, but its what I do. I dont know
how else to do it. Look at Requiem for a Dream people were telling me I raped them, people threw up,
there was an ambulance in Toronto when we screened it at the Toronto Film Festival because a guy had
heart palpitations. Its just not that intense now, but then it was a little different. Pi was trashed, too. The
New York Times called it grainy, gritty, blotchy and the music was jarring. You know, what are you
going to do? You cant win them all.

But nowadays things are different. Your last couple of films have been really well received.
I think The Wrestler was completely unexpected for the people. Everyone said, Why are you doing a movie
about wrestling with Mickey Rourke? What are you doing? Do you really want to destroy your career? And
then Black Swan went pretty well. I think tastes have changed. You know when we made Requiem for a
Dream it made 3 million dollars theatrically and I think in todays world they probably would have figured
out another way to sell it. You know, it was before Boys Dont Cry and these other movies suddenly became
Oscar films. So maybe the taste of what people expect in the theaters has changed a bit. Soon Ill be too old
to make anything hip, so Im catching up last second.

Could you imagine writing and directing a comedy?
A bunch of my student films were comedies, so I would love to. But I dont know for some reason I keep
making these dark movies, I dont know why.
Intuition?
Yeah, it is quite often that there is something about a story that I connect to and that makes me want to
continue that heavy lifting. You know, each of my projects is kind of a marathon run. A lot of them wont
make it to the finish line and the only reason they make it is because I go back and nurture them and try to
figure everything out.
The Talks - 8

That must have been the case with The Fountain. You kept going even after you lost Brad
Pitt, your main actor, during production.
He pulled out after eighteen million dollars were spent and the film fell apart. I spent the next six, seven
months trying to figure out what to do. One night I couldnt sleep, I woke up, I was sitting in my office and
across from me were all these books that I had read to do research on The Fountain. And I realized that it
was in my blood and there is no way I was going to be able to move on until I finished it even though there
were eighteen million dollars against it.

I dont know how you managed that
That was pretty upsetting and the seven months following were a pretty dark time for me. But I felt really
bad for the all the crews and staff because there were like four or five hundred people that were affected by
it and it all just collapsed. People had moved cities
Why did Brad Pitt step out?
Its a very hard thing to talk about because we worked together for two and a half years so it was like a
relationship. He even said that when we broke up he felt like he was breaking up with a girlfriend or
something because for two and a half years we worked on it. But its never one thing that breaks up a
relationship. Really, it was probably because I was in Australia for six months prepping the film and he was
in L.A. and creatively we just grew apart.
Is intuition also important for you when youre on set?
When you are on set and you are actually working intuition is there all the time its got to be. There is
some type of myth about filmmakers who know exactly what they want. That may exist for some people but
that is not how I work.
How do you work?
I try to get as many good people and as much good materials on set as possible and sort of create an
environment that allows the actors to try things and that mistakes can happen and that I can follow my
intuition and get to the right place. I think if you try to force something you can squeeze the life out of it
and make something that, no matter what you do, isnt real.
Its probably quite easy for you to get a great team around you though
Not really I wish I could be more manipulative, but I am not. Instead, I am very honest with actors. I tell
them, This is what it is going to take to do. It is this type of pain, this type of work. You really have to do
it. After that, most of them say, Ah, I think I am not going to do it. Ive lost a lot of A-list actors over the
years because of that. Peoples lives get very complicated and they have many opportunities. I mean look at
the actors I have worked with: How many of them are in super high demand? If I get them, then it is a
chance for them to do something else. But usually I dont get them.
CHARLIE KAUFMAN: I DONT BELIEVE IN
RULES
December 21, 2011
Mr. Kaufman, how are you?
I am not that great. How are you?
Im actually fine. Whats wrong?
I dont know. I am just tired and
cranky?
No, I am not cranky. Just tired and pissy. I have a headache and I am tired and I am fine.
The Talks - 9

Somebody once told me that a good writer is supposed to read at least twice as much as he
writes, otherwise he is not improving his skills. Would you agree?
I dont believe in rules. I think that there are probably always exceptions to everything. I think reading is a
very good thing for writers to do, obviously. I think its probably better not to read screenplays if you are
going to read because I think they are usually not very interesting and not well written. But I dont know if
there is a formula, something that mathematical like 2 + 2. I dont know. I certainly write so slowly that I
am sure that I read more than twice as much as I write.
How long does it take you to write a script?
Sometimes between two and three years. Theyve been taking longer lately. I dont know what that means.
Ive got to change that pattern because I want to get a few more movies done before I die. But I wrote Being
John Malkovich in a very short period of time. I was working on a TV show waiting for hiring season. I
think I wrote it in six months, which is pretty amazing for me.

When people reach a certain level they often hire assistants to do a lot of their work. Do you
have help or do you have to battle the beast yourself?
No Ive never had one. The only time I had an assistant was as a director. For co-production I had an
assistant. But, no, I never had an assistant in any way other than that. I dont know what they would do.
They would sit next to me in my office in my house and that would be really weird. Research for me is part
of the learning process. No one else could do it for me.
Why?
I read things really haphazardly something leads me to something else. I spend five hours going through
things online and oh, that leads me to this. How could anyone else do that? So the answer is no.
The architecture of your movies seems to be getting more elaborate. Maybe this is the
reason.
Yeah, I think so. Maybe thats why and I am thinking about more things and I am trying.
Is it a self-analytical process when you write?
In a therapeutic way? I dont know if it is. Thats a tough question. I get asked this question and I dont
know what the answer is. I feel glad to be doing it, I feel glad being able to think about the things that I am
thinking about and create something out of them, but I dont know if I get better because of it or anything.
I am still the same person. But its a living. Maybe, well see might be a living.
Youre one of the few screenwriters who has become a brand. People have an idea of what a
Charlie Kaufman film is, there is a kind of stamp on it. Was that not enough or why did you
feel the need to direct as well?
I dont think it was necessarily like I needed it for my ego. I was interested in it. I started out doing that
stuff: I went to film school and I made movies when I was a kid and I did a lot of acting when I was a kid,
too. Ive always been interested in theater and actors and it was something that Ive always wanted to do.
Its a good thing for me to be able to make my work even more personal to take it from its conception to
its completion and to be able to make all the choices myself. It maintains a certain integrity maybe that it
might not otherwise have and I wanted to explore that.
How did you find the experience then? Was it like you expected it to be?
Well, it wasnt all that surprising to me. Ive been working on movies for a while so I kind of know what it is
to make them to a certain extent. Was it everything that I expected it to be? Yeah, it was pretty much what I
expected it to be. It was straining, it was intense, it was very concentrated, a lot of people asking me a lot of
things, managing a lot of people.
The Talks - 10

Did you enjoy it?
I enjoyed it and I am glad that I did it and I would like to do it again. I learned a lot, but its not like there
were any kind of major surprises in the process. Am I really that director? It wasnt anything like that.
What do you think you learned as an artist from the process? About yourself and your
work?
What did I learn about myself? I think that I can direct a movie, which is probably the biggest thing I
learned. Now I have directed a movie! Its like when you write your first screenplay. One of the biggest
things about writing your first screenplay is that you actually finished a screenplay. Its a very important
sort of milestone just to have done that even if it sucks. It gave me a certain confidence to go on and do it
again if I can.
You said you used to act. Can you imagine acting, writing, directing, and producing one
day? Does Charlie Kaufmann want to do it all?
I dont know because I dont really act anymore. I havent done it in years. Im very kind of uncomfortable
in front of cameras. So I am not sure. Ive thought about it maybe somewhere in the future. I dont know, it
depends on how my therapy goes.