50 Fun Facts About Werner Herzog

In which German city was Werner Herzog born in 1942?

He was born Werner Stipetić; the family fled to a Bavarian mountain village two weeks later after an Allied bombing raid destroyed the house next door.

Which volatile actor starred in five Herzog films, beginning with Aguirre, the Wrath of God?

Herzog first met him as a teenager, when the struggling actor lived in the same boarding house as Herzog's family.

What did Herzog famously cook and eat in public in 1978 after Errol Morris finished Gates of Heaven?

He had promised to do it if Morris ever completed the pet-cemetery project; Les Blank turned the meal into a short documentary two years later.

In Fitzcarraldo, what does the title character try to haul over a hill in the Amazon?

Herzog had his crew actually pull the 320-ton vessel up the slope with no special effects, causing three injuries.

Grizzly Man chronicles the life and death of which bear enthusiast?

He and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard were killed by a bear in Katmai National Park, Alaska, in October 2003.

Which Star Wars series featured Herzog as a mysterious character called The Client?

He took the role after admiring the screenplay, despite admitting he had never seen a single Star Wars film.

Herzog played the villain Zec Chelovek opposite Tom Cruise in which 2012 film?

It was a rare live-action acting role for the director, who more often appears as a fictionalised version of himself.

What is the legendary goal of the conquistadors in Aguirre, the Wrath of God?

The film opens on Christmas Day 1560 with Gonzalo Pizarro's men marching down from the conquered Inca Empire into the rainforest.

Which classic vampire film did Herzog remake with Kinski in 1979?

It earned a Golden Bear nomination that year, the same year Herzog and Kinski also made Woyzeck.

Which documentary about Kinski did Herzog release in 1999?

The film screened out of competition at Cannes and chronicles their tumultuous professional relationship.

Herzog's surname at birth was Stipetić. What does the adopted name Herzog mean in German?

It was his father's surname; he took it because he thought it sounded more impressive for a filmmaker.

How did Herzog acquire the 35 mm camera he used to start making films?

He has said he does not consider it theft, describing it as a natural right to a tool to work with.

What night job did Herzog work during high school to fund his first featurettes?

No production company would take on his projects, so he paid for them himself.

To which city did Herzog walk in 1974, believing it would keep his mentor Lotte Eisner alive?

The three-week trek produced the diary Of Walking in Ice; Eisner survived another eight years.

While being interviewed by the BBC in 2006, Herzog was hit in the abdomen by what?

He carried on the interview about Grizzly Man without seeking treatment, calling the wound "not significant".

Which Herzog documentary about Antarctica earned him his first Academy Award nomination?

It also won Best Documentary at the 2008 Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams takes viewers inside which French cave?

Despite his general scepticism about 3D, Herzog shot and premiered the film in three dimensions in 2010.

Which country did Herzog head to after fleeing Pittsburgh for violating his student visa?

There he briefly worked in charreada rodeo, injured himself, and turned to smuggling TVs and stereos across the border.

Which Pittsburgh institution did the 20-year-old Herzog move to the United States to study at?

He was caught working for a producer at TV station WQED, breaking his visa terms.

What was the title of the first film Herzog began working on at 19?

He made his first phone call only two years earlier, at 17.

Herzog's first feature, Signs of Life, won a Silver Bear at which festival?

It was the Silver Bear Extraordinary Prize of the Jury, his first major award.

Which Herzog documentary about a pilot shot down over Laos earned him an Emmy nomination?

Herzog later retold Dieter Dengler's escape as the feature film Rescue Dawn.

Which actor was originally cast as Fitzcarraldo but had to leave the shoot with dysentery?

He had completed forty percent of the film; his doctors then forbade him from returning to Peru.

Which rock star's Fitzcarraldo role was written out of the script when he left to go on tour?

He was to play Fitzcarraldo's assistant Wilbur before the Rolling Stones tour intervened.

Fitzcarraldo dreams of building what in the Peruvian city of Iquitos?

He is a devotee of the tenor Enrico Caruso; the film ends with an opera company performing on the deck of his ship.

Which Les Blank documentary chronicles the troubled making of Fitzcarraldo?

Herzog's own diaries from the shoot were later published as Conquest of the Useless.

How much did the vessel hauled uphill in Fitzcarraldo weigh?

The real Carlos Fitzcarrald's boat weighed only about 30 tons and was carried over the isthmus in pieces.

Which tribe's chief offered to kill Kinski for Herzog near the end of the Fitzcarraldo shoot?

Herzog declined the offer; the tribe's members had been used extensively as extras.

Which band composed the soundtrack for Aguirre, the Wrath of God?

The kosmische musik group's music became a signature element of Herzog's 1970s films.

In 1971 Herzog narrowly avoided boarding which doomed airliner while scouting Aguirre locations in Peru?

The plane was struck by lightning; sole survivor Juliane Koepcke became the subject of his 1998 documentary Wings of Hope.

Which Herzog film won the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury at Cannes in 1975?

It also took the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury the same year.

What was the name of the manifesto Herzog read in 1999 before a public dialogue with Roger Ebert?

Its 12 points open with the claim that cinéma vérité reaches only "the truth of accountants", and set out his idea of ecstatic truth.

What did Herzog call the alternative teaching venture for young directors he founded in 2009?

He said he preferred students who had worked as bouncers in a sex club or wardens in a lunatic asylum.

Herzog's 2022 debut novel The Twilight World is a fictionalised account of which figure?

The Japanese soldier hid on Lubang Island for almost 29 years, surrendering only in 1974; Herzog had met him in Tokyo.

Which actress ultimately played the explorer Gertrude Bell in Herzog's Queen of the Desert?

Naomi Watts was originally announced for the part; Robert Pattinson played a 22-year-old T. E. Lawrence.

In The Simpsons episode "The Scorpion's Tale", Herzog voiced a character with what name?

The episode aired in March 2011, a year after his first cartoon voice role in The Boondocks.

In Hayao Miyazaki's The Wind Rises, Herzog voiced which character in the English dub?

The 2013 role was one of a run of animated voice jobs that also included Metalocalypse and Rick and Morty.

Herzog's 2013 short From One Second to the Next, funded by phone carriers, warned about what danger?

The 35-minute film drew over 1.7 million YouTube views and was sent to more than 40,000 high schools.

At which 2009 festival did Herzog enter two films in competition, including Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans?

The other, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?, entered the competition as a "surprise film".

Grizzly Man won which award at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival?

The prize honours films about science and technology; the soundtrack was composed by Richard Thompson.

How many summers did the subject of Grizzly Man spend among the bears of Katmai National Park?

Herzog built the film from more than 100 hours of footage Treadwell shot in his final five years.

What did Herzog initially advise Jewel Palovak to do with the audio recording of the bear attack?

He later called that "stupid, silly advice"; she instead put the tape in a bank vault, and destroyed it around 2023.

Which movement in film is Herzog considered a pioneer of, alongside Fassbinder, Wenders and Schlöndorff?

The movement's low-budget documentarians drew influence from the French New Wave.

To which US city did Herzog move in 1996, later praising it as a place where "things actually get done"?

He married Russian-American photographer Elena Pisetski there in 1999.

How old was Herzog when he made his first telephone call?

He grew up in Sachrang without running water, a flushing toilet or a phone, and did not know cinema existed until a travelling projectionist visited.

Herzog has said his "very first intellectual fascination" at 12 or 13 was with what?

That fascination eventually led to Cave of Forgotten Dreams, his 3D documentary shot in a French cave.

A young Werner Herzog reached the south of which country, and fell ill, trying to travel to the Congo?

He was intrigued by the newly independent Congo but had to return to Germany.

How many operas has Herzog directed, according to his Wikipedia biography?

His productions include Mozart's The Magic Flute, Beethoven's Fidelio and Wagner's Parsifal.

Herzog's diary of his 1974 three-week walk to see Lotte Eisner was published under what title?

Herzog walked from Munich to Paris believing that Eisner, his gravely ill friend and mentor, would not die if he did so.

Herzog won Best Director at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival for which film?

Woyzeck and Where the Green Ants Dream were also nominated for the Palme d'Or, but this was his only Cannes directing prize.