Cinema Science

Man, I love Werner Herzog. I am by no means an expert on his films but just listening to him talk is enough for me. Roger Ebert just posted an interview with the filmmaker for the release of his Antarctic documentary, Encounters at the End of the World (which is dedicated to Ebert). You can read the full transcript here but I loved the last line to this Herzog's answer and can imagine no other voice saying it.

RE: What was your method? All of the people you talk to in "Encounters at the End of the World" are genuinely interesting originals, with a particular way of discussing their lives almost objectively. Did you wander around chatting up your South Pole citizens? How did they regard the idea of a film about their settlement? Did some of them know you and your work? Among those who did not, how did you strike them?

WH: Going to Antarctica required a lot of self-confidence. There was no possibility to go on a scouting trip. I went down there only with a cinematographer (I did the production sound), and I knew I had to come back with a film seven weeks later.

The community at McMurdo did not know much about me, but they accepted me quickly. Quite a few of them I met only for a few minutes more than what you can see on the screen. The scientist who studies the gigantic glaciers ("larger than the country that built the Titanic") was on his way to his plane to New Zealand; he had only thirty minutes for me, and twenty I spent to make him feel calm and comfortable. Then I said: "I know that deep inside you are a poet. Tell me about the iceberg, and tell me about your dreams."