Werner Herzog: the Morrison & Waters Interview

Mr. Herzog, your new film—

“Do You Think Someone Would Be

Ever Crazy Enough?:  A Retrospective of the Shitty 

'80s Records of Jim Morrison & Roger Waters”—

Focuses on only one decade of the thirty-year 
Collaboration between Jim Morrison and Roger Waters.

Why did you choose to focus only on the 1980s?

I believe these people invented God,

But it took God a while to grow up

And invent the world.

Your films seem to prize human connection.

Would you say that this film

Is in some way about what it means to be human?

I own one single suit that I’m wearing right now,

And in the last 25 years I’ve never had another suit.

And the shoes that I’m wearing, I’ve 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 don’t need 20 pairs of shoes.

When you attend Los Angeles dinner parties
Do you like to eat lizard
Skewers with cashew nut satay?

I have a car that I’ve had for 12 years.

I enjoy life, and things are very basic. 

I don’t have social networks in the Internet type of example.

(coy giggle descends into sinister laughter, a flip of the hair 

resonates with sub-aural resonances only reptiles can hear)

That’s not quite true. 

I have this pseudonymous blog

Called Ingpree Lamley, 
And I use it for, among other things,

To pretend that I don’t

Even have a cell phone.

I wouldn’t really call you mainstream.

I’m probably the last holdout.

Or albino alligators in Bad Lieutenant.

No.

You don’t think even a part of our species will be able to adapt?

In answer to your question,

May I offer you a single song by Morrison and Waters?

There are 4 million names in the New York phone book.

Do you believe in a superior being?

A hitchhiker turned killer. Car thief.

That’s the plot summary of a film

Jim Morrison produced himself.

I felt the radioactive albino crocodiles 
Were a statement about human influence on the environment. 
Am I in the ballpark?

I guess you are not very friendly toward filmmaking.

It’s not, it’s not significant. It’s not even an everyday thing,

But it doesn’t surprise me to be shot in the gut.

One shudders to think what would surprise Werner Herzog.

Bottom line, 
The poet must never 
Avert his eyes.