Fresh Air - Werner Herzog Isn't The 'Wild Guy' You Think He Is

Episode Date: December 6, 2024

Herzog reflects on the curiosity that's fueled his career in the memoir, Every Man for Himself and God Against All, now out in paperback. The filmmaker and writer is drawn to extremes: extreme characters, extreme settings, extreme scenarios. But don't mistake him for a mad man like some of his film subjects: "You have to control what is wild in you. You have to be disciplined. And people think I'm the wild guy out there but I'm a disciplined professional," he tells Terry Gross.Film critic Justin Chang reviews Queer.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at autographcollection.com. This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosely. Werner Herzog is a writer and director known for his unique approach to storytelling that often delves into the extremes, extreme personalities, predicaments, and places. Aguirre, the Wrath of God, follows a mad conquistador in the 16th century as he navigates the treacherous

Amazon jungle. Then there's Fitzcarraldo, where Herzog tells the story of a European man living in Peru, who becomes obsessed with bringing opera to the Amazon. To achieve his dream, he faces an incredible challenge, getting a steamship over a mountain to reach a river. It's a wild premise, and it's made even more intense by the performances of Klaus Kinski, who plays a madman in both

films. Herzog has remarked that Kinski is not just acting, he was an actual madman in real life. Kinski also starred in Herzog's haunting version of Nosferatu and appeared in the documentary Grizzly Man, which tells the tragic story of a man who lived among grizzly bears in Alaska, believing he was protecting them, until one day a bear eats him. Herzog's own life has been shaped by extremes, too. Born in Munich during World War II, his mother rescued him as a baby from his crib, which was covered in shattered glass and debris after Allied bombs devastated nearby homes. His mother fled to a remote part of Bavaria for safety, where she raised him and his brother

in poverty. Throughout his life, Herzog has endured numerous injuries, ski jumping, and while making films. His cast and crew have faced their share of challenges, too. Those who may not be familiar with Herzog's films often recognize him for his sinister roles in popular shows like Jack Reacher, The Mandalorian, and even The Simpsons. Today, Herzog divides his time between Los Angeles and Munich, and Terry Gross spoke to him last year. His memoir is now available in paperback. It's called Every Man for Himself and God Against All. Werner Herzog, welcome back to Fresh Air. Thank you for having me again. Oh, it is always my pleasure. Do you know why you're attracted to extremes in your life and in your films?

I don't see it that much as extremes, you see, when you move a ship over a mountain, it is doable. And I knew it was doable, although quite hard. But I think it is such a big metaphor. Like in literature you have it, for example, the white whale, Moby Dick in the hunt for it, or Don Quixote attacking the windmills with his lance. So there are big metaphors, a big vision out there, and then it doesn't matter if it's becoming difficult or not. And of course, I disagree a little bit about what you said about risking things.

Yes, I have risked personally things. I test the problems and the obstacles and the dangers. But in 80 or so films not a single actor was ever injured, not one. So it's my proof that I must be circumspect, that I must be careful. Of course sometimes crew members were hurt, but they would volunteer, even push me, for example, let's go through the rapids with a ship. And it's a big one, I mean, 320 tons. And if it crashes into the rocks, it has a momentum and a kinetic energy that's enormous.

And of course, almost everyone who was on board for filming, and they pushed me, let's go on board and let's film this. Almost everyone was injured, but that does happen and it's a risk that we knew and we accepted it. But my question still stands, why do you think you're attracted to making films that put you in risky situations and that put you in extreme situations?

It's one thing to have in the film a metaphor, like dragging a ship over a mountain, but it's another thing to actually have to do it in your film, you know? At that point, it's not a metaphor. At that point, it's something your crew has to do. I hear you, yes. But I'm not searching for finding my boundaries or so.

The extreme mountain climbers do that. That's not my thing. I know my boundaries and I accept them and I take no as an answer, for example. And I'm a professional person, I'm a filmmaker, and I want to come back with a film and I want to come back alive because I want to edit the film and I want to show it to audiences. So, for example, at the edge of a volcano, yes, there were certain dangers and there was an eruption and glowing slabs or blobs of lava came down on us, raining down, and some of them very large. I mean, the size of a car, the size

even of a truck. So you better flee quickly. You get out of it. But I'm not searching the dangers. The nature of my storytelling sometimes requires to go into extreme situations, yes. But I think to look deep into our human nature, to look deep into the darkest recesses of our soul, or the hidden things deep in our soul, you have to put human beings at some sort of an edge. You grew up in extreme circumstances during World War II in Munich, and then in remote part of Bavaria in the mountains,

where you were poor. And there was one time where your mother, when you were living in Bavaria during the war, took you and your brother up a slope to get a better view of Rosenheim, a city in Bavaria that had been bombed and was on fire. And you describe it as a vast inferno tracing the terrible pulse of the end of the world

on the night sky. I knew that outside of our tight valley there was a whole world that was dangerous and spectral. Not that I was afraid of it, I was curious to know it. A lot of people would have been afraid of it. Why were you more curious to know it? Well, I was too young. You see, number one, when my mother fled Munich, I was only two weeks old, 14 days old when there was carpet bombing on Munich. Of course, there's no memory of anything. The childhood was very, very closed and very beautiful, but when I was two and a half,

and it's my very first memory, my mother wakes us up abruptly in the middle of the night. It must have been April 1945. She says, you have to see it boys, wraps us in blankets, rushes up on a slope and at the end of the valley the entire sky was red and orange but not flickering because it's, Rosenheim is 40 miles away. So the entire sky is pulsing slowly red and orange. And that somehow is embedded in my memory forever. And of course I knew all of a sudden there's something out there.

There's a world out there, there's war out there, there's a conflagration out there. And I became curious. And it's strange because my two brothers who grew up with me did not move out and were that curious. They were very successful in their professions, but not like me. I was one who would move to Antarctica or to the jungle or to the Sahara desert to do my work. So when you were young, you got into a fight with your older brother and you stabbed him in the wrist and the thigh. There was blood all over. And you write that you realized you urgently needed some self-discipline.

What did you do to acquire that self-discipline? It was from one moment to the next. I knew that something like that cannot happen again. And that's how a character is being formed, defeats catastrophes that I created. And of course, that shaped my character. And from one moment to the next, I knew you have to control what is wild in you. You have to be disciplined. And until today, 90% of what you see when you meet me is discipline. People

think, yeah, I'm the wild guy out there. And so, no, I'm a disciplined professional. And at that time, family, of course, was important because we grew up with our mother who raised us. We were three brothers and one mother. We lived in one single room in a sort of pension, we called it. It's a boarding house. And of course we had clashes like brothers would have and until today it's mysterious to foreigners. Not long ago, a few years ago, I visited my older brother in Spain where he had built himself a big house and had a wonderful sailing boat. We were at a fish restaurant and I studied the menu and he put his arm around my shoulder and all of a sudden I feel some stinging thing in my back and I smell smoke and I realize

he has set my shirt on fire with his cigarette lighter. We laughed so hard and everybody around on the table was appalled. But sometime that's how brothers sometimes function and I love him dearly and we do mischievous things to each other. It does happen and it's not that serious. You see somebody gave me his t-shirt and we cooled my back with a few glasses of Prosecco and that was that. That strikes me as slightly less than hilarious and kind of dangerous. No, it was hilarious.

Come on, a shirt doesn't really burn. I mean it glows and glimmers a little bit, but that was his joke. You talk about wanting to see the dark recesses of the soul, but you also write when it comes to your soul, that you'd rather die than go to an analyst, because it's your view that something fundamentally wrong happens there, and you say it's a mistake to light up your soul, shadows and darkness and all.

Why do you not want to light up your own soul but want to explore the dark recesses of other people's souls? Well that's my profession. That's my profession as a poet and you look deep into who we are and you describe it. But you shouldn't make the mistake to believe that memoirs are confessional. I'm not into that business and I never liked too deep introspection. There's enough in my memoirs. There's enough introspection.

There's no doubt it's in there, but to a certain limit. I do not want to step beyond a certain threshold. It is not healthy if you circle too much around your own navel, and it is not good to recall all the trauma of your childhood. It's good to forget them. It's good to bury them, not in all cases, but in most cases.

So psychoanalysis is doing that. I do not deny that it is good and necessary in a very few cases. Yes, I admit it, but it's not my thing when I keep telling men. So, you see, rather dead than going to a psychiatrist, but at the same time, rather dead than ever wearing a toupee. You see, my hair is thinning, and I just accept it as it is. So nothing, rather dead, yeah. It's nice to know you have your values straight. And women would immediately agree with me.

You cannot live with a man who starts to wear a toupee and thinks he is handsome now and rejuvenated. Are you afraid of what you'd see if you shone a light on your soul? No, no, I know who I am and I know where I come from. And I know where I'm heading to, toward. No fear and no regrets. Sure, I made massive mistakes and I'm in a way a result of my own

defeats. So be it. They formed me. They made me thinking beyond what I normally thought before. One of the films that made you famous is Aguirre, The Wrath of God. This is a film about a conquistador leading a Spanish expedition in South America searching for El Dorado, the city of gold. He goes mad along the way. He calls himself the wrath of God. What interests you about a mind that makes you want to write about it?

Yeah. Well, they figures all of a sudden we we have it spelled out. We can feel it, we can touch it, we can read it and sense it and start to compare it. Where I am standing, how mad am I myself? Do you feel like you are mad? No, no. I'm the only one in the entire profession who is clinically sane. Explain that. Oh, come on. I wouldn't have made some 80 films without having my wits together and my sanity and my professionalism. I'm the only one when you look at the craze of Hollywood and all these red carpet events and the statements at the red carpet which are all performative. It's all performative

borderline insanity in a way. Saccharin, pink sort of vanilla ice cream emotions. I'm the only one who is sane. The only one. All right. I'm definitely taking your word for it. Please make sure. And you can read it. Every single line in my memoir shows you that I'm absolutely sane in an ocean

of craze. Aguirre is about a Spanish conquistador who goes mad. And you can argue that Fitzcarraldo is a little mad too. And the actor who you got to play both of them is Klaus Kinski, who you describe as a madman. And you knew him since you were 13 and he was 36. And you were living in the same boarding house. And you knew he'd go into rages. You'd witnessed his rages.

Did it seem like a good idea to you to have somebody who seemed mad play madman? Or was it just your confidence in him as an actor? We have to be careful. I said it, yes, he was mad in moments of paranoia, but he had splendid moments of friendship and warmth and insight. So he had quite a few facets. And of course, since I lived in the same boarding house with him, directly with him, and saw

the tornado laying waste to the entire apartment, so I knew what was coming at me when some nine or ten years later I invited him to play the leading part in Aguirre, The Wrath of God. I knew it was going to be difficult, but I said to myself, what the real task now is, since he's such an incredible actor, since he has such a presence and dynamic and authority on the screen, I have to domesticate the wild beast somehow. All his crazy attitudes should not explode outside of the screen during a dinner or after dinner where he opens fire at a hut full of extras. It shouldn't happen. It should be all somehow organized

for the screen itself. And I think that was my achievement. Outside of actually firing into the tent, you know, into the hut, which happened. So I guess you were partially successful with that? No, not partially successful. I was successful because I made five films with him. And they all, when you look at them, and forget about Kinski and forget about his private, crazed personality and his egomania.

Forget about all this. There are five films out there that have something that you normally do not see in a movie. A presence and an intensity of a leading character that's unprecedented. I have only a few precedents out there, like the young Marlon Brando, for example. And no matter how difficult it was to tame him,

to domesticate the beast, it doesn't matter. The only thing, the only, only thing that counts, what do you see on a screen? You can't argue that his presence isn't remarkable on screen. I mean, you can't take your eyes off of him. But there is that thing that one person had part of his finger shot off when Kinski fired into the bamboo hut. So I mean that matters too. I mean I understand that what really matters to you as a filmmaker is what you see on screen, but there was some

collateral damage. Yes, but that was the most serious thing that ever happened. And of course it is serious. And you have to cope with it. And I threatened Kinski. I was actually there, wild rumors about it, that I had a gun in my hands. And so that's not true. But I threatened him and he understood

this was not a joke anymore and he had to be disciplined from now on. And through all the other films I made with him, never anything of this magnitude ever happened. Film maker Werner Herzog talking to Terry Gross last year. His memoir, Every Man for Himself and God Against All, is now out in paperback. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Tanya Mosely, and this is Fresh Air. Tis the season for rich meals, twinkly lights, and New Year's resolutions.

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To find out, listen now to the It's Been a Minute podcast from NPR. You grew up, well, your very early years were during World War II and then you grew up in the aftermath. Your father was a Nazi and he fought in the war, but he was mostly like in the supply room, I think. Yeah. Yeah. And your mother was briefly a national socialist. Did they talk with you ever about Nazism? We didn't talk that much. My mother, it was obvious. She was very early on embarrassed about having been misguided. And she practically, of course, she had to raise all alone three children. There was no money.

My father never paid anything to support us. She became a completely different person. Of course, it was always lingering out there. Of course, I was fascinated by what happened to Germany. How is it possible that within a few years such a cultured nation lapses into, transforms into a world of barbarism? Well, even your father, your father was from an academic family. I mean, he was from a very educated family.

He was an academic himself. So you must have wondered the same about your father. How could somebody who was educated from a very educated family? Yes, and it happened to many other educated families. There was no one spared. I mean, Germany was almost 100% Nazi. The dissidents, yes, they were out there,

but they ended up in concentration camps very quickly. Your mother took you to Bavaria in the mountains to escape the bombing, but in retrospect, she also escaped the Nazis. She escaped her own country, I mean, her own people. In a way, yes, but of course in this village there were also Nazis. Oh, sure, I hadn't thought of that. Did you know that? Yes, there were also Nazis. Well, much later, it took some time, I thought. I didn't even know what Germany was. It was the valley where we grew up in this remote place and the waterfall

in the gorge behind the house. That was our world. And of course a daily struggle. We had no running water. You had to go to the well with a bucket. We didn't have any running water in the house. So my shower was the ice cold water of the waterfall deep in the gorge and hardly any electricity. I didn't know of the existence of cinema until I was 11. I think the first time I noticed that there was something like Germany, I must have been seven or eight years old, for me the world was around me and that was it.

And of course I started to question and I started to understand how does chaos and barbarism invade a fairly organized country. And that's why I wanted to go to the chaos of Eastern Congo after its independence, which I never reached and I probably wouldn't have survived it. Your parents had to undergo denazification after the war. Did they ever tell you what that entailed? My mother, my father was always outside of my life. I hardly knew him.

Your father you hardly knew. Did your mother tell you? Yes, but not very much. It was fairly laconic and she said, look at me, that's me now. And I did a very, very severe mistake in my life. And my character had to readjust. I'm a different person. I think differently now. And so I accepted it. And for example, she was never a racist, never deep into Nazi ideology at all.

How do you think growing up during the war affected you, even though you were at a remove from it in the mountains? In the war and its aftermath? It is more the aftermath and the restrictions. For example, I noticed that we were hungry. That was the only thing that was really hard to take. Otherwise, we lived in very deep poverty. I didn't notice. It was a normal thing. Everyone around us was impoverished.

It was nothing really special. Only much later I understood what poverty meant. But that I had gone through it never affected me. Although you say that, I'm wondering if you're thinking at all about the children in Israel and in Gaza. Like children in Israel were kidnapped, there's been missile attacks, children in Gaza have getting bombed, many children have been killed. I'm wondering if you're thinking about that a lot now.

Yes, you have somebody talking to you who grew up in a war. We were bombed out. There was a foot of glass shard and bricks and debris on my cradle when I was 14 days old. And then of course I grew up in post-war time, starvation, poverty. And since I had this experience, for me it's obvious that there shouldn't be any war. I'm against any war at all. And of course, it is terrible what we are witnessing now. It is terrible.

It is terrible. And it shouldn't be. But what can I do? I cannot fight as a volunteer in this war. Well, would you if you could? cannot fight as a volunteer in this war. Well, would you if you could? It sounds like you're against war and wouldn't want to participate in one. You know, where I would participate if in Germany, all of a sudden, neo-Nazis started a rebellion, an armed rebellion, a coup d'etat.

You would know who would be first one to rush back and pick up a weapon. It would be me. I would fight. Because? Because something like times of the barbarism of the Nazis must not repeat itself. You see, as long as there is breath in me, I would fight. Danielle Pletka I understand that. Jürgen Tritt And of course, having caused, having created the Holocaust, Germany has specific attention to Israel. There's no doubt, but we also now, since it will be terrible what's coming, we also have to look after all the casualties on both sides.

We need to take another short break here, so let me reintroduce you. If you're just joining us, my guest is writer and filmmaker Werner Herzog. His new memoir is called Every Man for Himself and God Against All. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air. The Indicator is a podcast where daily economic news is about what matters to you. Workers have been feeling the sting of inflation. So as a new administration promises action on the cost of living, taxes, and home prices.

The S&P 500 biggest post-election day spike ever. Follow all the big changes and what they mean for you. Make America affordable again. Listen to The Indicator, the daily economics podcast from NPR. On the embedded podcast from NPR, what is it like to live under years of state surveillance? So many people have fear, fear of losing their families. For years, the Chinese government has been detaining hundreds of thousands of ethnic Uyghurs. This is the story of one family torn apart. Listen to the Black Gate on the Embedded podcast from NPR. The first time you narrated a film was when you made a film for a

production company in Germany that specialized in extreme subjects and you did a film for a production company in Germany that specialized in extreme subjects and you did a film for them about ski jumping, which you knew a lot about having grown up in the mountains in Bavaria and you used to like build, God what are they called, like platforms to jump off, to ski off? Ramps. Ramps, yes, and got terribly injured during one of those and a friend of yours got terribly injured in one of those, and a friend of yours got terribly injured in one of his jumps.

But anyway, so you made a documentary about that, and they told you, you have to narrate it, because that's what everybody does. They narrate their own films. And you've become famous for your narrations in films, in your documentaries. And you've had some movie roles, including in Jack Reacher, in The Mandalorian, which is like a Star Wars spinoff, parroting yourself on The Simpsons, and they're all

like sinister roles. What do you think it is about your voice that gets you cast in sinister roles? Maybe it's the content of what you're saying. Yes, the content of course. And since then, I narrated my own writings, my own commentaries, and I had found my voice. But it's a stylized voice. When I'm talking to you, I'm talking like me. In commentaries, there's a certain stylization, a certain performance in it, a certain hypnotic voice in it. I can't describe it easily and it has caught on. Audiences love it. So I do it for them as well. I do films for audiences. I write my book for readers. So I'm enjoying it. And I have been good in parts, in roles where

I have to play the bad ass, bad guy, like in Jack Reacher. Or where, for example, in a film by Harmony Corrine, which is called Julian Dunkie Boy, I play a hostile father who harasses his dysfunctional family. I'm good at that. It's but it's all performance. Don't believe, don't ever believe. I'm like that as a private person.

That's good to know. Can you quote any of the lines? No, not really. But you know when Jack Reacher was released, it was released in France as well. My wife immediately gets frantic calls from her girlfriend in Paris and she says, Lennar, are you really married to that man? We can give you shelter if you need to flee. We are only an overnight flight away, and Lennar laughed so hard and told me about it. And of course she will testify that I'm a mild-mannered,

fluffy husband. She came up with that. And I live with her happily now since 28 years. She will give you the right testimony. Good. So we're about at the end of the interview. And I have to say, you made it through without being shot at. Because you were shot at at the BBC, or at least you were shot and only mildly wounded.

Like what was that about? Do you have any idea how to happen? No, we do not know because I just heard somebody across the street on a veranda ranting like road rage. It all of a sudden I heard some sort of a mild explosion in something like a glowing piece of metal, like a kilo weight of glowing metal hits me at my belt or near my belt. I thought something at the camera had exploded, but no, and I saw then the man with a rifle ducking down and disappearing. And I did not know because I did not want to call police.

I said to the crew, BBC people, you are frantically now dialing 911. Consider it. We'll spend the next six hours filing reports at a police station and we will have a helicopter over us and a SWAT team arriving in five minutes flat. Do we need that? Do you want that? And so we decided we'd just continue shooting, but at a safer place. Were you outside when that happened? Yes, it was outside and you can still see it on YouTube. It's funny because people think,

ah yeah, it was all staged and made up. No, it was not. It was reality. It was the real world. And of course, in a world of fake news and inventions and embellishments and so people believe that being shot and hit, not seriously but anyway, that it must have been made up. Or having moved a ship over a mountain that must have been a digital effect and we are only pretending. No, I moved the ship over a mountain, that must have been a digital effect and we are only pretending. Now I moved the ship. So you have to connect yourself to the real world and then all of a sudden my memoirs become the most natural thing.

A man who lived a very normal life with a few things that were exceptional. And I think it's not exceptional to move a ship over a mountain. Every grown-up man should do something like that. Did you go to the emergency room after you were shot? No. Because we could see I was bleeding, but I could see the bullet went through all my leather jacket and the folded up catalogue and all my shirt and t-shirt. But it did not perforate my abdominal.

It did not perforate and go into my abdomen. If it had been inside of me, lodged in my intestines, in that case I would have gone to the emergency room. But I can distinguish what is serious and what can be taken and tolerated. So I do my best and I think in this case I did my best as well. Well, I should hope you would have gone to the emergency room if it penetrated during test. Well, I would have gone, sure, yes.

Okay. So, what's next for you? Well, I just finished another book, The Future of Truth, which will be released next spring, but in its German original. What you have in front of you is a very fine translation of my memoirs, but it always takes until it's being translated, so it will take about a year and I made also two films that are not fully released yet and I'm working on some poetry and I'm working on a translation of poetry by a Canadian writer on D'Atje and well I'm just plowing on wildly. Do you ever stop working?

Yes, I am I have Long hours of sleep. I'm fairly lazy My days of shooting are brief My hours of writing are brief. I do my tax returns three hours in the morning. Then I write three hours memoirs and I go to the pharmacy or whatever. So, but I write 15 pages, it goes fast. And next day another 10, 15 pages because it's my life.

I have lived it and it's in me. You see, it's not foreign, it's in me. And because of that, I can describe it for you and you will not be disappointed. Thank you so much for coming back to our show. I really appreciate it. And I really enjoyed our conversation. Oh, so did I.

I enjoyed it. Thank you. Werner Herzog speaking with Terry Gross last year. His memoir is called Every Man for Himself and God Against All. Coming up, Justin Chang reviews the new film Queer, set in Mexico in the 1950s, starring Daniel Craig as an expat, infatuated with a younger man. This is Fresh Air. You might have heard this song on TikTok blow up this summer. I'm looking for a man in finance. Trust fun.

Six-five. Blue eyes. On It's Been a Minute, we're asking the big questions about dating. Like, is it okay to date with money in mind? And what are we really looking for from a man in finance? To find out, listen to the It's Been a Minute podcast from NPR. Breakup stories are going super viral online. Normalize posting why you broke up on the internet. I cannot believe I'm about to tell this breakup story and expose myself like this.

On It's Been A Minute, we're asking the big questions about dating. Like what's the line between a juicy story and an invasion of privacy? To find out, listen now to the It's Been a Minute podcast from NPR. The Italian director Luca Guadagnino scored a critical and commercial hit earlier this year with a tennis-themed romantic triangle, Challengers. Now he's back with Queer, an adaptation of William S. Burroughs' autobiographical novel. It stars Daniel Craig as an American living in 1950s Mexico City who falls hard for a younger man. Queer is now playing in theaters

and our film critic Justin Chang has this review. Nobody does forbidden longing in far off places quite like Luca Guadagnino. He whisked us off to Italy for the passionate affairs of I Am Love and Call Me By Your Name, gave us love and death on a Sicilian island in a bigger splash, and took us all across America in the cannibal romance Bones and All. Now he's made Queer, a moody account of thwarted longing that begins in an expat-heavy corner of Mexico City during the early 1950s, a world that Guadagnino brings to life in all its sweaty, scuzzy glory.

The story follows an American drifter named William Lee, played by Daniel Craig with a louche smile and nary a hint of 007 elegance. Addicted to booze and heroin, Lee spends his days hopping from bar to bar, hoping to lock eyes and more with the handsome young men he spots there and around town. And few are more handsome than Eugene Allerton, a freshly discharged U.S. Navy serviceman played by a terrific Drew Starkey. Ollerton is trim, slender, and aloof to the point of disdainful, which makes Lee lust for him all the more. In time, after a few meals and many drinks, the two fall into bed in a scene that Guadagnino films with both roughness and tenderness.

But once isn't enough for Lee, and he spends every minute trying to keep this enigmatic young beauty from slipping away. At one point, a drunken Lee approaches Allerton at a party and causes a bit of a scene, prompting a friend, Tom, to intervene. I want to talk to you. Singing? Oh. Without speaking. I want to talk to you. Without speaking. I want to touch you.

Like, like, like, like the Russian. Yeah. Like the mine. Alright, alright Bill. Let's take it easy, huh? Hey, tell me. Lee is a fictionalized stand-in for the beat writer William S. Burroughs, whose years spent living in Mexico were eventful, to say the least. He began writing Queer in 1952, while awaiting trial for the killing of his wife, Joan Vollmer, during a drunken game of William Tell. Burroughs never finished the book, which was finally published, in its incomplete form,

in 1985. By that point, he had become a countercultural icon, known for his boldly experimental works like Naked Lunch, his struggles with addiction, and his many sexual relationships with men and women. Guadagnino has said in interviews that he read Queer at a young age, and has wanted to film it for years. That may surprise some of the director's fans, since his swoony romanticism, on display in the recent Challengers, isn't an obvious fit with the biting rawness of Burroughs'

prose. At the same time, Guadagnino clearly likes to push against expectations, and his horror movies, like Suspiria, have shown a flair for the surreal and grotesque. Even when queer's narrative loses momentum, it's fascinating to see a filmmaker known for his lush, beautiful surfaces try to connect with a writer's famously uncompromising ugliness. For the first hour or so, the screenplay by Justin Kuritskes is largely faithful to its source. But things take a weird turn once Lee talks Allerton into a trip to South America, so they can find a psychedelic called Yahe, or Ayahuasca, which can apparently confer telepathic powers. Deep in the jungles of Ecuador, Guadagnino essentially tries to imagine the mind-blowing ending that Burroughs never wrote.

The director is clearly having fun, filling the screen with hallucinatory imagery, and introducing a gun-toting healer, played by an unrecognizable Leslie Manville. In one maddening and mesmerizing sequence, a drugged-out Lee and Allerton dance silently in the nude, their bodies twisting and melting together as though under a kaleidoscope. Guadagnino is working overtime to honor Burroughs. In the thoroughly bonkers epilogue set back in Mexico, he goes well beyond the parameters of the novel to weave in moments from the writer's tumultuous life. But the reason queer works as well as it does has everything to do with Craig's performance. It's worth remembering that long before he became James Bond,

or a gay detective in the Knives Out movies, Craig played the tempestuous younger lover of the painter Francis Bacon in the 1998 drama Love is the Devil. He flips that equation brilliantly in Queer. With robust physicality and delicate emotion, he shows us a man in wretched yet defiant thrall to his wants, for sex, for love, for a moment of out-of-body transcendence. It's a singular performance, but also, in its expression

of pure desire, a deeply human one. Justin Chang is a film critic for The New Yorker. He reviewed the new movie Queer, starring Daniel Craig. On Monday's show, John Patiste, former bandleader of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, joins us at the piano to play his re-imaginings of Beethoven's music. His new album is Beethoven Blues. He'll also talk about the extremes in his life in 2022, when he won multiple Grammys and his wife had a reoccurrence of leukemia and a bone marrow transplant. I hope you can join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us

on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our senior producer today is Roberta Shorrock. Audrey Bentham is our technical director and engineer with additional engineering support from Joyce Lieberman, Julian Hertzfeld and Diana Martinez. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Valdonado, Sam Brigger,

Lauren Krenzel, Theresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Bea Challener, Susan Nya-acundy, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producers are Molly C.V. Nesper and Sabrina Seaworth. With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley. On the TED Radio Hour, don't you hate it when leftover cilantro rots in your fridge? I have to tell you, cilantro is like my nemesis.

Food waste expert Dana Gunders says that's just a hint of a massive global problem. Food waste has about five times the greenhouse gas footprint of the entire aviation industry. Ideas about wasting less food. That's on the TED Radio Hour podcast from NPR. Oh, my goodness, if I could get a reindeer that would be nice. I'm Jesse Thorne, celebrate the season with me and certified reindeer lover Jennifer Hudson on the Bullseye Holiday Special. Plus we'll hear from Tower of Power's Zach Cherry and Judy Greer on the Bullseye Podcast from MaximumFun.org and NPR.