Piers Morgan Uncensored - Werner Herzog On Putin, Hollywood Cancel Culture And Barbie

Episode Date: February 24, 2024

He’s a filmmaker, an actor, a poet, an author, a philosopher, an opera director and - well, frankly - a living legend. Werner Herzog’s documentaries span the collapse of the Soviet Union, the aftermath of the Gulf War and the secret trauma of penguins. Most recently, he starred in The Mandalorian. You name it, Werner Herzog has done it. And now, he’s uncensored YouTube: @PiersMorganUncensored X: @PiersUncensored TikTok: @piersmorganuncensored Insta: @piersmorganuncensored Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

He's a filmmaker, an actor, a poet, an author, a philosopher, an opera director, and frankly, a living legend. Werner Herzog's documentaries span the collapse of the Soviet Union. I'm a German, and the first German that you probably met wanted to kill you. The aftermath of the Gulf War and the secret trauma of penguins. Is there such thing as insanity among penguins? Could they just go crazy because they've had enough of... of their coloves. You name it, Werner Herzog, has been involved with it.

Most recently, you starred in The Mandalorian. I see nothing but death. I would like to see the baby. Have you changed your mind about Putin? I'm still against the demonization of a whole country, of the whole people. You ate your shoe after losing a bet with a friend. Is that true?

I cooked it in duck fat, in a famous restaurant. I swallowed down all the frags. with a six-pack of beer. You stabbed your own brother in a fight over a pet hamster. I wanted to learn what discipline meant. You apparently have a hobby of hypnotizing chicken. It's not a hobby, but I've actually hypnotized actors. Are you in the Barbie camp or the Oppenheimer camp?

As an audience, you can witness sheer hell. And now, Werner Herzlson, he's uncensored. Verna, great to have you on the program. Thank you for having me. So my middle boy is an actor doing very nicely in his mid-20s, and I told him today I was interviewing you, and he almost exploded with excitement. And he began rattling off all the things that he loves about you,

your body of work, what you stand for. But most importantly, I think your personality and your character, who you are and how important you are to the film business generally. Are you aware of this huge burden of a clansom of a claim that you must carry with you everywhere you go in your industry? Let's not speak about a claim. I'm always very suspicious. Touch it only with a pair of pliers. But I can see that there is resonance. I see it in the kind of mails that I get nowadays. It is the 15, 16 years old who reach out to me to me.

And significant in this context is that much of what I have. done in terms of films is available now online. Right. You can find a film I made 50 years ago, which never will play in a theater in Missoula, Montana. You have to wait a year, 20 years until it may play. And all of a sudden there's access. And of course the books that I wrote are accessible and you can see me in some acting roles like Jack Rich or Mandalorian.

By the way, I'm only good when I play the villain, the real bad ass. You've got a great villain face, if you don't mind me saying. I mean, you're a natural villain. Okay. You should have been a James Bond baddie, Verna. You'd be perfect. I thought so, yes.

I believe I would be good. If you had five, six hours to live, and I don't expect this to be happening anytime soon, which of all the films that you've been involved in would you want to watch again and which of all the films in history would you want to watch again? Oh, that's a difficult question.

You see, don't ask a mother which one of your children would you like to see again basically all of them but of the more recent ones, I would say bad lieutenant part of call New Orleans because it's sheer fun this kind of joy of filmmaking that you sense in it.

And of course in all my films you sense this immense joy of storytelling, the joy of filmmaking, the joy of passing something onto an audience, to interact with an audience. So I could give you basically the list of all my films. Which is, it would be phrasing a different way about your films. Which is the one that you would be, proudest of that people should watch which most personified your art oh for god's sake no don't don't ask me we should we should leave it to the audience we have to leave it to the audience they have

an autonomy they have their own desires and you see if i know my audience is among uh let's say prisoners uh in a federal prison in the united states show them even dwarves started small. That's where they go wild for it. I'm saying that because I showed the film to prisoners. And if you want to show a film to very young people, show them grizzly man or carry the wrath of God. Yeah.

Something where you can tell, I try to be a good soldier of cinema. And for that, see, for example, Fitzcaraldo, Moving a ship over a mountain means you have to do, still to do the doable. People think, yeah, I do the impossible, which is not true. I do the doable. And to encourage young people to do the doable. Dream big, but do the doable. I think it's a great message.

And I'm going to spare you any more inquisition about your films. But I'm not going to spare you on the second part, which was if you knew you had a short time left, which is the greatest film ever made? There's no such thing, but I can give you a hint, for example, a Bengal filmmaker in the 1950s, Satisha Drei,

who made the so-called Apu trilogy, a boy growing up in rural India in a village, completely foreign to us and yet so human that we identify completely. It's of staggering beauty and of staggering closeness to us. So it's an ingenious filmmaker, Bengal, or for example, Roshomon by Kurosawa, also made in the mid-50s. It's just phenomenal and I can't even learn from films like that

because they're so great, there's always a mystery. that enshrouds them. What do you feel, and I think I know a part of your answer to this, because I've read interviews where you've talked about this, but the really interesting phenomenon of cancel culture, which I generally despise, but particularly in movies, in art generally, you know, you made some iconic films with this guy, Klaus Kinski,

who was known as, you know, the most despicable human being to ever grace Hollywood stages. But they were some great films, in there, some great art that you made together. You made an incredible documentary about him. Obviously, he was an extraordinary one-off character who a lot of people really hated. But then after he died, his daughter came out

and said that he had, for years, abused and raped her. And many people said, well, in that case, he should be cancelled, and everything he was involved in should be expunged, which would, of course, include a lot of your films. How do you feel about that? Well, of course it's a very serious question and I have struggled with it. Of course, I heard about all this and I heard through his daughter herself about the abuses only after he had died. And I must say I absolutely believe her because there were doubts in some media.

I absolutely believe her. So he did monstrous things. But I tried to separate the person, the monstrous person, who did extraordinary things. And the question, I could answer it with two more questions to you and to those who are into cancel culture. Would you remove every single painting of the painter Caravaggio from museums and churches?

because Caravaggio was a murderer. Do you have to remove all his work from everywhere? Secondly, second question, what do you do about the Old Testament, about the book of Moses? And I'm saying that because Moses committed manslaughter. Actually, when you read the Bible, it was, we call it manslaughter,

but it was more primordering. sort of first-degree murder when you read about it. Do you dismiss, do you have to dismiss the Old Testament because Moses committed manslaughter? Well, it's a very interesting question. You know, Harvey Weinstein has been jailed for very serious sex crimes, and yet he's, I think, the most Oscar-nominated person for his movies has ever been.

Do you remove all those films? I think it's a really interesting debate about where you draw that line. And I think it also runs to the kind of hypocrisy and deceit at the heart of council culture. It really depends. The people driving it, it really depends who you're talking about.

There's no consistency to it. There's no one set of rules. It's pretty much who they just decide they don't like. Yeah, yeah. Of course, let's not set the rules. We are not God Almighty who sets the rules. However, cancel culture is much, as I dislike elements of it, it has changed the climate on movie sets.

In a good way? It is something that you can, in a good way, yes. I think women are much more respected. The tone has changed. I mean you don't have to look at my sets. You see in my films I had stars and great ones, Nicole Kidman for example. And I said to her, and it's remarkable that we come up with that. I said to her, and I said there is no stars.

There are no stars. However, everyone in front of my camera is royalty. And I treat everyone like royalty, and I have done it all my life. Royalty. And it goes all the way to the minor parts, even the extras in the background, there are royalty. I show them on a screen that has, and I have recorded them with my camera. And it's an attitude that should prevail much more on movie sets. If the behavior and regulation of that behavior on sets is much better, which is a good thing,

and I would agree with you about that, what about the kind of, you know, people would describe it as a kind of woke attack? on Hollywood where everything has to tick a diversity quota box, or you have Snow White the Seven Dwarves, you can't actually use dwarf actors, who then got angry, understandably. It's like these are plum jobs for them. What do you feel about that debate? Yeah, sure, of course, it has its excesses.

And when you look at productions in Hollywood now, if you have, for example, a scene where the leading character, the young lovers have to kiss each other. You have to engage an intimacy consultant. I think they're called intimacy coordinator. What does that mean? I can't even imagine. Yes, okay.

So those are the excesses and those are the stupidities. Much of it comes basically down to earth. What is decent human behavior? and I was never confronted with this question because in all my films that I have made that there's not a single sex scene and there's not a I think only once or twice in films of mine a couple is kissing but fleetingly. Really? So I've never been really, yes.

And I have been asked about that. And I don't have a real answer. I think on a screen there is a certain discretion. I don't like when a screen in the movies or on your TV or whatever becomes too indiscreet where boundaries of humanness are somehow transgressed. And if you really want to see a sex scene just watch porn or films. But do you feel on the wider point that Hollywood is going down a perilous route when it tries to, you know, tick too many diversity boxes before it even makes a movie? Or do you think that is a healthy progression?

Well, I'm not the judge of Hollywood, and I'm not the judge of other filmmakers. But of course, excesses are visible, and the pendulum will swing back, and it will, it will, it will. settle in a much more healthy way than we see it right now. Don't worry too much about it. It's very ephemeral. The general tendency is right and the excesses forget about them. They will be the laughing stock of tomorrow. Do you consider yourself to be a Hollywood director or does that phrase send a shiver down your spine? No, not really. I've always worked outside of the film industry. Although I live in Los Angeles and I'm here sitting in a van on Mulholland Drive, right next

to me is Mulholland Drive. But I moved here because I fell in love and that was 30 years ago and I do not regret a single moment. I've been one of those lucky men, one of those lucky bastards who found a wonderful woman in And because of her, I moved to the United States and because of her I moved to Los Angeles. I did not move to Hollywood. I moved to Los Angeles. And it's wonderful.

I do not regret a moment. And Los Angeles is a great, great city where very important things are being done. Things that determine the trends and the engagements and the ideas and the practicality. of the human race right now. The internet was born here. Reusable rockets are being constructed and built within the perimeter of the city. So it's incredible what is happening here.

It's a great city. I have a house in Los Angeles myself. I go there all the time. I think it's a great city. And Hollywood is a world within a world really there. So I completely get that. I think it was... But we should not underrate it.

Sorry. No, sorry. We should not underrate it because the collective dreams of the world are being fabricated here. Yes. There's nothing wrong about it. Well, some people say... People like Martin Scorsese would say that comic book blockbusters are not real cinema and that they're beginning to over-dominate Hollywood's output.

We're not seeing anywhere near. the volume of traditional great films. Would you agree? Yes, I do agree. And he has enough work behind him to have the authority to say such a thing. You see, it's easy to nag here and nag around and say the film industry has become somehow narrowed down

to comic. or whatever, but he has authority to say that. And I see it in a similar way. However, we should not underestimate the power of fantasies, the power of comic books. There's something inherent in them that has to do with our collective fantasies, with our dreams, our aspirations.

So don't dismiss it completely. It's not what I do, and it's fine. It's fine. Let them do it. They do it better than I would do it. I get it. You wrote a biography last year, rave reviews for this. Every man for himself and God Against All. And in it, you talked very movingly. Your father was a Nazi and later became a prisoner of war. Yeah. That in itself, that one fact in your biography is such a standout fact. How big an impact has that had on your life, do you think? It didn't have that much an impact because I hardly knew my father. I grew up without the presence of my father because my parents separated, divorced when I was very, very young.

So I don't even remember those times. And I hardly had any chance or time or meetings, encounters with him to discuss it with him. However, I discussed it with my mother, who also was announced. But she fairly soon sobered and she saw this was leading Germany into destruction. It was not good anymore. And she became somebody who focused completely from politics and grandiose dreams of a German empire away to a private person who had to raise three boys all alone. And of course, I'm somebody in a generation that's not unique,

because almost everyone at the time of the Third Reich was Nazi. You see it in the approval rates, you see it in the ballots, you see it in the results, you see it in the approval for Hitler. It's staggering and because of that, because of that a bigger question has always moved me. How does it come that a country as civilized with great poets, mathematicians, all the great composers, the philosophers within the span of a very few years lapses into sheer barbarism? How is that possible? And because of that, I set out right after I finished high school when I was 17 or 18. I set out because I wanted to go to Africa.

Congo, the Congo was in deep crisis at that time after its independence. And there was tribal warfare and chaos, collapse of all civil order, of everything. And I try to see it. How do institutions collapse? How does a sense of a civil state disappear completely? Of course, in the Congo it was a devastation of the colonialism. It's a completely different, a completely different background. But I got curious and I set out and never made it across the border into the Congo

because in Juba, which is today southern Sudan, not very far from eastern Congolese provinces, I felt very ill, almost died, made it back and was very, very ill. So that was one of the times where I almost died. But it was worthwhile. I was curious. I wanted to know a bigger question that had to do with Germany and the collapse of civilization. What did you conclude, Werner?

I mean, when you really thought about it, did you come up with any explanation for how this could have happened to a great country like Germany? Yeah, I still do not have it. I'm still wrestling with it. I do only have very partial answers, but we wouldn't have the time to discuss it.

We need 48 hours for that. But I do only have partial answers, and it's very, very hard for me to fathom it. But of course, something has become very solid inside of me. Be vigilant. You have to be vigilant, and you have to stem the tides very early on. The tides of destruction. When you see... The tides of barbarism.

You have to stem it early. early on. When you see that one of the consequences of the Israel Hamas war has been a surge in anti-Semitism around the world, for many Jewish people, they feel very- That's the worst of all. Yeah, that's the worst. You see, you may see it from various angles.

Pro-Israel, pro-Palestine, whatever your opinion is, whatever your perspective is, there's one single thing that must never ever be the result and that's anti-Semitism and that's a lesson from German history. Anti-Semitism, that's the threshold where you have to stop right there and do something about it. Yes.

You famously was the last person to interview Mikhail Gorbachev before his death, a remarkable film called Meeting Gorbachev. You've spoken in the past about the demon-eimmyth. of Russia being a mistake, that there's been too much animosity towards Russia from the West. Has your opinion changed now, given the Ukraine war, the activities of Vladimir Putin, what happened to Alexei Navalny and other protesters? Have you changed your mind about Putin and about whether the animosity to wars if it was in fact justified? Yeah.

not about demonization of a whole country. It's not only Russia. Now there's a tendency starting to demonize China. It is not healthy. It is not good. It's not an attitude for a world order that should not start with demonization of very large populations and leads to conflicts that are avoidably.

Should we not be demonizing leaders like Vladimir Putin? I mean, by that context, you could say, well, you shouldn't, you know, we shouldn't have demonized Adolf Hitler or whatever. Some people, through their actions, don't they just deserve proper demonization because they warrant it with their actions? No, not demonization. I would say there are courts of law that is a better instrument.

There should be instruments in there are instruments. What if I ignore the law like Peter? Well, that is what history is all about. Sometimes political acts are outside of law, and we know that and we see it. And if you start to demonize a certain person, well, I'm really not for Putin. I'm not for a war in general. And I think the war in the Ukraine was avoidable. It was avoidable.

And we have to look what happened, what was wrong. And when you mentioned Gorbachev, yes, Gorbachev was quite bitter. So many missed opportunities. He himself, upon his order, his signature, moved 400,000. Russian troops out of Poland and 5,000 tanks and there was no reciprocity from the West, a missed opportunity. And I do remember, for example, in the early 2000s, Vladimir Putin invited by the German Bundestag delivering a speech and speaking about the common European house from the Urals to the Atlantic. And then a few years later, applying,

Russia applying for NATO membership, which would have taken, let's say, the conflicts out, Russia would have been embedded in a construct of security. So there were many missed opportunities. And in principle, you can look at my face. In principle, I'm against war, against any war. There's something terrifying about it. and whatever we can do to avoid a war we should do. But wars very often start with a climate of demonization.

Some of it was not necessary. But sometimes, as we discovered in World War II, leaders become so despotic over time that the only recourse for the rest of the world is to deal with it. otherwise you can end up in a hellish situation. Yeah, but I'm not really a politician. I wish I had much more knowledge.

I follow what is happening. So I'm well informed and I form my own opinion. And I'm very careful. I'm particularly careful with the media. We are on media right now, but I'm very, very cautious. And I've learned in important, in really important things to look into parallel

informations BBC gives us a certain perspective of things but in important things I would immediately try to figure out what does Al Jazeera say about the same thing

I agree with you what is the Chinese what are the Chinese saying on the internet you can find the full speech of let's say the Chinese president. And you better read the full speech and you know where

China is standing and not this kind of this kind of propagandizing your perspective. Yes. I think it's very important to do that. I completely agree with you. Vern, I wanted to end. It's been a fascinating conversation

I could talk to you for a lot longer. But I wanted to end. There are so many great stories about you. But no one's quite sure where fact begins and ends and where fiction begins and ends with stories about you. So I wanted to go through a little list we compiled just to clarify for the record whether these are true. So let's start with a classic one, that you ate your shoe after losing a bet with a friend. Is that true? Yes, and it was filmed by Les Blanca documentary filmmaker,

Werner Herzog eats his shoe, I did. But it was to encourage Errol Morris, who was a nobody who's made his first film. I encouraged him, you finish this first film, and I want to see it, and when I see it, I eat my shoes. What did it taste like? I don't remember because I cooked it in duck fat, in a famous restaurant,

and because I thought duck fat would have much higher temperatures, Yes, it does before it boils, but the leather shrinks and it became tougher and tougher. I had to cut it in little fragments with a pair of poultry shares and swallow it down with a... I swallowed down all the fragments with a six-pack of beer. So I was completely drunk after it, so I don't recall how it tasted. But you can eat your belt, you can eat your shoes. Ladies can eat their leather handbags. That is a fantastic.

You can digest it easily. That's a fantastic story. I know this one's true, but I just still find it startling. You stabbed your own brother in a fight over a pet hamster. Yes, correct. It's embarrassing, but it's correct. And I wanted to mention it in my memoirs because I wanted to give hints about the formation of my own character. How, because of a catastrophe that I...

that I created, I had to learn immediately. I had to learn what discipline meant. Also, Sese, you have a hobby of hypnotizing. By the way, can I say one thing? In my memoirs, yes, of course, because in my films, I have sometimes departed from facts, but in order to reach a deeper truth. But in my memoirs, fact checking took more time than writing the entire book.

And my brothers, my siblings read it and confirmed or asked me to modify certain things. Took more time, more time than writing it. Well, you know, it's very interesting. But please I interrupted you. Well, they always say if you take a car accident and you ask 10 witnesses a week later to recount what they saw, They'll all give slightly different versions. There's just the nature of human memory, I think. You apparently have a hobby of hypnotizing chickens.

Is that true? It's not a hobby, but I think anyone can hypnotize a chicken. I have actually hypnotized actors for one film, Heart of Glass, where a village community lapses into some sort of somnambulistic state, sleepwalking into a disaster that, is prophesized and foreseen. And I wanted to create a state of somnambulism in the film.

I actually ended up hypnotizing the actors I could actually hypnotize an audience via a screen. Wow. It's not as effective. It is possible. I will not do it here, but it is possible. I've tested it. Amazing talent. But hypnotizing a chicken is hypnotizing a chick.

You take the chicken's beak on the ground and then you draw with a piece of chalk, you grow a quick line away from its beak. Wow. And it will be stay hypnotized. Fascinating. I've heard of method acting. We're never method directing like this. You once climbed into a live volcano so you could film it close up.

Is that true? Yes. And you can see the images. and the title page of the cover photo of my memoirs, Every Man for Himself in God Against All, is a moment where I just climbed out in some sort of a suit, protective suit. It looks like a space suit a little bit.

And I was down at the very crater with volcanologist, the famous British volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer, who teaches at Cambridge University. And we approached it, and for a fortnight, it was fairly regular and quiet. And all of a sudden, something big happened and slabs of molten lava were raining down, so we better fled.

Yes, I was very close. In one case, too close, a little too close. Is it true you don't have or use a mobile phone, a cell phone? I still do not have one. but I do it not for nostalgic reasons. I've thought a lot about it. I want to derive all my knowledge of the world and of reality in a more direct way, not through applications on a cell phone.

And I do not want to be reachable all that time. So I do not use it until today. Very, very wise idea. Apparently, you volunteered to eat. Elon Musk that you'd like to be one of the guinea pigs to colonize Mars? No, wrong, and that's a distortion in the media. I have a conversation on camera in my film about the internet, low and behold, reveries of the connected world.

And I have an interview with Elon Musk, and we speak about the colonization of Mars, and I think it's a bad idea. should not happen. We should rather look after the habitability of our planet and not create a habitat which is almost impossible on Mars. The colonization of Mars with a million people is a pipe dream. It's an illusion and don't listen to anyone who postulates it, including Musk. And he's intelligent enough to know that this is not going to happen. But we spoke about traveling and he wants to send

a probe onto Mars. I said I'd like to be on it. I'd volunteer with a camera but send me back a week later. I would send a daily report down to us a poem and the film clip from Mars. Wonderful.

It's my dream. And I actually seriously applied to the project of a Japanese billionaire who invites eight people from around the world you have to apply. And I applied, but I was not accepted.

Oh, what a shame. You'd be perfect. So I'm very serious about it. You've come very close to death many times. You were shot in the abdomen by an air rifle during an interview in Los Angeles. An Allied bomb hit your home in Munich. You fell down a crevice on K2, the mountain. You fell under the hooves of a bull in Mexico and in a giant wave in Peru. Do you feel lucky to be alive, Verna?

How can I say, sure, of course I enjoy to be around in the boat and to breathe and to write a poem and see the rain. It's raining in Los Angeles. It's wonderful. So it can't get any better. And brush with death, yes, it has happened because I had a pretty wild life. I had wild encounter. I have been in many countries, in many dangerous situations, yes, but I've never shied away from entering a danger zone if it was necessary for a movie or for insight. I'm not into trying to be a stuntman and explore my boundaries.

I'm not into that business. But as a natural concomitant with a kind of very, very intense and wild life. I've had my brushes. And sometimes, lucky coincidence, I was booked on a plane in Peru that crashed. And I tried very, very hard to be on that plane. Wow.

And I made a film about the sole survivor later on, Wings of Hope. Right. A young teenage girl who survived it. Amazing. I was basically on the same plane and was taken. It's a complicated story, but I was not on the plane. And if your luck was to ever run out, Werner, how would you like to be remembered?

What would you like your legacy to be? Oh, I don't care because I won't be around anymore. I don't care about legacy. But how shall I say, while I'm around, while I'm still around, I'm trying, I'm still trying something I've always tried, be a good soldier of cinema. Well, you're one of the great soldiers in cinema history.

It's been an absolute joy to talk to you, honestly, fascinating. And you're a great filmmaker, even if you won't want me to say that. And I know you're very modest with it, which is a great quality to have. I just want to end you on one final question, because it's the big question with the Oscars coming out. Are you in the Barbie camp or the Oppenheimer camp? I have not seen Oppenheimer yet, but I will do it. Barbie, I managed to see the first half hour.

And I was curious, and I wanted to watch it because I was curious. And I still don't have an answer, but I have a suspicion. Could it be that the world of Barbie is sheer hell? And for a movie ticket as an audience You can witness sheer hell As close as it gets Yes So I don't know yet

Verna I have Give me a moment to watch the whole thing Trust me I have to watch the whole thing first here Let me spare you the horror I watch the whole thing and it is hell I completely concur with your initial assessment

After half an hour And I would definitely recommend You don't put yourself through the rest of of it. Werner Herzog, what a pleasure. Thank you very much indeed for being an uncensored. I enjoyed it. Very nice to talk to you. Take care.