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Werner Herzog says:
"People thought films could cause revolutions or whatever. And it does not. But films might change our perspective of things and ultimately in the long term it may be something valuable. But there is a lot of absurdity involved as well. As you see, it makes me into a clown. And that happens to everyone. Just look at Orson Welles or look at even people like Truffat: They have become clowns... It's because what we do as filmmakers is immaterial. It's only a projection of light. And doing that all your life makes you just a clown. And it's an almost inevitable process... It's illusionist's work and it's just embarrassing to be a filmmaker. To sit here like this... I mean, thank heaven's I don't sit here for my own films. I am sitting here for a film that was made by a friend of mine."

3 comments:

Nicholas said...

Werner Herzog is hilarious. He came to campus last year. I tried to go but it was all full.

T said...

Yes, the following passage from the Penn Gazette's recap of the event (http://www.upenn.edu/gazette/0108/gaz03.html)made me envious of those who got in:

"Appropriately for an event billed 'Was the 20th Century a Mistake?' Herzog urged his laughter-wracked audience to reject the 'post-structuralist babble' infesting the humanities and turn their attention to phenomena like Anna Nicole Smith and WrestleMania, which he likened to Greek tragedy before Sophocles."

Nicholas said...

We wrote about it on The Spin. A colleague who forced his way in wrote something informative, if off-color: Here.