Werner Herzog, chicken hypnotist

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 20:54:00 +0000

"The enormity of their flat brain, the enormity of their stupidity, is just overwhelming. You have to do yourself a favor when you’re out in the countryside and you see a chicken: Try to look a chicken in the eye with great intensity, and the intensity of stupidity that is looking back at you is just amazing. By the way, it’s very easy to hypnotize a chicken; they are very prone to hypnosis, and in one or two films I have actually shown that.”

This brief monologue from a video directed by Siri Bunford (who has done at least one KFC commercial) encapsulates much of what we associate with Werner Herzog: His instinctive distrust of nature (including human nature) as a cruel and brutal aggressor; the enigmatic quality of his private obsessions; and the dogmatic certitude with which he expresses them, often bordering on the comical. All three are most memorably on display in the Les Blank documentary Burden of Dreams, about the torturous making of Fitzcarraldo (and rendered in brilliant self-parody in Zack Penn’s mock documentaryIncident at Loch Ness), but they’re always present — whether in the bug-eyed tyranny of Klaus Kinski, or in the long line of everyman eccentrics and dreamers the director uses to hold a mirror up to nature — taking comfort in the reflection of himself he finds there.

Nice “Beaver”!

Thu, 01 Mar 2001 20:00:00 +0000

A man stands alone on the stage of a high school auditorium. He wears full motorcycle leathers and a vivacious blond wig. In a wispy, girlish falsetto, he edges through the lyrics to Olivia Newton-John's "Please Don't Keep Me Waiting."

Please don't keep me waiting
I can't hold on much longer
Please don't keep me waiting
I can't love you any stronger
The man's face is a mask of quiet resignation, guarding secrets. His eyes blaze with something resembling glory, then slowly well up with a mounting panic. He looks like he's about to cry.
The scene repeats three times in "The Beaver Trilogy" -- one of the oddest films to premiere at this year's Sundance Film Festival. The first singing man, videotaped in 1979, is an unknown performer identified only as Groovin' Gary. Later, Gary is played by Sean Penn in 1981, moments before "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," and then, finally in 1984, by Crispin Glover, before he starred in "Back to the Future."
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Werner Herzog, chicken hypnotist

Nice “Beaver”!