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Werner Herzog in my cluttered office cubicle at New Yorker Films

Zoom-In Online blogger Annie Frisbie recently posted an entry about the history of German cinema. Kind of a mouthful to put into a single blog, but it's definitely worth a look.

When I started out in the business in the late 70s, it was hard to get people to go to German movies. At that time, going to a foreign film mainly meant French and Italian movies. Aside from that it was generally world-class directors that would lead you to other countries, like Kurosawa, Satajit Ray, and Ingmar Bergman. But there were always French and Italian films playing regularly, often with directors who have long since been forgotten. Remember "Cousin, Cousine"? Films like that played forever at the Paris Theatre in those days.

But there was a resistance to German films at first. It took a while to establish the trio of Fassbinder, Herzog, and Wenders. Fassbinder made a lot of films and they were very forbidding aesthetically. It took a long campaign from Vincent Canby in the New York Times to get people to pay attention. And he only really took off when he made movies like "Fear Eats the Soul," which were more accessible.

Believe it or not, Wenders' films were hardly shown at all at that time. There was this young guy named Ray Blanco who had all the rights. So the major Wenders films played at festivals and then were shown (rarely) at out-of-the-way theatres booked by Blanco. The first film to get a reasonable release was "The American Friend," the first film Dan Talbot bought for New Yorker Films.

I saw Herzog's "Even Dwarfs Started Small" at college and then "The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser" when I got to New York. So I was a huge fan when Werner brought his films to New Yorker Films and I was nervous and excited about meeting him. I had to write some stuff for the catalog! On movies that hadn't come out in the U.S. yet! One was a short called "Precautions Against Fanatics." If I remember it right, it was about this guy (the zookeeper?) who stood in front of caged animals and kept saying that there were fanatics all over the place. And you had to be very prepared. Maybe it wasn't just one guy--maybe there were a bunch of dudes all in a dither about fanatics at the zoo. I don't really remember. To be honest, I didn't have the slightest idea what the film was about and I doubt I would now. I described it as "wry and precarious" in the catalog. I think "wry" meant that it was funny and that "precarious" meant that Werner ran around the zoo shooting it without getting permission. To be honest, I didn't exactly know what my words meant any more than I understood the film.

To prepare for meeting Werner, I read everything I could. But all the journalism was really weird. One piece said that Werner tried to start his own country in Africa. I was just off the boat from Wisconsin, so I figured that if he said it, it must be true. It was written in a respectable British periodical. I was really fascinated by Werner out there in Africa, setting up his new country. What would it be called? Herzogland? Herzogia?

When I finally met Werner, I asked him how he had done it. Did he run for office? Did he form an army? Maybe there was some spare land hanging around and he was some kind of share-cropper. Did he make Bruno S. king?

Werner just stared at me blankly. It didn't appear like the question bothered him. It wasn't like, "Why did you ask me such a stupid thing?" It was just sort of....nothing. I was really disappointed. Here I was, right next to him, and I wanted to hear more about this and all of his legendary exploits--like jumping off a roof onto a cactus after shooting "Even Dwarfs Started Small." I knew I would never walk again if I tried a stunt like that. There'd be needles so far up my butt that modern science would never find them. I'd be in a wheelchair and really cranky. But I knew Werner could do it easily and it wouldn't hurt him a bit. He'd be skiing the next day.

Anyway, I got the message and moved on to other topics. Over the years I got to know Werner better and I had a ton of fun with him. I was very fortunate to be around him for "Aguirre," "Fitzcarraldo," "Stroszek," and other great films. Kinski too. I'm one of the few people who thinks Kinski was saner than Werner, but I guess, to paraphrase Bill Clinton, "It depends on how you define sanity."

I actually spoke about that time in my life recently in an interview with Sujewa Ekanayake on his website. There wasn't the pressure to make a bundle on arty films in those days, so the business was a lot more freewheeling. And a hell of a lot more fun.