Old News, New Thoughts: Werner Herzog is the Greatest

I recently caught up with the Werner Herzog episode of Marc Maron's WTF podcast (which can be found for free here) and it basically reaffirmed my belief that Herzog is one of the greatest living satirists of the human condition.  If you are not familiar, Herzog is an insanely prolific and gifted artist, with a particularly great eye for documentary film (Grizzly Man, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Into the Abyss, and this year's Lo & Behold, Reveries of the Connected World).  Despite his often great filmography, though, what I find more fascinating is his skewed worldview, which taps into some deeper truth that us normals can only hope to understand.  Receiving those eloquent truths through the ominous tones of his droll German-accented voice feels like hearing a philosophy lecture as given by Henry Kissinger.  And its wonderful.

The podcast has several highlights, like when Herzog marvels at the phrase "gift of gab," stating without irony, "I love that expression," or when Maron constantly attempts to summarize Herzog's statements succinctly causing Herzog to disagree with his assertions almost every time.   

One of my favorite moments also encapsulates the alien-view of humanity that I love about Herzog.  Turns out, his dreams are more eloquent and meaningful than my entire life.  In the podcast, Herzog mentions that normally he doesn't dream, but recently, he has found himself puzzling over one.  For extra credit, and enjoyment, imagine this being said in his wonderfully deep and raspy German inflection: 

"I was running in a street in Mexico, somehow pursued by God-knows-what.  And at an intersection, I bump into a donkey that has some sort of load packed on it, and I'm knocked down.  A priest picks me up and shakes me and screams at me, 'Do you believe in the forces of evil?  Do you renounce Satan himself?'  And somehow, perplexed as I was, I said, 'I do not believe in the Devil, I only believe in stupidity.'"

I don't know about you, but when I dream it is almost never that coherent or drenched in meaningful dramatic irony.  The entire interview is like this, and listening to such a well-defined personality, someone so extremely secure in the way he views the world, is both striking and refreshing.  Herzog doesn't care what you think, and he doesn't waste time thinking about it.

As a bonus, check out this excerpt from his interview with journalist Emily Yoshida of The Verge, where he was asked about Pokémon Go, and gave the most perfect Herzog-ian reply (find the full interview here):

Do you know about Pokémon Go?
No.
It's this...
I don't know what Pokémon Go is and what all these things are...
It's a...
You're talking to somebody who made his first phone call at age 17. You're talking to someone who doesn't have a cell phone, for example, for cultural reasons.
Right.
Tell me about Pokémon Go. What is happening on Pokémon Go?
It's basically the first mainstream augmented reality program. It's a game where the entire world is mapped and you walk around with the GPS on your phone. You walk around in the real world and can catch these little monsters and collect them. And everybody is playing it.
Does it tell you you're here at San Vicente, close to Sunset Boulevard?
Yeah, it's basically like a Google map.
But what does pokémon do at this corner here?
You might be able to catch some. It's all completely virtual. It's very simple, but it's also an overlay of physically based information that now exists on top of the real world.
When two persons in search of a pokémon clash at the corner of Sunset and San Vicente is there violence? Is there murder?
They do fight, virtually.
Physically, do they fight?
No—
Do they bite each other's hands? Do they punch each other?
The people or the...
Yes, there must be real people if it's a real encounter with someone else.
Well, it's been interesting because there are all these anecdotes of people who are playing the game, and they've never met their neighbors, for instance. And when they go outside to look for pokémon they realize they're playing the same game, and start talking to each other.
You'd have to give me a cell phone, which I'm not going to use anyway, and I have no clue what's going on there, but I don't need to play the game.
No, I think it's plenty to read about it... in the end, it does seem to be evidence of how easy it is for people to accept AR into their lives, as opposed to VR.
Yeah, but these things are very ephemeral, they come and go."

With that last line, he may as well be talking about the entire existence of life in the universe.  And knowing Herzog, he probably was.

Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World is available on-demand or through most streaming services right now.