Werner Herzog continues to work, predicting: “You’ll have to get me off a set first.”

When asked if he had turned off his cell phone, writer and director Werner Herzog said, “I don’t have a cell phone, I don’t have to turn anything off.” No need. I just want to be alive and have a real conversation with a real person.”

Herzog got his wish: an authentic conversation not long ago at his home in the Hollywood Hills.

He is a legitimate visionary of filmmaking in Hollywood and around the world, having directed more than 20 feature films and over 30 documentaries – from Journey to the Heart of Darkness in the Amazon to Grizzlies in the Arctic. to mid-life.

He put it all together in a memoir with a title that is vintage Werner: “Every man for himself and God against all” (Penguin Press)

“A title has to kind of jump out at you,” Herzog said. “When you walk by some books and you see it, you stop: ‘Man, what’s that?’

What it is, is a filmmaker’s story unlike any other. “Yes, I’ve experienced a lot, like I’ve lived ten times as much as I used to,” he said. “And that’s the beauty of a memoir, is it’s so thick. You won’t be bored when you read it.”

Born in Munich, Germany during World War II, Herzog began making films as a teenager. He was drawn to characters with impossible dreams: you see him in his 1982 film “Fitzcarraldo” with a longtime collaborator, Klaus Kinski. Fitzcarraldo’s character wants to build an opera house in the middle of the Amazon rainforest. To do this, he needs to take the steamship up, then down, a mountain.

Herzog said, “20th Century Fox was interested in financing and producing a movie. But they wanted to set it in a forest with a small plastic replica, a ‘good’ forest. And they thought, ‘We should do it at the Botanic Garden in San Diego.’ And I said, ‘No, it’s going to be shot in a really big forest, big rivers and everything.’

Without the benefit of CGI, Herzog gets his big forest, his big river. He made the surprising decision to pull a real 320-ton riverboat over a real mountain to the other side of the Amazon River.

I asked, “I feel like there were moments in ‘Fitzcarraldo’ where maybe the first time, and maybe the only time, that you were at least afraid that the crew might stop believing in you. Is that Is that true?”

“That’s true,” Herzog replied. “There were moments where it was very fragile. And only my fire somehow carried us along. The power of my sight carried everyone along, even though many of them didn’t believe I was the ship. can move to the mountain.”

To watch the trailer for “Fitzcarraldo” starring Klaus Kinski, click the video player below:

The finished film made believers out of the crew and critics. Herzog won best director at Cannes, even though “Fitzcarraldo” was a very different film. Jason Robards originally led the cast, with Mick Jagger playing his assistant. Then, about halfway through the film’s shoot, Robards fell ill and had to fly back to the U.S., a delay that cost him Jagger—going on a Rolling Stone tour.

So, Herzog hired Kinsky.

If Kinski had been unable to film, he said, he would have played the role himself: “I would have done it. Because the original work, moving the plane over the mountain, was no longer cinema. It was what I did.” Did I have to do it and I wouldn’t be half as good as Kinski, thank God the knee, ’cause I didn’t have to play it.

That’s not to say Herzog isn’t a good actor. He was born to play bad. He has starred as a villain in “Jack Reacher” and as a terrifying figure in “The Mandalorian.” “Well, I got dragged into acting,” he said, “but I enjoy it immensely, and I do it well. I know I do it well, but only For special parts. And I can deliver. But I swear to God, it’s a performance.”

Her greatest performance, though, is a love story: her own. Werner Herzog is a hopeless romantic. He fell for photographer Elena Pietsky in the late 90s. To seal the deal, he sold everything he owned and flew from Germany to America, with nothing but a toothbrush in his pocket and passion in his heart.

“It’s just me; it’s me, just me, that man, that person, and that’s it,” he said of his arrival on Pestsky’s doorstep. “So, I have nothing to offer, just me, myself. And I’m in America and I’m in Los Angeles because I’ve fallen deeply in love. And I’ve been very lucky. I’m here in Hollywood. Not because of. I’m here because I’m in love.”

This is Herzog’s third marriage. He and Elena have been together for 28 years now. “I’m a very lucky bastard,” he said.

It’s been 63 years since his first film, and Herzog is still going strong. And, he promises, there’s more to come. He said that I am working in two feature films.

“You’re not full?” I asked.

“Well, who knows?” Herzog replied. “After all, you’re going to have to get me out of a seat first. Hopefully that’s what’s going to happen.”

Click the video player below to watch an extended interview with Werner Herzog:

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Story by John D’Amilio. Editor: Emmanuel Cecchi.