The German-born Werner Herzog, 69, quickly made his reputation as a cinematic madman. He took on near impossible filming conditions, venturing into the jungle for Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) and Fitzcarraldo (1982), or riding in an experimental, not-quite-tested airship in The White Diamond (2005). He has also been attracted to difficult and controversial figures, such as actor Klaus Kinski, or the mysterious Bruno S., or even Nicolas Cage, playing one of Herzog's most unhinged characters in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009).
After a while, Herzog made a gradual shift from feature films to documentaries, and his madness became something more focused and distilled: it was a kind of fearlessness combined with a genuine curiosity. No matter how strange his surroundings or his subjects, Herzog treats each with respect; he never makes any judgments and seems to regard all humans as equal, though the eccentric, oddball ones are far more interesting to him. His latest documentary, Into the Abyss, is a perfect example of this: the director travels to Texas -- which can be as strange and as frightening as any jungle -- and plunges directly into a story about murder and death row, asking brutally frank questions about how all this feels.
He speaks with convicted murderers Michael Perry -- who was executed just days after his interview -- and Jason Burkett -- who received a life sentence. Herzog spends a bit of time covering the crimes that were committed -- three people died over the theft of a car -- but finds his most fertile ground while interviewing the families of the victims, as well as those involved in performing the execution itself.
It's another great film from one of the world's greatest living filmmakers. I feel lucky that I had the chance to sit down and speak with Mr. Herzog during his recent trip to the Bay Area. Following is an edited transcript of our talk, which was shared with two other journalists. (I have differentiated my questions with theirs by marking them "JMA" and "Q.")
JMA: I wanted to start off with, hopefully, an unusual question. There's a lot of talk about religion and spirituality in this movie. Some of the people in the film are Christian…
WH: Everyone invokes God.
JMA: Yes and I was thinking about your movie Wheel of Time and the very different, but also similar spirituality in that film. I don't know if I have a question or not, but I was wondering if you see a connection?
WH: Certainly not consciously that I tried to draw a connection, but some of my films have a distant echo of religion, like Wheel of Time for example. Strangely enough, Into the Abyss has a very faint, distant echo of the presence of God. For example, I remember I asked the death row chaplain, "Why does God allow capital punishment?" He said, "I wish I knew." And, of course, I personally wish I knew. I have to add since you're asking this question. Wheel of Time, of course, has to do with Buddhism and the Dalai Lama. It has been startling to me that the current pope, who is a disaster in handling media…media relations right, he visited Auschwitz and, I think two or three times during the speech he gave there, he says, "In all this mass murder, this genocide, where was God?" Which is totally startling that the Catholic pope asked this question. That's just giving you a little bit of feeling of what moves me and what draws my attention.
JMA: You asked one of the interviewees if Jesus would have approved capital punishment...
WH: Because everybody seems to be invoking God, but, of course, when you look at Christian fundamentalism -- you have a lot of them in Texas -- for example, they see it almost like religious retribution. But it's more the retribution of the Old Testament. When you look at the New Testament in its entirety and when you look at Jesus, I think it's a legitimate question, "Would Jesus have approved capital punishment?" Probably not. Lisa Stotler-Balloun, who is very much for capital punishment and has witnessed the execution of the murderer of her mother and her brother, she feels a huge weight off her shoulders, which is very credible and very moving. But then I asked her, "Wouldn't Jesus possibly be not an advocate of capital punishment?" She kind of agrees. A very serious question, then, would the families of the victims… I ask her, "Would life imprisonment without the possibility of parole be an alternative?" Yes, she says, clearly yes. It would satisfy her, pause for deliberation, then she says, "But some people do not deserve to live." It's very strong because she's not an ideologue. She has experienced it through a personal tragedy. This is because I take her very seriously and I listen.
By the way, she's the only one who's seen the film so far. I have not met her since, but I'm told she wrote a four-page letter to me. I know roughly what's going to be in it.
JMA: Is it a letter to be published or is it a personal letter?
WH: No, I have not seen it yet. I knew a few things. Yes, I know she liked the film. I think she likes me. I think it's essential as a filmmaker that she always felt safe with me.
JMA: You are, I think, a great interviewer.
WH: I'm not a journalist. I don't have a catalogue of questions. I come in and I don't have any questions at all. You have to assess the situation instantly. You have to find the right tone instantly because you have fifty minutes and that's that.
Q: The production notes said you only had one hour each with Perry and Burkett. Is that correct?
WH: Yes, fifty minutes. With everyone else, I spent around one hour of my entire life [with them]. That was that. Never met them before or after. With some of them, like the death row chaplain, maybe twenty-five minutes. With the young man who was stabbed through his chest with a 20-inch screwdriver and who used to be an illiterate, I spent maybe 20-30 minutes. Almost everything of this encounter was in the film. But how to you find immediately the right conversation, the right tone with him. And I speak with him completely differently, in a different tone, in a different voice, in a different mood than with all the others.
JMA: I think you have a genuine curiosity. I think you're genuinely interested in these people.
WH: Of course. In this case, Talbert, I liked him from five miles distance, just the way he comes at you and you feel the calluses in his hands. I said immediately to him, "You're a working man." Before we were on camera, he said, "Yeah, man, yes." He's proud, roofing, in the paint shop, body shop, and I said, "I had these calluses when I worked as a young kid. When I was in high school, I worked the night shift as a welder in a steel factory." I have been so proud of my calluses, so we had an immediate rapport. And I said to him, "Step out of the way because I have to talk to this young woman." She used to be the former bartender of this neighboring town called Cut and Shoot. The two perpetrators gave joy rides to almost everyone. And I said to him, "Jarred, just step out earshot and step out of eyesight. Let's not make her nervous." After sixty seconds of talking to him, he was gone, then after [I finished interviewing her], I dragged him in front of the camera. I said to him, "Jarred, now it's you. Let's talk man to man, welder to welder." You see the welder speaking to the man who does the roofing of the houses, or sanding of car bodies.
Q: He had a connection, I believe? Not just friendship, but I think he worked with one of them...
WH: Well, he worked with a brother of Burkett, who was also incarcerated most of the time. And he knew Burkett and Perry, the two murderers. And of course, he was almost killed by Burkett in a fight that lasted 45 minutes, with a gun at his head. Burkett actually pulled the trigger, and the gun misfired. He was completely lucky. But I must say, for me... because, you see, the perpetrators... and at the same time you see a young man, who under life-threatening attack, being stabbed through his chest with a screwdriver. The friend throws -- and this is the most legitimate case of self-defense -- the friend throws him a knife. He looks at his feet, sees the knife, and decides he's not going to pick it up, because he wants to see his kids at night. And I think this is a genuine American hero. This is absolutely heroic. I truly love that man, and you can tell. You see, it's easy to find the right tone with him. With Perry, for example, the perpetrator, who was executed eight days later, within 120 seconds of the discourse, I told him: Mr. Perry, even though your childhood was bad and destiny didn't hand out a good deck of cards to you, which doesn't exonerate you, it does not necessarily mean that I have to like you. Absolutely straightforward. And in fact he liked me for that. And I respect him as a human being.
Q: I was wondering in those moments that you share with Perry, if there's some particular bodily or psychological experience that one undergoes when you step into a death row facility.
WH: Well, it's very hard to describe because it's so oppressive. It's sitting just three feet away from someone -- of course separated by a bulletproof glass wall -- but you know he's going to die in eight days. But how do you deal with it? Number one, I knew: do not commiserate him. It is as it is. And don't be teary and cry over his punishment. No. You have to take it as it is. Secondly, do not make a hero outcast out of him. Do not idealize him. Sometimes you see "I have a big outcast, and here he is facing execution." No, I'm not into that business either. But the respect for a human being who is going to die very soon. And I always was under the impression, yes, the crimes were absolutely monstrous. And it's not the only crime I've dug into. I've spoken to other death row inmates. The crimes are monstrous, but the perpetrators are still human, and not monsters. And I treat them like that. I wear a suit, although you never see me. But they see me, and I wear a suit, which I hardly ever wear, ever in my life. I wear a suit.
Q: You bring it out for that.
WH: I only wear it because I meet a human being who's going to die in eight days.
Q: To sort of go back a little bit, the notes said that you were actually going to initially do a larger documentary... I wasn't sure if that was still the case... where you interview other death row inmates. How did you...
WH: No, it separated very quickly. There was Into the Abyss, which immediately was clear that it should be a big epic, almost epic film, a big tapestry, almost like an American Gothic, a true American Gothic. And of course, way beyond the crime... it has to do with families. It has to do with people who live in the town, with the bartender, with the death row chaplain, with the former captain of the tie-down team, and on and on, with the urgency of life. Parallel to that is a completely separate project, and it's a death row project: four shorter films, only for television, and very much focused on a single person on death row. And I filmed them and edited pretty much three of them. This coming week, I'm going right back into editing the last one. Which, by the way, is on a female. A female inmate in Texas. One inmate is in Florida...
JMA: It's not very often that they're female.
WH: I can give you a statistical insight: roughly 400 inmates on death row in Texas, male inmates, an additional 10 females in Texas. So the ratio is roughly 40 men, 1 woman. And all over America, it's lethal injection, with the exception of Utah, which in a way is sexist. Because Utah is the only state where you have the choice: lethal injection or firing squad. But this option -- shame on Utah -- is not given to females. Females are not allowed... I think it's sexist. "As a real woman, I would like to demand the firing squad! Shoot now!"
Q: It almost seems to connect to why the captain had that moment... because of Karla Faye Tucker ... that it's not about her, but it's about the men who have to point a gun, or a rifle, at a woman. Maybe that's such a bar for them...
WH: Well, it's mysterious. He doesn't have an answer for that either. He credibly tells us that her execution was no different from anyone else's: strapped her down, everything went down professionally and with integrity, and you can believe him when you see the man. He's pure integrity. And two days later, he starts shaking uncontrollably and cannot stop crying, and he doesn't know why. He doesn't have an answer. He has to ask for one of the chaplains to try to explain. He still doesn't have a clear explanation. But... quits his job from one day to the next, at the cost of losing his pension. I think that's real integrity. And he's Texan! You see, I'm not in the business of Texas-bashing! And, you see, America has this wonderful way of naming, let's say, a great old blues singer in the South, a "national treasure." And when you look at Fred Allen, the former captain of the tie-down team, you don't even have to propose to name him a national treasure. You can tell: this is a national treasure. This man is a national treasure. What a phenomenal character.
November 5, 2011
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