http://www.mjsite.comMusic News Cache

Aug. 01, 2005

Grizzly Tale

Maria Garcia

In My Best Fiend (1999), Werner Herzog's documentary about his friend and collaborator Klaus Kinski, the filmmaker quips that each of the gray hairs on his head could be named "Kinski." The actor, who died in 1991, was famously intractable. He was also the star of five of the Bavarian-born director's ten narrative features, most notably Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972) and Fitzcarraldo (1982). Kinski, with his deeply troubled genius, undoubtedly represents for Herzog everything he is not, but all that he wishes to keep close and undisguised-much like that gray hair which now frames his balding pate.

"I never had a career," the director insists in a telephone interview from Los Angeles. "I only had a life." The remark, which is vintage Herzog, is a warning to probing journalists. The ultimate Renaissance man, an author, screenwriter and director of plays, operas and film-although not formally educated-Herzog is gracious, in that Old World European way, but ask him about the psychology of his protagonists, or what he thinks of his status as articulator of the male psyche, and he professes ignorance. Whether from a genuine inability to reflect upon his films, or a desire to keep inspiration in the dark recesses where it is born, Herzog, at 62, nevertheless finds himself much in the limelight and compelled to discuss Grizzly Man (Lions Gate), one of three documentaries he completed in the last two years. It's scheduled for an August release.

"I was in a festival in Wyoming with The White Diamond [his documentary about aeronautics engineer Dr. Graham Dorrington]," Herzog explains, "which I shot immediately before Grizzly Man. I was fumbling around for my eyeglasses or my keys when the man who would become my producer approached me." TV producer-director Erik Nelson told Herzog the story of Timothy Treadwell, a co-founder along with Jewel Palovak of Grizzly People, an organization formed to protect bears in the wild. Nelson had watched Treadwell's videos, which comprise over half of Grizzly Man, and offered to send them to Herzog. "When I saw the footage," Herzog declares, "I had to do the film."

Treadwell and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard died in 2003 after they were attacked by a bear in Alaska's Katmai National Park, which had been the activist's summer haunt for the past 13 years. "I had to begin production almost immediately because the salmon run was imminent," Herzog says. During the salmon runs, Katmai's brown and grizzly bears (now considered one species in Alaska) congregate along the riverbanks in large numbers. "I asked who was directing the film," Herzog explains. "The producer said, 'I am kind of directing.' I said, 'Kind of directing?' I had the feeling that he was not completely sure yet. That's when I said, in my thick German accent, 'I will direct this movie.'" He laughs. Although Herzog can be strident in response to questions that he perceives as challenging his directorial vision-such as why he is so strong a presence in this documentary-he just as quickly turns droll and self-deprecating, poking fun at the stereotypes his German-accented English often conjures.

Herzog watched some of Treadwell's 100 hours of footage, and then "looked over the shoulders of four apprentices" as they sifted through the remainder of it. "If you see the raw footage, it looks very unprofessional," Herzog says, "but with the right music and in the right context, it captures a great deal." Treadwell's love of the brown bears and his passionate commitment to them is evident in every frame of Herzog's Grizzly Man. "Timothy had that romantic notion of nature and then you have me as the natural adversary," Herzog explains. "My attitude is very different: I respect the bears. I don't love them, as Timothy did, but I do respect them." Treadwell, who was the star of what might have become his own movie, is often seen in Grizzly Man telling the bears who linger in the background: "I love you, I love you, I love you so much."

Herzog honors Treadwell in the making of Grizzly Man, but he also creates an onscreen agon through his narration. "It is not a violent argument," he explains. "It is the same way I argue with my brothers." Herzog perceives Treadwell's activism as a dance with death, yet self-destruction is close to the filmmaker's heart, as evinced in more than 30 documentaries, one of which, La Soufrière (1977), finds Herzog and his small crew on the slopes of a volcano that may or may not erupt at any moment. "I have to give Timothy credit. He created footage that is unprecedented in its beauty. I salute him as a wonderful fellow filmmaker," Herzog says, thoughtfully. "I wanted to make him what he was deep inside: one, a great performer, and for another, a great image-seeker."

Herzog, who now lives with his wife in Houston, Texas, claims that his films often arise suddenly and with little advance planning, like Grizzly Man did, or his recent Wheel of Time, a portrait of a Buddhist gathering presided over by the Dalai Lama. Decrying his reputation for mapping only the male perspective, Herzog says: "Wait for Land of Silence and Darkness." The documentary, made in 1971 and being re-released here by New Yorker Films, is about a deaf and blind woman who cares for other deaf and blind people. "That is probably my deepest film," Herzog declares. "My films are very personal and, of course, my experiences are of a male, and therefore it is not farfetched that my leading characters are male. Of course, some of them are very sensitive, like Kaspar Hauser and Stroszek, who end up being destroyed."

Herzog, who picked up the Alfred P. Sloane Award for Grizzly Man at Sundance this year, contends that he doesn't watch movies, mostly because he's busy working. "I've not seen many films this past year. I haven't seen many films at all. The one I saw last year was set in Mexico and was about who gets laid first."

Asked about the experience of cutting someone else's documentary-although Treadwell never edited his footage, it seems clear he intended to make a film-Herzog declares: "It comes easy to me when footage is that strong and that substantial and that good. Any idiot could make a film out of it." What Herzog did not include in Grizzly Man was Treadwell's last audio track. As he was dying, the activist turned on his camera but was unable to remove the lens cap. "We weren't making a snuff movie," Herzog argues. In the documentary, the director listens to that audio track on-camera and then tells Palovak, who inherited all of Treadwell's footage, that she should destroy it.

Timothy Treadwell may be the newest addition to Herzog's oeuvre, but in his eccentricities, borne of a troubled life, he bears a striking resemblance to the characters portrayed by Kinski in Herzog's narrative films. Asked about this cinematic concatenation that reaches back to Kinski as the mad conquistador Aguirre or as the iconoclast Fitzcarraldo, Herzog chuckles. "I think the similarity between characters like Kinski in Aguirre: The Wrath of God and Treadwell in Grizzly Man is there," he admits. "Yes, it's true, of course. It is as if they were in the same family, as if I was working on a big family series, like doing 'Bonanza.' But I am not searching for these characters. They just come across me."