Werner Herzog, the director, fascinated me with his antithesis-driven and perversely cynical approach to filmmaking. I was astounded to learn that he hauled a steamship over a mountain in the Amazon rainforest for his film Fitzcarraldo (1982).Herzog did not use special effects at all, because no CGI could ever amount to what he did.
Fitzcarraldo (1982) is about rubber mogul Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, an Irishman referred to as Fitzcarraldo in Peru, who wishes to construct an opera house in the Amazon in the early twentieth century. To finance the endeavour, he must travel to a lucrative rubber area. He needs to carry a steamer from one river on one side of the mountain to another on the opposite side. He has to manoeuvre the ship beyond the mountain to make his wish real.
He dragged a 320-tonne ship over the mountain in fragmented sections before reassembling it on the other side. That was insane in and of itself, but Herzog’s concept of carrying an undamaged ship was even crazier. Additionally, Herzog’s ship was bulkier than the original vessel. It took nearly two weeks to transport the 340-tonne ship up and down the mountain using a manual winch system manned by 800 Ashaninka Indians.
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I am compiling a list of the top ten unconventional and freaky things done by some directors; perhaps this will be the most cynical one yet. But inspiring for some as well. Werner Herzog fulfilling his purported promise to eat his shoe if Errol Morris finished the movie Gates of Heaven. That’s it I’ve wrote it.
Morris was notorious for failing to keep to any of his past undertakings (stints as an Ivy League science student and fiction writer having previously been left in his wake), so the prospects of him finishing the film were poor at first. And yet, the almost unthinkable occurs: the film is made by lending, beseeching, and pillaging. So, a shoe must be eaten.
Alice Waters, the chef, cooked Herzog’s boots in a pot of rendered duck fat with “thyme, rosemary, salt and pepper, bay leaves, and the whole nine yards.” Despite an entire day of boiling, the leather barely loosened. But that didn’t deter Herzog, who used a pair of poultry scissors to successfully swallow a portion of one boot before Gates of Heaven’s April 1979 Berkeley debut. Herzog addressed the enthusiastic audience at The UC Theatre, saying that he was dedicating the unpalatable meal to those who wish “to make films and are scared to start”.
