美国国家公共电台 NPR Director Werner Herzog: 'You Can Throw Anything At Me'

Director Werner Herzog: 'You Can Throw Anything At Me'

play pause stop mute unmute max volume 00:0005:19repeat repeat off Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser¹ to a recent version or update your Flash plugin. MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: 

And finally today, it's time for another installment² in our series My Big Break. That's where we hear about pivotal moments in the lives of accomplished³ people. And normally when we say that we mean some chance meeting or opportunity that led to a breakthrough. But when we ask German filmmaker Werner Herzog about his big break, he took it in a direction all his own.

WERNER HERZOG: I do not break. You can throw anything at me and the worse it gets, the more instantaneously I will tackle the problem.

MARTIN: Which isn't to say that he hasn't had defining moments on the path to international renown⁴. We'll get to some of those in a minute. But he credits his success to the way he's lived his life following his curiosity.

HERZOG: Truth is I never had a career so to speak. I was just always somehow fascinated or haunted by ideas that are ferociously⁵ swinging at me like burglars in the night.

MARTIN: That may be how Herzog has been able to work at such a feverish⁶ pace for more than five decades to translate those ideas coming at him onto the screen, often releasing two or three movies a year that on the surface seemed to have little in common, such as the feature film "Aguirre, Wrath⁷ Of God" about a power hungry conquistador or the documentary "Grizzly⁸ Man" about a bear enthusiast⁹ who lived among the bears of Alaska until he was mauled to death. And Herzog's latest film out this week on Netflix is a documentary called "Into The Inferno¹⁰." It's about volcanoes around the world, but as with any Herzog film, it's really about much more than that.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "INTO THE INFERNO")

HERZOG: It is hard to take your eyes off the fire that burns deep under our feet. It is a fire that wants to burst forth¹¹ and it could not care less about what we are doing up here.

MARTIN: While Herzog maintains he's not defined by any one moment, the road to his incredible resume of more than 70 films was set in motion decades ago. As a Bavarian schoolboy in the 1950s, he had no idea what a movie even was.

HERZOG: I grew up in a very remote mountain village in the Bavarian Alps. My first contact with the cinema came when I was 11 at this little schoolhouse. It was actually one classroom. And one day a traveling projectionist¹² arrived and put up a screen and showed two films.

They didn't impress me at all. They were pretty lousy, but later when I moved to the big city to Munich for high school, I would see "Tarzan" and "Zorro."

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ZORRO")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character, singing) Out of the night when the full moon is bright comes a horse known as Zorro.

HERZOG: And "Dr. Fu Manchu."

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "DR. FU MANCHU")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Dr. Fu Manchu.

HERZOG: And there was a moment where I saw that a shot of a gun battle was recycled. Somebody shot down from a rock.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "DR. FU MANCHU")

HERZOG: Ten minutes later in the same film, I see the same three-second shot again.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "DR. FU MANCHU")

HERZOG: And nobody of my friends had seen that and understood that it was recycled, and that's how I started to look at cinema in a different way. How do they create a story? How do they create suspense¹³? And that was a moment where I started to look deeper and differently.

MARTIN: Werner Herzog had found his medium. But before he could put those insights into practice, he needed to get his hands on the tools of the trade. He tried to get a hold of a rental¹⁴ camera from the Munich film school to no avail, until one day he happened to find himself unattended in the school's equipment room with a shelf full of 35-millimeter cameras.

HERZOG: I just took one and walked out with it and started filming. I had the intention to return it which I kind of failed later. But I had never felt it was theft. It was something I needed to have, and I had a natural right to have a camera. At the time when I started to develop movie projects, nobody would take my films so I knew I had to be my own producer, and I worked the night shift in a steel factory as a welder¹⁵. And I had a sense fairly early on it was not going to be easy what I was doing. My life would be difficult and I said to myself, yes, I'm going to shoulder it no matter what.

MARTIN: Indeed, there were many difficulties along the way. Herzog's productions have been notoriously beset¹⁶ by adversity from plane crashes and border wars to malaria¹⁷ outbreaks. Somebody even made a movie about Herzog's effort to drag a 350-ton steam boat over a mountain in the Amazon for one of his films.

HERZOG: In doing all these things, of course, there were breaking points every 10 minutes. Every single day in making a film is an array of compromises, but it shouldn't break you. It should improve the quality of your film. You have to know that you have it in you to continue to endure the almost unendurable.

MARTIN: That's filmmaker Werner Herzog on his big break or lack thereof. His latest film "Into The Inferno" started streaming on Netflix this week.

1 browser   

n.浏览者

参考例句：

• View edits in a web browser.在浏览器中看编辑的效果。
• I think my browser has a list of shareware links.我想在浏览器中会有一系列的共享软件链接。

2 installment   

n.(instalment)分期付款；(连载的)一期

参考例句：

• I shall soon pay the last installment of my debt.不久我将偿付我的最后一期债款。
• He likes to buy things on the installment plan.他喜欢用分期付款法购买货物。

3 accomplished   

adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的

参考例句：

• Thanks to your help,we accomplished the task ahead of schedule.亏得你们帮忙,我们才提前完成了任务。
• Removal of excess heat is accomplished by means of a radiator.通过散热器完成多余热量的排出。

4 renown   

n.声誉，名望

参考例句：

• His renown has spread throughout the country.他的名声已传遍全国。
• She used to be a singer of some renown.她曾是位小有名气的歌手。

5 ferociously   

野蛮地，残忍地

参考例句：

• The buck shook his antlers ferociously. 那雄鹿猛烈地摇动他的鹿角。
• At intervals, he gritted his teeth ferociously. 他不时狠狠的轧平。

6 feverish   

adj.发烧的，狂热的，兴奋的

参考例句：

• He is too feverish to rest.他兴奋得安静不下来。
• They worked with feverish haste to finish the job.为了完成此事他们以狂热的速度工作着。

7 wrath   

n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒

参考例句：

• His silence marked his wrath. 他的沉默表明了他的愤怒。
• The wrath of the people is now aroused. 人们被激怒了。

8 grizzly   

adj.略为灰色的，呈灰色的；n.灰色大熊

参考例句：

• This grizzly liked people.这只灰熊却喜欢人。
• Grizzly bears are not generally social creatures.一般说来，灰熊不是社交型动物。

9 enthusiast   

n.热心人，热衷者

参考例句：

• He is an enthusiast about politics.他是个热衷于政治的人。
• He was an enthusiast and loved to evoke enthusiasm in others.他是一个激情昂扬的人，也热中于唤起他人心中的激情。

10 inferno   

n.火海；地狱般的场所

参考例句：

• Rescue workers fought to get to victims inside the inferno.救援人员奋力营救大火中的受害者。
• The burning building became an inferno.燃烧着的大楼成了地狱般的地方。

11 forth   

adv.向前；向外，往外

参考例句：

• The wind moved the trees gently back and forth.风吹得树轻轻地来回摇晃。
• He gave forth a series of works in rapid succession.他很快连续发表了一系列的作品。

12 projectionist   

n.电影放映员，幻灯放映员

参考例句：

• The projectionist runs the film back at the end of every performance. 放映员把每部影片都重新卷绕到开头。
• The projectionist was panning the camera attentively. 放映员在聚精会神地移动摄影机。

13 suspense   

n.（对可能发生的事）紧张感，担心，挂虑

参考例句：

• The suspense was unbearable.这样提心吊胆的状况实在叫人受不了。
• The director used ingenious devices to keep the audience in suspense.导演用巧妙手法引起观众的悬念。

14 rental   

n.租赁，出租，出租业

参考例句：

• The yearly rental of her house is 2400 yuan.她这房子年租金是2400元。
• We can organise car rental from Chicago O'Hare Airport.我们可以安排提供从芝加哥奥黑尔机场出发的租车服务。

15 welder   

n电焊工

参考例句：

• He left school at 15 to become an apprentice to a welder.他15岁离开了中学成为一个焊接工人的学徒。
• Welder done at least once a month when the dust handling.焊机时每月至少做一次除尘处理。

16 beset   

v.镶嵌；困扰，包围

参考例句：

• She wanted to enjoy her retirement without being beset by financial worries.她想享受退休生活而不必为金钱担忧。
• The plan was beset with difficulties from the beginning.这项计划自开始就困难重重。

17 malaria   

n.疟疾

参考例句：

• He had frequent attacks of malaria.他常患疟疾。
• Malaria is a kind of serious malady.疟疾是一种严重的疾病。