Werner Herzog Was Once Tricked Into Getting High and Other Highlights From His Vulture Interview
He rooted for Costa Rica during the World Cup…
“They are the quintessential underdog. They keep winning and winning and winning. Now, they may have come to the end of the line, but bravo! C’mon, that’s the beauty of soccer. All of the sudden there comes a team, we have never heard any of the names, and they run their lungs out of their bodies. And they fight. They are wonderful.”
But he doesn’t like the over-dramatic diving that takes place in soccer…
“No, that’s an awful disgrace. It’s a disgrace. And it shouldn’t be [allowed]. And all of them should learn from American football. And moreso, all of them should learn from rugby. What a manly, decent sport that is. There is a great kind of honor to rugby. I really love rugby for that.”
He has never been under the spell of psychedelic drugs…
“It’s not a question of control. I simply don’t like the culture of drugs. I never liked the hippies for it. I think it was a mistake to be all the time stoned and on weed. It didn’t look right and it doesn’t look right today either and the damage drugs have done to civilizations are too enormous. And besides, I don’t need any drug to step out of myself. I don’t want them and I do not need them. And you may not believe this, big-eyed as you sit here now, but I’ve not even taken a puff of weed in my life.”
But he was tricked into taking some laced marmalade…
“I was completely stoned once with the composer Florian Fricke in Popol Vuh. I was at his home and he had pancakes and marmalade. And I smeared the marmalade and he started chuckling and chuckling. And I ate it and it tasted very well and I wanted another one and took another good amount of the marmalade and the marmalade had weed in it. He didn’t even tell me. I was so stoned that it took me an hour to find my home in Munich. I circled the block for a full hour until finding my place. So I have had the experience.”
He credits tourism with the degradation of global cultures…
The outbursts of Nicolas Cage, Christian Bale and James Franco are nothing compared to those of the eccentric actors of the ‘70s and ‘80s…
“But every single one of them is taken seriously by me. And I pay a lot of attention. And I always have one clear goal: He or she has to be better than ever before afterward in their lives. I want them to be. Nicolas Cage, for example. Nicole Kidman now. I should have made films about women all my life…[Laughs.] Sometimes I think, in particular now having done Queen of the Desert… I keep marveling at how good I am with a female star of my story.”
