Hi, my name is Varda Herzog, and I feel a little bit weird about being Conan O'Brien's friend because I met him only once, and that was in front of cameras.

Yes. Fall is here. Hear the l back to school ring the bell brandish shoes, walking lose climb the fence books and pens I can tell that we are going to need friends I can tell that we are.

Going to need friends.

Hey, there. Welcome to Conan. O'Brien needs a friend. I just announced the show speaking through sona's. You were grumbling or coughing or what were we doing? Clearing your throat.

I was clearing I'm a throat clearer.

I made it quite clear I was starting the show, and I heard him.

Can I say something, though? You sounded like you were going to start it, like, four times, but you didn't, so I just thought you weren't.

You never know when I will strike. Oh, my God. What is wrong with my God? That was real. This is a mess. That was Matt Gorely sneezing his mind out. You okay? You got the sniffles? I have so much COVID right now. Let's go. We're in this chamber together. We're broadcasting from the Sphere in Las Vegas.

Yeah.

Maybe it is time that we take stock know? I'm the editor, and I know what we all do our own little tics. Because you clear your throat quite a hear it. And you do what you just did right now. What did I do? To begin a sentence with it?

Yeah, you do that.

Listen, I do that on purpose. I go and that's my way of letting the sound engineer know that I'm about to speak. It's a little code that we worked out. Isn't that right, Eduardo? And guess what? Another thing. I think that it shows a lot of forethought and planning on my part. Do you know how much work that is? I take all of those out. Why? I put those in on purpose. Wait, Matt has a tick, too. He does a lot of pops plosives. You do. You do a lot of plosives and then Eduardo has to take those out. That's probably a lie. Eduardo, also, you just stink the high I mean, I don't know what it is that comes through on the mic.

I know.

Yeah.

We were talking about our mic ticks. You got personal. That's just not cool.

Okay. Yeah. Let's try it all at once. We'll all do our personal things that we do all at once. And Eduardo? Yeah? Put your armpit to the microphone. And one, two, three, go. PU. Before I begin, I go, is that right? And you'll just take it out. Well and then you go like, all right. What if I tried not to do that anymore? That would make your life easier. Oh, boy. Would it? Yeah. Maybe I substitute it for something else anyway. But see, the audience wouldn't even know that this is an issue because they're never in the final product. Same with the throat clearing.

I'm going to oh, really? I try to clear it off mic.

You do not. You make more noise.

I sometimes do. I do this and then I cough at my elbow.

That's nice.

Yeah.

What do you do? Gargle with fava beans before you get on the mic.

I don't know why I do that. I think I talk incorrectly.

Speak incorrectly.

Fake ink. Shut up. I'm sorry. That was mean.

That was mean. I think you're okay with that one.

It was so just instinctive. No, I think I speak incorrectly. You're supposed to speak from your diaphragm. I'm just like up here.

Well, I think oh, God. Now, these ones I don't have to take out. No, you can leave these in. Yeah, I'm going to keep an eye on that from now on. Because you work very hard making sure that this product, and it is a product, goes out to people for free, for some reason is of the highest quality. And you work hard removing our little ticks. God knows what the listener or fan isn't hearing. Maybe for this, the Werner Herzog episode, which I have not yet edited, I'll leave them all in and just for a taste, just so people can I wouldn't do it. I think people will hate the podcast and we might be sued by Werner Herzog. It's possible he's got some of his own tics. He accused me of being quite insane several times. He accuses everyone of being you're enveloped in madness. I saw him yelling at a toad outside the studio. Mr. Toad, you are enveloped by insanity and madness. Mr. Herzar, would you like to come in? Oh, sorry. How are you? Mr. Tote? Ribbit. I am going to do the best I can to be a little more professional.

Do we have buttons that we can push? Like delay buttons or, like, cough buttons? Cough buttons. Why don't we have those? Because I recently recorded something at SXM Studios, SiriusXM, and they had all these cool buttons that were quite and I thought, huh? These don't exist in the studio that Eduardo designed. I was told not to give you.

Toys that you can just push at any time.

That makes so much sense.

I'm like a chimp in a capsule. I'm like a chimp in a space capsule. Don't let the chimp actually, don't let him near any controls.

I love that. There was a conversation about it.

Adults had a conversation and said there shouldn't be any buttons. That is great. Who was it? I want to know. Give me a name. I can't say. I bet it was Jeff Ross.

No.

Is it Adam Sachs? Can neither confirm nor deny.

No, you can't make him do it. Snitches get stitches.

You can't make him do not around here, they don't. Snitches get passive aggressive. Snitches get riches here. Yeah. I don't think it would be a problem to have those buttons. And it's not like you can go crazy with a cough button. Now, if there was a button that made a coughing sound, I'd be hitting that all the time.

Or the fart button.

Oh, my God, I would love a fart button. Just hitting that. And you know what? I'd make sure that I was waiting till like and today we're talking to Dame Judy Dench now. Dame Judy Dench, you've done such an incredible well. Thank you. I'm hitting all these sound effects buttons and then she just says, I am never doing that podcast again. Dame Judy Jench, that got 8 million listeners and your movie went through the roof. Then have me back instantly. I love that farting podcast. I want buttons. Get me buttons at work. The King demands a fart button. I want buttons. I want levers. I want all kinds of things. I want to look like Willy Wonka. You know, we should get him as a Boppet. Do you remember Boppet? Yeah. It's that toy that has all those things. It's basically like a kid's toy, but you have to hit it and it.

Goes.

Oh, my God, what a great podcast you would have if I had that thing? Yeah, that'd be fantastic. Wait, you looked uncertain. All right, well, there's no transition here. I also need a transition that would help right now. Yeah. Well, my guest today, it's a legendary filmmaker who's made over 70 films, including Grizzly, man and Fitzgeraldo. Now he has a new memoir entitled every man for Himself and God Against All. He is revered, he's esteemed. He's a true artist. He should not be here. I'm excited, though, that he has joined us. Verner Herzog. Welcome, Verner. You don't know who I really am and so you don't really know if you could be my friend. You don't know what kind, of course.

And we have seen each other only once, cameras rolling and we haven't hit the bars. We haven't been in high school together, we haven't rafted down a jungle river and so on.

Yes, I understand that it's going to be harder for me to become your close friend than it is.

It won't happen in half an hour, an hour of being together. But that's fine. Let's try our best anyway.

What about if it were to exist? Would you say 5 hours would do it? Or are you talking it would take maybe more lifetime than either of us.

Has left, actually has happened in my life once or twice that I became an instantaneous friend to somebody. I played in a soccer team, which was a best in Peru at the time.

Yes.

And I just did the condition, training with them. But all of a sudden when they had the Team A playing against Team B, there was one player missing and the coach said, you play Team B, which position would you like to play? And I said, I want to play against one of the best in the world was in that team. He was voted as one of the eleven best players in the world after the World Championships. Galliagato a speed freak, and I tried to give him problems and be an obstacle. And after ten minutes I didn't know which direction we were playing.

Yes.

I didn't know which jersey we wore.

Completely confounded you.

Confounded me. Bamboozled me. And I was so exhausted after ten minutes that I crawled off the field and vomited in some bushes for an hour and a half. One guy pulls me out on my legs and talks to me and he says, you did well. You played against one of the best in the world. Doesn't matter if you're defeated like that. And we were friends instantly.

Oh, so it wasn't with the soccer player that you became friends?

No.

You became friends with the man who pulled you out of the bushes while vomiting.

Yes, exactly.

So that's a guy who you could instantaneously be friends with, but Conan O'Brien. No, not possible. I hope that you start to vomit at some point in this interview and I will rescue you.

I will not.

Well, we'll see. Drink this. I have a little something in there. Well, I'm going to say something else. What do I call you? Because I have great respect for you.

Do I call me Werner? First name?

Is it Werner? With a V?

Well, we say Werner in German. Don't try.

I'm going to try Werner.

Well, no, it will be too rough. Tough.

Okay, I won't do let me say that I know from reading your book which, by the way, let me just give the title of this book. Every man for himself and God against all. Thank God this isn't a children's book. Can you imagine saying, okay, little Timmy, it's time to go to sleep. We're going to read every man for himself and God against all. I don't think that boy would ever go to sleep. That's a terrifying idea. But I read your book and you describe yourself as a bit of a loner. Do you have a big circle of friends or it's not your natural way?

No, circle of real friends is small and very intense.

Yes.

The only problem is that I live so far out and that's Los Angeles and my friends are in Peru. They are in Germany, they are in India.

Yes.

They are in Sicily. So that is the hard part of it.

Here's a question that just occurred to me. We now have this technology that really exploded in Zoom, and everyone is saying, well, it's fantastic because I can keep up my friendships with people who live far away. I have a problem with Zoom. I don't feel like I'm really communicating with the person. When I'm on Zoom, I feel like something essential is being extracted from the interaction. Is that possible?

You're totally right. Although I use it. But I use it only with people whom I know very well, but I have to refresh the physical contact with them. I want to embrace them directly once in a while. I want to laugh with them. I want to cook a meal for them.

Yes.

And then it's okay that you do one or two zoom calls. Sometimes there are business zoom calls. They have to be made because there is somebody involved in a project who is in Australia, somebody who is in the United Kingdom in London, and I'm in Los Angeles. So it's very hard to get them together.

I'm trying to imagine when you would create and I was thinking about your whole body of work, which is mind boggling. There were so many times where you've put yourself in extreme positions as a director, and I'm thinking that you couldn't just sit still in your office and be on a zoom. You would need to be on a raft floating down a river in Peru, battling the elements on your zoom while everyone else was talking. Do you know what I mean? You, Werner Hartsock, would have to be it feels like that would be the kind of Zoom you would want to have, is to put yourself way out there.

No, you have to be really out there, and zoom belongs somewhere else. It's a different world, and you have to make a decision. Do you want to use it? For what purposes? For example, I'm probably the last holdout. Who doesn't use a cell phone?

You don't have a cell phone?

I don't have a cell phone, no. But it's for cultural reasons. I'm not nostalgic, so I want to derive my interaction or my knowledge of the real world. In direct contact with the world. The most intense would be traveling on foot, which I have done.

This is a quote. You said it in your book, and it really stuck with me. The world reveals itself to those who travel on foot. It's important to you to walk and see things in real time.

It's not just real time. You are unprotected when you travel on foot. And I don't meet backpacking with your whole household on your back, your tent, your sleeping bag, your cooking utensils, and so on. I'm a lazy bum like everyone else. I would not travel on foot unless there was an existentially important reason for it. For example, I would travel on foot when my mentor, very old woman, by then 80 years old, Jewish, who had fled Nazi Germany on the day when Hitler took power, and she was in hiding in France during the Second World War and the Nazi regime, and she became my mentor and was very important. And when she was dying, I said, I'm not flying. I'm not taking the train, or I'm not going by car. I will come on foot a thousand kilometers.

Oh, wow.

And it was early winter and snowstorms and hail and rain and whatever, and I would sleep under bridges, sometimes in the hay of a barn, or I would open vacation home that was uninhabited, with some sort of tools, surgical tools, without breaking a lock. I can open it and close it again and sleep in there. And she was out of hospital, by the way, when I arrived.

Incredible.

Eight years later, when she was 88, probably 88, because we do not know exactly how old she became. She celebrated her 75th birthday at least twice, maybe three times. Normally, women start to cheat about their age much earlier, but she had 75.

I've been celebrating my 35th, and she.

Summoned me eight years later. She summons me to Paris, and she said to me, just over a cup of tea, there's still this spell upon me that I must not die. You put that spell on me. And I'm old now. I'm almost blind. I cannot read books, which is the joy of my life. I cannot see movies, which is the other joy of my life. I'm lame, I can barely walk, so can you lift the spell off of me? And I said, okay. Yes, it's lifted. And eight days later she died. And it was good. It was right. She had put me in a position where I had become independent and strong and self confident, and you just name it.

That's a beautiful story you touch on your childhood, which is not of this I mean, it's clearly not of this century, but it feels like your childhood could have been 400 years ago. You grew up in such poverty. You grow up in this I mean, you're born, as you say in the book, at this moment when fortunes are changing for the German army in North Africa, rommel is about to start losing, and the Germans have invaded Stalingrad, which is the beginning of the So. But you grow up in this great tumult and terrible poverty, and you say that you weren't really aware that you were poor other than you were hungry a lot.

Yes, that's when you really know you are poor. And my mother would have a loaf of bread, one loaf for my two brothers and me and her four people, and she would make a groove for each day. And each of us had one thin slice of bread per day. But normally, by Friday, when we were so hungry, we had eaten the whole loaf of bread, and we hoped that she would find something somewhere. But sometimes it was always Saturday, Sunday that was the worst, when there was nothing. I remember that very well. And we were wailing and tugging at her skirt, and she spun her. I remember her very well for that. She spins around, completely composed, but with an anger and despair in her face that I've never seen before. After. And very calmly, she says, boys, if I could cut it out of my ribs, I would cut it out of my ribs, but I can't, so you shut up. And that made a big, big impression on me, of course. But many people have grown up hungry or poor. There's nothing wrong about that. For children. It's much easier than for the parents.

When a mother cannot feed the children anymore, that's a real awful thing.

It's interesting because I've been thinking about all of your work and what comes up so often for me. This is my interpretation, and there's been so much discussion of your work, but will there's an Iron Will that you have. And I'm wondering, with these film productions, which know impossible to pull off, you're in the jungle, things are collapsing. Your main actor, Klaus Kinsky, wants to murder you, you want to murder him. It all sounds impossible, and yet you always keep going. And I'm wondering is that move a.

Ship over a mountain in Fitzgeraldo, you.

Have to move a ship over a mountain. And you've made work about how difficult the work was, or documentaries about how impossible the project is. And what I keep coming back to are a couple of themes, and one is Will, Iron Will. And I'm wondering, was that something in your opinion, is that in your soul or in your genetics, or was that something that somehow was the product of having so little growing up?

I think it's not a correct description to point at Iron Will because you can dissuade me from my will with a real good argument. And I do the doable. I really do the doable. I knew I could move a ship over a mountain in the jungle. It can be done. And I knew I would be able to do it, although nobody believed in it anymore. And you become very solitary when there are 800 people around and nobody believes in it. And the next town where you can buy a torchlight battery is 800 km away. So you become very solitary. But it's not I wouldn't call it Iron Will. It's a very clear vision, a very deep vision in me. And I knew moving a ship over a mountain would be a great metaphor. Something like Mobby Dick. Yes, the white whale. Something embedded very deep in our soul, in our collective soul, probably. And I can articulate it and all of a sudden everybody understands it. Although I must confess metaphor for what I cannot explain.

Well, everyone can have their own interpretation because in our lives we've all pulled a giant ship over a mountain.

Sure.

And when I say that, I mean we've all battled with something that most people thought, well, that can't be done. I'm curious if when I look at your work, I think, did you have you seem very solid the whole time, even during all this insanity and chaos, you seem very solid. And I think, do you have a good mask, a good poker face, or did you feel true despair?

If there's only a mask, it would get cracks and it would become visible that it's only posing.

Right.

You have to have it in you. So what can I say? That it has carried me, that I'm just myself and essentially myself in many of the situations.

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That's BetterHelp help Conan. There's another theme that you love to explore, which is madness. It comes up again and again and again, and I was noticing it even came up in so many of your films. There's that line between someone being obsessed and, have they gone mad? Have they lost control of themselves? You've worked with people who could clinically be called mad, if that's a real clinical diagnosis anymore. When you did your documentary Encounters at the End of the World and you're in Antarctica, I remember very clearly there's a scene where you're looking at the penguins and you start to wonder, have they gone mad?

At least one.

At least one. Has there one penguin gone mad? But I thought, Well, Werner Herzog went all the way to Antarctica and he's looking at penguins and he's still wondering about madness. Is it right that's a theme that you like to try and mine or explore?

Yes. It's not only madness, but a state where we can be out or beyond ourselves, like an ecstasy, like religious mystics in the late Middle Ages. Or it could be a penguin. I asked a penguin researcher, and I was told he has not spoken to anyone for 24 years. So I said, I will be the first one. And I tell him some things that he has never heard. Why do, for example, species of ants create colonies of slaves of some sort of lice that they milked for droplets of sugar? Why is that? And why does a chimp not saddle the goat and ride off into the sunset of Death Valley or Monument Valley? Why does this happen? Is there insanity among animals? Not only among people. Is there insanity among penguins? Some because I observed a penguin that marches right into the continent and it's 5000 ice and mountains and there's no way to turn the penguin around. You can do that. And you shouldn't do it, by the way, but you can turn it around. It will immediately, stubbornly march into his death into the interior of the continent. Not to the water, not to the colony.

So, what is going on? I've been fascinated by this, famously.

It's been much discussed, but it's so riveting. You had this work dynamic with the actor Klaus Kinsky and there's something in it that I understand. I understand because I've watched all the films. I've watched the documentaries about the making of the films. I've seen him completely lose control. I've seen in real time people who are working on the film, plotting to kill Kinsky. Kinsky plotting to and threatening to kill you. You plotting to kill Kinsky. And I swear to you that what I'm saying is true right now. I've worked in comedy for 40 years. And for 30 of those years, I worked many times out in the field making comedy under duress, in strange conditions. And I've wanted to kill people that I've worked with, one of them's here. But I've gotten to an altered state at times. I've been hungry and cold and we've needed to get this shot. And a lot of what I do is somewhat improvisational and I need to improvise something and make something happen. You have to deliver, and I have to deliver something. And I do think there are times when I've gone to another state and I'm thinking specifically of an episode I did where we were shooting in Italy and it was late in the day and we were exhausted and suddenly we had to shoot a thing where we're hunting for truffles.

And I started to lose it. And I think I lost my mind during the truffle hunt and started hopping around like a rabbit. Now, anyone watching it might think, I don't know what's happening with Conan or maybe he's just doing this because he thinks it's funny. No, I really did lose it and have this kind of madness. But I also understand I'm kind of in love with it. There's a part of me that is attracted to it. And, of course, what you were doing, multiply that by a thousand, your work with Kinsky. But when you say afterwards, no, we were brothers to most people, that would seem impossible that this man could be screaming at you and abusing you and you screaming back at him. But no, I understand it. I understand how you can go through that with someone but also cherish that bond.

Does that it's hard to describe it. And in my book, I describe quite a bit about it. Number one, there is a side to all this which is hilarious. Number two, I've never lost it. I cannot remember that I ever lost it. I've always been the calmest of calm in such situations.

You don't lose it. Yeah.

He would scream at the native people in the rainforest and they would huddle, sit down, because they solved their conflicts very quietly, whispering and whispering voices. And they came afterwards to me and one of their chiefs said to me, we were afraid, but don't you believe we were afraid of this screaming madman? They were afraid of me because I was so quiet and I really meant business. And in moments of real confrontation, Kinsky understood, when I explained to him things very, very calmly, this is impermissible. This cannot be done, what you are trying. There's a task that is beyond the two of us. We have to stick to it, or else. And he would know that this or else would mean he would be a dead man within 30 seconds flat. I didn't have to spell it out.

You just did, though. That's incredible. You're doing it now. You're doing it now.

Let's put it simply. Yeah. You have to have it in you to stop at a certain moment and to understand. Yes. You do not do this. You're not going to kill each other. It's a beautiful script, which is outside of the movie, and the script is not going to happen. Otherwise you end up on death row. And I have made nine films on death row, and I note that every single one on death row that I met, men and women were only a step away from what I am or what almost all of us are. Yeah, that's true. Very human beings.

It's interesting because there's this new movement that's being discussed lately, and it was written about the other day, I think, in The New York Times, which said when dealing with someone who's out of control or psychotic, they say, become a gray rock, become bland and very, very sort of almost disinterested. And they say it's the best way to treat them. So had you screamed back at Kinsky no. And tried to meet him, scream for scream, the whole thing would have blown up by staying almost inert, as you did.

No, we had a plane crash and only garbled messages in our camp. We didn't know exactly where was it, how many people can we?

Was this a plane that was coming.

To this film shoot, to our set, transporting extras? And I tried to make sense what it was in Kinsky at that morning. We served coffee in all the huts and he was the last one because we altered the line of who would be first or last. His coffee was lukewarm. He just lost it, over it, and he kept yelling and screaming for an hour and a half foam. At his mouth. I mean, literally, I'm not exaggerating screaming at the top of his lung. That close to my face. That close. And I tried to explain, klaus, there's a plane down. We need to understand what the radio, the garbled radio is transmitting to us. So and finally, I couldn't get rid of him. I went to my hut. I had one little piece of chocolate, very good chocolate left, and I stood right in his face and ate the chocolate. That was too much for him because chocolate was the most valuable item in the camp.

Yes.

And I ate my last piece of chocolate. And he just fell silent.

Yes. It's like you shut down the computer. It just went to the apple. It went to the apple logo. There's nothing he could do at that moment. It's fascinating because you've done this very intense and beloved work, and you explore these intense themes, but because of your fame and notoriety, you're also being asked to do these other side projects which are very popular in popular culture. You've been a guest on the Simpsons yes. More than once. Mandalorian. You're in the mandalorian. Yes. Jack reacher, parks and recreation. And I'm curious how you reconcile, because it's such a chasm between being in peru, you're life threatened by a madman trying to make this magnum opus, and then you're on the set of the simpsons, or you're with baby yoda on the mandalorian. It must be quite fascinating to imagine the trips you've taken in your life.

Sure, yes. And I do not want to miss any of that because I found the Simpsons very fascinating, intelligent, and a lot of anarchy in it. And when I was invited to speak a role, I immediately said, do they speak? I cannot believe that. I thought there were only, like, comic strips printed in newspapers. I had never seen it. And I think Matt groening, who started it, he said to me, don't you know, since 24 years, we are on TV station, one of the most popular.

TV shows of all time around the world.

I did not know that it existed. I asked for DVD to show me a little bit so that I could see how I hear how cartoonish the voices would be. They actually sent a few of them to me, and they said, you don't need to be cartoonish. Just speak with your accent. It's wild enough. Wild enough for us. I acknowledged, yes, and I really, really enjoyed it. I'm good at that. And in Jack reacher, they're bad guys. They open fire, they have huge assault rifles. They swear, they shout, they yell at you, they have fistfights. I'm the epicenter of evil. I have very few fingers left. I ate them in a gulag to avoid being sent to a lead mine and lose my life there. And I'm blind in I have one blind eye, and I only have my voice to spread terror and a calm voice, and one of the villains, the subvillain, who made a mistake, I tell him, you can get away with it. If you are really determined not to do that again, you have to eat your fingers. As I do it. As I did it. And he tries and tries, and I very calmly encourage him.

I say, that was already good. I know you can do it. Just try harder. And it's so frightening that when the film was out, friends of my wife in Paris, they called her, and they said, lena, are you married to that man? We are only one night flight away from you. We can give you shelter. So I knew I was good, and that's my best reward.

The mandalorian. There's so much secrecy around that shoot. What was that experience like for you?

Well, secrecy went so far that I had to sign a contract for a film. Huckleberry Finn, not Mandalorian.

They misnamed it.

You had your costumes, you couldn't leave the studio unless you put a big tunic all over you, and you were not allowed to speak about what was going on inside. So I understand that because it's such a worldwide phenomenon, and fans were lurking outside the hedges with their little cameras and trying to snap a few photos. But the experience was very interesting because John Favreau, who is mastermind behind all this, he invited me. I was always invited. I never competed for any part. I never was in any audition. And he apparently loves my films and loves my writings, and he wanted to make me, as a person, visible for a larger audience in the world. That's a guy who did all these things. And you see, we are speaking about my films and my acting. But equally important, I think, is writing. From the very, very beginning, I've been a writer, and I started out writing when I was 1516, and I published my first books decades ago, in the early seventy s, and they are still constantly being reprinted, reprinted. And I keep saying and it's basically to deaf ears, and it will fall on deaf ears, ears here as well.

But time is on my side. I keep saying the written things, my books, my prose, my poetry, with all probability, will have a longer life than my films. I will be remembered for my writings, not so much for my films.

You write beautifully. You are a terrific and disciplined writer, and your writing is very lyrical. And I think that that can travel through all kinds of changes in how people experience entertainment, probably more safely and durably than maybe film can. So I think that's possible.

Books are more durable than movies. That's a strange thing, but it's a fact. You can see it. And I've always loved to write poetry and to you see, when you look at my memoirs, people are looking for, let's say, content. What did he do in this period of his life. It's not an encyclopedia of my life. It's memoirs and it's prose. It's very, very intense writing. I write, for example, all of a sudden in this book, every man for himself, in God against all. I insert five ballads of the little soldier. I was once in Nicaragua, Honduras, with child soldiers between eight and eleven. And I mean tragic. Tragic.

And this is eight and eleven year olds with weapons.

With weapons and in warfare. And some of them whom I filmed were dead three weeks later. And I still have them on film. An eight year old boy, angelic looking and with a catastrophic tragic life behind him where his parents were killed in front of his eyes, and he decided to become a soldier, a warrior. And all of a sudden, there are five ballads of the little soldier. I insert diaries when I traveled on foot around Germany, I followed once all the situations of the German border to hold the country together when it was not united yet, I said to myself, politics has given up, so it's only the poets who can hold it together. And I traveled on foot around my own country, and I'm writing while I'm walking. And some of the most beautiful, intense prose that I ever wrote was on that traveling on foot or off walking in ice, when I traveled on foot from Munich to Paris, when things were essentially somehow reduced to a pilgrimage to a big quest, not the joy of walking. Of course I also enjoyed it. I knew that and superstitious. But I knew when I arrived on foot, lottie Eisner would be out of hospital and she would live.

And she actually did.

And she believed it was because you put a spell on her.

No, she said that jokingly years later, just before she oh, I thought you.

Had that ability and I was going to ask for it. Before you go. I was going to say, Please, before you go, one more thing. I'd like to live to 98, and then I'll ask to see you again because I'll be in a lot of pain. There was a revelation in the book that I found interesting because you are such a thoughtful person. I don't think your mind ever shuts off. You don't believe in therapy.

I'm very cautious about it because it hasn't done no good to no one. I think it's one of the monumental mistakes of the 20th century, among many others, the big social utopias, communism, fascism have led to incredible disasters, overpopulation of our planet, and you just name it. Destruction of what nature is. All of that started really in the 20th century? And one of the things that one of the great mistakes of the 20th century's psychoanalysis, of course, it started some decades earlier, but it really blossomed in the 20th century. And I do believe that the 20th century in its entirety was a mistake. And going back to psychoanalysis. I can give you a parable. When you move into a new home and you illuminate this home to its very last recesses in corners with neon lights, everything is illuminated. This house becomes uninhabitable and human beings illuminated to the darkest corners of their soul become uninhabitable. I say it in quotes now, and you should be careful what you do. Of course there are clinical cases and you better do it. But this mass phenomenon to think that everything in your inner balance and in your soul and in your emotionality and so will be solved by psychoanalysis I do not think it is a good approach.

It's funny because I think it's a byproduct of this obsession. And you live in Los Angeles, so you see this now in the 21st century in Los Angeles, there's just this obsession with I want to eat all the perfect foods. I want to make sure that I get all the perfect treatments. I want to achieve this perfect state of balance.

Yoga classes for five years old, five year olds.

Well, they bend so easily.

But I'm the great defender of Los Angeles. Everybody chuckles in and says, I love Los Angeles too. You think, yeah, the glitz and glamor of Los Angeles. But everything in the last half century somehow set the pace and the thinking and the trends of the world without, I mean, being completely trendy. Originated here. The Internet was born here. The Internet. And I've seen the place where the first contact was made with routers in servers, reusable rockets are being built in the perimeters of the city itself. I mean, a southern outskirt, but southern part of it all the great painters.

Are I think the art scene here.

Is the art scene very much. They are not in New York anymore. That was early 50s or so. Now they are here. The writers, the mathematicians. Also, of course, the stupidities, crazy sects. Inline skating is fine, but you're listening.

To Werner Herzog's list of what's in and what's out, what's hot and what's cold.

Actually, I'm very much beloved by skateboarders.

Oh, good.

There's a community of skateboarders.

Good to have them on your side. Yeah.

Yes. And they're on my side and I'm on theirs. Because the futility and the insistence try it again. Try it again. Try it again. You will do this. Jump up onto the railing of no, don't do that. No, I'm too old for that. And I've done ski jumping and ski flying and almost died in doing that. But anyway, you do the wild stuff when you are young. But the crazy things also come from here, originated here, and they have worldwide repercussions. It happens and there's no other city. Does it happen in Chicago or in London or in Florence or in Mumbai or in Buenos Aires? No, it's Los Angeles. It's wonderful to live in a city where all these things are happening.

All these things are happening. It's a very vibrant community. I guess you love to participate. You love to know what's going on. So you do watch some things that maybe your typical person might think werner Herzog doesn't view. You watch the.

Very, very few. But I do watch some trash TV like, let's say WrestleMania.

Sona'S, like perked up. Enough about madness.

Yeah, let's talk about wrestling.

No, but it's very interesting because it's a very crude form of drama has emerged and it's a dramas that are not in the fight itself. The fights are interrupted by commercials meaning they are not that important. But the owner of the franchise shows up in the ring, his wife, alleged wife in a wheelchair and blind and he has three sexy women in his arm and rants against his wife in the wheelchair. And all of a sudden you have a form of drama going on, a new form emerging apparently probably as crude as ancient Greek drama started out in the fifth century before Christ. So I watch it for number one. I think the poet must not close his eyes, avert his eyes. You have to know in which world you are living.

See every know. Yes.

And I have nothing against, let's say once in a while it isn't on the air anymore. Here comes Honey Boo Boo.

That's my favorite. The way you said it. That'll be a meme where that's?

No, but very fascinating.

Yeah.

There's something deep about society in it. Deep about something deep about the American dream that goes awry somehow. And I can see how the American dream is functioning because I've been in the heartland of America. I have worked in Wisconsin, I've worked in Louisiana, I've worked in North Carolina, I've lived in Pittsburgh with a guest family who picked me up from the street when I was homeless. Without hesitation, I was part of the best that America can give you. And I think much of the political chasm between left and right is due to the neglect of the center, the heartland of America. People say the flyovers, but they live in Boston or in Seattle or in Los Angeles and New York. And I ask, have you ever been in Wisconsin? No, but I have worked there. And I find it an outrage that some of the best of America, very good people living there, of course, underrepresented in the media with much less accent access to education, underpaid without that open access to the American dream. And this is why you have such conflicts now.

Yes.

I say, why don't you contact your old school buddies, tell them what they are doing and be interested in what they are doing. What are they thinking? What are they doing? Put them on your radar. Let them know they are around there and you like them and you like Arkansas and you like Wisconsin.

And do they do it?

No, unfortunately. Too very few no.

You are very prolific with your film work. Your writing. What's the plan now? What's in the next couple of years?

Well, I've written a screenplay for a story that's long in me, and I describe it in my memoirs. It's called bucking fastered.

Great title.

A slip of tongue.

Yeah.

And it's about twin sisters, identical twins who spoke in unison. And we have had twins. We know sometimes they develop their own secretive language, but these twins, unique. We have never seen or heard of anyone else. And I was in very close contact with them. They spoke in unison when they opened the door and they said, please come in and do you want to have a cup of tea? That can be ritualized and rehearsed. But they would answer a question that they could not expect in unison. There was a court case. Some truck driver, an ugly, purple faced truck driver had a restraining order against them. And in court, they were allowed to testify in the witness stand together.

Oh, my God.

But it's an iron principle. If you are in court, you, Conan, will testify, and then the next sibling will testify, and then the next person. There was an exception. They spoke in unison because they would be terrified and would unravel and start shouting and so and across the courtroom, they shouted to the truck driver, he's lying. Every word he's saying is a lie. He's lying under oath. And then simultaneously, the Bucking Fasted is lying.

So they both made the same mistake at the same time, same slip of.

Tongue in the same moment.

Even that, I need to reveal that Sona has twins.

Yeah.

She's shown us video, the cameras of them communicating with each other before they could really talk.

Yes.

And they are having full on it's nonsense to us. But you understand, it is a full.

On they're having a full conversation. I don't understand a word of it.

It's fascinating to watch, but it's a separate language. They do not speak in unison.

No.

And they do not make up. I said, hey, girls. I said girls. Even though they were not girls anymore. They were in their early 40s or late thirty s. I said to them, let's go out to a restaurant. And they whispered to each other making up. But they whispered in unison. And they said, now a restaurant. And there are these waiters in Tuxedos. And so I said, now let's go to a fish and chip place around the corner. They speak in unison to each other. And then they said, yeah, let's do it.

So when is this coming out?

There's only a screenplay. It's not financed yet. It's not shot yet.

I'll give you the money.

That would be nice.

But you doubt I have it, do you? Well, I have tens of thousands of dollars. So I think about the famous story about you is that you stole your first camera. You didn't have a camera, and you stole it. And I love this line from the book, you say, I refuse to think of it as stealing. You said I was exercising a natural right to put the camera to its intended use. I thought, that is such a fantastic rationalization, but also it makes perfect sense. But you had so many limits. And I wonder, Werner Herzog, if you went into a black hole and you appeared today as a young man, your early twenty s, and you have iPhones and you have computers that can laptops that can edit, how different are the films? Are they completely different films?

Or are you telling me films wouldn't be different? No, I don't think so. It doesn't matter if I shoot it on celluloid. When I started, it was 35 millimeter celluloid, very clumsy, expensive. Took a long time to make a film, much longer than today. And yet with the clear vision that I had, I've done one film after the other. I've done, I don't know, over 70 films by now. And I've published at least ten books, and I have acted in at least 20 films. And I've staged operas so it wouldn't look different, because writing a book, whether you write it on a laptop in long hand doesn't make any difference at all.

This has been a wonderful treat. I have spoken to you before.

Yes, but I do remember.

Thank you for remembering. I do love this format, because in the other format, I could talk to you for seven, eight minutes about Grizzly Man or nine minutes, and then thank you very much, Werner Herzog in The Band Plays and to be a commercial. Yeah. And this format enables me to have the kind of conversation with you that I've always wanted to have.

So it's a feeling when I walked in here and I knew, this is your new home now, and you've created it for yourself, I would have advised you at that time in conflict with was it NBC or what was the station?

Who can remember?

Yeah, NBC, whatever it was, buy the station. Buy the station and fire them all.

I didn't quite have that money at the time segment. Well, maybe I'll be hitting you up for financing.

But you will out talk them, you will outnumber them, you will out brilliant them, you will outshine them, and you will out talk them. You have the gift of gab.

The funny thing is, if you love the work, you're okay. So it doesn't matter what the platform is if you love the work. And that's what's so inspirational about you, is you were not raised with a silver spoon in your mouth. You weren't sent to USC film school at a young age and given a posh internship. There's no reason why you should be a prolific, amazing filmmaker. You didn't see a film till relatively late in your childhood. Cinema existed, and yet it was in you. And here we are. And so I think if you're doing the work, and you have things to say, and you have things that you need to say. The rest will take care of itself.

I believe that that sounds very encouraging. And I will walk out here ten pounds lighter.

Absolute joy. Werner Herzog, thank you so much. And the book, I just want to say this is a fantastic, lovely book. Every man from Self and God Against All, a Memoir and a very special memoir, because you're right, it is not just recounting what happened. ABCDE, it's a fantastic story, but also beautiful and poetic and worthy of your time. So thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Recently, we did a segment about a new voicemail number, and people could call in and leave a voicemail, and maybe we could answer the questions. And it worked.

We've got some voicemails.

Oh, good. New voicemails. I love to hear the vox populi voice of the people.

Yes, I know. Sorry, sona.

I know you're new here. Very excited to hear what they have to say. Hit it, Eduardo.

Hey, Conan. I am a high school US. History teacher, and I have to teach high school juniors about Abraham Lincoln sometime around. You know, I know you're a big Lincoln and Civil War buff, and so, you know, surely you can make a great connection to the TikTok generation or whatever they call themselves, and help me find a way to just really hammer home the historical importance of the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln. So if you could help me out, that'd be great. And also, that truly was the worst outgoing voicemail message of all time. I loved it.

Thanks.

Is it me?

It's all of us.

Oh, I don't remember what the outgoing voicemail message was. My apologies. Kind of coaching, sona, on how to do it. Yeah, there you go. Well, this is a huge responsibility. You're up to it? No. Explain the significance of President Abraham Lincoln and to explain the Civil War to these students. In what and what length of time? I'll give you three minutes. That's insane. Look, kids, put down your iPhone.

You lost them already.

You did.

You lost them already. Just Photoshop his head onto a dancing TikTok person.

Oh, there you yeah, Photoshop whatever you just said. Help me, sona. How would I communicate with the TikTok generation?

I'm beyond this generation. I don't know. I have no idea. You have a really good way of connecting with people, right, but they're something you like, right?

Civil war. Crazy carnage. Aren't kids into that? I mean, just insane. You know how many people die? And if you added up all the John Wick movies yes. Multiply that by, like, a hundred thousand. Yeah. Imagine just there's a whole bunch of John Wicks in the south, and there's a whole bunch of John Wicks in the north, and they just go towards each other. The ones in the north are wearing blue suits, and the ones in the south are wearing gray suits, and they just go at it. And then there's this guy who's the guy who runs the hotel. Oh, Ian McShane. Ian McShane. But what's his character's name in the John Wick movies?

I forget.

We'll come up with it. Continental. Yeah. The hotel is called the Continental. Well, in this, the Continental Hotel is the White House. Okay. That's run by Winston. So Abraham Lincoln was a British guy played by McShane. Yeah. And he's the one that's sort of watching in the background and really not doing anything, just sort of sipping.

Oh, you said Abraham Lincoln's not doing.

He'S just sitting around watching these armies, these massive armies of John Wicks fight each other and going and so it ah, yes. And now it has begun and just keeps and seems pretty ineffectual and doesn't really do much at all. Unfortunately, that's Lincoln, except he did do stuff, wrote amazing speeches. Gettysburg Address.

No, they're boring. You losing.

Okay, okay. Civil War was started by the killing of a dog. What happens is the south killed our dog. Yes. And then the south called its dad and said, don't worry, it's just some asshole. I just killed his dog. And he went, what? You killed the North's dog? And then all the John Wicks from the north came after the John Wicks from the south. And look, I'm going to get a lot of mail from people in the south saying, no, they killed our dog. And it's just said, I'm from Boston, so fuck you. Anyway, all these John Wicks are fighting each other, and it's absolutely insane. And it goes on for four years, and you name it. And Tetam cold harbor.

You're losing them. You're losing.

Just steps in, oh, around the Arctic Triumph. And when there's no door on the car, john Wick's leaning out and he's firing it's so fucking cool. Lawrence fishburne's there. Yeah. And Lawrence fishburne's there. And that's little bull run. Yeah. And then wow. Oh, man. And then every now and then, Abraham Lincoln thinks about his wife, who passed away a long time ago, and he's really sad, and he thinks about that. And that's Mary Todd Lincoln, although she didn't pass away in real life. She lived and she was crazy, batshit crazy, and spent a lot of money and really lost it all the time.

She's so hot.

Yeah. So yeah. But anyway, that's what happened. It's just incredible. You got to check this out. A John Wick that lasts four years. Check it out, motherfuckers.

Conan O'Brien needs a friend with Conan O'Brien. Sonom of Session and Matt Goreley produced by Me matt Goreley, executive produced by Adam Sachs nick Liao and Jeff Ross at Team Coco and Colin Anderson and Cody Fisher at Your Wolf. Theme song by the White Stripes incidental music by Jimmy Vivino take it away, Jimmy. Our supervising producer is Aaron Blair, and our associate talent producer is Jennifer Samples. Engineering by Eduardo Perez. Additional production support by Mars Melnick Talent booking by Paula Davis, Gina Batista and Britt Khan. You can rate and review this show on Apple podcasts and you might find your review read on a future episode. Got a question for Conan? Call the team Cocoa Hotline at 669-587-2847 and leave a message. It too could be featured on a future episode. And if you haven't already, please subscribe to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend wherever fine podcasts are downloaded.