Werner Herzog, a distinguished filmmaker known for his daring and unconventional approach, has directed over 70 documentaries and feature films in a career spanning more than 60 years. Despite not being a household name, Herzog has gained respect for his unique cinematic vision, which often explores the extremities of nature, human frailties, and the bounds of sanity. His relentless pursuit of authentic storytelling is illustrated through his iconic films such as "Aguirre, the Wrath of God," which survived arduous production conditions due to Herzog's perseverance, and "Grizzly Man," an exploration of the ill-fated relationship between a man and nature.

Herzog's filmography is a testament to his resilience and fascination with challenging environments. His career began in poverty-stricken post-war Germany and took a non-traditional path diverging from standard filmmaking practices. Despite having no formal training, Herzog commandeered a stolen camera for his early works, boldly navigating the film industry's norms to realize his vision. His projects demand commitment and often involve risky filming scenarios, from dragging a steamship over a mountain to capturing rare natural phenomena.

Main takeaways from the video:

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Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. unhinged [ʌnˈhɪndʒd] - (adjective) - Having extreme mental disturbance or being unstable. - Synonyms: (deranged, unbalanced, unstable)

Over the last six decades, the German director has made more than 70 documentaries and feature films about everything from an unhinged cop in New Orleans to a guy who thought he could live with grizzly bears

2. conquistadors [kɒnˈkwɪstəˌdɔrz] - (noun) - Spanish soldiers, explorers, and adventurers who brought much of the Americas under Spanish rule in the 15th to 17th centuries. - Synonyms: (explorers, adventurers, invaders)

About a group of conquistadors searching for a lost city of gold in the Amazon.

3. barter [ˈbɑːrtər] - (verb) - Exchange goods or services for other goods or services without using money. - Synonyms: (trade, exchange, swap)

It's good to have some good boots and you can barter it for a load of fish or my wristwatch.

4. eccentric [ɪkˈsentrɪk] - (adjective) - Strange or unusual, sometimes in a humorous way. - Synonyms: (quirky, unconventional, peculiar)

An eccentric drifter who spent 13 summers in the wilds of Alaska recording himself interacting with grizzly bears.

5. unromantic [ˌʌnroʊˈmæntɪk] - (adjective) - Not concerned with or suited to romance; lacking idealistic views about reality. - Synonyms: (practical, realistic, pragmatic)

You have A distinctly unromantic view of nature.

6. indigenous [ɪnˈdɪdʒɪnəs] - (adjective) - Originating or occurring naturally in a particular place; native people. - Synonyms: (native, original, aboriginal)

And hires indigenous laborers to haul a ship over a mountain to do it.

7. apocalyptic [əˌpɒkəˈlɪptɪk] - (adjective) - Describing or involving widespread destruction or disaster. - Synonyms: (catastrophic, end-of-the-world, doomsday)

Herzog has revealed hidden landscapes under the Antarctic ice sheet and apocalyptic oil fires in Kuwait after the first Gulf War.

8. relentless [rɪˈlentləs] - (adjective) - Showing or promising no decrease of intensity, strength, or pace. - Synonyms: (unyielding, persistent, unremitting)

Herzog's relentless pursuit of his vision took a toll on the cast and crew and on him as well.

9. expropriation [ɛkˌsproʊpriˈeɪʃən] - (noun) - The action of taking property from its owner for public use or benefit, with or without compensation. - Synonyms: (seizure, appropriation, confiscation)

It was more expropriation than theft.

10. treacherous [ˈtrɛtʃərəs] - (adjective) - Guilty of or involving betrayal or deception; hazardous because of presenting hidden or unpredictable dangers. - Synonyms: (dangerous, risky, perilous)

Herzog is a miserable, hateful, malevolent, avaricious, money hungry, nasty, sadistic, treacherous, cowardly creep.

Werner Herzog - The 60 Minutes Interview

Werner Herzog may not be a household name, but he is one of the most respected and unusual filmmakers of our time. Over the last six decades, the German director has made more than 70 documentaries and feature films about everything from an unhinged cop in New Orleans to a guy who thought he could live with grizzly bears. He did, until they ate him. Werner Herzog has never shied away from the extreme. If anything, he's drawn to it. His movies are often dreamlike explorations of the power of nature, the frailties of man and the edges of sanity. At 82, he's still working constantly, still making movies no one else would or could ever dream of.

The story will continue in a moment. This was the film that introduced Werner Herzog to the world in 1972. Aguirre, the wrath of God. About a group of conquistadors searching for a lost city of gold in the Amazon. I'm the Wrath who gradually descend into madness. The Wrath of God. Shot on a shoestring budget in Peru, it only got finished because of Herzog's force of will and determination. I read that you sold your shoes in order to get some fish to feed the crew. Well, it's not normally what a director has to do. It's good to have some good boots and you can barter it for a load of fish or my wristwatch. I would give away. I would give away everything. And it's worth it, of course. Of course it's worth it. I get away with the loot. I have a film that's the loot, though. You're not talking about making millions and millions of dollars. The loot for you is the film. Yeah. And of course, I make money sometimes and I invest it in the next film.

If you've seen any of Herzog's documentaries, it may be Grizzly man, one of his most commercially successful. It tells the strange tale of Timothy Treadwell. Oh, hi, Grinch. An eccentric drifter who spent 13 summers in the wilds of Alaska recording himself interacting with grizzly bears. If I show weakness, I may be hurt. I may be killed. Treadwell seemed convinced he had a spiritual connection with the grizzlies and was somehow their protector. In the end, he's the one who needed protecting. Go back and play.

We sat down with Herzog to watch the film and others at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, David Geffen Theater in Los Angeles. And what haunts me is that in all the faces of all the bears that Treadwell ever filmed, I discover no kinship, no understanding, no mercy. You have A distinctly unromantic view of nature. Yes, nature is utterly indifferent. We are not made to become brothers with the bears. That happens in Walt Disney, not in real life. Take a step to the left. Okay.

In all of Herzog's feature films and documentaries, you'll find remarkable moments, nightmarish ones as well. His curiosity has taken him to the remotest regions of our planet. In celluloid we trust. With his distinctly Teutonic tone, he narrates his documentaries himself and asks questions that rarely have easy answers. Do fish have souls? Do fish have dreams? Herzog has revealed hidden landscapes under the Antarctic ice sheet and apocalyptic oil fires in Kuwait after the first Gulf War. As life without fire become unbearable for them, he's risked his life to capture the power of volcanoes and filmed ancient cave paintings in France, rarely seen before. Yeah, hold it, hold it, hold it.

Herzog is now working on a new documentary in Los Angeles with his editor, Marco Capaldo. And now, music. Wow. Schubertznut. It's a movie about the search for a legendary herd of elephants in southern Africa. But Herzog insists it's not a wildlife film. It's a fantasy of elephants. Maybe a search, like for the white whale, for Moby Dick. It's a dream of an elephant.

Herzog never had any formal training as a director. He was born in Munich just two weeks before the Allies bombed it in 1942. His father was away serving in the German army when his mother fled with Werner and his older brother to the mountains of Bavaria. We grew up in complete poverty and we had no running water, no sewage system, hardly ever electricity. We had one loaf of bread per week, and we were hanging it at her skirt, wailing that we were hungry. And she spins around and she looks at us and she says, boys, if I could cut it out of my ribs, I would cut it out of my ribs. But I can't to this day. That experience, yes, it does follow me.

Herzog didn't see his first film until he was 11. He got hooked on American B movies like Zorro and decided filmmaking was his destiny. He just needed a camera. He finally found one in a film school in Munich. One day I saw this camera room and nobody was in there. And I took one and tested it, walked out. And they never noticed that a camera was missing. I mean, that's a stolen camera. It was more expropriation than theft. You have to have a certain amount of, I say, good criminal energy to make a film. Sometimes, yes, you have to. You have to go outside of what the norm is.

He's been going outside the norm his whole life. In 1979, he began working on a fever dream of a film called Fitzcarraldo. It took him three grueling years to make. German actor Klaus Kinski plays an obsessed Irishman who'll stop at nothing to build an opera house in the Amazon. I want my opera house. Give it a go. To raise the money for it, Fitzcarraldo hatches a plan to harvest lucrative rubber trees in a remote jungle. And hires indigenous laborers to haul a ship over a mountain to do it. Herzog refused to cut corners. He insisted on buying a 340 ton steamship and actually moving it up a mountain.

Couldn't you have used special effects with a model of a ship being moved over a mountain rather than actually moving? Yes. There was a discussion with 20th Century Fox. And they said we could shoot it in the Botanic Garden in San Diego. And we could move a tiny miniature boat. And I said, no, we are not speaking the same language. It certainly would have been easier. No, it would have been a lousy film. That was the least of it. A border war forced Herzog to move the production 1,000 miles away to a new location. There were money problems, plane crashes, fighting between local indigenous groups. And constant battles against the rain and mud. Herzog's relentless pursuit of his vision Took a toll on the cast and crew and on him as well.

Documentary filmmakers shot the chaos behind the scenes. And turned it into a movie all its own called Burden of Dreams. It's just been re released in theaters. We are challenging nature itself. And it hits back. It just hits back, that's all. And that's grandiose about it. And we have to. To accept that it is much stronger than we are. Of course, there is a lot of misery that is all around us. The trees here are in misery. And the birds are in misery. I don't think they sing, they just screech in pain. Did you feel that? Every day. Every day, Every night and the next day and the next night. And on.

Herzog also had to deal with Klaus Kinski, the star of the film. Who was prone to explosions of rage. I had a madman as a leading character. He had a temper as demented as it gets. You had to contain him. And I made his madness, his explosive destructiveness, productive for the screen. How do you do that? Every gray hair on my head I call Kinski. Kinski appeared in five of Herzog's films and died in 1991. But not before putting his own thoughts about Herzog down on paper. This is what Klaus Kinsky said of you in his autobiography. I've never in my life met anybody so dull, humorless, uptight and swaggering. Herzog is a miserable, hateful, malevolent, avaricious, money hungry, nasty, sadistic, treacherous, cowardly creep. Yes, it's beautiful stuff. I actually helped him. You helped him write this? With a dictionary? With Roas.

When Fitzcarraldo was Finally released in 1982, Herzog won the Best Director Award at the Cannes Film Festival. You must have been deluded to make this. Or crazy in some way. No, no, no. But the fact is, when you look at the film industry, there's so much craziness around, so much illusion, so much dementia, so much ego. And when I look at this, I know I'm the only one who is clinically sane. This shows you're the only one who's sane. It shows it. Yes. Yes. That's my proof.

Notebooks. Herzog still has the journals he wrote while making Fitzcarraldo. Over the months, as the pressure on him grew, his writing became barely readable. But it becomes microscopic almost. He turned those journals into a book called the Conquest of the useless. He's published 11 others as well. Fiction, poetry and memoirs. I've always maintained, since more than four decades, that my writing, my prose and my poetry will outlive my films. You think your writing will outlive your films? Yes, I'm totally convinced of that.

Herzog doesn't just work behind the camera. Every now and then he acts. That's him in the Star wars series. The Mandalorian. Please lower your plaster. You would do well to remember that life is heartless. He's also lent his distinctive voice to several characters on the Simpsons. I'd say goodbye, but what's the point? I have to know when I'm keeping away from them.

Last September, we joined Herzog as he taught aspiring filmmakers on the Spanish island of La Palma, off the west coast of Africa. It's covered in volcanic rock and ash from an eruption three years ago. A Herzogian landscape if ever there was one. You want to leave him and he looks in this direction, you just pan away. It's an 11 day workshop on this shot less about the fundamentals of filmmaking and more about poetic vision and grit. It's his fantasies, it's his ghosts that he's searching.

He calls it a film school for rogues. And for the rogues. I also say you are able bodied earn money to finance your first films, but don't earn it with clerical works in an office. Go out and work as a bouncer in a sex club. Work as a warden in a lunatic asylum. Go out to a cattle ranch and learn how to milk a cow. Earn your money that way. In real life, you do not become a poet by being in a college. And I teach them a few things. Like forging a shooting permit. Can I have you see? It should look really authentic. How to fake a shooting permit. The shooting permit during a dictatorship. Have you made those? Yes, of course. And I teach lock picking. You have to know. Yes, you have to be good at that to make a film. You have to know how to forge a permit and pick a lock. And you better carry bolt cutters everywhere. It's not for the faint heart.

FILM INDUSTRY, DOCUMENTARIES, WERNER HERZOG, TECHNOLOGY, INSPIRATION, FILMMAKING TECHNIQUES, 60 MINUTES