“Hypnotic….It is ever tempting to try to fathom his restless spirit and his determination to challenge fate.”
—Janet Maslin, New York Times
Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man) is one of the most revered and enigmatic filmmakers of our time, and Fitzcarraldo is one of his most honored and admired films. More than just Herzog’s journal of the making of the monumental, problematical motion picture, which involved, among other things, major cast changes and reshoots, and the hauling (without the use of special effects) of a 360-ton steamship over a mountain , Conquest of the Useless is a work of art unto itself, an Amazonian fever dream that emerged from the delirium of the jungle. With fascinating observations about crew and players—including Herzog’s lead, the somewhat demented internationally renowned star Klaus Kinski—and breathtaking insights into the filmmaking process that are uniquely Werner Herzog, Conquest of the Useless is an eye-opening look into the mind of a cinematic master.

Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo

Arts & Photography

Herzog, Werner

Photography & Video

Ecco

Werner Herzog is one of our most revered contemporary filmmakers, a visionary director who ceaselessly tests the boundaries of art. Fitzcarraldo, his lavish 1982 film about a would-be rubber baron who pulls a steamship over a hill to access a rich rubber territory, was hailed by critics around the globe and won Herzog the 1982 Outstanding Director Prize at Cannes. The text of Conquest of the Useless emerged as if out of an Amazonian fever dream: the crew's camp in the heart of the jungle was attacked and burned to the ground; the production clashed with a border war; two planes crashed during filming; and Herzog had to unravel the logistics of moving a 320-ton steamship over a hill without the use of special effects. More than just a journal or diary of the shooting of Fitzcarraldo, Conquest of the Useless is a work of art unto itself, which charts the inner landscapes born of the delirium of the jungle and offers an extraordinary glimpse into the mind of a genius during the making of one of his greatest achievements.

The book is the diary by Werner Herzog. It was written and takes place between November 23 and December 14, 1974. In the foreword Herzog says that he had a call from a friend in Paris, informing him that his close friend and film historian Lotte Eisner was ill, and was probably going to die. He sets off to Paris from Munich believing that he would save Eisner from death by arriving on foot. The book is the complete diary during his journey, only a few private remarks have been omitted.

Of Walking On Ice

Humor & Entertainment

Tanam Press

An invaluable set of career-length interviews with the German genius hailed by François Truffaut as "the most important film director alive"
Most of what we've heard about Werner Herzog is untrue. The sheer number of false rumors and downright lies disseminated about the man and his films is truly astonishing. Yet Herzog's body of work is one of the most important in postwar European cinema. His international breakthrough came in 1973 with Aguirre, the Wrath of God, in which Klaus Kinski played a crazed Conquistador. For The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Herzog cast in the lead a man who had spent most of his life institutionalized, and two years later he hypnotized his entire cast to make Heart of Glass. He rushed to an explosive volcanic Caribbean island to film La Soufrière, paid homage to F. W. Murnau in a terrifying remake of Nosferatu, and in 1982 dragged a boat over a mountain in the Amazon jungle for Fitzcarraldo. More recently, Herzog has made extraordinary "documentary" films, such as Little Dieter Needs to Fly. His place in cinema history is assured, and Paul Cronin's volume of dialogues provides a forum for Herzog's fascinating views on the things, ideas, and people that have preoccupied him for so many years. This revised edition features new interviews discussing Herzog's films up to From One Second to the Next (2013), as well as additional text from Herzog, his collaborator Herbert Golder, the physicist Lawrence Krauss, and the filmmaker Harmony Korine.

Werner Herzog: A Guide for the Perplexed: Conversations with Paul Cronin

Movies

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

Product Description A National Bestseller!The great filmmaker Werner Herzog, in his first novel, tells the incredible story of Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier who defended a small island in the Philippines for twenty-nine years after the end of World War IIIn 1997, Werner Herzog was in Tokyo to direct an opera. His hosts asked him, Whom would you like to meet? He replied instantly: Hiroo Onoda. Onoda was a former solider famous for having quixotically defended an island in the Philippines for decades after World War II, unaware the fighting was over. Herzog and Onoda developed an instant rapport and would meet many times, talking for hours and together unraveling the story of Onoda’s long war. At the end of 1944, on Lubang Island in the Philippines, with Japanese troops about to withdraw, Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda was given orders by his superior officer: Hold the island until the Imperial army’s return. You are to defend its territory by guerrilla tactics, at all costs. . . . There is only one rule. You are forbidden to die by your own hand. In the event of your capture by the enemy, you are to give them all the misleading information you can. So began Onoda’s long campaign, during which he became fluent in the hidden language of the jungle. Soon weeks turned into months, months into years, and years into decades—until eventually time itself seemed to melt away. All the while Onoda continued to fight his fictitious war, at once surreal and tragic, at first with other soldiers, and then, finally, alone, a character in a novel of his own making. In The Twilight World, Herzog immortalizes and imagines Onoda’s years of absurd yet epic struggle in an inimitable, hypnotic style—part documentary, part poem, and part dream—that will be instantly recognizable to fans of his films. The result is a novel completely unto itself, a sort of modern-day Robinson Crusoe tale: a glowing, dancing meditation on the purpose and meaning we give our lives. Review “[A] potent, vaporous fever dream; a meditation on truth, lie, illusion and time that floats like an aromatic haze through Herzog’s vivid reconstruction of Onoda’s war . . . Hofmann’s resonant translation conveys the portentous shimmer of Herzog’s voice.” —New York Times Book Review “[A] wondrous first novel . . .” —The New Yorker“[A] spare and lyric tale . . . In his feverish search for ecstatic truths, Herzog has given readers a portal into human folly, self-discipline and domination—surely his life’s work.” —Washington Post“As profound and thought-provoking as the best of his films, Herzog’s The Twilight World delivers as a superb yet painful parable on the fleeting nature of purpose.” —San Francisco Chronicle “From the true story of a WWII soldier who kept up the fight until 1974, legendary filmmaker Herzog distills a brooding, poetic novella . . . Herzog, ever in pursuit of deeper truths, sees in Onoda's predicament an all-too-ordinary tendency to subordinate facts to master narratives.” —Booklist“There’s an element of the romantic as well in Herzog’s jungle survival tales, where the universe boils down to individuals wrestling with nature and being shaped by it in turn. . . . This is why Herzog loves the jungle, for its capacity to show us at our most abject and our most inspiring.” —The New Republic“Filmmaker Herzog draws on the true story of a Japanese officer who patrolled the Filipino jungle for nearly three decades after WWII, unaware the war had ended, in his fascinating debut novel . . . Onoda shares with the director’s filmic protagonists a fierce will and singular perspective. This will whet the reader’s appetite for a film version.” —Publishers Weekly“[A] stunning tale of obsession unto madness by a master of that narrow but fruitful genre . . . Recall director Herzog’s film Aguirre, The Wrath of God, (1972) and you’ll have a key to this story, whose details he calls ‘factually correct’—mostly. In Tokyo to stage a production of Chushingura in 1997, Herzog decli

The Twilight World: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

Penguin Press

The great filmmaker Werner Herzog, in his first novel, tells the incredible story of Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier who defended a small island in the Philippines for twenty-nine years after the end of World War II. In 1997, Werner Herzog was in Tokyo to direct an opera. His hosts asked him, Whom would you like to meet? He replied instantly: Hiroo Onoda. Onoda was a former soldier famous for having quixotically defended an island in the Philippines for decades after World War II, unaware the fighting was over. Herzog and Onoda developed an instant rapport and met many times, talking and unraveling the story of Onoda's long war. At the end of 1944 on Lubang Island, with Japanese troops about to withdraw, Onoda stayed behind under orders from his superior officer. For years, Onoda continued to fight his fictitious war--at first with other soldiers, and then, finally, alone, a character in a novel of his own making. In The Twilight World, Herzog immortalizes and imagines Onoda's years of absurd yet epic struggle in an inimitable, hypnotic style--part documentary, part poem, and part dream--that will be instantly recognizable to fans of his films. The result is a novel completely unto itself: a glowing, dancing meditation on the purpose and meaning we give our lives.

Penguin??Books

Legendary filmmaker and celebrated author Werner Herzog tells in his inimitable voice the story of his epic artistic career in a long-awaited memoir that is as inventive and daring as anything he has done before Werner&nbsp;Herzog&nbsp;was born in September 1942 in Munich, Germany, at a turning point in the&nbsp;Second&nbsp;World&nbsp;War. Soon Germany would be defeated and a new world would have to be made out the rubble and horrors of the war. Fleeing the Allied bombing raids,&nbsp;Herzog's mother took him and his older brother&nbsp;to&nbsp;a remote, rustic part of Bavaria where he would spend much of his childhood&nbsp;hungry, without running water, in deep poverty. It was there,&nbsp;as the new postwar order was emerging, that one of the most visionary filmmakers of the next seven decades was formed. &nbsp; Until age 11,&nbsp;Herzog&nbsp;did not even know of the existence of cinema. His interest in films began at age 15, but since no one was willing to finance them, he worked the night shift as a welder in a steel factory. He started to travel on foot. He made his first phone call at age 17, and his first film in 1961 at age 19. The wildly&nbsp;productive working life that followed--spanning the seven continents and encompassing both documentary and fiction--was an adventure as grand and&nbsp;otherworldly as any depicted in his many classic films. Every Man for Himself and God Against All is at once a personal record of one of the great and self-invented lives of our time, and a singular literary masterpiece that will enthrall fans old and new alike. In a hypnotic swirl of memory,&nbsp;Herzog&nbsp;untangles and relives his most important experiences and inspirations, telling his story for the first and only time.

Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir

Newly repackaged as a Penguin paperback, Conquest of the Useless, the legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog's diary of the making of Fitzcarraldo, one of his most revered&nbsp;and classic films In 1982, the visionary directory Werner Herzog released Fitzcarraldo, a lavish film about a would-be rubber baron who pulls a 320-ton steamship over a mountain. It was hailed instantly by critics around the globe as a masterpiece and won Herzog the 1982 Outstanding Director Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, affirming Herzog's reputation as one of the most revered and enigmatic filmmakers of his time. Conquest of the&nbsp;Useless is the diary Herzog kept during the making of Fitzcarraldo, compiled from June 1979 to November 1981. Emerging as if out of an Amazonian fever dream during filming, Herzog's writings are an extraordinary documentary unto themselves. Strange and otherworldly events are recounted by the filmmaker. The crew's camp in the heart of the jungle is attacked and burned to the ground; the production of the film clashes with a border war; and, of course, Herzog unravels the impossible logistics of moving a 320-ton steamship over a hill without the use of special effects. In his preface, Herzog warns that the diary entries collected in Conquest of the Useless do not represent "reports on the actual filming" but rather "inner landscapes, born of the delirium of the jungle."&nbsp;Thus begins an extraordinary glimpse into the mind of a genius during the making of one of his greatest achievements.

Conquest of the Useless: Fever Dreams in the Jungle

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

In Werner Herzog’s highly anticipated new film, Nicolas Cage plays a man as devoted to police work as he is to scoring drugs. A high-functioning addict who is a deeply intuitive, fearless detective, he ranges over the beautiful ruins of New Orleans with authority and abandon. Adding to his tumultuous life is the prostitute he loves (played by Eva Mendes). Together they descend into their own world marked by desire, compulsion, and conscience. The result is a singular masterpiece of filmmaking: equally sad and manicly humorous. In this book devoted to the film, renowned photographer Lena Herzog’s documentation of the film captures the uniqueness of the director’s vision, the set, and the actors. The volume also includes the script, written by Billy Finkelstein, reworked by Herzog.

The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call: New Orleans

Universe

In late November 1974, filmmaker Werner Herzog received a phone call from Paris delivering some terrible news. German film historian, mentor, and close friend Lotte Eisner was seriously ill and dying. Herzog was determined to prevent this and believed that an act of walking would keep Eisner from death. He took a jacket, a compass, and a duffel bag of the barest essentials, and wearing a pair of new boots, set off on a three-week pilgrimage from Munich to Paris through the deep chill and snowstorms of winter.
Of Walking in Ice is Herzog’s beautifully written, much-admired, yet often-overlooked diary account of that journey. Herzog documents everything he saw and felt on his quest to his friend’s bedside, from poetic descriptions of the frozen landscape and harsh weather conditions to the necessity of finding shelter in vacant or abandoned houses and the intense loneliness of his solo excursion. Includes, for the first time, Werner Herzog’s 1982 “Tribute to Lotte Eisner” upon her receipt of the Helmut Käutner Prize

Of Walking in Ice: Munich-Paris, 23 November–14 December 1974

Univ. of Minnesota Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Herzog, Werner. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Herzog, Werner

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Herzog, Werner. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo

Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo

Of Walking On Ice

Werner Herzog: A Guide for the Perplexed: Conversations with Paul Cronin

The Twilight World: A Novel

The Twilight World: A Novel

Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir

Conquest of the Useless: Fever Dreams in the Jungle

The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call: New Orleans

Of Walking in Ice: Munich-Paris, 23 November–14 December 1974