Werner Herzog is one of the best directors of all-time. Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Nosferatu the Vampyre, Fitzcarraldo, Grizzly Man: he’s done it all! What he hasn’t done, until this point, was teach a class on how to do it all, but never fear (or do)! Werner Herzog is teaching a class at MasterClass, and there’s now a horrifying introductory video to go with it.
The video, which is not embeddable, begins: “It’s like death staring at you when you look at a camera,” and it only gets cheerier from there, when he says “I do not use a storyboard, I think it’s an instrument of the cowards.” He also goes on to talk about how idiotic it is for young filmmakers to record hours and hours of footage. “We are filmmakers,” he says. “Not garbage collectors.” Amen.
The class itself starts soon, but you can pre-enroll now. It only costs $90, and would be the perfect gift for that young aspiring filmmaker in your life who needs to be scared out of pursuing his dreams and steered, instead, toward a respectable career in finance, or as an analyst, or anywhere else where Werner Herzog has not made his presence known.