The filmmaker famous for bending the truth tries his hand at memoir.
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Theres an area at the top of the hill with picnic benches, he suggests.
This is the only point in our interview when he musters more than a chuckle.
Normally, I dont get caught, he says.
I bamboozle them out of their wits.
Herzogs exploits usually end with either good footage or a good story; this one had both.
Let that madman in with his camera, he recalls officials in Washington saying.
Madmanis an honorific here.
InFitzcarraldo,the character Brian Fitzgerald drags a steamship through the jungle, so Herzog did the same.
Now, at 81, the director is turning his lens on his most astonishing creation: himself.
It is not a biography, Herzog says of his memoir.
Its more in the landscapes, the poetry.
Its also a strange project for him.
He also has a fluid relationship with facts.
I always give some question marks to fuzzier memories, he says.
Theres no one who writes like me.
It is fueled by characters who are a little scary.
When he was a kid, Herzog stabbed his brother during a fight.
Decades later, the brother set Herzogs shirt on fire at a dinner party.
His friendship with Kinski is among many formative experiences Herzog details.
When we meet, I embarrass myself by showing him a photo of us at a 2009 book signing.
(I remember the event, he says.
Of course, I do not remember you.)
Herzog favors privacy, even as a memoirist.
Its an isolated existence that his book only partly illuminates.
Some things are appropriate for films or books, but others are simply life.
Let it stay life, he says.
You forgot the foreword, Herzog says, instructing me to open my dog-eared copy to page two.
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