Werner Herzog Interview, Rescue Dawn

Movies Online sat down with legendary director Werner Herzog to talk about his new film, "Rescue Dawn,” which he also wrote. A blistering action-adventure and a stark epic of survival, "Rescue Dawn” reveals how Dieter Dengler (Christian Bale), the only American to ever break out of a POW camp in the impenetrable Laotian jungle, relied on the most primal qualities of evasion, endurance, tenacity and courage to find his way home.

Ten years ago, while Dengler was still alive (he died in 2001 of Lou Gehrig’s disease), Herzog made the acclaimed documentary, "Little Dieter Needs to Fly,” about Dengler but wanted to bring his still largely unknown story of escape to the screen in a purely visceral action-adventure. Shot on location in the stunning jungles of Thailand, "Rescue Dawn” features a behind-the-scenes team that includes director of photography Peter Zeitlinger ("Grizzly Man”), editor Joe Bini ("Grizzly Man”), composer Klaus Badelt ("POTC: The Curse of the Black Pearl”), and costumer designer Annie Dunn ("Incident at Loch Ness”).

Dieter Dengler (Bale) dreamed of flying since his childhood in wartime Germany, which is why he volunteered to become a Navy pilot after his family moved to America. The only place he ever wanted to be was in the sky, but now, on his very first top-secret mission over Laos, his plane is shot down. Trapped in a dense jungle far from the U.S. control, Dengler is soon captured by notoriously dangerous Pathet Lao soldiers. Though he quickly realizes he is in the most terrifying and vulnerable of circumstances, he refuses to give an inch. The film also starts Steve Zahn and Jeremy Davies.

Werner Herzog is a phenomenal director and we really appreciated his time. Here’s what he had to tell us about his new film, "Rescue Dawn”:

MoviesOnline: After doing the documentary, why did you feel you also needed to tell the story dramatically in this format?

WERNER HERZOG: I have to contradict right away because it was always clear there would be a feature film. And since it took some time to get the money together and organize everything, we decided to do a documentary, but in fact it should have been the other way around. In my feeling and the way I see it, Rescue Dawn is a big film that always needed to be told on a big screen with a character much larger than life.

MoviesOnline: What was it about Christian Bale? Did you see him in something? Does he look like Dieter?

MoviesOnline: What captivated you about this particular story? Obviously there’ve been numerous prisoners of war and people who have undergone this type of crisis. What was it about this particular story that drew you to it in the first place?

WERNER HERZOG: You see I’m a storyteller. What struck me immediately when I stumble into a big story or a big story stumbles into me, I can tell right away this is big and I mean really big and the character is so large and that’s something for the big screen. I can make the distinction very clearly. Of course, his story was unique and within the context of the Vietnam War. Actually it’s not a war movie but the test and trial of men. The war doesn’t really affect them, but he was the only American POW in the Vietnam War who managed to escape and that’s a real remarkable feat. What I also find remarkable about him is his loyalty to America which made him able to fulfill his dream to fly. [He] came with a big dream. America gave him the possibility and he stayed loyal. For example, he was one of the very, very few POWs who did not sign this kind of propaganda letter that the North Vietnamese and Laotians would force out, wrestle out of their prisoners by torturing them. I think even Senator McCain signed this kind of letter. Dieter Dengler did not.

MoviesOnline: But it was also presented to him before he had gone through some severe torture. Did they come back to him several months later and try to force him to sign something?

WERNER HERZOG: In his real story, and it was partially filmed, there was real torture, very nasty torture. I never felt comfortable with number one filming it and keeping it in the film because I always when I make a film see it like a spectator. As a spectator, I do not want and do not like to see physical violence against the defenseless. I do not want to see the rape of a woman. I do not want to see torture of a man in handcuffs. A couple of these scenes were filmed because they happened to be in the screenplay. When you read it on paper, it looks different than when you really do it in physical life and you do it for the camera. Most of these scenes are deleted. I always had a feeling they should be deleted and I had a big confrontation with a producer one of these days and I predicted they would be out and they are out now. I’m very confident with the way it is.

MoviesOnline: Which was easier: making the movie or making the documentary? Or did making the documentary make it easier for you to create the movie?

WERNER HERZOG: You’re asking a very profound question. Probably making the documentary first as it happened to be, but it’s not because of making that film but through the film knowing Dieter Dengler so closely and traveling with him back to the jungle in Southeast Asia, in seeing him and hanging out with him, that made it easier. It didn’t need a documentary to make, but in my opinion, both films were fairly easy to make. I’ve made much more complicated, much more difficult films.

MoviesOnline: From a technical standpoint, were they difficult?

WERNER HERZOG: In all respects. From a technical point of view, yes, of course we were shooting for the big screen and we actually shot Super 35mm celluloid, whereas the documentary was shot in Super 16 which does not hint to a very, very big theatrical release.

MoviesOnline: A lot of the filmmakers have a very signature style. With you going between documentaries and narrative films, what would you say is the Werner Herzog style?

WERNER HERZOG: I don’t know because I don’t care about style. It comes in as a natural concomitant of my work but you probably recognize a film of mine if you just switch on the TV at late night and you see two minutes of a film, you could tell this must have been him. You can tell somehow. How I do it, I don’t know. But you should also be careful about speaking too clearly as a distinguishing mark between documentaries and feature films. My documentaries are partly staged, partly scripted. They have a lot of fantasy in it. They are not like cinema verite which I call the accountant’s truth, all about facts. I’m not so much interested in facts. I’m interested in something deeper, some illumination for the audience. My feature films are not that far away from quote unquote "documentaries” and the other way around. I keep saying to make my point, I keep saying Fitzcarraldo, a feature film where I’m pulling a huge ship over a mountain in the jungle is my best documentary even though every single scene was scripted and staged and acted.

MoviesOnline: What happened to the DVD revolution? A couple years ago it seemed like every documentary and indie film was going to be shot on HD or in 24P or on DV in general, but lately no one talks about it. Why is that do you think?

MoviesOnline: What were some of the biggest challenges you faced making this film?

WERNER HERZOG: Well doing a film like this was obviously full of a lot of challenges including for example a great amount of physicality, plowing into the jungle where nobody would ever manage to plow into vines and thorns and underbrush and the camera following right into it. So sure, a real challenge, and of course a challenge to really get an audience very, very close and intimate with very complex characters. The film is not complicated. It’s told straight forward and it’s really mainstream. It’s very accessible and yet it doesn’t have comic strip characters of one dimension.

MoviesOnline: Did you go on a diet to be simpatico with your actors?

WERNER HERZOG: [Laughs] They must have squealed. Yes, I did because I would always offer to. I would not let them do anything that I would not be willing to do myself. So eating maggots, I was ready to do that for Christian before he would do it to show him that it was not a hazard. In this case, he said, ‘No, c’mon, forget about it. Let’s get over with it and turn on the cameras.’ When Christian lost weight, I said to him, ‘Christian, out of solidarity I’m losing half the amount of pounds that you are losing’ and I actually did. I’m back (meaning he’s gained back the weight). I should do that more often.

MoviesOnline: Did you use his methods?

WERNER HERZOG: I don’t even know what his method was, but of course, yes, there was no… He did it under good supervision I’m sure and I know that, but there is no real miracle diet. It’s discipline. People asked him all the time ‘how do you do it?’ or they asked me ‘how do you do it?’ The simple answer is ‘eat much, much less that you would normally eat.’ That’s the answer to it.

MoviesOnline: He seemed generally pretty fearless not just as far as losing weight and so forth. Were there ever times when maybe you had to pull him back a little bit because he would do anything, like pick up snakes?

WERNER HERZOG: No, that was scripted. It was scripted and it was always clear. The first thing I ever said to him, ‘Chris, are you ready to catch a snake and bite it in half?’ But I mean a real snake. Without missing a beat, he said, ‘Yes,’ and we were over with this question. No, I was not really afraid. We were very professional in handling situations that might have been risky, and in some of the situations we had a stunt man for example when you see the impact of the fuselage in the rice field. It was massive pieces at great momentum hitting into the rice paddy, huge explosions, and the pilot was not done with any digital trick. The pilot is propelled with the explosion, with this fireball into the scene. That was done by a stuntman. But I’m sure Christian would have done it had we shot it on the last day of shooting. [Laughs]

"Rescue Dawn” opens in theaters on July 4^th.