Burner Herzog
SPB: What is your favorite Werner Herzog film?
Burner Herzog: I have two: Aguirre, Wrath of God and Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.
Aguirre is the classic first film Herzog did with lead actor Klaus Kinski, a man so odious that his behavior was even worse than the decadent exaggerations he published in his own autobiography. Crazy-eyed and armed with an explosive temper, he was pretty much born to play the titular character, a psychopathic mutineer on a colonial expedition for El Dorado, the fabled "city of gold" that drove many an explorer across the Atlantic. Problem is, once Aguirre's coup has succeeded, it only drives him, and the remaining crew, deeper into madness. The human condition, much? It's an evil Don Quixote of sorts. Just the other week, on our tour, I thought to myself, "Maybe I'm not so different from Aguirre..."
Bad Lieutenant is the best movie of the aughts, for my money, as well as one of the few films of my lifetime that lived up to the promise of its trailer. This time, Herzog tapped Nic Cage to play lead, letting him run riot all over a somewhat ridiculous anti-morality tale of a police detective who, following a debilitating injury, loses his compass and sinks into addiction. All manner of hilarity and depravity ensues before the film climaxes with not one but three deus ex machina's -- in a single scene. It's almost nihilistic in its contempt for plot or any particular values, but there's still a real love you can feel on the director's part for its characters, and the weird world they inhabit, not far beneath the surface. A film I watch, and reference, again and again. (I'm even considering naming our next album Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.)
