“Australian-born, London-based Ron Mueck is as enigmatic as his sculptures. From a distended baby, stuck to the wall crucifixion-style and bearing an unnervingly intelligent demeanor far beyond his age, to a smaller-than-life, sick old woman, who curls up in a fetal pose under a blanket, Mueck”s works command an uncanny ability to amaze with obsessive surface detail and intense psychic discharge.” From The Progress Big Man A Conversation with Ron Mueck, Sculpture Magazine, July/August 2003. Check out the whole article and interview with Ron Mueck by Sarah Tanguy here.
Here, as an addition to this post written several days ago, are some clips posted on YouTube by consumerguide from Les Blank’s classic 1980 short, “Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe.” The film documents Herzog fulfilling a bet he made with Errol Morris: if Morris would finish his brilliant first feature “Gates of Heaven,” Herzog said he would eat his shoe. He uses this public stunt to say some very serious things about American pop culture, filmmakers becoming “clowns” to promote their work, and the culture of images (or lack thereof).
In response to “What are your views on film schools?”:
It has always seemed to me that almost everything you are forced to learn at school you forget in a couple of years. But the things you set out to learn yourself in order to quench a thirst, these are things you never forget. [“¦]
Actually, for some time now I have given some thought to opening a film school. But if I did start one up you would only be allowed to fill out an application form after you had travelled alone on foot, let”s say from Madrid to Kiev, a distance of about 5,000 kilometres. While walking, write. Write about your experiences and give me your notebooks. I would be able to tell who had really walked the distance and who had not. While you are walking you would learn much more about filmmaking than if you were in a classroom”¦ academia is the very death of cinema. It is the very opposite of passion.
On the mysterious “something else” (that is not happiness) he seems to be after:
One aspect of who I am that might be important is the communication defect I have had since a young child. I am someone who takes everything very literally. I simply do not understand irony”¦ Let me explain by telling a story. Continue reading “Musings on Werner Herzog”
(written by Werner Herzog with Editor Paul Cronin) and shares some thoughts on the book:
