Werner Herzog on the Difficult Discipline of Distancing

Hosted by Paul Holdengräber, The Quarantine Tapes chronicles shifting paradigms in the age of social distancing. Each day, Paul calls a guest for a brief discussion about how they are experiencing the global pandemic.

On today’s episode Paul and Werner Herzog discuss reading and cultural memory for a new generation, the fragility of our existence on this planet, and ultimately the importance of sharing of warmth, stories, and music.

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Werner Herzog, born in Munich in 1942, grew up as a child in a remote valley in the Bavarian mountains. Until age 11, he did not even know of the existence of cinema. He started to develop film projects from age 15 on, and since no one was willing to finance them, he worked the night shift as a welder in a steel factory during the last years of high school. He also started to travel on foot. He made his first phone call at age 17 and his first film at 19. He dropped out of college where he studied history and literature. Since then he has written, produced, and directed some 70 films, has published books of prose, staged about a dozen operas, acted in films, and founded his own Rogue Film School.