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Iguana Time
“The iguanas are the best thing in the movie. And I must have five minutes of iguana time! And if I don’t have my full five minutes of iguana time, I will never make another movie again!”
—Werner Herzog
The Jungle is Obscene
From the June issue of Harper’s: excerpts from Werner Herzog’s journals during the filming of Fitzcarraldo. Each entry is unbelievable, so it isn’t even worth quoting anything in particular, as it wouldn’t do it justice (thanks to Jenny for finding this).
Oh, and here’s more great jungle obscenity from Les Blank’s Burden of Dreams:
Update: A Harper’s representative has informed me that I must remove the PDF forthwith. So I’ve decided to reproduce the text of my favorite entry instead:
A still day, sultry. Inactivity piled on inactivity, clouds staring down from the sky, pregnant with rain; fever reigns; insects taking on massive proportions. The jungle is obscene. Everything about it is sinful, for which reason the sin does not stand out as sin. The voices in the jungle are silent; nothing is stirring, and a languid, immobile anger hovers over everything. The laundry on the line refuses to dry. As part of a conspiracy, flies suddenly descend on the table, their stomachs taut and iridescent. Our little monkey was wailing in his cage, and when I approached, he looked and wailed right through me to some distant spot outside where his little heart hoped to find an echo. I let him out, but he went back into his cage, and now he is continuing to wail there.