In Disagreement with Werner Herzog

In the excellent short documentary film entitled Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, the German filmmaker states “I’m quite convinced that cooking is the only alternative to filmmaking. Maybe there’s another alternative, that’s walking on foot.” Perhaps Mr. Herzog is making a little joke, because he’s about eat an old shoe of his. However, it’s never a safe bet to assume Werner is joking.

I’ve always taken him seriously on this matter. I cook a lot, and I often think of this quote as I’m crushing garlic and stewing beans. I try to find the parallels that compelled Werner to make this statement, and in some ways I can see them. However, I recently toiled through a grueling process that reminded me more of filmmaking than anything else. I moved to a new apartment.

The top 10 ways in which moving is the closest alternative to filmmaking:

1. If you try to do it all yourself, you will likely fail.
2. You have to physically move a great number of unreasonably large and heavy objects to multiple locations in a very short period of time.
3. There will be pizza.
4. Halfway through the day you will realize that you’re already more exhausted and over-exerted than you have been since the last time you were on set moved.
5. There will be momentary flashes where you get to make creative decisions: “I’ll put this box over here, and that box in there.”
6. The schedule and the game plan were scrapped after the first hour or two.
7. “It’s going to be a quick move, in and out, just a couple of hours…” echoes in your head as you grind away late into the night.
8. You wonder if they bothered to do any preproduction packing before we started.
9. The biggest mistake made was not hiring an experienced crew of professionals.
10. At the end someone offers you a cold beer, and you’re almost too drained to drink it. Almost.

PS – here’s a link to the film: http://youtu.be/rd6rUo7Htso