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A bet with a fellow filmmaker
would result in German film director Werner Herzog leaving his boots in
Edmonton, and a non-profit film and video society reaping the benefits.
Herzog was best known for his ongoing antagonistic working relationship
with the German-Polish actor Klaus Kinski. Through the films, Aguirre: The
Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo and Nosferatu, Herzog's leading man often
defined Herzog himself.
In a convoluted fashion, American documentary filmmaker Les Blank is the
connection between fellow documentarist Errol Morris, Herzog, Kinski … and
Edmonton.
In 1982, Blank filmed Burden of Dreams, the documentary on the making of
Fitzcarraldo, for which Blank is perhaps best known. This would be Blank's
second film on Herzog; in 1979, he directed a 22-minute short entitled
Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, a film whose genesis relied on the loss of a
bet.
Herzog, who in the '70s was Morris's film professor at the University of
California at Berkley, had told his student that if his proposed
feature-length film on pet cemeteries were ever made, he would eat his
shoe. Blank's documentary records exactly that event, as Morris's film,
Gates of Heaven, is completed in 1978.
Sautéed, and cooked in broth, spices and garlic, the dish of choice
work-boot shoe leather was served to Herzog on a stage in a packed
theatre.
In March 1996, Herzog visited Edmonton the guest director of the National
Screen Institute's Local Heroes International Screen Festival.
In an apparent salute to the Blank documentary, Herzog donated a pair of
boots to the Film and Video Arts Alberta Society of Alberta (FAVA) to be
used in a fundraiser. One boot was raffled, and the other was incorporated
into a trophy FAVA uses as an annual award. This fundraiser is described
in the evening edition of Alberta Today, broadcast May 28, 1996.
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News and Current Events #42 Other stories from this broadcast of Alberta Today:
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