{"id":617335,"date":"2026-09-07T16:10:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T16:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/617335\/"},"modified":"2026-09-07T16:10:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T16:10:11","slug":"werner-herzog-interview-on-david-lynch-ai-and-bucking-fastard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/617335\/","title":{"rendered":"Werner Herzog Interview on David Lynch, AI, and ‘Bucking Fastard’"},"content":{"rendered":"

You\u2019ve never seen a movie quite like \u201cBucking Fastard<\/a>,\u201d whose director, Werner Herzog<\/a>, turned 84 while promoting it at the Venice Film Festival<\/a>. Part bawdy sex comedy, part picaresque adventure, and fully an eccentric existential odyssey, the film<\/a> stars real-life sisters Kate and Rooney Mara<\/a> as nearly identical twins who speak, move, and desire in lockstep unison. Think of Joan (Kate) and Jean (Rooney) Holbrooke as a two-headed person with the same shared dreams. And the same shared love interest, a rakish charmer played by Orlando Bloom.<\/p>\n

Herzog\u2019s narrative features, whether \u201cBad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans,\u201d \u201cFitzcarraldo,\u201d or \u201cHeart of Glass\u201d (where all the actors performed under hypnosis), always veer toward the unexpected. Predictably, not all audiences at Venice<\/a> vibed with his latest. It\u2019s an acquired taste, for sure, but one that cast a strange early spell on the festival as it seeks North American distribution. Herzog shot the film in February 2025 in both Ireland and inside a famed tourist-attraction cave in Slovenia, complete with a jaunty train car ride. \u201cBucking Fastard<\/a>\u201d also toured Telluride, and will next play Toronto and New York.<\/p>\n

\"Look<\/a> \"You<\/a> <\/p>\n

The film was originally invited to play out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival, an offering Herzog rejected because he wanted to give his stellar actresses a chance to win prizes. But there\u2019s no bad blood with the festival, and now \u201cBucking Fastard\u201d can compete for the panel of Venice jurors led by Maggie Gyllenhaal.<\/p>\n

The day after the film\u2019s world premiere, IndieWire sat down with Herzog \u2014 who fills any room with a warm gravitas \u2014 to talk about \u201cBucking Fastard,\u201d why he has no plans to stop making movies, and his relationship with David Lynch, to whom this film is dedicated.<\/p>\n

IndieWire: How are you feeling about the reactions to the movie? I wasn\u2019t in the premiere. You were all a bit misty-eyed during the standing ovation.<\/p>\n

Werner Herzog: It\u2019s obvious that the audience loves [the Maras]. And they love Orlando Bloom and Domhnall Gleeson. Not a single one that is mediocre. So they\u2019re all very, very good. They\u2019re at their best. And somehow as a director, I\u2019ve always managed to get the very, very best out of my actors. They\u2019re always at their best. Klaus Kinski, Nicolas Cage. He says that was his best performance in his life [in \u201cBad Lieutenant\u201d]. And way after the film that got him the Academy Award. So in a way, I always try to get the very, very best out of everyone, but it\u2019s more than that. I try to get the best out of my audience.<\/p>\n

You had rehearsals on this film for the first time. But you stopped a few days in when you realized how prepared Rooney and Kate already were. How did they achieve this synchronicity?<\/p>\n

Normally it would be done through synchronizing your breathing. Like in stages of ancient Greek tragedies, you have the chorus that speaks in unison, and they normally assemble, stand in a circle, and breathe together, even touching their solar plexus. When they are synced up, they step out, and they speak in sync. It didn\u2019t work with Kate and Rooney, but what worked \u2014 they discovered it by singing, I think, their earliest childhood song, and they would sing it, and then they would hum it, and then they\u2019re almost inaudibly and they were in sync.<\/p>\n

Directors normally do not do the slate board, but I always want to be the last one between my actors, to be the closest one and on the other side, the camera and lights and sound and whatever. And I heard them humming, and then it fades away, and I still knew a few more moments, and they would be in sync. And I sensed it because I was that close. I could touch them, so close. And when I knew now they\u2019re in the rhythm, I would do the slate and move out.<\/p>\n

What they achieve is remarkable.<\/p>\n

They are really in the flow, and they\u2019re so like one soul in two bodies. And they\u2019re ingenious. I mean, what you see, the audience immediately knows it. They instantly know it. What you see, you have never seen on a screen before. It\u2019s unprecedented. By the way, this is the reason I wanted to have a film in Venice. People say, \u201cCannes Film Festival overlooked it.\u201d It\u2019s not true. Cannes didn\u2019t overlook it. They invited it into the official selection, but it turned out it would not be in competition. And I said, \u201cI don\u2019t need a competition. I\u2019ve been in many; I don\u2019t need an award. I\u2019ve got awards, but the two sisters should be in a position where they can compete for best actress.\u201d<\/p>\n

Did Thierry Fr\u00e9maux give an explanation as to why it was out of competition?<\/p>\n

No, no. You see, don\u2019t go after the festival directors. It\u2019s a most joyless, thankless job on God\u2019s wide earth. They have 3,000 films applying and they take 20. So 4,980 filmmakers are against you and don\u2019t like you. No, no, it\u2019s a difficult, very, very difficult task. I don\u2019t mind at all, but I had to gamble. I declined the offer, and I said, \u201cWell, hopefully Venice takes the film in competition.\u201d And when they saw it, they were instantly, instantly taken by it. And so it\u2019s a wonderful place to start to do the splashdown.<\/p>\n

\"DomhnallDomhnall Gleeson, Rooney Mara, Director Werner Herzog, Kate Mara and Orlando Bloom attend the \u2018Bucking Fastard\u2019 Photocall during the 83rd Venice International Film Festival at Palazzo del Casino on September 03, 2026 in Venice, Italy. (Photo by Carlo Paloni\/Getty Images)Carlo Paloni\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

You hadn\u2019t been in competition in Cannes since the 1980s. You\u2019ve shown many of your fiction movies at Venice, like \u201cBad Lieutenant\u201d and \u201cInvincible\u201d with Tim Roth.<\/p>\n

And \u201cMy Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?.\u201d In one year I had two films in competition, which has never happened before in any of the festivals. Let\u2019s put it this way. Cannes has been good to me and Venice has been very good to me. There\u2019s no doubt.<\/p>\n

You received the Venice Golden Lion last year.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve declined it 20 times, and Venice, it would have been embarrassing to decline it. If a festival invites me, tries to lure me with a Lifetime Achievement Award, I duck in the trenches.<\/p>\n

You are 83 at this point and in good health.<\/p>\n

Tomorrow, 85! Oh, no, sorry, 84. Yeah.<\/p>\n

How much longer do you want to keep making movies? How do you want to use the rest of the years creatively?<\/p>\n

Well, while we are speaking here, I\u2019m only a few days away from finishing the next one. I have a film practically finished already. I\u2019m writing at the moment and I\u2019m working on a book by the publishing house, Taschen, photos of all my films. It\u2019s going to be big, and we have very, very good photos from 80 or so films. And so I try to finish one after the other. But it\u2019s such a joy for me, what I do. And of course I know there are certain limitations, [like on] \u201cGhost Elephants,\u201d which played here last year. I was in Namibia filming deep in the bush, and then part of the film takes place in Angola in the highlands.<\/p>\n

And it meant the last 50 miles walking. And then each day, 10 hours nonstop running after elusive elephants. And I said, \u201cI\u2019m too old for this. I can hasten after an elephant maybe for an hour.\u201d And Ariel [Isacovitch], who is the producer, but he\u2019s my left and right hand, he went there with a camera team, and he had a very clear, precise bucket list. But I said to him, \u201cIf you discover something that fascinates you,\u201d and he filmed a few things that were not on the list, and of course we were always in very close contact. So I was the director at home in my garden speaking to him in Angola.<\/p>\n

With the movie being dedicated to David Lynch, you wanted to show him the film, and you weren\u2019t able to before he died.<\/p>\n

There was a deep respect for each other\u2019s work, although we are so different in what our output is. I had the feeling, \u201cOh, he should be the first one to watch the film with me.\u201d And I think one shouldn\u2019t read too much into it. In the last years, contact with David was difficult because he had been moving completely into transcendental meditation. And, for example, speaking to him across a table, he would have a photo placed facing him on the table. I saw the backside of the photo, and the photo was of a guru, and he would have the picture of the guru, and beyond the picture of the guru, there was me. He wanted to talk about world peace and meditation, and I\u2019m not into that. So it shifted.<\/p>\n

\"Bucking\u2018Bucking Fastard\u2019Courtesy Venice Film Festival<\/p>\n

Did it feel like a barrier?<\/p>\n

Yes. He didn\u2019t want to have a barrier, nor did I, but he was so much into it that he had to have a picture that he could face. And beyond that was his visitor, anyone. Yeah.<\/p>\n

I think there probably isn\u2019t too much to read into that dedication, but of course people will, right? And then they\u2019ll try and think, \u201cOh, there\u2019s an homage here.\u201d But I don\u2019t see that.<\/p>\n

Well, David, quite often he said, \u201cWe should do something together.\u201d And I told him the story of \u201cMy Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done,\u201d and he said, \u201cAh, can I produce that?\u201d But it was with some distance. He was not daily involved or anything like that. So no, it\u2019s just if you try to read too much into it, you overload it.<\/p>\n

A couple years ago at IDFA, I saw this movie \u201cAbout a Hero,\u201d which is this partly AI-generated hybrid documentary that tries to recreate the atmosphere of your films. <\/p>\n

The intention of this young filmmaker was never to remake any [of my films], but making something in the spirit. And I immediately said, \u201cYou will fail. It is such a stupid idea. It\u2019s phenomenally, abysmally stupid. I will not take part in it.\u201d He wanted me to explain things and have my voice in it. I said, \u201cYou are alone. There\u2019s such a thing as free speech, which I respect. So go ahead and fail.\u201d And it is a failure, period.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s so standardized that AI can step in because there\u2019s not real storytelling. It\u2019s mimicry of something that has happened before. And I welcome AI to replace all the idiots who are into nothing but repeating, repeating, repeating until it\u2019s ad nauseam. When it\u2019s ad nauseam, please, please, please let AI step in and do the job.<\/p>\n

This interview has been edited for brevity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You\u2019ve never seen a movie quite like \u201cBucking Fastard,\u201d whose director, Werner Herzog, turned 84 while promoting it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":617336,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[261039,321,93,1043,61,1694,60,35168,2787],"class_list":["post-617335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-bucking-fastard","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-ie","tag-interviews","tag-ireland","tag-venice","tag-werner-herzog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=617335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/617336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=617335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=617335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=617335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}