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Mark Kermode: It’s only a movie | extract

from Latest film news and reviews | guardian.co.uk by Mark Kermode

The great iconoclastic film-maker Werner Herzog is used to shooting films – but being shot at? In this extract from his cinematic memoir Mark Kermode tells the remarkable story of how, in the middle of interviewing the German director on a hilltop in Los Angeles, he gets shot. And refuses to go to hospital. And there’s the day he meets Angelina… and other stories from a life obsessed with films…

We were somewhere near Lookout Mountain, on the outskirts of LA, when Werner Herzog’s trousers exploded. It was a small explosion, admittedly, as if a firecracker had gone off in his pocket. But it was an explosion none the less and in an area where unexpected bangs are to be treated with suspicion, if not outright alarm. Herzog had been shot – that much was clear – and was even now bleeding quietly into his boxer shorts as a tiny plume of smoke drifted photogenically from his pelvic region and into the evening air of LA. We stood there, the bold Bavarian with a bullet in his groin and the befuddled British film critic with ridiculous hair from Barnet, in a silence broken only by Herzog’s morosely German observation: “Someone is shooting at us. We should leave…”

Exactly what happened next is something of a blur – although unflattering video footage of myself hanging off a wire fence attempting to scramble round a precipitous overhang suggests that I did not proceed in an orderly fashion toward the nearest exit while taking care to remove any sharp objects or high heels. I do remember a profound sense of urgency which seemed strangely absent from Herzog’s own response. I put this down to deep cultural differences: Herzog grew up in exciting Germany, whereas I grew up in Barnet, a place so dull that a decapitated chicken once made the front page of the local press. All that was clear now was that Herzog had been shot (in the pantular region) and befuddled panic was top of my list of possible responses.

For Herzog, however, this was business as usual. As the maker of such rugged classics as Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre: Wrath of God, Herzog had long held a reputation as modern cinema’s most fearless foot soldier. Folklore had it that working on Herzog’s movies was all but indistinguishable from being in them, an idea crystallised in Les Blank’s brilliant documentary Burden of Dreams which found Herzog dragging a steamboat over a mountain in pursuit of his cinematic vision. Whereas Lucas or Spielberg would have used models or blue-screen special effects, Herzog simply went upriver into Peru where he introduced a real boat to a real mountain and filmed the resulting grudge match for real. Go Werner!

Time and again, the madness of Herzog’s on-screen adventures has been matched by perilous off-screen antics as the director searches for those rare moments of “ecstatic truth” which have become his signature. “I live my life, I end my life with this project,” he famously said of Fitzcarraldo and he wasn’t kidding. Among the life-threatening on-set adventures that haunted the movie is the story of the extra who got hit in the neck by an arrow which Herzog had to help remove on a kitchen table. Other key Herzog legends involve a crew member hacking his own foot off with a chainsaw after being bitten by a poisonous Peruvian snake. “It was very wise,” Herzog dead-panned. “The man survived.”

Nor has Herzog himself escaped the wrath of the movie gods. In Africa, he was thrown into jail after being suspected of organising a military coup (“It was another man they wanted whose name was Hertz – like the hire car”) and more recently he was handcuffed at an airport after the producers of Rescue Dawn pissed off the famously inflexible Thailand authorities. “Two of the producers are actually in jail right now,” Herzog admitted. “But that’s fine; what was wrestled away from that situation was a film. And the film is good!”

The zenith of Herzog’s life-or-death approach to film-making came when he famously used a gun to prevent leading man and “best fiend” Klaus Kinski from walking out on the odd couple’s greatest movie. No wonder he viewed getting shot at as so utterly unremarkable. In fact, the reason we were up on that wretched promontory by Lookout Mountain in the first place was Herzog’s declared expectation that he would probably get shot at if we stayed at his house.

Upon our arrival chez Herzog, our BBC director David Shulman had asked if we could get an establishing shot of me arriving at the house and meeting Herzog in his front garden. Herzog shook his head gravely and explained: “This is not a good idea. I do not want the outside of my house to be shown on television because I attract crazy people.” By way of example, Herzog recounted being in his office back in Munich when a woman arrived demanding to see him. She declared that the director was in league with 20th Century Fox to destroy her life. “She had a bag with her,” Herzog remembered, “and she began to reach inside it. I lunged across the table and grabbed it and in the bag was a gun. Loaded. It was somewhat upsetting.”

And that’s not all. Other attacks upon Werner’s person included someone “diving through my kitchen window at night, flying through it like Batman, a car jack in their hand”, the context and gravity of which I was frankly unable to comprehend. What was clear was that we probably didn’t want to be advertising Werner’s home address to any wandering whackos. Instead, we decided to take a drive uphill, up toward Lookout Mountain Avenue where the road arches majestically along the edge of the hill and the entire vista of smog-bound LA is laid out below.

When we reached the appointed place, it was impressive indeed, although annoyingly someone had fenced off the particular slice of roadside headland from which the best view of the city was available. Herzog insisted that the fence wasn’t there a couple of days ago and since it didn’t seem to be doing anything we decided to just scoot round it; after all, who was going to object to us walking on a bit of old scrubland? “In Germany,” intoned Werner sombrely as the cameras started to roll, “I’ve somehow left a paved road. Nobody cares about my films.”

It was a bleak assessment of his legacy in Europe, the continent Herzog had fled seeking artistic sanctuary in America. Having spent a lifetime refusing to play the mainstream movie game, it seemed both poignant and bizarre to find him here in the very heart of the beast, lurking on the outskirts of Hollywood.

And then he got shot or, as Herzog later termed it, “unsuccessfully shot”. Looking back on it now, the entire episode seems so bizarre that I’m inclined to think I must have made it all up. So I go to YouTube and put “Herzog/Kermode/Shot” into the search engine and there it is: Werner and me, together in LA, providing target practice for some nut-job with a BB gun (an air rifle). There’s Werner in his dark brown leather jacket, quietly complaining about his outsider status in Germany; there’s the weird cracking noise that was the only aural indication that anything untoward had happened; there’s the brief moment of confusion as Werner lifts his arm, looks down at his waist and wonders: “What was that?”

And then there’s the footage of me hanging off the fence trying to get back up on to the roadside, captured by David on his DV cam after the main camera stopped rolling at the first sound of gunfire. The effect is not dignified, although my hair seems to be standing up well. So not a complete disaster. Back in the car, David kept his video camera rolling as Werner strapped himself in, remarking with a frown: “Los Angeles is not really very friendly toward film-makers.” No kidding! We wanted to call the police and get Werner to a hospital, but he was having none of it. “It is not a significant bullet,” he kept repeating. “In Los Angeles, if you report a shooting they overreact. They send out a Swat team with helicopters and squad cars. We don’t need that.”

It was clear that Herzog wasn’t going to change his mind and so eventually we headed back down the hill toward his house, Werner trudging up the garden path, apparently resigned to the fact that he really did attract crazy people wherever he went.

Inside the house, David and the crew began to assemble the barrage of lights, cameras and dolly tracks that make any television interview look like a small-scale military intervention. Herzog eyed the expanding chaos with mild amusement before easing himself gingerly into his chair, ready and willing to be probed, if not actively penetrated. Herzog was engrossing and his company effervescent.

He spoke eloquently about Grizzly Man, the documentary he had just completed. Yet all the time we were talking, a voice in the back of my head kept saying: “He just got shot. He just got shot! Jeeze Louise, he really did really just get really shot. Really. Surely he’s hurt. What if he’s bleeding? What if he’s hurt and bleeding and I’m just sitting here talking to him about movies and ecstatic truth and all the while his insides are gradually becoming his outsides? What if the bullet’s still inside him? Isn’t that bad? Won’t it go septic? Damn, I can’t think straight. But that’s because I’m talking to a man who just got shot and has now probably got a bullet lodged in his abdomen. Why isn’t he weeping in pain?” Eventually, I could contain it no more. “Look Werner,” I blurted as the crew stopped to change tapes. “I can’t just go on not mentioning this. We have to talk about this whole getting shot thing.”

“It is not signif… ”

“I know it’s ‘not significant’ to you, but that’s because you’re Werner Herzog, the fearless Bavarian film-maker who has faced down death in the jungles of Peru. But I am Mark Kermode, the much less fearless film critic who once had 50p stolen from him by a tough-looking teenager on Whetstone High Street and thought that was pretty Mean Streets so it is not insignificant to me, OK? And about half an hour ago, I was standing next to you in gun-toting Los Angeles when smoke started to emerge from the waistband of your trousers. And to me that seems very significant indeed. And I need to talk about it. If that’s OK with you.”

“It is OK,” Werner shrugged.

“Great. Then when you’re ready, we’ll talk about it. On camera…”

The tapes started rolling again. I took a deep breath and tried to look casual.

“So Werner, during the course of your career you’ve been shot at a couple of times. And in fact when we started this interview somebody took a shot at you and they hit you.”

“Yes, yes,” Herzog beamed, apparently now finding this hilarious. “Yes, it hit me. I heard it. And it hurts a little bit.”

“So have you got a wound?”

“Yes. I think so.”

“Well, show me. Let me see.”

Unperturbed, Werner got up and started to loosen the leather belt around his waist and undo the top of his trousers.

“I’m sorry,” he intoned drolly, with just a hint of sauciness. “I shouldn’t do this on camera…”

The belt was lengthy, the buttons fiddly and the overall effect like some bizarrely clumsy striptease. Come Inside! Bavarian Film-Makers – All Nude! But with a degree of fumbling, Herzog got his trousers open and lifted up his jumper to reveal blood seeping through into his white woollen vest. Another layer was peeled back to reveal a pair of purple paisley boxer shorts now emblazoned with a darkening red patch. The surreal burlesque continued as the elasticated waistband of his boxers came down to reveal a palpable hole in Herzog’s abdomen where, as Billy Bragg once poetically put it, no hole should be.

The wound was about the size of a dime, with an angry red bruise spreading out from its enticing centre. For a second, Herzog teasingly fingered the surrounding flesh, causing the wound to gape briefly like the mouth of a tiny sea anemone. Then after this quick illicit flash the boxers came back up like the feathers of one of Mrs Henderson’s racy dancers and Werner was back – intacto.

“But, Werner, you’re bleeding!” I protested.

“It is not significant,” Werner repeated, retying his belt. “It does not surprise me to be shot at.”

The cameras stopped rolling and David called me over for a discreet word.

“We need to get him to a hospital,” he said quietly.

“I know, I know,” I whispered. “I’ve been thinking exactly the same thing.What if he gets septicaemia?”

Werner was wandering about, admiring the mini-DV cams, utterly at ease.

“Look, Werner,” David and I said in unison, “we need to get you to a hospital.”

“No!” he said firmly. ” No hospital!”

“But why not? You’re hurt. What if you’ve been… damaged?

“Because,” said Werner, “if I go to hospital with what looks like a gunshot wound then they call the police. It is a lot of trouble. And anyway, I am fine.”

David had a brief go at pulling rank with some “BBC health and safety regulations” shtick, but Werner was having none of it, so eventually we gave up. Defeated, we packed the gear into the vehicles, the cameras going into a van while David and I piled into his poky little rental car. We said goodbye to Werner and pulled away from the house, watching him waving from his garden looking exactly as he had looked when we arrived – apart from the bullet hole, obviously.

Back in London, we struggled to figure out how to put the piece together. The cameras had been rolling when the shot was fired and everything was captured – both sound and vision. But could we actually use any of that footage? Since Herzog had been so determined to downplay the entire event, wouldn’t we be exploiting him if we showed the shooting on TV? There also remained the issue of who was to blame for the whole weird affair – had we somehow inadvertently placed him in danger?

We needn’t have worried. A few days after our return to the UK, I started getting emails from people in LA who had heard all about Herzog and the “crazed sniper” – from Herzog himself. One particular contact sent me a digital photo of Herzog on the set of Harmony Korine’s new film (in which he played a small role) proudly displaying the wound to all and sundry. As the weeks went on, the story grew, appearing first in the Hollywood Reporter and then in newspapers in the UK. And as the story grew, two interesting things happened. First, Herzog’s stoical response to the shooting became increasingly matched and even outdone by a growing cowardliness on the part of the BBC crew. The braver he got, the more whimpering we became. By the time Herzog recounted the story to Henry Rollins on American TV a few months later, the Brits had been reduced to the status of quivering wrecks, fleeing at the first sign of danger as the Bavarian legend impassively took incoming fire.

The second result of all this press interest was a perhaps inevitable conspiracy theory which grew up on the internet (where else?) suggesting that the whole thing was a stunt designed to make Werner look brave and orchestrated by David Shulman and myself. Key to this interpretation was the offhand phrase which I had used to describe the effect of the bullet hitting Herzog’s trousers – that it looked as though a firecracker had gone off in his pocket. I had evidently repeated this phrase a few times on my return to England and through the usual process of half-heard Chinese whispers it had transmogrified into a private confession that I had planted a firecracker in Herzog’s trousers to make it look like he’d been shot. I had, in effect, blown up Werner’s boxers.

In the end, I thought I might as well join in the madness and recorded a video blog on the BBC’s Kermode Uncut site in which I confessed to having set up the whole Herzog shooting. If everyone says I did it – maybe I did. Maybe “real life” is only a movie after all…

Since then, whenever my path has crossed with Herzog’s, the story of the Lookout Mountain sniper and the “insignificant bullet” comes up. In 2009, I hosted an onstage Q&A with Herzog to celebrate his BBC4 World Cinema lifetime achievement award. Afterwards, Werner wandered over to say how much he’d enjoyed himself (as is traditional) and to ask if I was going to be back in LA anytime soon. “Yes, I’ve got to go and interview Coppola next month,” I replied, at which he seemed unimpressed. “Incidentally Werner,” I added, “have you still got a scar from where that bullet hit you during our interview?”

“Oh yes,” he replied, although this time he didn’t get his trousers off to show me.

“Does it ever hurt?” I asked

“Only when I laugh,” he replied. “If I laugh really… profoundly, then I suddenly get a searing pain in my abdomen.” And with that we went our separate ways.

On the journey home, I thought about Herzog and that magic bullet and the peculiar way in which it had bonded us, the visionary, secularist, Bavarian film-maker and the dewy-eyed, God-bothering, liberal critic from Barnet. And I thought about the fact that every time Herzog, with all his rigorous anti-sentimentalism, was really enjoying himself he would feel an annoying pain in his side. And, in some poetically appropriate way, that pain would be me.

MY STORY, MY CHOICE

If my life were a TV movie of the week, who would play me? I’d like the answer to be Richard Gere, although physically the front runner is clearly Jesse Birdsall, on whose behalf I have been merrily accepting compliments about my sterling work in “that Spanish soap series” for years. Apparently, Birdsall and I are all but physically indistinguishable to the public at large and I’ve simply given up trying to tell people that I’m not him (I’ve even signed autographs “With best wishes from Jesse” to those who won’t take no for an answer).

Sometimes I wonder whether this is a two-way street and whether Mr Birdsall has ever been thumped for writing a rotten review of Blue Velvet or punched on the arm for dubbing Keira Knightley “Ikea Knightley” in honour of her on-screen teakiness. If so, I apologise. And Jesse, if you’re reading this, everyone really loved you in Eldorado.

But looks aren’t everything (did “Sir” Anthony Hopkins look anything like Nixon? Was Kevin Spacey a dead ringer for Bobby Darin?) and since we’re in the realms of fantasy here I should get to choose whoever I like to play me. And I choose Jason Isaacs.

Hello to Jason Isaacs. In case you don’t know (in which case shame on you), Jason Isaacs is just about my favourite actor in the whole gosh-darned world. He’s done everything from gritty TV dramas to romcoms, war flicks, fantasy films and sci-fi blockbusters. To some of you, he’ll be best known as the fiendish Lucius Malfoy from the Harry Potter films, but to me he is, in the words of David Bowie, chameleon, comedian, Corinthian and caricature.

More important, he is also the person whom I most wanted to be as a child. You see, Jason and I were at school together, in the same class, although we never really spoke or even acknowledged each other’s existence. I thought he was incredibly cool and aloof, being one of the first people at school to own a skateboard and the very first to swear out loud in an English class. If truth be told, I had a sort of schoolboy crush on Jason Isaacs and I’ve never really got over it. And if I get to choose who plays me in the movie of my life, then it’s Jason all the way – he knows the background, he’s done the research and he would look really good with a quiff.

So, the lead role in The Mark Kermode Story (we’ll need to come up with a better title – Easy Writer perhaps or The Man Who Watched The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance) goes to Jason, with John Malkovich co-starring as Werner Herzog (same shaped head and I’m pretty sure Malkovich could do Bavarian). Then, in the other assorted supporting roles, I’ll have Toby Jones as David Lynch (I’ve heard his impression and it’s really quite unusual), Samantha Morton as Linda Blair (because she’s tough and smart and great in pretty much everything) and David Morrissey as Noddy Holder (he’s got stature, plus he had good sideburns in Stoned, plus he was really funny in Basic Instinct 2 for which I retain a foolish fondness).The role of my long-suffering partner in crime Linda Ruth Williams will be filled by four-time Academy Award nominee Julianne Moore who will have to work pretty damned hard to look unimpressed by all the zany scrapes into which Mr Isaacs will get himself.

The Queen will play Dame Helen Mirren, obviously; Charles Hawtrey will play radio’s very own Simon Mayo (his choice, not mine); Ian Hislop will play my great friend Nigel Floyd (not physically similar, but a perfect match in attitude and mannerisms); and Ken Russell will play himself (I’ve already asked him and he’s said yes, as long as it’s only in my head).

Picture the scene. We open on a sepia-toned shot of an awkward young kid with stupid, unruly hair being mocked at school and called “Mr Pineapple Head”, which was just one of the terms used to deride my upstanding hair when I was young. Other insulting sobriquets included “Bogbrush”. The camera follows this scrawny kid home, alone, passing en route a cinema (showing a double bill of The Exorcist and Mary Poppins) and a desolate barber’s shop, the window of which showcases a handsome array of male hairdressing products and pomades.

Cut from here to the kid at home, spooning wax into his hair, with Elvis playing on a plastic Decca Dansette, his mum shouting from downstairs for him to come and have his tea, but his attention entirely gripped by the sleekly handsome quiff which he has skilfully crafted from his previously ragtag spikes.

The camera closes in on said quiff, delving into the hair like David Lynch’s extreme lawn close-up at the beginning of Blue Velvet which foretells great horrors to come. We pull back to reveal that very same hairstyle, utterly unchanged, although now it adorns the head of our adult star (Jason Isaacs to the set, please) whose barnet has remained immovable despite the passage of time and the ageing of his face.

After which we’d get the movie. Then, as the end approaches, we’d come to the crucial scene in which La Jolie (played by herself – as a favour to me) compliments Jason’s hair in the most effusive manner. He laughs nonchalantly but then, unexpectedly, seems to retreat into his own inner world. As the crowd of technicians and cameramen scuttle on the outskirts of the frame, we follow Mr Isaacs back to his dressing room where he sits silently in front of a mirror.

Slowly, the music starts to swell and, as it does so, we see Jason staring at his reflection, the distorted sounds of childhood taunts echoing around his head like the creepy kids’ nursery rhyme (“One, two, Freddy’s coming for you…”) in A Nightmare on Elm Street. As we watch, the reflected image of Jason’s face dissolves into a nostalgic scene of the previously awkward kid striding boldly through the school corridors, ignoring the jeers of his classmates, safe in the knowledge that his hair is immaculate and they are all just idiots. He is right, they are wrong. End of story.

ANGELINA LIKES MY HAIR

Angelina Jolie likes my hair. She said so. In those exact words.

“I do like your hair,” she said, looking at my hair.

“Do you?” I replied, pretending not to care, like Pooh Bear.

“Yeah,” she confirmed, just in case there was any doubt.

“Thank you very much,” I replied. “I like my hair too.”

And then, as an afterthought, Ange added: “I must get Brad to do that…”

“Well of course he already did,” I burbled. “In that film Johnny Suede.” This was true. Before becoming officially the Sexiest Man in the World Ever, Brad Pitt had starred somewhat self-deprecatingly in a little, New York indie-pic directed by Tom DiCillo who famously shot Jim Jarmusch’s black-and-white cult favourite Stranger Than Paradise. The titular character was a somewhat dorky 1950s throwback who worships Ricky Nelson and sports a bouffant pompadour on which you could balance your hat, coat and shoes and still have space for a compact Wurlitzer jukebox. I really loved that movie and indeed the British poster consisted of a picture of Brad’s hair with the quote “Quifftastic! – Mark Kermode, Q magazine” emblazoned across it.

“Oh, right,” said Angelina, nonplussed. “I never saw that movie…”

So that was that. I still wonder from time to time whether, in between bouts of photogenically physical interaction, Ange ever turned to her beloved and said: “Hey, I met this weird, middle-aged, English journalist with really great hair and I think you should try to look more like him…”

Probably not. Still, it’s something to tell the grandchildren. My grandchildren, not hers, obviously.

Top marks: Kermode’s favourite films

The Exorcist (1973) Greatest movie ever made – terrifying, uplifting, transcendent.

Local Hero (1983) ‘Brigadoon meets Apocalypse Now’ in Bill Forsyth’s charmer.

Silent Running (1972) Doug Trumbull’s lonely sci-fi gem – without which we wouldn’t have Wall-E.

It’s A Wonderful Life (1946) Suicidal despair, financial ruin, corruption – how’s that for a feelgood film?

Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) Guillermo del Toro’s Citizen Kane of fantasy cinema.

Mary Poppins (1964) Anyone who doesn’t get Poppins simply has no soul.

A Matter of Life and Death (1946) Powell and Pressburger’s after-life epic blends romance, philosophy and metaphysics.

Brazil (1985) The battle between dreams and reality played out in Gilliam’s masterpiece.

The Devils (1971) Ken Russell’s fiery classic, the director’s cut of which still remains shamefully unreleased.

Blue Velvet (1986) First time I saw it, I walked out. Wrong, wrong, wrong…!