Originally published at: Werner Herzog watches a skateboarding video for the first time | Boing Boing
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As someone with a passing interest in skateboarding videos, I find it incredible that a filmmaker of that age would never have come across any video of a person riding a skateboard.
It’s not as if I seek out skateboarding videos specifically, but it is a popular activity that is attractive to being filmed, much like motorcross or skydiving videos.
That is a lot of videos to not have seen in a considerable amount of time.
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I love The German.
It’s a toss-up between him, Freeman, Sagan, and Sir Attenborough when the contest comes to best nature documentary narrating
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Herzog is always a positive, and upbeat commentator and narrator, “Nature here is vile,” he said. “I see fornication and asphyxiation and choking and fighting for survival and growing and just rotting away . . . the trees here are in misery, the birds are in misery. I don’t think they sing, they just screech in pain.” 
He just says what we are all thinking!
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you made me realize that i’ve never seen a motorcross video, haha.
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One of my favorites is from his recent documentary about meteor strikes.
"We had to go where the most colossal fireball came down. It was at a place with an unpronounceable name, at the coast of the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. Nothing out here is reminiscent of it. Only leaden boredom weighs upon everything.
Chicxulub is a beach resort so godforsaken you want to cry. The dogs here, like all dogs on this planet, are just too dim-witted to understand that three-quarters of all species were extinguished by the event that took place right here.
The dinosaurs have only survived in a local museum. Their eyes were made by humans. They recognize nothing."
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Werner Herzog watching me and saying, “So many failures. It’s astonishing.” would be the absolute highlight of my entire life.
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As someone who has been making skateboard films for 20 years or so, Herzog’s “naive” observations are spot on. He’s truly a philosopher and an astute film maker. His amusement of the repetitive failures and the final success reminds me that’s exactly what sports like this speak to. The indomitable human spirit to keep trying over and over despite multiple failures. “Knowing” that at some point you’ll make it, at some point it will happen and somehow every time after that it’s so much easier.
As a skater it would seem you have to earn the respect of the asphalt or the plywood and the streets in general. Same thing for surfers and waves and snowboarders and mountains. It’s not just adrenaline. I think it’s more about human spirit. At least that’s what I like to think and portray. There’s definitely something spiritual in the action.
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An early lesson for rock climbers and sailors, too. Respect the mountain and the ocean. They will reach out and kill you, given half a chance.
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My favorite:
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What’s great at 2:59 in the “I was doing Russian Roulette with slave traders” is that he seems to be holding a semi-automatic.
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It’s Werner Herzog… the same guy who didn’t realize John Waters was gay for like years… 
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Loved his reasoning for a skateboarding soundtrack. Always an interesting person to listen to.
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Little Deiter Needs to Ollie
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The things I love about Werner Herzog:
- After decades as an art house staple, he has reached mass culture recognition
- He is one of the most self-aware people in filmmaking. He appears genuinely bemused by his public image
- He has a near pathological inability to turn down a paycheck when offered. He’s game for pretty much any kind of appearance. .
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well, i’d hate to break my streak, so thanks but i think i’ll skip it. 
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This is something that also endears me to Christopher Walken. He’ll do it, but it’s going to become his own thing.
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This is the best thing I have ever seen. It’s just great.
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I’m amazed that (a) they manage to navigate that swirling maze of a track, and (b) they don’t constantly land on each other.
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