Live Like Werner Herzog
Here’s a great article about Werner Herzog.
Abandoned by his father at an early age, Herzog survived a WWII bombing that demolished the house next door to his childhood home and was raised by a single mother in near-poverty. He found his calling in filmmaking after reading an encyclopedia entry on the subject as a teenager and took a job as a welder in a steel factory in his late teens to fund his first films.
So that’s pretty amazing.
He believes you should watch crap things and dissect them to see what you would have done differently.
He believes you should do everything yourself. That way all the money can go towards making the movie rather than paying salaries.
He believes you can make a movie for $10,000, and you can get that money by driving a cab for six months.
He believes you should start making a film even if you don’t have the money to finish it.
But he also believes that ‘A project can become a cul-de-sac and your life might slip through your fingers in pursuit of something that can never be realized. Know when to walk away.’
He believes you should just go ahead and make what you want to make, rather than taking a job as a runner or whatever other low-paid position you might consider to be the entry point in a production company.
There’s too much great inspirational stuff there for me to copy it all out. Click on the link, do what he says and acquire ‘true liberty’.