Werner Herzog Is One Lucky Filmmaker

Death row: it's a genre. From Louis Theroux to Errol Morris, we've all been there. We all know the procedure. Countless times we've stared down the lens, through the Plexiglas, into the eyes of probably-guilty, triple-homiciders as they travelate towards oblivion. The last-minute appeals to Ann Richards/ George Bush/ Rick Perry – delete according to era. The tough yet decent prison guards who preside over the killing. The whispering chaplains. The stenographed final statements. And finally, the unmarked graves in the specially-designated prison yards out back. So why exactly did Werner Herzog voluntarily step into this soup of cliches to make his latest film? And why did he then include pretty much all of them? The only real answer is the dumb one: because Herzog is Herzog – a genuine ingénue. A man who freely admits he barely watches any cinema, and who chases what he's interested in with a naivety that precludes much second-guessing. That's kind of his whole MO: to be curious about something interesting, then remember to bring a camera.

Into The Abyss, Herzog's stab at the death row genre, deals with the cases of Michael Perry and Jason Burkett, who received death and life sentences respectively for their parts in a triple murder in Texas. Herzog brings a lot of freshness to their crimes. The questions fly off at odd angles, and suddenly the milky prison chaplain is telling a story about not hitting a squirrel with a golf cart that ends with him blubbing. The prison guard starts talking about noticing ducks in a way that rivals Jesus' greatest hits for warm humanity. This is what happens when The Common Man is put in contact with Werner Herzog: he stops checking the baseball scores and suddenly becomes an eloquent instrument of philosophical truth. You could say Herzog is lucky. You could say that he has a gift for getting into the hearts of those he meets. A bit of both. A bit of either. What remains extraordinary whichever way you slice that talent, is that Into The Abyss left virtually nothing on the cutting room floor.

“I am a very lucky filmmaker. Yes,” he admits, from within the Soho Hotel room where he is launching his latest product. “I'm very good at casting… I see that's a person with whom I must speak, although I know nothing about them. The film that you saw: every single person with whom I filmed is in the movie. With one exception. There was a former girlfriend of Michael Perry. And she was very dull. So I didn't even look at the footage when I was editing: I knew it was not good. But every single other person is prominently in the film.”

Out in the sticks of Texas, Herzog journeys through a half-forgotten, half-submerged world of pain and neglect: Burkett's dad is a long-time petty hood now in jail for life too, the pair were handcuffed side-by-side as father went to plead for his son's life in court. The father of one of their victims is also doing life for homicide. Another guy – from the half-a-horse town of Cut And Shoot – recalls being stabbed with a screwdriver, right up to the hilt, 14 inches. Did he go to hospital? No sir. He did not. Because he had to be at work in 30 minutes. So he just let the wound heal by itself. “I guess I was lucky,” he mumbles, in-between spitting another ball of gob into the long grass where Herzog has him framed. If there's one thing that binds the thing together, it's still WH's plain-speaking, precise, Bavarian voice asking only the questions he's interested in. “I realised that he only had 15 minutes, 20 minutes or so until he had to go to his job. I simply turned the camera 90 degrees, placed him in front of the camera and said 'What is your name?' – and, I realised when he shook my hand that he had enormous calluses on his palms. And that made him very likeable immediately – from working man to working man. I had been a welder to earn money for my first film, so I immediately had some sympathy. I had no idea who he was. And almost everything I spoke with him is in the film.”

Michael Perry Perry, he got permission to shoot some eight days before he was due to go to his death. He's an obviously guilty man protesting his innocence with the cheery smugness of the born liar: yet you can't help but like Perry. He is, as with the rest of this, extremely lucky casting: a raconteur, full of smiley charm, oily, boyish, yet concise at getting his point across. Perhaps charged with the energy of a man living every nanosecond. Without even being allowed a ballpoint pen, Herzog was patted down and put flipside of the Plexiglas to meet with Perry. He had only 50 minutes – the course of which would determine whether he had a film or not. “I never have any questions at all. Never. I only knew I would ask Michael Perry 'How are you doing?' That was the only question I had. Then… let's see what happens… When you work like this you have no time. You have to find the right voice. Instantly. And with everyone in the film differently, as you see. And you hear my voice. Every one has a different voice behind the camera from my side. And you have to read them. You have to understand them instantly. You have to know the hearts of men. It's a gift. In a way I always had it, but life also gives you other insights.”

Jason Burkett Herzog keeps going on about how this film 'isn't a philosophical argument, it's a story'. Yet it's obvious, both on and off screen, where his sympathies lie. After all, has anyone ever made a pro-capital punishment film? For someone so forthright, his politics around the issue are very ginger. He seems to feel – despite living in America for many years, that he still has no right to tell Americans what their criminal justice system ought to do: as though human life is a relative commodity. Herzog's opposition to the death penalty is lifelong. He comes from exactly that generation of Germans who strove to be the most liberal people in Europe. But by the same token, he seems to have noosed himself with a lot of national historical baggage only true assholes would have him carry. It's definitely not a philosophical argument because, were it to be one, listening to him, it'd be intensely confused.

“No. I'm not an activist. Firstly because I'm a guest in the country where I have filmed the film. And… being a German, with the past of Nazi Germany, I could be the last person to tell the American people how to handle their criminal justice system. And I have no voting right in the United States. Of course, there are various great activist films. Let these films exist.” It is rather, he points out, all about the ecosystem. It's a sort of Herzogian thing about finding one flashbang moment of excruciating human high-drama, and then uncoiling it, following it upstream to see where it leads, unpicking the hearts of the people caught up in its wake. “I'm not just into death row inmates. That's one of them. But you have a… a man who was an illiterate who got stabbed with a screwdriver through his chest. And you have family members of victims. You have a former executioner, you have got the chaplain. You have got a homicide detective. Very much it's not just about death in this film, it's about life. Life-affirming. It's not a film on death row on capital punishment. The crime is something which is a real story. And the senselessness of this crime.” Here he leans in a bit and becomes more Germanic with every breath. “The nihilism is so staggering and so frightening. That's what fascinates me.”

Fred Allen Into The Abyss ends with the man who executed 1990s death row celebrity Karla-Faye Tucker, Fred Allen: the obligatory tough yet decent prison guard. Chief supervisor at 125 executions, after Karla-Faye, all the wind went out of him, and he quit then and there, at the cost of losing his pension. “That was just like a beautiful present that fell into my lap. When Fred Allen, after working at 25 executions, decides no more… He quits his job and loses his pension, but now his life is good. And he sits back and he finally watches the birds. And what the ducks are doing. And the hummingbirds. Why are there so many of them? And I instantly cut. And when I stood up, I hugged him briefly. I said: 'Mr Allen, you will have the last word in the film.' He said: 'Sorry, did I say anything wrong?' He had no idea he'd said anything special – that he'd asked the ultimate question: 'Why are there so many of them…?'” He still looks delighted as the scene plays back across his mind's eye. Perhaps Mr Allen should've stood up and hugged Herzog first. After all, it's not every day that you get to be interviewed by such an incredibly lucky filmmaker.

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