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May 6, 2011
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Les Blank Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, 2008 It’s 1978. A packed audience at the UC theatre in Berkeley, California, watches on as a man eats his shoe. The act coincides with the U.S. premier of American director Errol Morris’ first major film project, Gates of Heaven, a documentary on American Pet Cemeteries. The man eating the shoe is Werner Herzog. The story goes, Herzog, the seminal German New Wave director, made a bet with his protege Morris, that he would eat his shoe if Morris ever completed Gates of Heaven. Notorious for his failure to stick with any of his previous engagements (stints as an Ivy League science student and fiction writer already left in his wake), the chances of Morris completing the film had originally appeared slim. And yet, the near impossible occurs, by borrowing, begging and stealing the film is made. And so, a shoe has to be eaten. To digress briefly, it is Restoration period England that first produces the language of clothing consumption as an exemplary limit point against which certainty and confidence in speculation can be graded. Charles II or “Old Rowley” as he was sentimentally known, was a King famed for his salubrious headwear. During this period one might have been heard convicting a given speculation with the offer to ‘eat old Rowley’s hat’ if the unlikely event was to in fact transpire. Be it a hat or a shoe, the essence of this type of declaration has remained unchanged to this day. Concurrent with its historical origin, it would appear that Herzog’s offer and the doubt it suggests, arises as an expression of negativity towards Morris. However we might consider an alternative reading and take it instead as a pure statement of encouragement directed at a gifted though errant protege. The offer to eat his shoe illustrates Herzog’s deep-felt belief in the artistic potential of another, the unusual feast, then, as creative catalyst. Herzog provides a commentary to the film, which he uses a battle cry for unrestrained creativity. Advocating any means at all, theft, fraud, subterfuge, to realise a film project, Herzog’s commitment to production at any costs transforms the undeniable farce and humour, the high ceremonial pantomime and performance of this particular public consumption, revealing a further, deeper, truth. So when Herzog addresses both audience and camera, he does so with the jouissance of a man bathed in the light of another’s creative emergence against all odds. Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe is a testament work by Blank, a lesson to all striving to create in any field. The near messianic zeal that infuses the film is designed to motivate and inspire with its simple message: in the face of the limitations we all experience on a daily basis, the only ever viable answer is action, relentless action.

Les Blank

Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, 2008

It’s 1978. A packed audience at the UC theatre in Berkeley, California, watches on as a man eats his shoe. The act coincides with the U.S. premier of American director Errol Morris’ first major film project, Gates of Heaven, a documentary on American Pet Cemeteries. The man eating the shoe is Werner Herzog.

The story goes, Herzog, the seminal German New Wave director, made a bet with his protege Morris, that he would eat his shoe if Morris ever completed Gates of Heaven. Notorious for his failure to stick with any of his previous engagements (stints as an Ivy League science student and fiction writer already left in his wake), the chances of Morris completing the film had originally appeared slim. And yet, the near impossible occurs, by borrowing, begging and stealing the film is made. And so, a shoe has to be eaten.

To digress briefly, it is Restoration period England that first produces the language of clothing consumption as an exemplary limit point against which certainty and confidence in speculation can be graded. Charles II or “Old Rowley” as he was sentimentally known, was a King famed for his salubrious headwear. During this period one might have been heard convicting a given speculation with the offer to ‘eat old Rowley’s hat’ if the unlikely event was to in fact transpire. Be it a hat or a shoe, the essence of this type of declaration has remained unchanged to this day. Concurrent with its historical origin, it would appear that Herzog’s offer and the doubt it suggests, arises as an expression of negativity towards Morris. However we might consider an alternative reading and take it instead as a pure statement of encouragement directed at a gifted though errant protege. The offer to eat his shoe illustrates Herzog’s deep-felt belief in the artistic potential of another, the unusual feast, then, as creative catalyst. Herzog provides a commentary to the film, which he uses a battle cry for unrestrained creativity. Advocating any means at all, theft, fraud, subterfuge, to realise a film project, Herzog’s commitment to production at any costs transforms the undeniable farce and humour, the high ceremonial pantomime and performance of this particular public consumption, revealing a further, deeper, truth.

So when Herzog addresses both audience and camera, he does so with the jouissance of a man bathed in the light of another’s creative emergence against all odds. Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe is a testament work by Blank, a lesson to all striving to create in any field. The near messianic zeal that infuses the film is designed to motivate and inspire with its simple message: in the face of the limitations we all experience on a daily basis, the only ever viable answer is action, relentless action.

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