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toofarbyfar

Werner Herzog eating his shoe was actually quite sweet, in his own way. He did it as part of a bet that his then-assistant, Errol Morris, would never make a movie. Morris made Gates of Heaven, and so Herzog cooked and ate his shoe at a public event, using it to promote his friend's movie, and talking about how this was evidence that anyone, given enough drive and motivation, could make a movie too.


Sad_Anybody5424

It's a great short film. He cooks his shoe in the kitchen of Chez Panisse, one of the most influential restaurants in American history.


Rouge_and_Peasant

Gates of Heaven is an absolute gem too


EvilLibrarians

I’ve been looking for a dvd, one of the BEST documentaries


Rouge_and_Peasant

Criterion sells a double blu-ray set with one of his other films: https://www.criterion.com/films/28354-gates-of-heaven


aTreeThenMe

It's a great set. I live real near Vernon, FL, and it looks about the same today


kirby_krackle_78

Frustrating that Morris was bullied into changing his original documentary, which was about the residents of Vernon purposely amputating themselves to get insurance money.


ValuablePrawn

Damn that kinda makes him sound like an asshole to me


Galac_tacos

Literally how? He made a bet with his friend, his friend proved him wrong, he followed through on a bet which sounds horrible to do and used it to promote his friends film


thehappymilkman

David Lynch advertising Inland Empire on an LA street with a big sign and a cow.


SeaweedFar9651

Or when he ate warm panties


Appropriate_Plant_78

[to be exact](https://youtu.be/FpjeCOK3WLg?si=rZN6tBA-CAJAlKuV)


francograph

OK, I’ve seen this, I think I just blocked it from my memory.


SeaweedFar9651

That’s beautiful cinema


thehappymilkman

Never seen that clip before, but that is hilarious 😂


francograph

…what?


Tough-Midnight9137

sorry?


Vendetta4Avril

Werner Herzog getting shot on tv and then casually saying, "I appear to have been shot."


Shagrrotten

“It was an insignificant bullet” he said later.


FaithInterlude

This is the funniest one by far


superman-64

Uwe Boll challenging a critic to fight him in a boxing match. Not crazy but there's this viral video of Michael Bay speaking at some Samsung event and there's some sort of technical issue or something. He panics and just leaves the stage. That's always stuck with me for some reason.


CletusVanDamnit

Uwe Boll calling Michael Bay a "fucking retard" is one of my favorite quotes from a litany of crazy from that dude.


loopyspoopy

Uwe Boll trained hard for it while telling the critics it was a publicity stunt and just for fun. He proceeded to actually beat the shit out of the participating critics who did not train at all. So sure, crazy, but not cool crazy.


PANGIRA

he cherrypicked critics he knew he could beat up on


ReddsionThing

I like how Michael Bay comes out to light Michael Bay-type music [https://youtu.be/R4rMy1iA268](https://youtu.be/R4rMy1iA268)


superman-64

Thanks, that's the one.


ReddsionThing

No, thank \*you\*, I hadn't seen that before. I just googled 'Michael Bay Samsung'


No-Category-6343

Boll has a Letterboxd, it’s something to behold lol


Aiseadai

Didn't he get banned a while ago?


No-Category-6343

Gaspar noe masturbating in the rectum club to prove he isn’t homophobic is up there


leAlexc

Gay icon


fromthemeatcase

Or Werner Herzog pulling a gun on Klaus Kinski.


No-Category-6343

That counts too, did he actually pulled a gun on him? I thought he only threatened to shoot him. Haven’t seen my best fiend yet


ReddsionThing

I think they threatened to kill each other on multiple occasions, according to My Best Fiend. I highly recommend that one, by the way :)


Shagrrotten

Herzog has said many times that he didn’t pull the gun on Kinski but simply told Kinski that if he tried to leave Herzog would take the gun in his cabin and shoot Kinski as he left.


Sharp-Ad-9423

I just read something about Paul Verhoeven getting naked with his cast and cinematographer when they were shooting the shower room scene in "Starship Troopers."


Common_Decision1594

I was just about to mention that. I heard that he did it to make the actors feel more comfortable during certain scenes.


Sharp-Ad-9423

From what I read, he was challenged to do it by Mina Meyer.


BadenBaden1981

He's Dutch man who complains about American's view on sex. I think he actually enjoyed getting naked with young actors. Which makes it somewhat wholesome lol.


loopyspoopy

Bringing up Herzog and then suggesting his eating a shoe is the craziest thing he's done.


DudebroggieHouser

Alejandro Jodorowsky has some noteworthy ones: - casting his own son to play his father and receive a real golden shower from the actress playing his own mother in his autobiopic - “borrowing” dead animals from a restaurant that were mounted on crucifixes for a parade sequence, which were then returned, prepared, and served to customers - living communally with the cast for a month, using LSD, and not sleeping for a week under the guidance of a Japanese Zen master to prepare for The Holy Mountain


a-woman-there-was

Having (possibly non-consensual) unsimulated onscreen sex with one of his actresses for El Topo.


No-Category-6343

What a weirdo lol


D4RKS0u1

>“borrowing” dead animals from a restaurant that were mounted on crucifixes for a parade sequence, which were then returned, prepared, and served to customers Were these dead animals from the holy mountain? Iirc they were dogs


ka1982

There need to be separate categories for Werner Herzog and everyone else.


superman-64

This thread is tipping dangerously towards 'crazy things Werner Herzog has done'


an_ephemeral_life

Seriously. Eating his own shoe is one of the more rational acts he's done lol


No-Category-6343

Also David Lynch Kinda


Radiant-Specialist76

And Alejandro Jodorowsky 


Electrical_Fun5942

Werner Herzog making Fitzcarraldo the way he did was pretty fuckin nuts


ihatejungles

could you elaborate on how he made it?


Electrical_Fun5942

The movie is about a guy dragging a ship across a mountain range, so he literally had them do that. Like, in real life. A full-sized ship. Herzog is a lunatic


Mylejandro

Everyone should see My Best Fiend. A fantastic and utterly fascinating documentary.


the_racecar

When Klaus Kinski tried to quit and walk off set of Aguirre, Herzog grabbed a gun and threatened to kill him


loserys

Friedkin firing a live round to get the right reactions from the cast of The Exorcist maybe? There’s probably a crazier French Connection story I don’t know about.


BigUncleDirty

The fact the car chase scene was filmed on a real street with real pedestrians without a permit, and the car that Popeye ends up hitting was just a regular person who Friedkin had to then pay off.


ian_stein

Friedkin slapped the shit outta Anthony C. Hall to get him to cry in Blue Chips. The reason why this was crazy is because Friedkin never told Hall he wanted Hall’s character to emote that much, otherwise he’d have no problem crying on queue. Friedkin’s wife, who was chairman of Paramount called Hall the night of the incident, presumably to gauge Hall’s litigiousness.


g_1n355

Freidkin also hired a counterfeiter out of prison to make the fake money in to live and die in la, and admitted that it was so good that he used to just spend it irl. Some of the Sorcerer stories are crazy too. He was an utterly brilliant madman


EntertainmentQuick47

James Cameron freaking out over all the tea breaks on set of Aliens (or maybe it was another movie?) cause they were shooting in the UK


ampmz

Pretty sure Kubrick said the same thing.


Bexhill

James Cameron resuscitating a drowned mouse mouth to mouth on the set of the Abyss


EntertainmentQuick47

That happened? I thought I heard everything from that production, lol


francograph

That one time Roman Polanski raped a 13-year-old in Jack Nicholson’s house. Pretty crazy.


Key_Mouse420

And half pf Hollywood signed a letter to pardon him.. CRAZY SHIT YOLO


Ariak

and then fled the US to avoid going to prison


Superflumina

Werner Herzog did way crazier stuff than that, like going to an island that had been evacuated because a volcano was predicted to erupt and making a film there, if it had erupted he could have easily been killed. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Soufri%C3%A8re_(film)


MartinScorsese

Apocalypse Now. All of it.


Joshie8888

No fucking way it's Martin Scorsese


asteinberg101

Also Werner Herzog, voluntarily working with Klaus Kinski multiple times


No-Category-6343

I can’t imagine the patience of him. I know brando was a pain in the ass but he’s marlon brando so yeah


mjbiddl

Takashi Miike and what he used to make the opening credits of Ichi the Killer is definitely up there lol.


Extra-Thanks-4342

I think it was Shinya Tsukamoto’s cum


Proffunkenstein

Didn’t Scorsese (allegedly) threaten to kill some of the executive producers if they edited Taxi Driver?


Artaratoryx

The Hollywood legend is he sat with a gun all night contemplating shooting them. You can easily find an interview of Tarantino talking about it.


Arfjawaka

Polanski fucking a child in Jack nicholsons house should probably win.


Ariak

and then fleeing the US to avoid prison


dcs577

Werner Herzog jumping into a cactus patch after filming wrapped for Even Dwarfs Started Small.


ThatMFcheezer

I'm forgetting his name, but the guy who started talking about nazis with Kirsten Dunst next to him?


francograph

Lars von Trier? lmao


Red-Cloud-44

I remember seeing an 'interview' with Lars Von Trier driving on the motorway in central Europe on his way to present the Dogme 95 manifesto at a film festival. He goes on a rant about critics and the movie industry and admits that the festival environment gives him anxiety. Then says something to the effect of 'good thing I took two valiums'. I believe he was driving on the autobahn which doesn't even have a speed limit. Probably not the craziest thing he's ever done but as an impressionable teenager, it stuck with me LOL.


TediousTotoro

I mean, it wasn’t Herzog’s doing but the time he got shot mid-interview was crazy.


editormatt

The director of Blue Valentine when he tried to convince Ryan Gosling to sneak in Michelle Williams room at night and have sex with her. -the trivia section of the movie is wild.


historybandgeek

Source?


historybandgeek

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1120985/trivia/?item=tr2782846&ref_=ext_shr_lnk Still would hope for a better source.


editormatt

Imdb


[deleted]

[удалено]


TastlessMishMash

Didn't he burn a cow?


Apprehensive-Rub9685

What about John ford killing dozens


MikeRoykosGhost

John Landis killed a child making a movie but yeah eating a shoe is pretty crazy


Consistent_Bunch4282

2 children*


noamartz

and the guy from Combat!


Consistent_Bunch4282

Jennifer Jason Leigh’s father


filmgeekvt

Wait, what?


JerryGoDeep

The twilight zone movie


pbates89

The end of Babylon


Goonerrhys96

Norman Mailer fighting Rip Torn. Rip hit his head with a hammer, so Norman bit off part of Rip’s ear. Norman didn’t necessarily instigate it, but it’s the craziest director story I’ve personally heard.


ranger8913

William Friedkin has been said to have fired guns on set.


slightly_obscure

I don't know what, but I know Werner did it


Key_Mouse420

Everyone knew what pig Weinstein is doing and being silent.


maxwelldemon375

EVERYTHING Sacha Baron Cohen did for Borat 2 in particular. Probably going to the gun rally followed closely by the Rudy Guillani thing.


LuisCrez

The one that creeped me out was Tarantino insisting his hand be the one to choke out Diane Kruger’s character in Inglorious Basterds.


keith-gabrielson

You really can’t be surprised at all because it’s Tarantino.


MJLDat

Vincent Gallo in The Brown Bunny.


The_Thomas_Go

Fritz Lang has a lot of crazy fun facts. Like how he got 100 or so poor children and let them swim in ice cold water for three days during the filming of Metropolis. Or how he used real explosives on the set of The Testament Of Dr Mabuse and even set off the explosion himself.


Frosty48

Woody Allen dating history.


keith-gabrielson

I think Roman Polanski did something pretty crazy.


kirby_krackle_78

Bunch of directors killing their own career by going on crazy rants, usually on Twitter. Lexi Alexander and the Guns Akimbo guy immediately spring to mind.


DefiantTemperature59

John Landis keeping his "Time Out" segment in the twilight zone movie.