Werner Herzog names his funniest movie: “It’s humour that you cannot easily name”
He’s been called many things by many people over the years, but “hilarious” wouldn’t be the first thing that comes to mind when anyone thinks of either Werner Herzog or his filmography.
That’s not to say he can’t be funny because there’s something ominously humourous about his deadpan delivery and verbose explanations of the most mundane things. He’s become a cult figure on either side of the camera, and his inimitable persona has been an integral part of it.
After all, this is the guy who ended up directing Grizzly Man because of a misunderstanding when he was trying to locate his missing keys, so he’s always been driven by unintentional hilarity, in a way. It’s even better when he’s in on the joke, as one famous documentary short can attest.
The auteur was adamant that if Errol Morris ever got around to completing Gates of Heaven, he’d happily chow down on his footwear. When Herzog’s idea of the unthinkable actually happened, the world was rewarded with the fantastic and uniquely mesmerising Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe.
That doesn’t even cover his odd obsession with chickens or his dysfunctional dynamic with Klaus Kinski, which often comes across as funny when being relayed by a third party but probably wasn’t side-splitting up close when the duo were regularly threatening to kill each other.
Then again, he was confident enough to proclaim he made funnier movies than Eddie Murphy, who was one of the biggest and most bankable comedic actors on the planet for the better part of two decades, so it’s not as if he’s lacking in confidence or self-belief to tickle the funny bone of viewers everywhere.
Teaming Herzog with Nicolas Cage was always going to result in a bountiful amount of bizarre, which is precisely what happened when the two mavericks put their heads together on Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. It’s weird, wonderful, offbeat, outlandish, and eccentric, often in the space of the same scene, and for its director, it’s also the funniest thing he’s ever lent his name to.
“There’s such an instant rapport with the audience in terms of the sort of wild, hilarious side of it,” he told Alex Simon. “It’s humour that you cannot easily name; however, when you look at slapstick, you immediately know what it is that’s so funny. You know where the jokes are. But here it’s hard to figure that out, yet audiences have responded very strongly to it.”
A pair of unwieldy talents like Herzog and Cage collaborating wouldn’t deliver anything other than off-the-wall insanity, with Bad Lieutenant living up to its bonkers promise. It might not qualify as a comedy, but if the person who directed it wants to say they’ve never been as funny, then it’s hard to argue with their assessment.
