Cineaste: Last year two films, Celebration adn Idiots, wer shown at Cannes that were based on Dogma '95, a manifesto written by Lars Von Trier. Are you familiar with Dogma?
Herzog: I've seen it very recently for the first time. For me it's a little uninspired because it's a tchnical cookbook on what to use and what not to use. but i think the basic aim of this manifesto is very necessary, seeing how much cinema has been overwhelmed by special effects and technicalities and a huge apparatus that has reduced the real life that is possible in movies. It's very strange because this year I acted in a film by a very young American filmmaker, Harmony Korine, who made his movie, Julien: Donkey Boy, according to the rules of Dogma. I played his crezed father in a dysfunctional, white-trash family. He wanted me very badly in this film as his father. For him it was important to have me in the film because he sees me as some sort of predecessor to Dogma, for the reduced technical apparatus - not as reduced as teh Dogma postulates, but essential, physical, direct cinema, whith all the possibilities of all the exuberance and vitality of life in it. It's very telling that you do not find this quality anymore in the big Hollywood action or special-effects movie.
Cineaste: Is your manifesto in opposition, or better, in respoinse to Lars Von Trier's Dogma?
Herzog: No, they're after something completely different.
Cineaste: Would ever consider doing a Dogma film?
Herzog: No, it would reduce my possibilities and my subjects. I could not do Aguirre, for example, because a historical film in costume is not permitted. Music would not be permissable and I love to work with music. So, no, certainly not, but I have respect for what they postulate and I do believe, even though it reduces a lot of possibilities, that it is at least an answer. It doesn't make filmmaking more democratic as they say, but it brings down the apparatus to its essential size. I wish that Dogma had been a manifesto that had more substance as far as, let's say, storytelling. But I think as reduced and stark as it is, it's a step that is quite interesting.
Cineaste: Do you feel that the new millennium is urging filmmakers to define new ways of making movies with manifestos, declarations, and so on?
Herzog: No. Who cares about the millenium? It's an artificail date! Even the church doesn't know when Jesus was born. I think it's obvious that in the cinema new ways have to be found en route all the time.