Werner Herzog and crew live large and discover the subtleties of native labor relations in the tropical rain forest in Les Blank's feature-length "Making Of Fitzcarraldo." Now why hasn't someone tackled "The Making Of Burden of Dreams"?
Herzog on the jungle:
"It's a land that God, if he exists, has created in anger. It's the only land where creation is unfinished yet. Taking a close look at what's around us, there is some sort of a harmony. It is the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder. And we, in comparison to the articulate vileness and baseness and obscenity of all this jungle, we in comparison to that enormous articulation, we only sound and look like badly pronounced and half-finished sentences out of some stupid suburban novel. And we have to become humble in front of this overwhelming misery and overwhelming fornication and overwhelming growth and overwhelming lack of order. Even the stars up here in the sky look like a mess. There is no harmony in the universe. We have to get acquainted to this idea that there is no harmony as we have conceived it. But when I say this I say this all full of admiration for the jungle. It's not that I hate it. I love it very much. But I love it against my better judgment."
Posted by Erik at August 28, 2005 02:01 AMLes wrote a book about the making of Burden of Dreams, which I have. It's much better than the current New Yorker article about looking for Colonel Fawcett, who disappeared into the Amazon jungle with his son in 1927 looking for the lost city of Z. The story is enthralling but the writer tends toward cliché.
Posted by: Anita at September 18, 2005 11:53 AM