Werner Herzog

Herzog and Kinski collaborated on five feature films: "Aguirre, the Wrath of God" (1972), "Nosferatu the Vampyre" (1979), "Woyzeck" (1979), "Fitzcarraldo" (1982), and "Cobra Verde" (1987). Their volatile relationship — marked by legendary tantrums and mutual threats of violence — was documented in Herzog's 1999 film "My Best Fiend."

The 2005 documentary examines the life and death of Timothy Treadwell, an environmentalist who spent 13 summers living among grizzly bears in Alaska's Katmai National Park before being killed and eaten by a bear in 2003. Herzog narrates the film and analyzes Treadwell's extensive video footage, famously listening to Treadwell's death audio (but not playing it for the audience) and declaring that "the common denominator of the universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility, and murder."

Herzog has argued that traditional cinéma vérité captures only superficial factual truth — what he calls "the accountant's truth" — while his filmmaking pursues a deeper, more poetic "ecstatic truth" achieved through stylization and occasionally fabrication. He outlined this philosophy in his 1999 "Minnesota Declaration," a manifesto of documentary filmmaking principles.

Yes. After losing a bet with filmmaker Errol Morris over whether Morris would actually complete his debut documentary "Gates of Heaven," Herzog publicly boiled and ate his own leather shoe at the UC Berkeley theater in 1980. The event was documented in Les Blank's short film "Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe" and became a legendary piece of film lore.