Directed By: Errol Morris
Starring: Stephen Hawking, Isobel Hawking, Janet Humphrey
Tag line: "Where did the universe come from? Will time ever come to an end? Which came first, the chicken or the egg?"
Trivia: Appearances to the contrary, all interviews were filmed on sets built for the movie
From the night it premiered in September of 1987, I have been a big fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and one of my all-time favorite scenes in the entire series is the opening of The Descent, part 1, an episode that aired during the show’s 6th season. In it, the android Data, played by Brent Spiner, is in the holodeck playing poker with three of history’s most impressive scientific minds: Isaac Newton (John Neville), Albert Einstein (Jim Norton), and Stephen Hawking (appearing as himself). Hawking was a fan of the series, and this brief bit of whimsy allotted him a chance to finally appear in an episode, but the more I learned about the man, the more I realized he belonged in this class of great thinkers, and his work in the field of cosmology has allowed us to understand our universe in ways that were not possible before.
Director Errol Morris’s A Brief History of Time is both a biopic about Stephen Hawking and a documentary that presents, sometimes in amazing detail, the theories he developed over the years. Born in England during World War II, Hawking was, according to his mother (interviewed here), an active child, and usually impressed the adults around him with his sharp mind and analytical skills. It was during his years at Oxford and Cambridge that he dedicated his life to researching the universe, and it was also at this time he was diagnosed with ALS, a neurological disease that would eventually render his body useless. Told in the early 1960s that he only had about 2 years to live, Hawking beat the odds and, to this day, continues to astound with his theories on such topics as black holes and dark matter.
It’s here that the movie truly excels, with Morris giving us computer graphics, testimony from Hawking’s former classmates and peers, and even a few clips from Disney’s The Black Hole, to explain how his findings have taken the field of cosmology to new heights. I’ve watched A Brief History of Time twice now, and while I can’t say I’m any closer to fully comprehending his research into black holes and the Big Bang, Hawking himself (rendered mute by his disease and speaking by way of a specialized computer program) is as witty as he is brilliant, and does his best to present these very involved subjects in a manner that everyone can understand.
There are other works out there that delve deeper into Hawking’s research (the 1997 TV miniseries Stephen Hawking’s Universe is quite fascinating), and 2014’s The Theory of Everything, in which Eddie Redmayne plays Hawking, gives us a broader understanding of his life, both personal and professional. But as a concise, entertaining look at both the man and his discoveries, A Brief History of Time is, indeed, an invaluable resource.
Directed By: Les Blank
Starring: Werner Herzog, Tom Luddy, Michael Goodwin
Line from this film: "Errol has set a good example. He's a landmark now. And I'm very proud of it"
Trivia: Herzog once promised to eat his shoe if a certain young American film student went out and actually made the film he was always only talking about. The young student was Errol Morris, who met the challenge with his off-beat 1978 pet cemetery documentary Gates of Heaven
I love Werner Herzog. Aside from being one of the finest directors ever to step behind a camera, he’s also a true character, the kind of guy who marches to his own tune, thumbing his nose at convention. When he talks, you want to listen, and when he does something, no matter how outlandish it may seem, you sit up and take notice.
Take, for instance, the good-natured kick-in-the-butt he gave filmmaker Errol Morris back in the late ‘70s, promising the young hopeful that, should he complete his first film, he would eat his own shoe. Well, Morris did just that, directing the extraordinary 1978 documentary Gates of Heaven, and being a man of his word, Herzog, with the help of Alice Walters (chef and owner of Berkeley’s Chez Panisse), cooked the shoe he was wearing when he made that wager. Then, just before the premiere of Gates of Heaven, Herzog devoured it in front of a live audience. Along with honoring his pledge, he hoped this publicity stunt would draw attention to Morris’ film, which, at that point, had not been picked up for distribution (in front of everyone, Herzog promised he’d eat the other shoe if a Hollywood studio bought Gates of Heaven and gave it a wide release).
Directed by Les Blank, Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe is a 1980 documentary short designed to serve as a filmed record of the above, but like its main subject, there’s plenty of interesting stuff lurking just under the surface as well.
As always, Herzog is positively enthralling throughout Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, from his advice to other young filmmakers (he tells them to do whatever it takes to get their movies made, even if it means stealing a camera and breaking into the processing lab) to his views on the state of modern entertainment (“We have to declare holy war against what we see every single day on television”, he says. “I think there should be real war against commercials, real war against talk-shows, real war against Bonanza, Rawhide and these things”). Clearly, Herzog is a serious thinker, and he approached the cooking of his shoe quite seriously, too (he coated it in spices, then, following Chef Walters’ advice, boiled it for about 5 hours).
Blank does wander off the beaten path a few times throughout Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, showing clips from Gates of Heaven as well as an excerpt from Herzog’s own Even Dwarfs Started Small, for which the director made a similarly bizarre wager with his cast (he promised that, should they survive the shooting of that 1970 movie, he would jump into a nearby cactus field. They survived it… and he jumped). Yet, at all times, Herzog himself is the film’s biggest draw.
Werner Herzog is one of the cinema’s most consistently fascinating personalities, and even when you don’t agree with what he has to say, you can’t stop listening to him. So if, every now and then, he does something crazy like eat his own shoe in public, I say “What the hell”?
