Snubbed by Werner

There have been two film crews down here working on documentaries. One is focusing on human life at McMurdo and is being directed by Anne Aghion, an award-winning film-maker who has done several films on the post-genocide trials in Rwanda. She and her her crew of 2 (one sound guy and one camera guy) arrived in August with the small group of employees in charge of getting the station ready for it's main season (Mainbody). Those of us who arrived in October for Mainbody were surprised (to put it mildly) to have a camera and boom mike shoved in our faces as we greeted old friends. I did enjoy, however, seeing one of the Rwanda documentaries and listed to Anne describe her experiences there.

Two weeks ago, Werner Herzog, the German film/documentary maker - best known for "Aguirre: The Wrath of God", "The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser", and most recently "Grizzly Man" - arrived on station. He is planning to do a documentary from out in the field about the natural beauty of this land. Before he heads out to the field, he has been hanging around town and doing some filming. He brought his cameraman to last weekend's talent contest and got up on stage and in people's faces while they performed (I was surprised at how close you have to get a microphone to someone's face in order to get good sound). The winner of the talent contest called Freak Train, by the way, was a woman who did a Tina Turner impersonation. Excellent! But I digress....



I was excited about having him here on station as I had really appreciated his perspective and treatment of Timothy Treadwell in "Grizzly Man". I found the film to be thought-provoking and balanced.

Last night, Mr. Herzog screened a film from 1932 about circus freaks called "Freaks". He gave an introduction to the film and discussed why it was meaningful to him as a film-maker and how he, like Tod Browning, the maker of "Freaks", tried to show the humanity and beauty of subjects seen by society as ugly, scary and freakish. He compared this approach to that of some of his films. After the film, he mingled and I asked him if "Grizzly Man" was also of the same vein. Perhaps I offended him by suggesting that Timothy Treadwell was a freak or perhaps he snubbed me because I was so mainstream as to only mention his most popular and accessible film. In any event, he turned away from me, looked at someone else, gave a short response and then changed the subject.

Nothing like meeting "a star" in real life to shatter any positive feelings you might have had.....