The Mamet/Herzog polarity: "What Happens Next" vs "Ecstatic Truth."

Herzog wasn't, like Mamet, interested in "telling a story", as much as getting the story to stand still long enough to be appear on film. Even in his filmed fictions, Herzog shot them like documentaries and was interested in finding the the human stories within their core. Unlike Mamet's, Herzog's scripts were often only a few pages long, vague outlines of scenes that need to happen. Herzog stages the scenes, creates the conditions for the scenes to unfold and films them. Herzog needs actors: Klaus Kinski's unpredictable nature made his rage and mania on camera more powerful than you could write or predict beforehand. Where Mamet would use dialogue and a careful organization of shots to make his points, Herzog would create conditions to get his actors to be human on camera.

Herzog has shot at least as many documentaries as he has fiction films. In both, he's looking for stories and imagery. In his late-career manifesto he says:

"There are few images to be found. One has to dig for them like an archaeologist. One has to search through this ravaged landscape to find anything at all... I see so few people today who dare to address our lack of adequate images. We absolutely need images in tune with our civilization, images that resonate with what is deepest within us... to find images that are pure and clear and transparent."

Mamet has said that one should never "rush immediately to visual or pictorial solutions." Herzog is not guilty of this. Where Mamet finds a Dionysian joy in writing the dialogue, in the crafting of language that illuminates his structured, mechanistic list of shots, Herzog is looking with his camera for what he calls "ecstatic truth." The solutions Mamet talks about are to the problems of drama, but those are not Herzog's main concerns.

I adore both creators. Everyone I know has a favorite Mamet line or two of dialogue. (" Put that coffee down! Coffee is for closers!") But I'll pick up Mamet's gauntlet and be a "person talking about the films of Werner Herzog and the films of Frank Capra":

via NYC graphic