I recently posted on Mastodon that my husband sent me a new Werner Herzog treatment and I commented to him “That first line made me realise why I like Werner Herzog so much. He’s like a nihilist David Attenborough.” I went on to comment that I should write a blog post about how I came across Werner Herzog documentaries, because it was a little before most people would. Here’s that blog post.
When I was a smolRyn, we would go to the East High auditorium to watch Warren Miller ski movies before the ski season kicked off in southcentral Alaska. I loved this. It was the thing I looked forward to in October most. More than Halloween (because that was always in the mall – it was too cold to go house to house and show off our costumes because Alaska).
For those not familiar with Warren Miller and the ski movies, in the ’80s, there was a new movie every year. And it was showing adrenaline filled extreme (at the time) skiing and it was Ev.Ery.Thing to ski crazy me. I was 8, I couldn’t afford to go heliskiing or cat skiing, but I could watch it!
One year I missed the movie because I was sick. A few months later, we went to the video store and I was like “I’m gonna get the movie I missed” but I couldn’t remember the name Warren Miller. I knew it started with a W and being a dyslexic little kid, Werner and Warren are close enough.
As a result, I came across the movie “The Great Ecstacy of Woodcarver Steiner” by Werner Herzog. I legit thought I found an unknown ski movie by the guy who I watched every October. So I brought it up. My parents were used to me being their weird kid that watched documentaries (still am) so they didn’t really question it.
I watched it. I realised that it was not Warren Miller but something amazing and wonderful and my brain was fully engaged.
The following October, I was reminded after watching that year’s Warren Miller offering that I watched the Herzog film the year before and I was like “Well, I gotta get me some more of that.” I was still under the impression that he was a ski documentarian. So I found “The Dark Glow of the Mountains” which wasn’t skiing but it was mountain-based so my kid brain was “theory confirmed!”
Now, imagine finding out at ten years old that mountain-ski-documentary-foreign-guy put out a NEW documentary! So exciting! Gotta get it.
It was “Herdsmen of the Sun”.
This was not a mountain-ski-documentary. This was set in the desert. In Africa. The place that I only vaguely knew about because of the mandatory 2 week section on the trans-Atlantic slave trade in 5th grade. Sure, yep. Let’s go. And maybe because of National Geographic magazine, but it was always about the Suri tribe (you’d recognise them by the women’s neck rings) or similar.
This was also after I’d been taken to see “The Gods Must Be Crazy” so I was still trying to put together what was what given my limited life experience.
So yep, I came to Werner Herzog documentaries via ski movies in 1980s Anchorage, Alaska.
Is there anything that you came across and found out that you loved because of a mix-up or misunderstanding?