HOW TO EDIT YOUR LIFE: WERNER HERZOG & JERRY ANDRUS

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In the process of cleaning out our files we ran across this video, the 2007 memorial tribute to our old and sorely-missed pal Jerry Andrus. As one of the speakers, I revealed to the world that I was making a film about Jerry's life.  Reviewing my speech, I was somewhat ashamed to confess that I'm still working on that film. It has indeed taken unconscionably long to finish. 

I blame Werner Herzog.

For my money, Herzog is the best film-maker alive today, fiction or nonfiction. If anything his nonfiction work is more artistic, more poetic, more surreal than his fiction. You’ve got to love an artist whose motto is: “Always carry bolt-cutters!”

I had the good fortune of meeting him some years ago in New York City, where he had come to host a retrospective of his documentaries. He was highly approachable, delightfully charming, and full of amazingly on-point advice for a fellow film-maker.

I was already working on the Andrus film, and I described Jerry for Herzog - grand master of optical illusions, ruthless honesty and chocolate milkshakes. Herzog was captivated, and allowed as how Jerry was the kind of one-off character he himself might cast.

At the time Jerry was already quite elderly. I'd been following him around with a camera for twenty years, and I was slowly assembling the sequences. But because he was a deceptively simple man who set forth one day to discover the universe, the film had to be cosmic and down to earth at the same time, just like Jerry. It was not something to be slapped together.

I was feeling this tug of yin and yang, and asked Herzog for guidance.

“I want to finish my film quickly,” I said to Herzog. “I’m afraid he’s going to die soon and I want to show him the final cut before he dies.”

“Let him die!” Herzog said.

After a dramatic pause, in which my inner world rocked, he added: “And yes, you must edit quickly, very quickly.”

I had been thinking like two to three weeks.

“Two years!” he said. “Take two years to edit!”

He paused again. “And here’s how to edit. Divide all your footage into two parts.  Good footage. And great footage. Then, only use the great footage!”

Words to live by! Cut your life like you cut your films! 

Now Jerry has passed into that Zone Zero in the sky. I've already cut two segments of the film (here and here) and shown them to select and enthralled audiences. But I'm still trying to make a new kind of film out of his unique life. I'm calling it a "haiku documentary." 

Not that it would be in 17-syllable verse, of course, though Jerry was quite a poet and I've recorded scores of his verses. No, this would be in an ancient, nearly forgotten prose/poetry form, where the protagonist - Jerry - leaves his house to walk the world, unearthing secrets of the universe along the way. 

Each time he discovers something, he writes a poem - or does a magic trick - to mark the find.

As Jerry's spiritual ancestor Basho put it:

                          From five to six miles
                          I walk every day
                          In search of you,
                          Cherry blossoms.





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