‘…lock-picking and document forging might come in handy too…’
Does Fitzcaraldo mean anything to you? Okay. Does The Client from the series The Mandalorian ring a bell? Still nothing, mmm. The heading should have tipped you off. The former was directed, and the latter was played by Werner Herzog. He was born in 1945 during an Allied bombing raid over Munich. He grew up in a tiny village in a mountainous part of Germany and used a phone for the first time at the age of 16. In 2023 he published Every Man for Himself and God against All: A Memoir.
Although he is most famous for directing over 70 diverse movies, he describes himself as a poet. But I suspect he is toying with us. He has re-invented himself more times than Madonna and the ANC combined. Fortunately, with better artistic results. Most recently he reinvented himself as the above-mentioned Client in the Star Wars spin-off, thus endearing and making himself relevant to a whole new generation.
No-one can accuse Herzog of picking low-hanging fruit or letting obstacles halt his projects. His movie Fitzcaraldo is about a man obsessed with building an opera house in a mining town on the Amazon and his struggle to do so. It’s a fascinating movie. But what’s even more fascinating is the Making of Fitzcaraldo documentary Burden of Dreams. It shows that Herzog’s quest to make the movie was even more outrageously difficult than Fitzcaraldo’s fictional folly.
Herzog is largely self-taught and made his first film at age 19. He hates conventional film schools, so he proposed starting his own, calling it the Rogue Film School. “Here I will teach you two things – to pick locks and forge documents”. In an interview with Steve Levitt on Freakonomics Radio he explained his philosophy:
“… you really have to follow [your] vision, it’s not iron will. It’s a clarity of vision that carries [your] film and carries [your] crew with you”.
A visionary is someone who clearly envisions a future scenario, then envisions the steps that need to be taken and, finally, communicates the vision and journey to those who will help realise it.
One frustrating aspect of being part of CHARGE is dealing with people who can’t think beyond internal combustion engines. However, working for CHARGE already means you don’t settle for low-hanging fruit and aren’t intimidated by the obstacles of low intelligence. One aspect that isn’t hard or frustrating is communicating the co-founders’ crystal clear vision of a network of solar-powered charging stations connecting the African landscape. Make no mistake, in a venture of this magnitude, it will be necessary to have an iron will, too. Along the way, a bit of lock-picking and document forging might come in handy too*.
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Note: Tim Sandham is a dubious fictioneer and not an authorised advice-giver. This blog does not constitute an invitation to start making movies, forging documents, and picking locks
