As an Amer­i­can, I admit that only an out­sider can view my coun­try with the great­est clar­i­ty. And as long as we want to look at the Unit­ed States through for­eign eyes, why not look through those of Wern­er Her­zog? Even aside from his wild­ly cre­ative body of work as a fea­ture film­mak­er — he made Aguirre, the Wrath of God; he made Fitz­car­ral­do; he made Bad Lieu­tenant: Port of Call New Orleans — Her­zog the doc­u­men­tar­i­an has offered up a host of his own rich and sur­pris­ing per­cep­tions. He’s trav­eled the globe, from the Less­er Antilles (La Soufrière) to Antarc­ti­ca (Encoun­ters at the End of the World) to south­ern France’s pre­his­toric caves (Cave of For­got­ten Dreams), look­ing intense­ly and com­ment­ing even more intense­ly on peo­ple, from cham­pi­on ski jumpers (The Great Ecsta­sy of the Wood­carv­er Stein­er) to Viet­nam pris­on­ers of war (Lit­tle Dieter Needs to Fly) to wildlife film­mak­ers eat­en by bears (Griz­zly Man). By com­par­i­son, most of us might con­sid­er places like the auc­tion hous­es and tel­e­van­gel­i­cal broad­cast stu­dios of Amer­i­ca com­par­a­tive­ly unex­ot­ic ter­ri­to­ry.

Not Her­zog, how­ev­er: when he watch­es a live­stock sale, he hears in the rapid-fire bab­ble of the auc­tion­eer “the last poet­ry pos­si­ble, the poet­ry of cap­i­tal­ism,” and when he watch­es a tele­vi­sion preach­er, he sees an appeal to “the para­noia and crazi­ness of our civ­i­liza­tion.” Here we have two fruits of these strands of Her­zog’s fas­ci­na­tion with his now-adopt­ed home­land of Amer­i­ca: 1976’s How Much Wood Could a Wood­chuck Chuck and 1981’s God’s Angry Man. Like many oth­er doc­u­men­taries of Her­zog’s, and not a few of his fic­tion films, these doc­u­men­taries deal with pur­suits so spe­cial­ized, obses­sive, or both that watch­ing them in prac­tice becomes mes­mer­iz­ing. The first wit­ness­es a series of auc­tion­eers as their obscure, qua­si-musi­cal pat­ter keeps one high­ly par­tic­u­lar gear of the econ­o­my spin­ning. The sec­ond, one even more con­cerned with mon­ey and with an orig­i­nal title of Creed and Cur­ren­cy, looks into the world of Los Ange­les’ flam­boy­ant, dona­tion-demand­ing, FCC-hat­ing, seem­ing­ly untir­ing reli­gious broad­cast­er Dr. Gene Scott. Do cow­boy-hat­ted rur­al busi­ness­men and man­ic tel­e­van­ge­lists accu­rate­ly rep­re­sent Amer­i­ca? Hard­ly. But inter­pret­ed by Her­zog, they show you the coun­try in a way nobody else could.

Find more great films in our col­lec­tion of 600 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wern­er Herzog’s Eye-Open­ing New Film Reveals the Dan­gers of Tex­ting While Dri­ving

Por­trait Wern­er Her­zog: The Director’s Auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Short Film from 1986

Errol Mor­ris and Wern­er Her­zog in Con­ver­sa­tion

Wern­er Her­zog Has a Beef With Chick­ens

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

If you’re seek­ing advice about mak­ing your first film, Kevin Smith is a good place to start. The comedic direc­tor of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and Chas­ing Amy fame was a Hol­ly­wood out­sider when he made his debut with the crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed Clerks in 1994. The black and white fea­ture went on to gross $3.1 mil­lion — not bad for a Van­cou­ver Film School dropout who shot the movie in the con­ve­nience store where he once worked, on a total bud­get of $27,575.

In the clip above, Smith dis­pens­es a dose of ram­bling advice to Cana­di­an film­mak­er and video pro­duc­er Gavin Michael Booth. We’ve summed it up in three main points. Our sum­ma­ry lacks the exple­tives that makes Smith’s talk rather col­or­ful.

1 – “You have to have a rea­son­able amount of unrea­son­abil­i­ty” – Smith sug­gests that film­mak­ers must pos­sess an appro­pri­ate degree of self-belief and dri­ve, regard­less of the obsta­cles before them. If young film­mak­ers were rea­son­able about their chances of suc­cess, the only peo­ple mak­ing movies would be Los Ange­les natives already entrenched in the film indus­try.

2 – “You have to know… what hills you’re will­ing to die on.” The rea­son­able amount of unrea­son­abil­i­ty also refers to know­ing which bat­tles are worth fight­ing for. A direc­to­r­i­al vision is impor­tant, but at the end of the day it is sub­or­di­nate to bud­get con­straints.

3 – “You have to learn how to kill your babies.” Smith is an ardent believ­er in movies need­ing to be only as long as they must, and no longer. Includ­ing scenes because you like them unless they’re unequiv­o­cal­ly essen­tial is self-indul­gent and does a dis­ser­vice to the audi­ence.

If you’re after fur­ther tips, we’ve also writ­ten about Quentin Taran­ti­no joint­ly giv­ing film­mak­ing advice with Sam Rai­mi, and leg­endary Sovi­et direc­tor Andrei Tarkovsky’s coun­sel to begin­ner film­mak­ers. Plus we have 10 Tips From the Great Bil­ly Wilder on How to Write a Good Screen­play.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman

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What is the Inter­view Project? David Lynch describes it as “a 20,000-mile road trip over 70 days across and back the Unit­ed States” where “peo­ple have been found and inter­viewed,” and if you watch the videos this trip pro­duced, you’re “going to meet hun­dreds of peo­ple,” all dif­fer­ent, found “by dri­ving along the roads, going into bars, going into dif­fer­ent loca­tions, and there they were. The peo­ple told their sto­ry. It’s so fas­ci­nat­ing to look and lis­ten to peo­ple.” This all comes straight from the Inter­view Pro­jec­t’s Lynch-star­ring intro­duc­to­ry video above. As for its actu­al 121 video episodes, those come direct­ed by Lynch’s son Austin and his col­lab­o­ra­tor Jason S. And what ele­ments of the U.S. pop­u­la­tion have they curat­ed? Let’s just say you would­n’t hear these voic­es in the main­stream media — and prob­a­bly not even on This Amer­i­can Life. “Today we’re meet­ing Jere­mie,” Lynch père tells us in his open­er to the Inter­view Project episode below. “The team found Jere­mie in a restau­rant in Ham­mond, Louisiana.”

From the cor­ner of a hotel bed, young Jere­mie, who looks at first like a Mor­mon mis­sion­ary on casu­al day, describes his lit­tle-known town as “about 45 min­utes from Baton Rouge and about fif­teen hours from New Orleans.” He then recounts the impres­sive num­ber of lifestyles he’s lived so far: in the mil­i­tary, on the streets, “the drug scene,” “the nature scene.” He then gets into the rea­sons behind his taste for one-night stands and orgies. In the episode below, the team meets Traci, a motel man­ag­er in Mar­fa, Texas, who tells them under the moon­light of her vic­to­ry over alco­holism, her first encounter with her life­long best friend, and her once-recur­ring dreams of a face­less man with a goa­tee. At an auc­tion in Bel­lville, Wis­con­sin, they find Robin, who dis­cuss­es his attempts to start a mas­sage-and-heal­ing coop­er­a­tive, only to have them thwart­ed by the pre­vail­ing notion that “This is the Mid­west. It’s not going to hap­pen here.” The Inter­view Project has gath­ered small-town Amer­i­ca’s per­son­al sto­ries of tragedy, tri­umph, and all those rich expe­ri­ences in-between. “It’s some­thing that’s human,” to quote David Lynch again, “and you can’t stay away from it.” And at three or four min­utes apiece, you cer­tain­ly can’t watch just one.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch Talks About His 99 Favorite Pho­tographs at Paris Pho­to 2012

David Lynch Presents the His­to­ry of Sur­re­al­ist Film (1987)

David Lynch Teach­es You to Cook His Quinoa Recipe in a Weird, Sur­re­al­ist Video

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

I just caught a clever dou­ble-bill: Going Attrac­tions, April Wright’s doc­u­men­tary on the his­to­ry and future of the Amer­i­can dri­ve-in movie the­ater, and Demen­tia 13, Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la’s 1963 dri­ve-in-geared fea­ture debut (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture). Going Attrac­tions fea­tures a good deal of com­men­tary from Roger Cor­man, the inter­na­tion­al­ly respect­ed and immense­ly pro­lif­ic film­mak­er whose career has defined the very con­cept of the high-qual­i­ty “B‑movie.” In fact, so Wright revealed at the Q&A, Cor­man nev­er went to dri­ve-ins him­self, so appalling did he find their sub­stan­dard audio­vi­su­al pre­sen­ta­tions of his pic­tures, made cheap­ly but not with­out painstak­ing efforts to look and sound expen­sive. Still work­ing after over 50 films to his cred­it as direc­tor and near­ly 400 as pro­duc­er, the Detroit-born, Oxford-edu­cat­ed, Los Ange­les-based Cor­man, as well as mak­ing such revival-house clas­sics as Soror­i­ty Girl, The Wild Angels, and sev­er­al not­ed adap­ta­tions of Edgar Allan Poe, launched the careers of not just Cop­po­la but oth­er auteurs like Mar­tin Scors­ese (Box­car Bertha, 1972), Monte Hell­man (Beast from Haunt­ed Cave, 1959), and Peter Bog­danovich (Voy­age to the Plan­et of Pre­his­toric Women, 1968).

Cor­man also worked with actors now as famous as they come, as in 1960’s Lit­tle Shop of Hor­rors at the top, which fea­tures a young Jack Nichol­son. 1962’s The Intrud­er, just above, stars William Shat­ner in a sto­ry that con­fronts racism with a frank­ness unchar­ac­ter­is­tic of that era. 1963’s The Ter­ror, below, brings back Nichol­son, team­ing him with San­dra Knight and Boris Karloff. Accord­ing to a 1967 pro­file by Roger Ebert, Cor­man “shot all of Karlof­f’s scenes in two days to save on the pay­roll. Then when he got into the cut­ting room with his film, he real­ized to his hor­ror that his hor­ror film made no sense. Karloff was gone. What to do? Cor­man called in two of the bit play­ers, shot them in close-up (the sets had already been torn down or had fall­en down), and had one ask the oth­er: ‘Now tell me what all this means.’ And then the oth­er one did. Along the way, work­ing quick­ly and impro­vis­ing a lot of his scenes, Cor­man devel­oped a dis­tinc­tive, per­son­al style with­out think­ing much about it.” Yet such seem­ing­ly laugh­able tech­niques have served the man well: he titled his auto­bi­og­ra­phy How I Made a Hun­dred Movies in Hol­ly­wood and Nev­er Lost a Dime. What film­mak­er at any lev­el of crit­i­cal regard can say the same? You can find Cor­man’s films in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Demen­tia 13: The Film That Took Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la From Schlock­ster to Auteur

Tro­ma Enter­tain­ment, the Mak­er of Acclaimed B‑Movies, Puts 150 Free Films on YouTube

Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Out­er Space: “The Worst Movie Ever Made,” “The Ulti­mate Cult Flick,” or Both?

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

Quentin Taran­ti­no has nev­er been one to shy away from shar­ing his views on film­mak­ing with the pub­lic, and we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly writ­ten about his 2008 and 2012 lists of the great­est movies ever made. Even a casu­al com­par­i­son of his 2008 and 2012 picks, how­ev­er, shows that the one­time video store clerk’s tastes are liable to change over time. When mak­ing his direc­to­r­i­al debut with Reser­voir Dogs (1992), Taran­ti­no made anoth­er list; on the sec­ond page of the script, under a head­ing marked “Ded­i­cat­ed to:” Taran­ti­no enu­mer­at­ed the actors and direc­tors who had inspired him to make what Empire Mag­a­zine would rank the great­est inde­pen­dent film of all time.

In the video above, which was shot some years after Reser­voir Dogs’ release, Taran­ti­no revis­its this list and gives his lat­est thoughts on its con­stituents. Some are scarce­ly-remem­bered fig­ures, such as the king of ‘60s and ’70s mis­fit roles Tim­o­thy Carey whom Taran­ti­no wry­ly remem­bers treat­ing flat­u­lence “almost like a reli­gion.” Oth­ers include then obscure actors on their way to becom­ing inter­na­tion­al­ly-rec­og­nized names, such as Chow Yun Fat. Although Taran­ti­no ini­tial­ly saw some­thing effort­less­ly cool about Fat, rem­i­nis­cent of trench­coat-wear­ing French star Alain Delon, he claims to have since down­grad­ed his opin­ion of the Hong Kong actor. And don’t even get him start­ed on Jean-Luc Godard. For the full list accom­pa­nied by Tarantino’s col­or­ful com­men­tary, check out the video.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Quentin Tarantino’s Hand­writ­ten List of the 11 “Great­est Movies”

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists the 12 Great­est Films of All Time: From Taxi Dri­ver to The Bad News Bears

Tarantino’s 10 Favorite Films of 2013

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists His Favorite Films Since 1992