Every Night the Trees Disappear

Werner Herzog and the Making of Heart of Glass

Alan Greenberg, Werner Herzog

• Publisher: Chicago Review Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781569766071
• eBook ISBN: 9781613743522
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

"You know from seeing it that Herzog was up to something strange in filming Heart of Glass. Now the mystery is clarified. Alan Greenberg peers into the heart of darkness of the great artist." —Roger Ebert "Mesmerizing . . . as poetic and mysterious as the film itself."—Jim Jarmusch This intimate chronicle of the visionary filmmaker Werner Herzog directing a masterwork is interwoven with Herzog's original screenplay to create a unique vision of its own.   Alan Greenberg was, according to the director, the first "outsider" to seek him out and recognize his greatness. At the end of their first evening together Herzog urged Greenberg to work with him on his new film--and everything thereafter. In this film, Heart of Glass, Herzog exercised control over his actors by hypnotizing them before shooting their scenes. The result was one of the most haunting movies ever made.   Not since Lillian Ross's classic 1950 book Picture has an American writer given such a close, first-hand, book-length account of how a director makes a movie. But this is not a conventional, journalistic account. Instead it presents a unique vision with the feel of a novel--intimate, penetrating, and filled with mystery.   Alan Greenberg is a writer, film director, film producer, and photographer. He is also the author of Love in Vain: A Vision of Robert Johnson. Werner Herzog is considered one of the world's greatest filmmakers. His books include Conquest of the Useless and Of Walking in Ice.    

The Scenario

DEATH ROOM

Ascherl is stretched out in a narrow room. The room is painted in a green oil color about shoulder high, and the paint is beginning to peel away. The floor is covered with wet flagstones, which have apparently just been wiped with a pail of water that still stands on the floor.

Paulin puts two candlesticks on each side of the dead man’s head and replaces the candles. Paulin hums a foolish song.

She lights the candles. They stand against a small window through which gray daylight penetrates.

Paulin leaves through the door by the feet of the corpse, taking away the bucket and the rag.

The door is closed from without.

The door.

INN

The innkeeper polishes some glasses behind the counter and is very fussy about it. He watches his guests. They keep still. The door beside the counter opens. The guests don’t take note of him; they just stare at each other.

TONI

Here I am.

INNKEEPER

Jeez, Toni! I think this time you’ve brought us funeral music.

TONI

God, am I thirsty.

INNKEEPER

A wheat beer first, as always.

Toni sits at the table where Wudy and Ascherl always sit. The guests are very oppressive in the way they stare at each other unflinchingly. The innkeeper returns and serves Toni his wheat beer. He takes his seat across from him.

INNKEEPER

They buried Muehlbeck yesterday, our top workman. Now they don’t know what to do.

TONI

Hias already predicted that.

INNKEEPER

Then you also know the thing about the Ruby.

TONI

The thing with the Ruby is the master’s malady.

MANSION

Ludmilla takes the Ruby mug off the carpet, the factory owner having taken it from the case in the office. Apparently he just left it there. Hias steps behind Ludmilla without making a sound.

HIAS

Ludmilla.

Ludmilla is frightened and drops the mug. We cannot tell if it is broken.

HIAS

Leave it; there is more to break today.

Only Ludmilla’s face; she looks waxen. Very softly she shows her joy with Hias’s presence.

Hias carefully places his massive, bandaged arm around her shoulder.

HIAS

Go away from the mansion. The master could very well slip and end up sitting on your face.

A view of the display case in the adjacent room. Hias is attracted by the case. He steps close and stares at the glass.

Ludmilla, alone. She has a flushed face.

OFFICE

In the office, there now stands a larger table, not far from the desk, packed with books. The factory owner sits behind the untidy heap. We look at him with the eyes of Ludmilla, who stands before him.

The factory owner has something distracted and nasty about him. He looks up.

FACTORY OWNER

What does that whining mean?

Ludmilla sobs.

He lifts his big sackcloth. Boundless weeping.

FACTORY OWNER

It is better for the servants to pray that we rediscover the law of the Ruby than to blubber.

LUDMILLA

So much will happen. Hias is outside, you know.

Startled, the glass-factory owner goes to the door of a small adjoining reception room and sees stacks of old files and exhibition pieces. Hias stands with his back to us, scratching his head.

FACTORY OWNER

He is here—he knew it! He didn’t need a messenger!

Hias revolves clumsily. He speaks overly calm and slow, like a threat.

HIAS

The master may send for a hunter to shoot the bear. The bulls are frightened, and Sam and I can’t guarantee that he won’t rip a bull to pieces while the others escape. On the Day of the Bear, a bull runs as far as Mainz.

FACTORY OWNER

Muehlbeck has died, taking the secret with him, but you must find the ingredient for the Ruby glass. Muehlbeck has forsaken us.

HIAS

I don’t know the ingredient.

FACTORY OWNER

You’d know it for ten florins.

Hias lapses into reflection. He shakes his head.

FACTORY OWNER

Then you’ll know it for a thousand.

In the background we can hear Ludmilla cry. The factory owner lapses into trance.

FACTORY OWNER

Do you want our people to have to eat oat bread again, which only gives them a headache?

Hias shakes his head.

FACTORY OWNER

Then tell me the secret so we can produce the Ruby glass again and so you can be master of the factory. I shall carry a millstone to Trier.

HIAS

I am here only as a hunter.

FACTORY OWNER

I want to see the Ruby again! I want the red glass, understand? I need a glass to carry my blood. Or else it will trickle away.

The factory owner has seized Hias by the throat and shakes him.

FACTORY OWNER

The sun is hurting me.

Hias pushes the factory owner away with a jerk.

HIAS

You will never see the sun again. The rats will bite your earlobes.

SHOP

It is a kind of grocery or, rather, a small store that apparently belongs to the inn. A simple counter, chests and stacks. Sacks filled with grain on the floor. Through the open door in the background, we recognize an oven.

The innkeeper’s wife shovels flour into Hias’s sack from a chest. She sets the sack on the counter and ties it.

HOSTESS

Ascherl’s dead in the closet.

HIAS

That’s the beginning.

HOSTESS

Will you be going up to the woods again?

Hias starts; a vision overcomes him.

HIAS

Wait. I don’t need the flour anymore.

HOSTESS

Then...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword by Werner Herzog
• A Distant Wind
• Gangster Priests
• Death Lesson
• The Sign at Thusis
• The Scenario: A Summary
• Blues
• The Scenario
• The Gloom of Gloom
• The Scenario
• Outside Czechoslovakia
• Pallbearers
• The Scenario
• The Castle Flies
• Under the Ice
• The Scenario
• The Interrupted Death of Friedrich
• The Scenario
• The Fool on the Roof
• The Soundman Haymo
• The Scenario
• The Diminishing Snake
• Order and Disorder
• The Weasel of Feilgau
• Wa’hid
• Ludmilla
• The Scenario
• Sachrang
• The Story of Absalom
• The Scenario
• The Bluff
• The Death of a Dog
• The Scenario
• Afterthought: Visions of Great Skellig
• Zorn’s Lemma
• Great Skellig
• Nothing to Declare
• Afterword by Werner Herzog
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author