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  It was clear that Herzog wasn’t going to change his mind (‘I have been shot at in the jungles of Peru – that is being shot at’) and so eventually we headed back down the hill toward his house, Werner trudging woundedly up the garden path, apparently resigned to the fact that he really did attract crazy people wherever he went.

  Inside the house, David and the crew began to assemble the barrage of lights, cameras and dolly tracks that make any television interview look like a small-scale military intervention. In a matter of moments we had successfully rendered Herzog’s house unfit for human habitation, a criss-crossing maze of power leads and camera cables making every step a potentially electrifying experience. (People who work in television – myself included – complain endlessly about all the health and safety red tape we have to deal with but honestly it’s surprising that more people don’t die while attempting to tell Richard and Judy about their fifteen-year battle with IBS.) Herzog eyed the expanding chaos with mild amusement before falling into conversation with our cameraman about some innovation in the field of digital photography. Meanwhile I lurked in the background, trying to figure out how to approach the forthcoming interview in the wake of all that weirdness up on Lookout Mountain. Eventually we were ready, and Herzog eased himself gingerly into his chair, ready and willing to be probed, if not actively penetrated.

  Herzog was engrossing, and his company effervescent. He spoke eloquently about Wrestlemania as a modern form of Greek theatre and explained why it had been important to keep abreast of Anna Nicole Smith’s reality TV show. He talked about being a ‘good soldier for cinema’ and of the poet’s responsibility to look the world in the eye and to have ‘no fear’. And he spoke movingly of Treadwell’s grisly death, the sounds of which had been captured on Timothy’s own camera but which Herzog refused to include in his documentary because ‘there is such a thing as privacy’. Yet all the time we were talking a voice in the back of my head kept saying: ‘He just got shot. He just got shot! Jeeze Louise, he really did really just get really shot. Really. Surely he’s hurt. What if he’s bleeding? What if he’s hurt and bleeding and I’m just sitting here talking to him about movies and ecstatic truth and Wrestlemania and Anna Nicole Smith and all the while his insides are gradually becoming his outsides? What if the bullet’s still inside him? Isn’t that bad? Isn’t that very bad indeed? Won’t it go septic? Doesn’t someone have to suck it out? Oh no, that’s snakes, isn’t it. Westerns. Sorry, wrong genre. OK, what do they do in cop movies? Should we pour whiskey on the wound and then get Herzog to bite down on a stick while I remove the bits with a red-hot blade? No, that’s Westerns again. Damn, I can’t think straight. But that’s because I’m talking to a man who just got shot and has now probably got a bullet lodged in his abdomen. Why isn’t he weeping in pain? Why isn’t he giving me a letter and demanding that I promise to take it to his sweetheart in Bavaria? Did any of this really happen? What the hell is happening …?’

  Eventually I could contain it no more.’Look Werner,’ I blurted as the crew stopped to change tapes.’I can’t just go on not mentioning this. We have to talk about this whole getting shot thing.’

  ‘It is not signif —’

  ‘I know it’s “not significant” to you, but that’s because you’re Werner Herzog, the fearless Bavarian film-maker who has faced down death in the jungles of Peru. But I am Mark Kermode the much less fearless film critic who once had fifty pence stolen from him by a tough-looking teenager on Whetstone High Street and thought that was pretty Mean Streets so it is not insignificant to me! OK? And about half an hour ago I was standing next to you in gun-toting Los Angeles when smoke started to emerge from the waistband of your trousers. And to me that seems very significant indeed. And I need to talk about it. If that’s OK with you.’

  ‘It is OK,’ Werner shrugged.

  ‘On camera!’ said David in a not very sotto voce stage-whisper.

  ‘What?’ we both replied in unison.

  ‘You need to talk about it on camera …’

  It transpired that David had no idea whether or not the shooting, which we’d all witnessed and which was now proving so preoccupying, had actually been captured on film. If it hadn’t, and if we were going to make reference to it in the finished piece, then we needed something – anything – to prove that we weren’t making this all up.

  ‘It happened,’ said Werner.’And I am happy to prove it … as long as you don’t sensationalise what happened.’

  Presumably it wasn’t sensational enough already.

  ‘Great. Then when you’re ready, we’ll talk about it. On camera …’

  The tapes started rolling again. I took a deep breath and tried to look casual.

  ‘So Werner, during the course of your career you’ve been shot at a couple of times. And in fact when we started this interview somebody took a shot at you, and they hit you.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Herzog demurred, beaming, apparently now finding this hilarious.’Yes, it hit me. I heard it. And it hurts a little bit.’

  ‘And I was standing right next to you …’ I interjected.

  ‘Yes, but it is not a significant bullet.’

  ‘So have you got a wound?’

  ‘Yes. I think so.’

  ‘Well show me. Let me see.’

  Unperturbed, Werner got up and started to loosen the leather belt around his waist and undo the top of his trousers.’I’m sorry,’ he intoned drolly, with just a hint of sauciness.’I shouldn’t do this on camera …’

  The belt was lengthy, the buttons fiddly, and the overall effect like some bizarrely clumsy striptease. Come Inside! Bavarian Film-Makers – All Nude! But with a degree of fumbling Herzog got his trousers open and lifted up his jumper to reveal blood seeping through into his white woollen vest. Another layer was peeled back to reveal a pair of purple paisley boxer shorts now emblazoned with a darkening red patch. The surreal burlesque continued as the elasticated waistband of his boxers came down to reveal a palpable hole in Herzog’s abdomen where (as Billy Bragg once poetically put it) no hole should be. The wound was about the size of a dime, with an angry red bruise spreading out from its enticing epicentre. For a second Herzog teasingly fingered the surrounding flesh, causing the wound to gape briefly like the mouth of a tiny sea anemone. Then after this quick illicit flash the boxers came back up like the feathers of one of Mrs Henderson’s racy dancers, and Werner was back – intacto.

  ‘But Werner you’re bleeding!’ I protested.’Someone has shot at you and created a wound in your abdomen.’

  ‘It is not significant,’ Werner repeated.

  ‘But to you it’s like this is some sort of everyday thing. “Hello I’mWerner Herzog, the film-maker who gets shot at!”’

  ‘It’s not an everyday thing,’ laughed Herzog, still retying his belt, ‘but it does not surprise me to be shot at.’

  The cameras stopped rolling, and Werner walked to the sink to get a drink of water, limping very slightly but otherwise apparently unharmed. David was fiddling with something technical in the corner, and called me over for a discreet word.

  ‘We need to get him to a hospital,’ he said quietly.

  ‘He won’t go,’ I replied.

  ‘I know, but for heaven’s sake, you saw it. He’s wounded. OK, it’s probably a small wound, but do any of us have any idea what a big wound is meant to look like? I don’t. What if that is a “big wound”? What if there’s something stuck inside him?’

  ‘I know, I know,’ I whispered.’I’ve been thinking exactly the same thing. What if he gets septicaemia? Isn’t that what happens in movies? Someone gets wounded and no one does anything about it and the next thing someone else is having to saw their leg off without anaesthetic because gangrene’s set in. Or is that only in Westerns?’

  Werner was wandering back from the sink, admiring the mini-DV cams, utterly at ease.

  ‘Look, Werner …’ David and I said in unison.’We need to get you to a hospital.’

  ‘No!’ he said firmly.�
�No hospital!’

  ‘But why not? You’re hurt. What if you’ve been …damaged?’

  ‘Because,’ said Werner, ‘if I go to hospital with what looks like a gunshot wound then they call the police. And it doesn’t matter if you did the shooting or the getting shot at – you are part of the shooting. It is a lot of trouble. And anyway, I am fine.’

  David had a brief go at pulling rank with some ‘BBC health and safety’ regulations shtick but Werner was having none of t, so eventually we gave up.

  Defeated, we packed the gear into the vehicles, the cameras going into a van while David and I piled into his pokey little rental car. We said goodbye to Werner, and pulled away from the house, watching him waving from his garden looking exactly as he had looked when we arrived – only without the bullet hole, obviously.

  We trundled down through Laurel Canyon in silence, the oddly pastoral sound effects of the Hollywood Hills warbling away in the background. Finally, I spoke.

  ‘I need alcohol,’ I said firmly.’And food. Although I could probably live without the food.’

  ‘Right,’ said David.’Where do we go to get alcohol? Or maybe food?’

  Neither of us had any idea. To be honest, we weren’t entirely sure what day of the week it was. I’d only arrived at the airport a couple of hours earlier and my head was still going round and round the baggage carousel.

  ‘Let’s go back to the hotel and regroup,’ said David.

  ‘Good idea,’ I replied.’As long as we go straight out again and get alcohol. And maybe food. But with the emphasis on the alcohol.’

  So we drove down toward Sunset, toward the thrumming metropolitan area around the Chateau Marmont and the Standard and the Hyatt, just round the corner from the Magic Castle, and all the other reassuringly familiar hotels in which I habitually stayed (along with every other passing media type) whenever I was filming in Hollywood. For some reason, however, David seemed to be going the wrong way, heading down Sunset toward the less salubrious end of town, past the ‘Sunset Strip’ club (Girls! Girls! Girls!) and the In-N-Out burger joint (Burger and Fries $1. 99!) and the ‘Cheques Cashed’ minimart, drifting inexorably toward that end of town where people tend to congregate in search of assistance – financial, sexual and chemical.

  ‘David, where are we going?’ I asked.

  ‘We’re here!’ he announced, pulling into a side street and stopping outside a shabby hotel which seemed to have been specifically positioned for ease of access to pushers and pimps. And burgers.

  ‘Here? Where is “here”?’

  ‘At the hotel.’

  ‘Sorry, what do you mean “at the hotel?”’

  ‘I mean “at the hotel” as in “we are at the hotel in which we are staying”.’

  I peered out into the gloom. Two hours ago I was getting shot at on some alien LA hillside. But that was a walk in the park compared to this.

  ‘David, you’re not serious. You’re not really staying in this otel.’

  ‘No,’ said David.’We are staying in this hotel. What’s the problem? It’s fine. I’ve been here two nights already.’

  The hotel, it transpired, was not David’s choice, but had been booked by a production co-ordinator in London who was apparently mad keen on saving licence-payers’ money. David understood this admirable intention and was clearly making do. But he was made of sterner (and less pampered) stuff than me.

  ‘But David,’ I bleated, ‘we are in the “wrong part of town”, the part of town where people come seeking the kind of “refreshment” for which you and I are not in the market. This is the part of town where anyone who is not a hooker, a pimp, a junkie, a pusher or a john, is clearly lost. You could probably get picked up by the police just for being here without intent to purchase hard drugs and be beaten up by a large and heavily tattooed transvestite. I wouldn’t even park here let alone stay here. So please tell me that this is an example of your darkly ironic New York wit, and I will laugh indulgently, and then we can head back up Sunset to the nice part where the wanky media types like you and me stay and we can pretend that this never happened.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said David.’It’s fine. Grab the bag. And the camera.’

  ‘“Grab the camera”? Are you mad? You want me to parade around the streets with a big expensive camera? Why don’t I just pin a hundred-dollar bill to my forehead and stand on the street corner shouting, “Hey, I’m from out of town and I’m clearly lost so please mug me!”’

  ‘You’re being ridiculous,’ said David.’How bad can it be? Look, we just got shot at in Laurel Canyon and that’s meant to be “safe”.’

  ‘Oh right. And somehow that’s meant to make me feel better is it? The reassurance that everywhere is just as dangerous as everywhere else?’

  But David had gone on inside, and I had no choice but to follow, camera in one hand, kitbag in the other, a look of petulant self-indulgent misery and loathing stamped across my middle-class British face. How bad could it be?

  As it turned out, very bad indeed. Having conducted my usual anally retentive room-disinfecting routine (take a towel from the bathroom, place it on the bedspread – the one part of the bed that never gets changed or cleaned – grab the bedpsread through the towel thereby avoiding physical contact with the vast bacterial ecosystem now thriving thereon, and throw the resulting bundle into the furthest corner of the room before covering it with a second towel), I set about investigating the regular thumping sound coming from the wall by the head of the bed. Depressingly, it did indeed turn out to be the soul-destroying sound of the bedstead on the other side of the wall (which appeared to have been made of Kleenex and spit) rhythmically shifting back and forth as a couple trudged their slow but sure way toward some form of quasi-congressional climax. Every now and then you could hear some gasping ecstatic yelp the gender of which seemed curiously non-specific. Over the course of the subsequent evening, the neighbours made two further explorational sorties into the world of fleshy fun, each louder and more laborious than the last. Despite the fact that I never laid eyes on them, by morning I felt that I knew them both quite well.

  ‘Alcohol,’ I said out loud. Again.’I need alcohol,’ and I slammed the door shut and trudged down the corridor toward David’s room. When I say ‘corridor’, of course, I mean no such thing. The connecting passage between David’s room and mine was an open walkway which fronted straight on to Sunset, so that anyone who felt the need to do so could actually walk off the pavement and into the room without effort, thus giving the hotel an alarmingly earthy street-side ambiance. (This was also presumably the sort of street-facing window through which the car-jack wielding Batman clone came hurtling in search of Herzog.) More alarming still was the fact that David had opened his curtains – a wildly impetuous act as far as I was concerned.

  ‘For heaven’s sake David,’ I bleated, sounding increasingly like Little Lord Fauntleroy.’You can’t open the curtains! You’ll be killed in your sleep. And you can’t put the camera there. Hide it in the wardrobe. Or in the bathroom. Or, better still, move the wardrobe into the bathroom and then hide it in both of them. Just to be safe.’

  David rolled his eyes upward, grabbed his jacket and keys, and strode out into the night.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘let’s go and get some food.’

  ‘And alcohol?’

  ‘Yes, Mark – “and alcohol”.’

  And off we went.

  The next morning we rang Werner to see if he was still OK. Unsurprisingly his abdomen had stiffened up overnight, and the wound itself had become rather more painful. But he insisted that he’d dressed it and it was still ‘not significant’, so after a few minutes of pleading for him to allow us to take him to hospital we said our goodbyes.

  Back in London, we struggled to figure out how to put the piece together. David had checked the tapes and confirmed that the cameras had indeed been rolling when the shot was fired, and everything was captured – both sound and vision. But could we actually use any of th
at footage? Since Herzog had been so determined to downplay the entire event, wouldn’t we be exploiting him if we showed the shooting on TV? There also remained the issue of who was to blame for the whole weird affair – not in terms of who fired the shot, but who was responsible for Herzog’s safety when the shooting happened. Had we somehow inadvertently placed him in danger?

  This latter question particularly troubled David, who is both a brilliant director and an Olympic-level worrier. If David can find a way to take the responsibility (or more precisely the blame) for something then he will do so. That’s what makes him such a terrific person to work with – if it all goes well, I get the glory; if things screw up (which they never do with David), it’s all his fault. Perfect!

  We swiftly resolved that we wouldn’t do anything with the footage without Herzog’s permission. Nor would we talk to anyone about what had happened – although word was already leaking out that ‘something really weird’ had happened during the interview. After all, if Herzog wanted the issue to remain private, then that was his right.

  As it turned out, we needn’t have worried. A few days after our return to the UK I started getting emails from people in LA who had heard all about Herzog and the ‘crazed sniper’ – from Herzog himself. One particular contact sent me a digital photo of Herzog on the set of Harmony Korine’s new film (in which he played a small role) proudly displaying the wound to all and sundry. By now the bruise surrounding the hole had started to go a bit manky, and looked a lot larger and angrier than when I had last set eyes on it. But Werner seemed happy and otherwise unharmed, and was clearly enjoying regaling the assembled masses with tales of his fearlessness in the face of adversity.

  As the weeks went on the story grew, appearing first in the Hollywood Reporter, and then in newspapers back here in the UK. A couple of journalists rang me to check the details, and I confirmed that yes, Herzog had indeed been utterly unflapped by this sudden unexpected violation of his person. And as the story grew, two interesting things happened. Firstly, an ‘axis of terror’ began to emerge, growing in stature and imbalance with each subsequent retelling of the tale. Within this economy of fear, Herzog’s own stoical response to the shooting became increasingly matched and even outdone by a growing hysterical cowardliness on the part of the BBC crew. The braver he got, the more whimpering we became. By the time Herzog recounted the story to Henry Rollins on American TV a few months later, the assembled Brits had been reduced to the status of mere quivering wrecks, fleeing at the first sign of danger while the Bavarian legend impassively took incoming fire.