Werner Herzog Analyzes Kanye West’s “Famous” Video
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The legendarily intense German filmmaker Werner Herzog has just put together a movie called Lo And Behold, Reveries Of The Connected World, a sort of meditation on the way the internet has altered our lives. And so the Daily Beast had the weirdly brilliant idea of getting Herzog to comment on Kanye West’s “Famous” video, one of the more cryptic and provocative recent examples of internet art. And as Pitchfork points out, Herzog loves the thing. In a new video, we get to hear him commenting on the “Famous” video, calling it “very good stuff.” Here’s the video — which, like “Famous” itself, is obviously NSFW.
Some highlights include Herzog referring to Kanye as “Kane,” saying that his rap is “very well-done,” struggling to remember Billy Cosby’s name, and claiming to enjoy internet cat videos. But he also gets much deeper into what the video means:
This video gives you space for creating your separate parallel story. And you keep thinking, are these people for real? Are they doppelgängers? And what could be the story of them? What are they doing? How have they partied? What brought them together? So all of a sudden, the rapper gives me the chance to completely go wild on my own story.
So: Do you think Kanye West has seen Fitzcarraldo? I have a feeling that he’d really like Fitzcarraldo.