crying fowl

The other night we were watching a Werner Herzog documentary called Encounters At the End of the World, which is about Antarctica and which Herzog narrates in English, and we were trying to guess what part of Germany he was from by scrutinizing his accent. I guessed Bavaria, not so much based on my presumed expertise as someone with graduate degrees in both Germanic literature and Linguistics, but rather as someone whose German relatives are not from Bavaria and also sound nothing like Werner Herzog when they speak English. I called up the Wikipedia entry for Herzog on the laptop that just happened to be in front of me, and confirmed that he is indeed from Munich. We went back to watching the movie, but every so often I would glance down and scan the information on the computer screen.

Suddenly I had to hit pause. "Listen to this!" I said, and started to read aloud to poor James, who presumably was along for this particular ride primarily in the hopes of getting to see some weird scientific crap about Antarctica. "One recurring symbol running through Herzog's films is chickens, which Herzog fears." We paused for a moment to let this sink in. Herzog had stated near the start of the documentary that it was definitely not going to be yet another film about penguins, so naturally that statement suddenly resonated with us. "Penguins are kind of like chickens," said James. "Yeah," I said. "This is all starting to make sense." We hit play and continued watching.

A few minutes later I glanced at the computer screen once again and lunged for the pause button. "WAIT OH MY GOD LISTEN TO THIS!" Reading aloud, I continued, "Even Dwarfs Started Small features cannibalistic chickens, and several sequences of dwarfs throwing chickens."

"Several sequences, " I repeated. "SEVERAL."

"Uh huh, I got that part."

"Sevvvveral. More than one."

"Got it."

I had barely started the movie up before the proceedings were halted once more. Again I quoted directly from the computer screen: "Signs of Life and The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser feature chicken hypnosis."

Me: "Herzog has so much to say about chicken hypnosis that he can't fit it all into one movie?"

James: "Wait, so the chickens are being hypnotized, or are they hypnotizing someone else?"

Me: "It doesn't specify. Maybe both, if we're lucky."

Then we got back to watching the rest of the documentary, only now occasionally inserting phrases into the narrative, suchlike:

Herzog: "Zee wattur iss negative 2 dekrees Celzius. Zee divers must be carefull not to go too far..."

Us: "...becauss of there mayght be chickenss."

Also, we are now planning a Werner Herzog film festival/drinking game.