Title: Real Monster/Fake Auteur: Humor, Hollywood, and Herzog in<i>Incident at Loch Ness</i>
Abstract: Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Daniel Herbert is a Lecturer in Screen Arts & Cultures at the University of Michigan, where he teaches classes on Adaptations, Apocalyptic Film and Television, The Contemporary Film Industry, the History of World Cinema, and Film Theory. He holds a PhD in Critical Studies from the University of Southern California. His dissertation examines transnational film remakes. His essays have appeared in a number of edited collections and journals, as well as in the pages of Film Quarterly and Millennium Film Journal. Notes 1. Jonathan Bing, “‘Loch’ Lurks for Helmer,” Variety.com, June 30, 2003. <http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117888727?categoryid=1236&cs=1>. 2. Zorianna Kit, “Herzog Gets to the Bottom of ‘Loch Ness’,” Hollywood Reporter, July 1, 2003; “Werner Herzog Making a Loch Ness Monster Film?” Ain't-It-Cool-News, June 30, 2003, <http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=15571>. 3. “‘Invincible’ Screening,” Variety.com, Sept. 11, 2002, <http://www.variety.com/vstory/VR-1117872691?categoryid=38&cs=1>. 4. Michel Foucault, “What is an Author,” in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essay and Interviews, ed. Donal F. Bouchard, trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977). 5. Foucault, 130–131. 6. Notably, Foucault does not limit this assertion to literary authors, but also to “a person to whom the production of a text, a book, or a work can be legitimately attributed,” as well as the producers of theories, traditions, and entire disciplines. This means that the author function applies also to cinematic authors, or auteurs. Foucault, 131. 7. Timothy Corrigan, “Producing Herzog: from a body of images,” The Films of Werner Herzog: Between Mirage and History, ed. Timothy Corrigan, (New York: Methuen, 1986), 5–6. 8. Corrigan, “Producing Herzog,” 6. 9. Corrigan, “Producing Herzog,” 5. 10. Paul Arthur, “Beyond the Limits,” Film Comment 41.4 (July-August 2005): 43; Thomas Elsaesser, New German Cinema: A History (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989), 166; William Van Wert, “Last Words: Observations on a New Language,” in The Films of Werner Herzog, 51–54. 11. Elsaesser, New German Cinema, 91, 304; Thomas Elsaesser, An Anthropologist's Eye: Where the Green Ants Dream, in The Films of Werner Herzog, 133–135; Jan-Christopher Horak, “W.H. or the Mysteries of Walking on Ice,” in The Films of Werner Herzog, 23. 12. Timothy Corrigan, among others, makes this claim in “Producing Herzog,” 6. 13. Nevertheless, Herzog also contests his reputation as a risk-taker. Herzog on Herzog, ed. Paul Cronin, (London: Faber and Faber, 2002), 19, 150. 14. Werner Herzog, Of Walking in Ice: Munich-Paris 11/23 to 12/14, 1974, (New York: Tanam Press, 1980). 15. Jan-Christopher Horak engages this book in a thorough textual analysis in “W.H. of the Mysteries of Walking in Ice.” 16. Van Wert, 52; Although Herzog problematizes the idea that he is an “independent” filmmaker, he stresses the fact that he works as his own producer and refers to himself as “self-reliant.” Herzog on Herzog, 10–12, 202–205. 17. Timothy Corrigan, New German Film: The Displaced Image, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983), 124. 18. Herzog on Herzog, 12, 172, 229–230. 19. Thomas Elsaesser, New German Cinema, 40–42, 90–92 103–105. 20. Corrigan, “Producing Herzog,” 4. 21. Corrigan, “Producing Herzog,” 7. 22. Anne Thompson, “A Movie as Cagey as That Mysterious Nessie,” The New York Times, Aug. 9, 2004. 23. “Project: Invincible,” Variety.com, Sept. 20, 2002. <http://www.variety.com/index.asp?layout=studiosystems&ss_view=s_s_project&mode=allcredits&project_id=127859>. 24. Lance Armstrong, Associate Producer on Incident at Loch Ness, personal interview, Sept. 9, 2004. 25. Most recently, Penn secured a two-year “first-look” deal with the studio to write, direct, and produce films. Michael Fleming, “‘X-Men 3’ Scribe Pens Pact at Fox,” Variety.com, June 27, 2005. <http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117925170?categoryid=1238&cs=1>. 26. By the year 2000, home video constituted 38% of all film industry revenue, up from 7% in 1980. Harold Vogel, Entertainment Industry Economics: A Guide for Financial Analysis, 6th ed. (Cambridge University Press, 2004), 68; Jill Goldsmith, “DVD sales forecast at four times B.O.” Variety.com, Aug. 8, 2005. <http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117927489?categoryid=&cs=1>. 27. Zak Penn, public talk at the NuArt Theater in Los Angeles, Sept. 17, 2004. 28. Thompson. 29. Anonymous source, “Werner Herzog!!!” Ain't-It-Cool-News, April 15, 1998. <http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=870>. 30. He stated this to the audience at the Los Angeles premier of the film at the NuArt Theater, and earlier to the film's audience at the 2004 Seattle Film Festival, as seen on a “behind-the-scenes” feature on the DVD for Incident at Loch Ness. 31. During the autumn of 2005, Werner Herzog went into production on a feature about Dieter Dengler titled Rescue Dawn, starring Steve Zahn and Christian Bale—who recently played Batman. Pamela McClintock, “Cast coming to Herzog's ‘Rescue’,” Variety.com, July 20, 2005. <http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117926254?categoryid=1236&cs=1>. 32. Bing. 33. For example, see Thompson; Kenneth Turan, “A Monstrously Charming Mockumentary,” Los Angeles Times, Sept. 17, 2004; Rebecca Murray “Screenwriter Zak Penn Makes his Directorial Debut with ‘Incident at Loch Ness’,” About.com, October 2004. <http://movies.about.com/od/directorinterviews/a/lochness102404_4.htm>. 34. Bing. 35. Kit. 36. Many of the websites related to Incident at Loch Ness have been removed from the web since its release in 2004. These sites can still be viewed, however, with the use of the “Wayback Machine” at the “Internet Archive,” found at <http://www.archive.org>. Although I viewed all of these sites at the times they were active, for this paper I used the Internet archive to look them over in order to discuss them. 37. Cryptozoology is a crank science that investigates mythical creatures, such as the Abominable Snowman, Bigfoot, and the Loch Ness Monster. 38. Herzog describes this in Herzog on Herzog, 180–181, 185. 39. This figure is for its first week in wide release of 1101 theaters on July 30, 1999, not its opening weekend in 27 theaters two weeks earlier. The film earned over $140 million in US theaters overall. “The Blair Witch Project (United States History),” Variety.com. <http://www.variety.com/index.asp?layout=film_weekly&dept=Film&releaseID=16874&film=THE%20BLAIR%20WITCH%20PROJECT&movieID=12026>. 40. Jane Roscoe and Craig Hight, Faking It: Mock-Documentary and the Subversion of Factuality, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), 49. 41. Steven N. Lipkin, Derek Paget, and Jane Roscoe, “Docudrama and Mock-Documentary: Defining Terms, Proposing Canons,” in Docufictions: Essays on the Intersection of Documentary and Fictional Filmmaking, (Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2006), 14. 42. This corresponds with Roscoe and Hight's “Degree 1.” Roscoe and Hight, 68–69. 43. Bill Nichols defines these two documentary modes in Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 34–44. Whereas expositional documentaries typically address the viewer directly with an argument authoritatively connected to historical world, observational documentaries take the “fly on the wall,” “non-interventionist” approach of direct cinema and cinema verité. 44. The phrase “accountant's truth” comes from Herzog's characterization of cinema verité in his “Minnesota Manifesto,” and in numerous interviews, as conveying only “the truth of accountants.” Werner Herzog, “Minnesota Manifesto,” in Herzog on Herzog, 301–302. 45. Roscoe and Hight state that mock-documentaries do not constitute a genre, but rather a “discourse.” Roscoe and Hight, 182–183. 46. There is some discrepancy even within this sub-section of the genre. Roscoe and Hight include hoax mock-documentaries within their “Degree 2” grouping of mock-documentaries, noting that these films frequently make use of extra-textual material in order to build and sustain the myth of the film's reality. Roscoe and Hight, 72, 144, 155. On the other hand, Lipkin, Paget, and Roscoe appear to exclude hoaxes and fakes from the mock-documentary genre, as they state that mock-documentaries “seek to develop a relationship with a knowing audience who through being in on the joke can appreciate both the humor and the inherent critical reflexivity of the form.” Lipkin, Paget, and Roscoe, 14. I prefer to maintain that Incident at Lock Ness is a mock-documentary, and if the strictest classificatory precision is needed, then the multiply-hybridized terms “hoax mockumentary” or “hoax mock-documentary” seem appropriate. 47. Lipkin, Paget, and Roscoe, 25. 48. Michael Renov states “Every documentary issues a ‘truth claim’ of a sort, positing a relationship to history which exceeds the analogical status of its fictional counterpart.” Michael Renov, “Re-thinking Documentary: Towards a Taxonomy of Mediation,” Wide Angle 8.3–4 (1986): 71. 49. Corrigan, “Producing Herzog,” 6. 50. Foucault, 123.
Publication Year: 2009
Publication Date: 2009-09-25
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 2
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