Werner Herzog Has Never Liked Introspection | The New Yorker

When I wrote “Fitzcarraldo,” I was in San Francisco, and Francis Ford Coppola offered me the use of his mansion on Broadway. There was a little turret with almost three-hundred-and-sixty-degree windows, and I immediately decided to sit there and write. I gave myself ten days to compose the whole screenplay. From Coppola’s turret, I could see the entire bay and the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz Island. I was completely mesmerized by what I saw out there, and, after two hours, I noticed I had only half a page. So I turned my chair around. There was one segment with no window, and with a ruler and a very sharp pencil, I made a cross on this segment, like the crosshairs in your binoculars. When I looked up from writing, I would stare into the crosshairs and then continue.