About 20 years ago, Werner Herzog was being interviewed in the Hollywood Hills when a bullet shot past his head, grazing him. The journalist asked if he was all right. Herzog calmly replied:
“It’s not a significant bullet.” It was not a significant bullet.
That moment – his brush with an insignificant bullet – has always stayed with me. Because in my own life, if it weren’t for Werner Herzog, I would not be the significant bullet I became.
Bullet One: Herzog
In 1997, before Herzog was a household name in Hollywood, I was a film student. In German film history class, we watched Stroszek. It left a mark on me: strange, absurd, unforgettable.
After film school, I spent three months delivering coffee to Hollywood executives – as one does. It wasn’t for me. So I moved to Austin, Texas, to start a theater company that would adapt outsider cinema into stage plays.
This was pre-Internet. You couldn’t just Google an artist. So I rented Stroszek on DVD, combed the credits, and discovered Herzog’s production company. A little digging revealed his brother ran it. With a landline telephone and a lot of nerve, I tracked him down.
A week later, at six in the morning, my roommate screamed across the apartment: “There’s an angry German man on the phone for you!”
It was Werner Herzog.
“What do you want with my picture?” he asked.
Long story short: he gave me permission to stage Stroszek. So I did – in an alleyway in Austin. That insignificant (to Herzog) phone call set the course of my life. And to this day, Herzog has no idea.
Bullet Two: Black Francis
Years later, I wanted to write a play about my favorite band, the Pixies. I cold-called Frank Black’s manager, using the same trick I’d used with Herzog: flip the credits of a CD, find a manager’s name, make a call.
A few days later, the manager called me back and said, “Charles [Frank’s non-stage name] told me to tell you if you were good enough for Werner Herzog, you’re good enough for Black Francis.”
That call led to an oral history book about the Pixies, a workshop musical, and – more importantly – a lifelong friendship with Charles (Black Francis). He taught me what kind of artist, and what kind of person, I wanted to be and that both were equally as important.
Bullet Three: Lynch, Dalí, and the Marx Brothers
The Pixies oral history introduced me to the story of Peter Ivers, who wrote the theme song for David Lynch’s Eraserhead. Ivers had a very significant if yet tragically short life. Learning about Ivers led to an afternoon with David Lynch. Which led to my obsession with great unmade films, as Lynch himself had written the holy grail of unmade movies, a film called Ronnie Rocket. This obsession led me to discover Salvador Dalí’s Giraffes on Horseback Salad, written for his heroes, the Marx Brothers, and never completed.
As an 11-year-old, I had dressed up like Harpo Marx to go see his son Bill, a renowned entertainer in his own right as a jazz pianist, play a concert in my hometown of Houston. I got to meet him after the show and shake his hand. It was the greatest moment of my young life. Thirty-five years later, I reached out to Bill for permission to adapt Dalí’s notes into a graphic novel starring the Marx Brothers. Permission granted.
Thanks to my friendship with Charles, Tim Heidecker of Tim and Eric joined me as co-writer. Another bullet, another trajectory.
Bullet Four: The Blue Starlite
My love of cinema eventually pulled me into running my own. In 2009, I built a boutique drive-in theater in an Austin alley: the Blue Starlite. A few weeks after opening, Charles came to town with the Pixies. After the show, he asked to see the drive-in.
We sat outside in the alley, watching Herzog’s Stroszek. The circle closed.
Bullet Five: Abbey Road
Decades of bullets – Herzog, Black Francis, Lynch, Dalí, the Marx Brothers, my drive-in – all culminated in Silents Synced: silent films rescored to the greatest alternative rock albums of all time.
That idea led me to the courtyard of Abbey Road Studios, meeting with music executives about producing my second series. It was here that I heard the stories of my new peers, who were some of the music industry’s most important deal-makers and artist creators, talk about their own personal Werner Herzogs.
As I sat there, I realized: everyone has their own Werner Herzog. Everyone has their insignificant bullet that becomes the most significant moment of someone else’s life.
The Magic Bullet
The most insignificant bullet to you might be the most important shot you ever give to someone.
That’s the magic bullet.
Don’t forget when it first grazed you. Follow it wherever it leads. Because it’s giving you direction. And as Ferris Bueller reminds us on my own cinema’s screen many times a year, “If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
And never forget: your Werner Herzog had his own Werner Herzog.
And that is very significant.
