Overview

"You know from seeing it that Herzog was up to something strange in filming Heart of Glass. Now the mystery is clarified. Alan Greenberg peers into the heart of darkness of the great artist."  —Roger Ebert

When Alan Greenberg first showed up at Werner Herzog’s Munich home at age twenty-four, he was, according to the director, the first outsider to seek him and recognize his greatness. At the end of their first evening together, Herzog urged Greenberg to work with him on his film Heart of Glass—and everything thereafter. He clinched his plea by assuring the young American, “On the outside we’ll look like gangsters, but on the inside we’ll wear the gowns of priests.”

Every Night the Trees Disappear is an intimate chronicle of how this visionary filmmaker directed a masterwork. Greenberg’s observations, interwoven with Herzog’s original screenplay, elucidate just how unusual Herzog’s filmmaking methods could be. By hypnotizing his actors before shooting each scene, Herzog led his crew into a veritable cinematic netherworld, resulting in one of the most haunting movies ever made.

Rather than a conventional, journalistic account of how a director makes a movie, Every Night the Trees Disappear instead presents a unique vision with the feel of a novel—intimate, penetrating, and filled with mystery.

Reviews

"Alan Greenberg's book, which plunges you far into the unstable depths of the creative process, is delirious, madcap, beautifully observed and rendered, and genuinely exhilarating."  —Luc Sante, author of Kill All Your Darlings: Pieces 1990–2005

"Alan Greenberg's mesmerizing account of the creation and realization of Werner Herzog's Heart of Glass (during the filming of which the actors were under hypnosis) is truly unusual—and as poetic and mysterious as the film itself."  —Jim Jarmusch, director

Author Biography