Book Review: Werner Herzog, Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo HarperCollins Publishers, 2009 By Heather Blackmore
Conquest of the Useless contains chronicles of many specific production challenges, including the replacement of the original cast—Jason Robards, who left due to health issues, and Mick Jagger, whose touring schedule did not permit him to wait while a replacement was found—after shooting was already well under way. Extraordinary organizational and physical challenges also plagued the production, which included hundreds of local extras, a notoriously difficult lead actor in Klaus Kinski (who replaced Robards), and the movement of a 320-ton steamship over a mountain in the Amazon rainforest. Accounts of these events are hardly new, however. Most of them have already been reported elsewhere, including in Les Blank’s 1982 documentary Burden of Dreams, for which Blank spent months alongside Herzog’s crew in Peru. Burden of Dreams has become central to the small subgenre of making-of documentaries about impassioned film directors working on impossible projects, joined most notably in 1991 by Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, about Francis