Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe: The Crazy Story Revealed

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You ever hear the one about when Werner Herzog eats his shoe? I always found this story both bizarre and inspirational. It’s also incredibly fascinating and gives a glimpse into the passion needed to be a world-famous filmmaker.

The Les Blank Short

Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe is a short documentary film directed by Les Blank in 1980 which depicts director Werner Herzog living up to his promise that he would eat his shoe if Errol Morris ever completed the film Gates of Heaven.

The film includes clips from both Gates of Heaven and Herzog’s 1970 feature Even Dwarfs Started Small. Comic song Old Whisky Shoes, played by the Walt Solek Band, is the signature tune over the opening and closing credits.

The film features Herzog cooking his shoes (the ones he claims to have been wearing when he made the bet) at the Berkeley, California restaurant Chez Panisse, with the help of chef Alice Waters. (The shoes were boiled with garlic, herbs, and stock for 5 hours.)

He is shown eating one of the shoes before an audience at the premiere of Gates of Heaven at the nearby UC Theater. He did not eat the sole of the shoe, however, explaining that one does not eat the bones of the chicken. There are also clips of short interview of Herzog discussing the destructive capitalistic effects of television and mankind’s lack of adequate imagery.

Blank went on to direct Burden of Dreams (1982), a feature-length documentary about Herzog and the making of Fitzcarraldo. Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe is included as an extra on the Criterion Collection edition of the Burden of Dreams DVD.

That is the record. I am not adding extra Herzog quotations on top of it. The short is twenty minutes of a man doing a stupid, public, edible thing because a film got finished. That is already the whole myth.

Why The Bet Matters

People tell this story as a stunt. It is a stunt. It is also a production tool.

Errol Morris had the film. The obstacle was finishing. That is the boring, unphotogenic problem that kills more projects than weather or money. Herzog’s wager was a ridiculous deadline with a ridiculous penalty. If Morris completed Gates of Heaven, Herzog would eat the shoe. Morris completed it. Herzog ate the shoe.

The bet is not “believe in yourself.” It is: put a consequence on the last mile. Talking about a documentary is cheap. A premiere at the UC Theater is not. Cooking leather at Chez Panisse in front of Alice Waters is not. The audience is not there for haute cuisine. They are there to watch someone pay up because a film exists.

I love that the penalty is personal and slightly humiliating. It is not a clause in a finance plan. It is a body doing something the mind promised. Filmmakers are excellent at promising. We are less excellent at locking picture.

Gates of Heaven is a documentary about pet cemeteries. That fact still makes me laugh, and it is also the point. The subject does not have to be “important” for the finish to matter. Herzog did not bet on a war film. He bet on Morris getting the thing into the world. Once it is in the world, it can be argued with. On a hard drive, it is a rumour you tell at dinner.

If you want the darker twin of this story, watch Blank’s Burden of Dreams and the Herzog jungle speech from the Fitzcarraldo shoot. Same director, same documentarian, opposite temperature. One is a boiled shoe in Berkeley. One is a steamship and a hill in Peru. Both are about insisting that the image happen in reality, not only in conversation.

What The Short Actually Shows

Blank’s film is funny, but it is not only a gag reel. You get the kitchen. You get the garlic and stock and the five hours. You get Herzog at the table with the shoe, drawing a line at the sole. You get Even Dwarfs Started Small cut in, which is a nasty, feral Herzog feature to drop into a food stunt — a reminder that the man eating leather is the same man who makes films that do not comfort you.

You also get the television speech: the complaint that we are drowning in images that do not mean anything. I will not paraphrase it into a fake quote. The short is easy to find. The useful version for anyone shooting today is simple. Herzog is not anti-camera. He is anti-sludge. If your footage is just more sludge, eating a shoe will not save it. Finishing a film that actually looks at something — pet cemeteries, a jungle, a dwarf revolt — might.

Chez Panisse is not a random restaurant name-drop. Alice Waters cooking the shoes places the stunt inside a real kitchen with real craft. The leather still looks like leather. The herbs do not turn it into dinner. That visual is the joke and the proof: you can prepare the inedible with great care and it is still a shoe. You can prepare a film with great care and it is still not finished until people sit in a theatre and watch it.

The UC Theater premiere is the other half. Private vows do not count. Herzog eats in public because Morris delivered in public. I have sat through enough “almost done” projects to feel the difference in my stomach.

What Filmmakers Can Steal

You are probably not going to boil footwear. Good. Steal the structure, not the menu.

1. Bet on completion, not on mood.
A treatment is not a film. A folder of interviews is not a documentary. Herzog did not wager that Morris would “keep developing” Gates of Heaven. He wagered that it would be done. If you need a bet, make the prize or the penalty land on lock, premiere, or delivery — some moment other people can attend.

2. Make the consequence visible.
A spreadsheet reminder at 2 a.m. is weak magic. A date, a room, a person who will watch you fail: that is stronger. The shoe works because it is absurd enough to be memorable and specific enough to be checkable. “I will be embarrassed at the UC Theater” is a better engine than “I should really finish this year.”

3. Use a filmmaker friend as a closer, not only as a cheerleader.
Herzog did not help Morris by saying the pet-cemetery idea was valid. He helped by attaching a stupid promise to the end state. If you have a collaborator, ask them to hold the finish, not the vibe. Be that person for someone else. A filmmaker career is built out of finished pieces, including the odd ones.

4. Keep the joke attached to the work.
The short includes Gates of Heaven and Even Dwarfs Started Small. It is not a celebrity eating challenge with the film as a footnote. If you ever do a public stunt around a release, hitch it to the actual movie. Otherwise you are just branding.

5. Leave the bones.
Herzog skipping the sole is the most Herzog detail in the whole story. Even inside a circus, he keeps a rule. On a shoot that rule might be: we do not fake the location, we do not fake the interview, we do not eat the sole. Pick one rule you will not violate when the stunt gets loud.

None of this requires a Berkeley restaurant or a German accent. It requires treating “done” as a physical event.

Where To Watch And What To Watch Next

Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe travels with Burden of Dreams on the Criterion disc. That pairing is the curriculum. Comedy first, then the jungle. Same director, same documentarian, two definitions of “we actually did it.”

Then watch Gates of Heaven as a film, not as a punchline. Then pick a Herzog feature from the list and notice how often the movie depends on something stubborn in the real world — a boat, a cave, a man who will not stop talking to bears.

Les Blank is the secret hero here. Without him, the bet is an anecdote. With him, it is a film you can study: kitchen, audience, clips, the refusal of the sole. That is how you document a promise. Point a camera at the moment the promise comes due.