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German director Werner Herzog is the most well-known of the cinematic German New Wave movement of the 60s and 70s, producing numerous critically-lauded fiction and documentaries for the past 40 years. While the subject matter of many of his films, like Aguirre, The Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo, and Grizzly Man, often deals with the eccentric, Herzog himself has been known to be amusingly eccentric, or having a knack for finding himself in bizarre situations. The following is a partial list of some of Werner Herzog’s most memorable real life activities:

From November 23rd to December 14th, 1974, Herzog walked from Munich to Paris in order to visit the French-German film critic Lotte Eisner, a close friend. Herzog had been informed that Eisner was critically ill, and was on the verge of death. Believing that German cinema could not function without her, he made the journey in the belief that she would get better when he came to visit on foot. Eisner recovered not long after Herzog made it to Paris, and he wrote a book about the events, titled Of Walking in Ice.

Later in the 70s, Herzog made a wager with then-unknown director Errol Morris that he would eat the shoe he was wearing if Morris completed his latest documentary about a pet cemetery, in order to motivate the director. The film, Gates of Heaven, premiered in 1978, and to his word, Herzog had his shoe prepared at an upscale California restaurant (boiled in garlic, herbs, and stock for 5 hours) and ate it in front of a live audience. Director Les Blank turned that into a short documentary in 1980, the aptly-titled Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe.

In early 2006, actor Joaquin Phoenix upturned his car on Sunset Boulevard after his brakes failed. Herzog, who lived nearby, was the first to come to Phoenix’s aid. “There was this German voice saying ‘Just relax’...There’s something so calming and beautiful about Werner Herzog’s voice,” Phoenix told reporters after the accident. He followed up by recalling: “I got out of the car and I said thank you...and he was gone.”

In a 2006 interview with the BBC’s Culture Show, Herzog was shot with an air rifle by an unseen assailant. Despite his injury, Herzog carried on with the rest of the interview. In order to reassure interviewer Mark Kermode that he was alright, Herzog told him “It is not a significant bullet.” Werner Herzog’s next film, The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans starring Nicholas Cage, will be released on November 20th.