Braden Thommarson | Broadcast Reporter
My Dinner with Werner is a short film written, directed and edited by Baylor Film and Digital Media professor Maverick Moore that premiered in 2019. The film centers around the filmmaking duo Werner Herzog and his temperamental partner, actor Klaus Kinski.
Moore said his inspiration to make My Dinner with Werner was the duo themselves and the events that characterized Herzog and Kinski’s moviemaking partnership. This relationship, though, wasn’t always an easy one for either Herzog or Kinski to endure.
“There were times where [Herzog and Kinski] planned to kill each other” Moore said.
Herzog and Kinski’s partnership spanned fifteen years and five movies, Moore said. Eventually, though, the partnership came to a crashing end. Though the specific reason is unknown, My Dinner with Werner depicts the fictional event that ended Kinski and Herzog’s partnership.
One of the core elements in Moore’s film, which both he and co-writer and co-producer Ryan McNamara helped compile, is the sheer variety of events that occur in the short runtime.
“Something that we set out early on in the writing process was ‘How can we make something that everyone can enjoy?’” McNamara said. “There’s a little bit of drama, some comedy, some darker elements, a fight scene, [etc.].”
Yet making the magic happen behind the scenes wasn’t always easy.
“Everything was a challenge” Moore said.
One thing that both himself and McNamara highlighted as a tedious aspect of the film was constructing an entire set that would hold up during production — especially given the wide variety of scenes found in such a short film.
When asked about how Baylor students might succeed in trying to make a go of the film world, Moore had one piece of advice: make films.
