1979: When Werner Herzog Ate His Shoe — hollywoodreporter.com

This article first appeared in The Hollywood Reporter's Berlin Daily issue on Feb. 5.  In 1979, a 35-year-old Alice Waters — the renowned chef and this year’s Berlinale Camera award recipient — was asked for her help in fulfilling an unusual promise. Some years earlier, German filmmaker Werner Herzog had pledged to “eat my shoe” if Errol Morris — a 29-year-old protege he’d met on the UC Berkeley campus — finished his first film, a documentary about the pet cemetery business called Gates of Heaven. (Morris had been dragging his feet on the project, and the prolific Herzog had begun to lose patience.) Newly incentivized, Morris completed the feature, whereupon Herzog was determined to make good on the deal.

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