The 2008 Film Issue of The Believer features the transcript of a conversation between filmmakers Werner Herzog and Errol Morris, which took place at Brandeis University last fall. As you know if you've seen Les Blank's short film Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, Herzog played a significant role in getting Morris's career started by betting the budding documentarian that he would indeed consume his footwear if Morris ever completed his first film Gates of Heaven. Herzog survived the meal and their friendship survived the bet.

Even before the shoe-eating incident, Herzog and Morris got up to some odd adventures together. "When Werner and I first met each other, we took a trip to visit this serial killer [Edmund Emil Kemper III] in prison in Northern California," says Morris. If you're not familiar with Kemper's resume, suffice it to say he got started torturing animals and killing his grandparents, moved on to murdering female hitchhikers, and ended his storied career by bludgeoning his mother to death with a hammer, using her head for a dartboard and raping her headless corpse. "Kemper was, in a way, a very sensitive person," says Herzog. "When you looked at his hands, like the hands of a violin player, in a way. I remember he looked like an elephant with a Mozart soul."

Herzog and Morris later had a falling out over another serial killer, the notorious Ed Gein. As Herzog explains, "Errol wanted to know more about the grave robberies, because Ed Gein had not only murdered people. He also excavated freshly buried corpses at the cemetery. And I do remember: he dug up graves in a pretty perfect circle. And in the very center of this circle was the grave of his mother. And Errol kept wondering, did he excavate his mother and use her flesh and skin for some sculptures in things at his home?... So the only way to find out is, I proposed, let's go to Plainfield, grab a shovel, and dig at night."

It turns out that Morris had some qualms about this plan; you can read the rest of this fascinating story here.