Archive notice: This article was originally published on October 17, 2007. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
In a conversation with VANITY FAIR, director, producer and actor “Bully” Herbig explains why he feels so at home in Germany. The 39-year-old has so far turned down offers from Hollywood, although he admits: “I find it interesting that I receive greater recognition there as a filmmaker than in Germany. Here I am the comedian. In America I am the ‘filmmaker’. I would be lying if I said that I did not like that.”
“Bully” fans had to wait three years for a new cinema film from the pen of the Munich multitalent. “Lissi and the Wild Emperor” opens on the big screen on October 25. The parody of historical “Sissi” films is an animation: “One morning I was standing under the shower and suddenly I remembered that as a ten-year-old I had absolutely wanted to make a cartoon film. Back then, all my colored pencils were used up for the first attempt.”
A further advantage of animated cartoons was that this implementation had spared him from disguising himself as a woman for months, says Herbig: “Briefly throwing on a women’s costume for a sketch is one thing. But being dragged through the mountains in a corset for weeks was then too much for me. That could have had serious physical and psychological consequences for me.”
For upcoming film projects, the director wants to forgo prominent templates:
“I am quite certain that my next film will not be a parody. I would much rather make an adventure film in the style of Indiana Jones.” It was also important to him, says Herbig, not to lose the ‘normal’ view of things: “Because nothing is as inspiring as completely ordinary everyday life.” Only German politics currently provides no material for gags and sketches, the Munich native finds: “Angela Merkel is very controlled and offers little surface for attack. […] In addition, she has the luck that all the jokes about her were already made before she was Federal Chancellor.”
