The Carlton Hotel is the setting for the encounter that turns a Cannes interview into a confrontation over what deserves attention. In a suite there, Werner Herzog receives the narrator, whose book about Herzog’s work has been delivered to him the previous day; when the narrator tries to introduce it, Herzog refuses the subject and insists that they work. The room’s few recorded details—a coffee table, a book, and a pause before the reply—make the hotel less a backdrop than the stage for that reversal.

Setting and Circumstances

The meeting takes place during the Cannes film festival, after the narrator has spent a year writing a book about Herzog’s works. The day before their appointment, the narrator arranged for the press secretary to deliver a copy to Herzog. He knew Herzog could not read French and did not expect him to discuss the book at length, but hoped for a warmer welcome than the one Herzog had given journalists during a day of interviews scheduled in forty-five-minute slots.

Herzog opens the door of his suite at the Carlton. His loose-fitting T-shirt, work pants, and heavy walking shoes give him, in the narrator’s description, the appearance of someone who has just left a tent at Everest base camp in rough weather. Herzog is not smiling; the narrator, by contrast, is smiling too much, anxious that the press secretary may not have explained who he is and that he will be mistaken for another journalist.

The Interview

Once they sit down, the narrator spots his book on the coffee table and falteringly acknowledges that Herzog has it, adding that he knows Herzog cannot read it. He trails off, leaving Herzog to decide whether the book will be the subject of the meeting. The copy’s presence confirms that it reached the suite, but it does not secure the response the narrator had hoped for.

Herzog looks at him silently before answering in a low, soft voice: “I’d rather we not talk about that. I know it’s bullshit. Let’s work.” The abrupt dismissal is also a redirection. Rather than discuss a book about his work, Herzog defines the interview as work to be done, taking control of the encounter in a few sentences.

Narrative Significance

The Carlton scene follows the narrator’s humiliating book-signing experience at the Palais des Festivals, where festivalgoers largely ignored him or took copies without realizing they were for sale. At the hotel, the humiliation changes form: Herzog has received the book, but rejects talk about it before the narrator can explain it. The contrast sharpens the narrator’s precarious position at Cannes, where the effort to present his work does not guarantee that anyone will attend to it.

The suite’s importance in the account rests on this compact exchange, not on any description of the hotel beyond the room and its furnishings. The book lies within sight; the narrator’s effort to make it matter stops mid-sentence; Herzog’s answer redirects the scene. The Carlton thus marks the point at which an anticipated conversation about authorship and recognition gives way to Herzog’s own blunt definition of the appointment.