The 63-year-old Werner Herzog doesn't count talking about his work among his favorite activities. As he puts it, "I have a more physical approach than a cerebral approach, a more athletic approach." But he's enthused about Grizzly Man, which traces the life and death of animal activist Timothy Treadwell, who spent some 13 years in what he called "the grizzly maze." In October 2003, Treadwell and his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, were killed by a grizzly in the Katmai National Park and Reserve.

The film covers a familiar Herzog theme: self-invention. "I think Treadwell has affinities with Woyzek and Kaspar Hauser, a lot of characters that I’ve created," he says, "I feel as though I was the girl in the fairy tale, and gold coins came raining down into my lap." Among these "coins" were Treadwell’s hours of video footage, which Herzog intercut with his own interviews, including the coroner who autopsied the half-eaten bodies. "This case shook him to the marrow of his bones," says Herzog, "I told him, "You can be the expert in court, but not in my film. You’d better take your pants down now.’"

Herzog sees in Treadwell’s self-presentation an effort to "address an audience who was feeling like him, that there was harmony in nature, that the bears were good and fluffy… You see what he tries almost to ignore, the ferocity and vileness of bears."

For Treadwell, Herzog says, the desire to "morph" into a bear "was something almost religious, to step outside of your humanness and into an ecstasy." On one hand, such desire informs what Herzog calls "footage that ... allows us inside, into our innermost human condition." But Herzog also questions Treadwell’s "Lone Ranger" pose, omitting Huguenard from all but 40 seconds of his 100 hours of tape.

Though Herzog argues with Treadwell, he also feels that "in a case like this, you have to approach everything with a certain respect, because he cannot defend himself." He admires Treadwell’s relentless effort to "wrestle some meaning for his existence… Even with his stupidities, there’s something very beautiful about him."