If one is like myself, Werner Herzog’s voice is hypnotic. I could listen to him talk about anything. Hell, if he were next to me right now, I’d ask him to read Kenneth Graham’s “The Wind in the Willows.” Chapter 7, entitled The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, to be exact, in which Rat and Mole trip balls while boating on a river when they hear the dawn chorus and the great god Pan playing his pan-pipes. Pan then wipes their memories, making the whole effect just brilliantly trippy.

Anyway. I’ve heard Herzog speak twice and met him once, asking the director about his monologue in “Mister Lonely.” He told me in his authoritatively sonorous voice: “Not one piece of dialogue was scripted.” The monologue is all the more magnificent because of it.

In the “Jack Reacher” trailer (the latest star vehicle for Tom Cruise), Herzog plays a villain.  My question is: what took so long? It was well worth the wait because we get to hear Herzog deliver the line, “Get me the lawyer.” Sublime.