Today I had a chance to talk with Werner Herzog, the adventurous German director of such films as the famously arduous “Fitzcarraldo,” the chilling documentary “Grizzly Man” and the upcoming “Encounters at the End of the World,” a wonderful documentary about the residents of Antarctica.

I didn’t go the way I had hoped.

I wasn’t surprised that he called at the precise time I had been promised or that I was warned I would get exactly fifteen minutes. But I was surprised that I couldn’t get Herzog to lighten up and digress about something other than his new film.

Herzog often narrates his documentaries, and even in English he comes across as both erudite and dryly funny. But when I tried to start with small talk about his prodigious workload, he said, “Let’s not waste any time.” When I asked him about his general approach to making documentaries, he said that he didn’t consider any of his films to be documentaries (even though at least half of them are routinely listed as such). And when I asked him how global warming is affecting Antarctica, where he spent six weeks profiling the kindred oddballs who work there, he said he didn’t want to talk about it because that’s not relevant to his film.

I still like and respect Werner Herzog, who is one of the world’s most vital filmmakers, but he hereby joins the list of interviewees with whom I could not establish a rapport. Others on that list include:

–Jane Fonda (who assumed I was fishing for gossip when I asked about her conversion to Christianity)

–Kevin Kline (who wouldn’t answer to the name “Homey”)

–Denzel Washington (ditto)

–Troy Donahue (who scolded me when I asked about his homosexuality, even though it was the selling point of his autobiography)

–and punk-rocker-turned-actor Henry Rollins (who said he wasn’t interested in interviews, just “hang-gliding and %@#$&%$#ing”)

I don’t hold a grudge against any of these people. Maybe they were just tired from a long day of publicity chores. Maybe I really am a clueless interviewer. Or maybe I perceived problems that weren’t there. Yet I continue to replay these interviews in my mind–and I refuse to replay them on my tape recorder.