"Excuse me, Mr. Herzog. Are you married?"

One veteran reporter dared to ask director Werner Herzog this perilous question during the 2009 Toronto Film Festival.

Those of us who watched on thought, "Are you nuts lady? This is the god of German New Wave Cinema. The man who burnt up the screen with visionary films like 'Aguirre, the Wrath of God' (1972), 'Nosferatu the Vampyre' (1979) and 'Fitzcarldo' (1982). He's going to tear your head off."

Boy, were we wrong.

"My dear woman," the 67-year-old icon smiled. "I am taken. Too bad."

That disarming ease from one of the toughest filmmakers out there is surprising. But, it marks Herzog as a man who loves to upset our expectations, just as he does in his latest movie, "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans."

In it, Nicolas Cage stars as a Terrence McDonagh, a good New Orleans cop who goes very, very bad thanks to his struggles with drug addiction.

Full of dark, seedy corners and tongue-in-cheek despair, Cage fully explores the bliss of evil and delivers all the tangy, twisted bite that he and Herzog could concoct.

"For three decades Nicolas watched my films and I kept an eye on him," says Herzog. "It never occurred to either one of us to work together. Almost at the same moment we thought this was an outrage."

Shortly after Herzog stumbled onto the script for "Bad Lieutenant," fate presented him with a phone call from Cage.

"Sixty seconds later we were in business," says Herzog.

Cage commits terrible transgressions in this movie, digging his teeth in violence and sin in a way that clearly puts a big smile on Herzog's face.

"I told Nicolas, let's go for it. Let's be really, really be bad here," says Herzog with impish glee.

"I pushed him to his limits and he knew it. All my actors did. They knew this was not going to be a Boy Scout field trip."

The final result, which also features strong performances from Eva Mendes and Val Kilmer, is one that showcases taught, fast-paced energy to great effect.

"So many people believe I am overly abstract in my thinking. They give me more credit than I deserve," says Herzog.

"Good ideas like this movie come to me like burglars in the night," laughs Herzog.

"I had a very short time for pre-production on this movie. No crew was in place. I was completely on the run. But, in some ways that tension was my lucky charm."

According to Herzog's tough-to-please standards, "Bad Lieutenant" is "certainly more captivating than the phone book in Manhattan."

"That phone book has four million entries, all of which are utterly factual and correct. Will it inspire you? Not likely. 'Bad Lieutenant' inspires me simply because it is such a wild story," says Herzog.

As for any other wild attributions to this film titan, including his toughness on actors, Herzog says, "People think I like to torture my actors. I'm not Stanley Kubrick. I'd never do 120 useless, exhausting takes and kill my actors that way. I'm not into stupidity."

Finally, to that new generation of Hollywood filmmakers who like to shoot until 5 p.m. and go home for dinner, Herzog says, "Not me."

"I go home because I know I did the best shooting I could do for the day. End of story. Anything else just sounds lazy to me."