By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
Get Your Malick On
It’s unnamed Malick. It’s A & McA, together again for the first time. And waving wheat or grass or whatever that is…
May 6, 2024
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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?
So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.
And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.
There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.
I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.
So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.
But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”
My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher
“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.
~ David Simon
God, that’s beautiful.
I love that Malick is going to have two out in such a short amount of time. THE TREE OF LIFE trailer gives me goosebumps and, frankly, looks incredible. So excited for both of these.
LOOK AT HER!!!!
Okay, we all know Affleck’s a married man and I think McHotness is dating Michael Sheen and this isn’t a gossip site and there’s zero evidence of this, but considering McAdams basically IS the same persona as Jennifer Garner, and Affleck seems like EXACTLY the dude every actress ever would fall for… How are these two NOT announcing that they’re a couple for real? That’s like a BIOENGINEERED pairing right there. Kind of like when JON KRASINSKI worked with MANDY MOORE, which seemed like an alignment of the “hooking up with co-star” stars, though I don’t think they ever dated either.
Then again, I pretty much take it as FACT that every leading man and chick are banging on every site ever.
still waiting for a DP/30 with Rachel McAdams ..also waiting for McAdams to do a comedy
Sanj, can you maybe post instead all the people you AREN’T waiting for a DP/30 with?
It’d probably be a lot shorter.
“also waiting for McAdams to do a comedy”
Um, MORNING GLORY…?
That shot looks almost . . . malickesque.
Affleck seriously has THE greatest life of any human on the planet. How do you not enter a tailspin of depressing even pondering how great his life is compared to yours?
LexG – every actor / director should get a shot – most are busy making movies to do a DP/30 but some might not know who DP is … before the Oscars i suspect that Hailee Steinfeld, Jennifer Lawerence and Justin Timberlake had no idea who DP is ..
maybe there’s 5/100 actors that won’t do a DP/30 no matter what ..
if McAdams has time for “Chuck the Movie Guy” she probably has time for a DP/30
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFWJ89X85A0&feature=related
Why hasn’t McAdams done a comedy with Apatow or Sandler yet ..
FYI, the popup on the shot says “Ben Affleck and Rachel Weisz”.
Love the King Speechesque framing of the shot.
i think it might be possible to figure out the entire storyline of this movie based on this 1 shot – if there’s like 1000 people who comment on it …
my version – they fall in love but one of them dies at the end ..
I can’t believe I’m the only one waiting for Sanj to ask when the Terrence Malick DP/30 is going to drop…
Sanj it all depends, sometimes the requests to publicists are taken the wrong way when their client is asked to perform a DP.
I’m already more excited for this than The Tree of Life. TTOL’s trailer didn’t do much for me.
i haven’t seen any Terrence Malick films actually ..
his film is only famous cause he got Brad Pitt
any other actor and this would be a small indie film
nobody would have heard of . am i right ?
forget the publicists – whats wrong with calling actors up personally ot twitter them up or facebook them .
use the fancy internet technology .. have actors learned nothing from the social network
Michelle Rodriguez is on all the social media
http://www.michelle-rodriguez.com/home.htm
is this guy for real?
No he keeps breaking character now and then but its a brilliant creation.
Sanj for Prez.
deja heaven ?
http://goofybeast.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/days-of-heaven-0.jpg
sanj: Sounds like you need to rent THE HOT CHICK and MEAN GIRLS. Oh, and BADLANDS, DAYS OF HEAVEN, THE THIN RED LINE, THE NEW WORLD…
i checked the trailer for Thin Red Line ..looks good
Yeah, thanks for the info.
Wonder if Affleck has wood there. Stern used to be obsessed with this, too, but seriously, how do you stand THAT close to RACHEL McADAMS and not get at least a semi?
I would have a giant boner if her hair was grazing me.
He has a wife and two kids. You just think about the wife and two kids to not get a woody and plus… IT’S ACTING!
This is truly extraordinary (and am I the only one who’s relieved Affleck replaced Bale?)
But I can’t help thinking that “Untitled Malick” will probably suffer the same fate as “Tree of Life”–i.e., getting postponed ad infinitum.
It would certainly be a boon to have two new Malicks released in consecutive years…what a frigging concept!
showed this pic to my girlfriend and she said, “oooooh I want to see that. wow” and she has no clue who malick is, only that that is a hell of a romantic enticing looking shot to her that sold her.
Calm down fanboys.
I’m a big Malick fan too but this is a blown out saturated shot with hot whites that looks like some 80s print ad for fleece sweaters.
Love Malick, but this is not a unique shot in any way.
“Why hasn’t McAdams done a comedy with Apatow or Sandler yet ..”
Because she’s too smart to appear in an unmitigated pile of rubbish.
Lex, how can you seriously compare McAdams, who is a gloriously talented actress, with Garner, whose acting is barely one notch above reading-her-lines-phonetically?
I’m not a huge Garner fan, but she gives what is easily the best performance in Juno. She is tremendous in that movie. It’s certainly as good as anything McAdams has done.
While not that fantastic of a movie, I did enjoy Garner in Catch and Release as well.
And it is too early to place bets, but between Affleck, McAdams and the wavey grass, who would you wager will get the most screen time.
garner is pretty good in ‘catch and release’. and so is olyphant in his t-shirts and jeans lordhavemercy…and i want to be kevin smith’s drinking buddy in that movie, he cracks me up. juliet lewis does a decent new-age health-nut turn, too. i don’t know who that other guy is, he was ok for the completely nondescript guy i guess. actually, i quite like ‘catch and release’, it’s a bit of a dirge but i find it compulsively watchable for some reason.
mcadams is a shining, sparkly star tho. i dig her in ‘the family stone’ where she plays against type for a change, after ‘mean girls’ she’s largely travelled the goody-two-shoes route. i hope she branches out with her considerable skills and the-camera-loves-you charisma, maybe this will be just the ticket.
Ugh I find The Family Stone and just about everyone in it totally insufferable. I really hate that movie.
i don’t really feel much about family stone one way or another, but i like mcadams in it, she’s a little shit
“Lex, how can you seriously compare McAdams, who is a gloriously talented actress, with Garner, whose acting is barely one notch above reading-her-lines-phonetically?”
Because unlike too many guys who populate movie blogs and have some MOVIE ASPERGER’S where TV, music, radio and sports don’t exist, just CINEMA CINEMA CINEMA, I actually watch television and thus watched Garner COMMAND five seasons of ALIAS with so much charisma and charm, it’s ALMOST disappointing that the save for JUNO, the big screen hasn’t really captured her complexities as successfully.
But she doesn’t act phonetically. What are you TALKING about? GARNER RULES.
“Asperger’s an autism spectrum disorder that is characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction, along with restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests. Although not required for diagnosis, physical clumsiness and atypical use of language are frequently reported.”
I’m with christian and JBD….calm….down. It almost looks like someone else doing a Malick shot. Nothing to see here. And I too am a Malick fanatic.
Also- McAdams>Garner. Jennifer Garner has grown on me but I’m still not sure what her deal is exactly. She can’t open a movie or do action in film (ironic seeing as “Alias” made her) so I’m not sure if she’s like, high end co-star or what. McAdams can act, makes cool choices, lies low and is much hotter than Garner.
I’ve only watched the first season of ALIAS, recently actually, and yeah she’s fantastic. She’s gripping and strong and funny and sexy and vulnerable and complex. Just great and impressive all around.
Also yeah, it’s just a picture but I don’t know if a bunch of people getting excited for A TERRENCE MALICK FILM is a particularly alarming development that needs to be dampered.
“Two consecutive years?” I’m wondering it this is a sign of the once-unthinkable: Two Malick films in a single calendar year. It’s happened before, and not just with Spielberg doing the “popcorn movie” “Oscar bait movie” two step. Traffic and Erin Brokovich were out the same year. Could happen, huh?
I know everyone’s a Malick superfan on movie blogs, and my mind was BLOWN by Thin Red Line and I like the earlier ones too but…
Doesn’t it ever get a little old? More Americana and wheat and trees and New Agey hippie-dippie oil derrick bullshit? Has T-Mack ever met a black guy in his life? Isn’t there something that goes beyond quaint, pastoral and picaresque about his mise en scene that skirts on both ludicrous and out of touch? Like, hey Malick, mix it up and cast like DMX and Noel Guglielmi and Wesley Snipes and set it in the hood, I don’t care. Or something else, anything else….
i don’t know, at the current rate two malick movies in one year could be a sign of the apocalypse
I’ll believe it when I see it, Malick could spend another 36 months rewriting and rerecording Affleck’s voiceover. Or spend an extra year deciding if the runtime should be 132 or 198.
THE TREE OF BULLSHIT.
Maybe, with the less-than-stellar BO of THIN RED LINE and THE NEW WORLD, Malick no longer has the luxury to tinker with his films while the interest on the loans goes up and up. No one ever thought Woody Allen would do the kind of publicity he now has to do, or leave Manhattan to make films, but he’s doing both so that he can keep working. The fact that Martin Scorsese had no say in the release date of SHUTTER ISLAND, getting it kicked out of Oscar season because the studio thought it would make more money in February, shows who’s really in charge these days. Moreover, it’s funny what people will do when they get older–try to make up for lost time and such–and to make up for lost time, Malick might feel he needs to pick up his pace and get the new film out when the funders want it out: this year. It’s not inconceivable.
“When is Kubrick gonna hurry up with that Vietnam film? Is he gonna wait ten years between every movie? I’ve got things to do, people!” – The Hot Blog, 1986
Lex, I watch just as much TV as you, possibly more. And I gave ALIAS every possible shot. It was just pretentious, incoherent nonsense whose sole raison d’etre was squeezing her then-anorexic frame into as many skimpy outfits as possible while her stunt double did all the ass-kicking. Apart from critics and horny teens, it was a non-event, and ABC’s keeping it on the air for five long years was nothing more than a testament to how shallow their bench was at the time.
ALIAS is one of my top three favorite TV series of ALL TIME. You have wounded me with this put-down of greatness. Garner. Rifkin. AWESOME VICTOR GARBER. AWESOME BRADLEY COOPER. AWESOME DUDE WHO PLAYED SARK AND STOLE THE SHOW.
LENA OLIN POWER.
And most of, MICHAEL MOTHERFUCKING VARTAN, COOLEST DUDE this side of James Bond and Clint Eastwood.
ALIAS POWER. BRILLIANT MASTERPIECE OF GREATNESS.
Seriously, why isn’t MICHAEL VARTAN the biggest leading man in Hollywood movies? THAT GUY IS AWESOME.
This picture is achingly beautiful. You can tell that this movie is full of poetry that most stupid unwashed masses won’t get. To be honest they could just release this photo onto screens right now with a soundtrack of whale sounds and I would declare it a masterpiece. If you do not agree, you hate true art and brilliance and beauty.
Love Garber and Rifkin. Seriously love Olin. Which is what made watching the show that much more painful.
I think BADLANDS is one of the great American films. Liked DAYS OF HEAVEN. Had issues with THIN RED LINE. Haven’t seen THE NEW WORLD. The TREE OF LIFE trailer gives me serious pause with that kid’s narration: “Father, muuther, always you wrestle inside me.” Oy. It was the narration that kinda killed THIN RED LINE for me, ironic considering BADLANDS has some of the best narration ever.
Malick should pull a David Gordon Green and do a comedy. Maybe they can get him for the KNOCKED UP sequel.
Ozu, Dryer, Rohmer, Mizoguchi, Godard, hell, even Tarantino have shown less range than Malick in their work. You want to see a different type of movie, go see one by a different artist. This is a little like someone telling Norman Rockwell or Claude Monet to quit being so repetitive.