Terrence Malick

Birthday: 30 November 1943, Ottawa, Illinois, USA

Birth Name: Terrence Frederick Malick

Height: 170 cm

Terrence Malick was born in Ottawa, Illinois. His family subsequently lived in Oklahoma and he went to school in Austin, Texas. He did his undergraduate work at Harvard, graduating summa cum laude with a degree in philosophy in 1965.A member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society, he attended Magdalen College, Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship, but did not finish his thesis on Martin Heidegger, allegedly because of a disagreement with his advisor. Returning to the States, he taught philosophy at M.I.T. and published a translation of Heidegger's "Vom Wesen des Grundes" as "The Essence of Reasons". Malick did not get his PhD in philosophy: Instead, he attended the American Film Institute Conservatory in its inaugural year (1969), taking a Masters of Fine Arts degree in film-making. His masters thesis was the seventeen-minute comedy short Lanton Mills (1969), which starred Warren Oates and Harry Dean Stanton. Malick himself acted in the short.At A.F.I., Malick made a lasting association with Jack Fisk, who would establish himself as an Oscar-nominated art director and production designer and serve as art director on all of Malick's films. He also picked up Mike Medavoy as an agent, who got Malick work doctoring scripts and marketed his original ones. He wrote the screenplay for the 1972 Alan Arkin trucker movie Deadhead Miles (1973), which was many miles from Harvard let along Oxford, and for the 1972 Paul Newman-Lee Marvin contemporary oater Pocket Money (1972), another departure from fields of academia. "Deadhead Miles" was dumped by Paramount as unreleasable and "Pocket Money", despite being headlined by two Top Ten Box Office stars, flopped. It was an inauspicious start to a legendary career, but it influenced Malick to begin directing his own scripts.His first two films were the now critically acclaimed Badlands (1973) and Days of Heaven (1978). He then took a self-imposed retirement of nearly two decades from film-making before lensing his 1998 adaptation of James Jones's The Thin Red Line (1998), which was nominated for 7 Academy Awards, including nods for Malick for directing and adapted screenplay.Adopting a Kubrickian pace of movie-making, he directed The New World (2005) and the autobiographical The Tree of Life (2011) with gaps of only seven and six years, respectively, between release. However, he reportedly was working on ideas for "The Tree of Life" since the late 70s, including exposing footage that found its way into his finished film.In an unprecedented burst of productivity, he shot his next four films, To the Wonder (2012), Knight of Cups (2015), an as-yet unnamed drama and the cosmic documentary Voyage of Time: Life's Journey (2016) back-to-back during and immediately after completing the long editing process of "Tree of Life". Like Stanley Kubrick, Malick usually takes well over a year to edit his films. All three are highly anticipated by cineastes the world over. Hide

[on his future] There's a good many pictures I'd like to make, we'll see how many I'll be allowed to Show more [on his future] There's a good many pictures I'd like to make, we'll see how many I'll be allowed to make. Hide

[on working with Martin Sheen on Badlands (1973)] Martin Sheen was extraordinary. He's a very gifted Show more [on working with Martin Sheen on Badlands (1973)] Martin Sheen was extraordinary. He's a very gifted man. He's from a working class family, so he had all the moods down for the film. And when he wasn't before the cameras, he was helping in the background, wrapping cables, packing up light reflectors. One day I found him going around a gas station and picking up aluminum snapback lids from soda cans. He knew they didn't exist in 1959. Hide

[on the cinematography of Days of Heaven (1978)] With Néstor Almendros, we decided to film without Show more [on the cinematography of Days of Heaven (1978)] With Néstor Almendros, we decided to film without any artificial light. It wasn't possible in the houses at night, but outside, we shot with natural light or with the fire. When the American team was saying, 'This is not how we should proceed,' Nestor Almendros, very courageously insisted. As we filmed, the team discovered that it was technically easier, and I was able to capture absolute reality. That was my wish: to prevent the appearance of any technique, and that the photography was to be processed to be visually beautiful and to ensure this beauty existed within the world I was trying to show, suggesting that which was lost, or what we were now losing. Hide

[on his methodology] I film quite a bit of footage, then edit. Changes before your eyes, things you Show more [on his methodology] I film quite a bit of footage, then edit. Changes before your eyes, things you can do and things you can't. My attitude is always let it keep rolling. Hide

[on why he doesn't work with storyboards] If you try to make things happen, they start to feel prese Show more [on why he doesn't work with storyboards] If you try to make things happen, they start to feel presented. The action has been premeditated. It starts to feel like theater, which is wonderful in its own right. But you don't want the movies to be like theater. Hide

[on what he was aiming for in Song to Song] I think you want to make it feel to like there just bits Show more [on what he was aiming for in Song to Song] I think you want to make it feel to like there just bits and pieces of (the characters') lives. It goes to that quotation that can you live in this world just moment to moment, song to song, kiss to kiss, as she (Rooney Mara's character) says and try to create these different moods for yourself and go through the world as in that (Virginia Woolf) quote, ""How can I proceed now, I said, without a self, weightless and visionless, through a world weightless, without illusion?", and living one desire to the next, and where does that lead, what happens to you in that sort of (life of moments)... It's a hard thing to convey and we didn't know how, so doing lots of locations and lots of songs was our best guess about how to do that. Hide

[on Badlands (1973)] I tried to keep the 1950s to a bare minimum. Nostalgia is a powerful feeling; i Show more [on Badlands (1973)] I tried to keep the 1950s to a bare minimum. Nostalgia is a powerful feeling; it can drown out anything. I wanted the picture to set up like a fairy tale, outside time, like Treasure Island. I hoped this would, among other things, take a little of the sharpness out of the violence, but still keep its dreamy quality. Hide

[on setting a film in the modern day] I remember feeling timid about it because it's hard to project Show more [on setting a film in the modern day] I remember feeling timid about it because it's hard to project yourself into the present. I think making a contemporary film you think about what images haven't been used in advertising... but what you come see there is as many images today as there was in the past. Hide

[on The New World (2005)] I knew it would have a slow, rolling pace. Just get into it; let it roll o Show more [on The New World (2005)] I knew it would have a slow, rolling pace. Just get into it; let it roll over you. It's more of an experience film. I leave you to fend for yourself, figure things out yourself. Hide

[on America in 1979] It would be difficult for me to make a film about contemporary America today. W Show more [on America in 1979] It would be difficult for me to make a film about contemporary America today. We live in such dark times and we have gradually lost our open spaces. We always had hope, the illusion that there was a place where we could live, where one could emigrate and go even further. Wilderness, this is the place where everything seems possible, where solidarity exists - and justice - where the virtues are somehow linked to this justice. In the region where I grew up, everyone felt it in a very strong way. This sense of space disappearing, we nevertheless can find it in cinema, which will pass it on to us There is so much to do: it's as if we were on the Mississippi Territory, in the eighteenth century. For an hour, or for two days, or longer, these films can enable small changes of heart, changes that mean the same thing: to live better and to love more. And even an old movie in poor and beaten condition and can give us that. What else is there to ask for? Hide

Terrence Malick's FILMOGRAPHY

All as Actor (4) as Director (7) as Creator (7)

Pocket Money

Days of Heaven

Ennio (2022)

Badlands