If you have even the most basic knowledge of renowned filmmaker, Terrence Malick, then you have heard about the kind of person he is. To call him a recluse would be to put it mildly and after only having made 7 films in 43 years (two more are due later this year, but even those release dates are up in the air), there isn’t much known about his directing style. Thanks to Business Insider and the hilarious Thomas Lennon, we now have a little more insight into what it was like to be on the set of his latest film, Knight of Cups, and it sounds incredibly interesting.
Among the many highlights of this amazing article (which should be read in full if this interests you at all), Lennon only finds out what kind of scene he is in three days before the shoot. Once he arrived on set, Lennon only recognized Malick from a picture he had to find on Google and Lennon goes on and says “I could only assume it was Terrence Malick because he was the most eccentric-looking person there…[wearing] this sort of straw hat, slightly dirty khaki pants, and a real loose, floppy shirt.”
From there, Malick hands out pieces of paper to be used as inspiration for the scene and their characters. Lennon’s paper said ‘There’s no such thing as a fireproof wall.’ This exchange between Knight of Cups’ lead, Christian Bale and Lennon really sums everything up:
Lennon: “Is this how it goes?
Bale: “Yeah.”
Lennon: “Every day?”
Bale: “Yeah.”
Lennon: “How long have you been doing this?”
Bale: “This is, like, day 25.”
The tale goes on to tell about how a scene was abruptly stopped to add a famed plastic surgeon in the shot, to Malick filming Lennon having a fight with his wife over the phone, “At first I felt it was kind of an invasion of privacy and then I was like, ‘F— it, this is the realest thing that has happened all day.” It’s hard not to pretend that I wish I wasn’t there.
Knight of Cups goes into limited release on March 4th, 2016.
Source: Business Insider
