This is a few weeks old now, but still evergreen. Plus with Terrence Malick finally getting distribution for his long-gestating “Tree of Life” film project, it’s even more relevant now.
In anticipation for the August 29th re-release of the 1973 Terrence Malick film “Badlands” (in the U.K. only) Ryan Gilbey of the British paper Guardian explored the troubled shoot that produced one of the finest romantic, on-the-run road films ever made. It is a fascinating story, behind one of the greatest (and gorgeously meditative) films ever made and gives incredible insight into one of the kookiest and capricious directors to ever get behind a camera.
In 1972, Malick began production of a loose biopic of 19-year-old warehouse worker turned serial killer Charles Starkweather. It was a film that Martin Sheen, who played the iconic character of Kit in “Badlands,” would describe in an interview with the paper in 1999, “It was mesmerising. It disarmed you. It was a period piece, and yet of all time. It was extremely American, it caught the spirit of the people, of the culture, in a way that was immediately identifiable.” The meticulousness and spontaneity that aided Malick in making such a great film is also one of the main reasons the movie was almost never finished. The project went through three cinematographers (somehow the look throughout is still jaw-droppingly beautiful), sound people, more editors and it got to be so bleak at one point that outside of the actors and art department, every original crew member had quit by the time production had wrapped. Production designer Jack Fisk, who has worked with Malick on all of his films, described the frustration on the set caused by the eccentric director during a 1999 interview with Gilbey.
“The shoot went on for ever because the crew kept quitting. They were completely brutalized,” lead actress Sissy Spacek said. “They’d be setting up one shot over here, then Terry would look over in the other direction where the moon was rising and he’d go, ‘Let’s shoot over there!’ I have these memories of everyone tearing off across the desert in pursuit of one sunset or another” (one person who wouldn’t quit was Fisk, he had good reason: “I had a vested interest. I’d fallen in love with Sissy, so that also kept me going.”Two years later they were married).
Executive producer, Edward R Pressman also commented on film, “Amazingly, despite the input of these different hands, the film looks remarkably seamless.” He lauded Malick for his ability, even through the troubled shoot, to never loose his vision, “If the picture survived all those problems, it’s because one thing was consistent: Terry Malick’s vision.”
From all accounts, Malick’s spontaneous style is something that many adore and many can find extremely frustrating.
“People who’ve worked with Terry either love him or hate him,”Spacek said. “I love him. ‘Badlands’ was a real turning point for me. We’d spend hours talking about things, and then the next day I’d look at the rewrites, and there’d be all the things I told him.”
Even after Malick destroyed every camera on set while filming the scene where Kirk (played by Martin Sheen) burns down his girlfriends family home (played by Sissy Spacek), and pushed the film over budget multiple times, causing production to stall while he raised other funds, the film finally premiered at the New York Film Festival on October 13th 1973 to a better reception than Martin Scorsese’s “Mean Streets.” The box office was not kind to “Badlands” and Malick sunk into obscurity over the years, emerging infrequently to direct such films as “Days of Heaven” and “The Thin Red Line,” but over the years “Badlands” has come to be viewed as one of the most iconic movies of a memorable era in filmmaking history.
