(upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) Hey, welcome back. It's Hit Factory, a podcast about the films of the 1990s, their politics, and how they inform today's film landscape. I'm Aaron. I'm Carly. And today, we are blessed to be joined by the returning champion of the show, filmmaker, producer, Chad Harbold is here. Chad, how you doing? I'm great guys. Thank you so much for having me back. And I'm glad I could be on one with Carly here too. So excited to have you guys. I am a celebrity after all. Yes, I told you, I think when we did our episode on Ed Wood back when, how long ago was that now? It feels like it's been mere like weeks, but it could be months. It could be years. I don't know. I think it was maybe back in February. Possibly. So months, enough months have elapsed that I can say way back when when you were on for Ed Wood, Chad. But, you know, during a period of time where Carly was away for a moment and it's hard not to feel like I have to be apologetic with our guests and be like, I promise we'll bring you back for the full Hit Factory experience at some point so you get to witness Carly. Because Carly, I mean, you are Hit Factory. No. And then you guys come on and I just like scream at you for two hours. And you're like, oh, I'm so glad we did that. She's lovely. The people love that though. That's the juice of the show. I'm here to try to keep things on the rails a little bit, but people really come for the Carly takes for the energy. Listen, I'm here for Chad. I'm here for Chad and I'm here for Elias. Chad and Elias Kultius. Well, that's good because there's quite a bit of him in this movie. And like lots of Terence Malek films, but this one specifically, there's a danger that when you get on set, you may just not show up in the movie at all after doing like a couple months of work. It's so raw. It's such a king shit. I love it. Yes. I have spoiled it just a little bit, but in case you haven't read the title of this episode yet or haven't picked up on it just by virtue of us talking, Chad is with us today so that we can discuss Terence Malek's 1998 masterpiece His sole work of the 1990s, so we will unfortunately not be covering Terence Malek on the show again in any direct way. It's the thin red line. In this world, a man himself is nothing and there ain't no world for this one. I've seen another world. Sometimes I think it was just my imagination. If I go first, I'll wait for you there. On the other side of the dark waters. Why should I be afraid to die? I belong to you. One straight up that hill then. How many men do you think it's worth? How many lives? There's nowhere we can hide except in each other. Go! Go! I killed him, man. The worst thing you can do, nobody can touch me for it. Make no difference who you are. No matter how much training you got or how tough a guy you might be, you're in the wrong spot at the wrong time, you're going to get it. I want you to attack right now. Without a matter, you're just awful. I've lived with these men who served for two and a half years and I will not border them all to their destiny. Before we get too deep into that, though, Chad, I do want to mention that you're here today, of course, as our esteemed guest because we love you, but also because you've got a new movie that you've been working on that is going to be premiering in theaters in the coming weeks. Can you tell us just a little bit about it? Yeah. Thank you. I produced a movie called "Chromcatcher", which is the debut film from Chris Scotch-table, and it's a kind of darkly comedic thriller about a newlywed couple whose honeymoon is invaded by waiter and bartender from their wedding who kind of trapped them. In the remote location, you know, this sort of Airbnb they're staying at for their honeymoon and try to trap them in an elaborate blackmail plot involving a secret invention. So it's a sort of like strange and uncomfortable comedy it premiered at, I'm sorry, it premiered at Fantastic Fest and has gotten great reviews. And, you know, people are describing it as kind of like if I think you should leave Sketch was a feature film thriller or, you know, it's a kind of a movie, you know, speaking of some great '90s movies, but, you know, it has some shares, some DNA with stuff like Red Rock West and very bad things, kind of a movie about things just increasingly going wrong and people making worse and worse decisions until it ends in absolute mayhem. So it's gonna be released theatrically, exclusively in theaters on July 19th, and it's gonna be at Alamo draft houses and AMC theaters across the country. So obviously check your local listings if it means it's a huge deal for us to get theatrical release for a very low budget in need that, you know, doesn't have a lot of, you know, famous names in it. I will mention that I was lucky enough to produce it with Larry Fessiden, who is a great filmmaker and genre sort of stalwart, who's, well, I guess, habit came out too late for you guys to cover, but he, oh no, maybe not. I forget what year that came out, but he's in, he's also an actor, he was in, he has a small part in bringing out the dead, which you guys have covered, and then he was also in Killers of the Flower Moon. This year, but his company, Glass Eye Picks, and I've worked together a few times, but so yeah, we're really excited for people to see it, it's gonna be, I don't know when this is gonna come out, but it is hopefully gonna play in theaters for a few weeks. So definitely check it out when you can. You are talking our language, Chad, you revealed next to nothing about that movie, and the hooks are in. You clearly have, we will be seeing it. You clearly have sold this movie to many people, both financiers and also audience members. It's like he does this for a living or something. Yeah, right. I hope so. We will make sure to leave some information on Crumb Catcher, we're excited to catch Crumb Catcher ourselves, and awesome to have you on the show to talk about and promote it a little bit. And congratulations. Thank you. Making a movie is a big fucking deal, and the fact that you guys got it in theaters really rocks. I'm stoked for you. Yeah, it's obviously always an uphill battle, but we're really grateful to Fantastic Fest in general, which is a great genre festival in Austin that is always at the Alamo draft house. And our Alamo draft house rollout is in conjunction with them, and so they're continuing to support the movies that they premiere at their festival, which is a great thing. I love that. That's awesome. Speaking of little indie features. I was like, what's your segue going to be for this? And I don't think I really stuck the dismount, but turning now to the film at hand, Terence Malek's the thin red line. Tiny little film. Tiny little film. Small. Nobody's in it. Didn't really make much of an impact. Even before it was out, it wasn't really anything anyone was particularly excited about. It's not like Oscar winning actors were flying across country to beg this guy for a role in their movie or anything. To gravel to be a part of the production for no salary whatsoever or extremely low salaries just to get the chance to watch the man work. Give me a handshake, Terence, and let me be in your movie. But we'll detail all of that and more about this long gestating production in just a minute. But I want to know first, Chad, what does the thin red line mean to you as a film? We were talking a little bit off Mike before we started recording just that. I think we've all seen it before, and not just seen it before, but kind of proximate to its initial release. And so we have kind of grown up with this movie. Where did you start with it and where are you now on this last rewatch? So I don't think we you can talk about this movie without talking about saving private Ryan, which came out in the same year, which came out over the summer. I would imagine around the 4th of July in 1998. And then this came out later in on Christmas Day. Obviously Spielberg and Malick are incredibly different filmmakers. Spielberg shot saving private Ryan in like 50 days, which is insane. And you know, Malick shot for over twice that and you know, edited for, you know, over a year, if not longer. And then obviously there's a very long gestating pre production that happened, you know, starting, I believe in 1989. So, you know, it took nine or eight or nine or 10 years to eventually be released. But so I was I'm born in 1986. So I was 11 years old in, you know, I hadn't turned 12 yet when saving private Ryan was coming out. I was already kind of obsessed with movies. My family had done our first trip to California and over the summer and saving private Ryan was playing at the Chinese theater. And I was begging them to let me see it and they would not. Something that I am still upset about to this day, because what better, you know, first experience at the Chinese theater would be, you know, this, this big movie that everyone's talking about in Spielberg and all this stuff. And so, you know, I didn't get to see that. And then I'm sure at some point in the fall, I saw the trailer for saving or for the thin red line in a theater. And I think it's a trailer that I go back to rewatch all the time because it's really beautiful and it has the great sort of song that, you know, ends the film. And so I was determined to see it then. And so I did see it in theaters with my parents when I had just turned 12. And I just remember being totally mesmerized and kind of blown away by the poetry and the art of the film. I don't think I had ever seen anything like that. You know, as a, you know, budding cinephile, I was still going through the sort of like major, you know, popular movies and seeing something like this, you know, obviously felt very adult. But like, I do remember being moved by it, even though I certainly didn't understand, you know, like, even really fully understand that that part of the war, World War II was in Japan. Like, I don't think any, you know, I'd probably seen like the longest day or like a few other kind of like grandpa staples, you know. But like seeing something like this, I don't know, it just stuck with me for basically my whole life. And then I've, you know, revisited it a lot. And, you know, and then saw all of Terrence Malek's movies will hit the tube before that. And then eventually in college, when the New World came out, that was like a real sort of, you know, felt like going to church or Mecca or whatever that like. This was like an important thing to go see. Yeah, it's funny that Malek movies always seem to do that. I remember, because I'm a handful of years younger than you Chad, but for us it was Tree of Life. And the gestation period between New World, which I had seen like on like premium cable or something at home after it come out and was, you know, kind of picking up on, oh, this Malek guy is like a guy, like the person who made the Thin Red Line made other movies and he has kind of a style that I can recognize. In the time between that in 2005 and when Tree of Life came out, I went to college, I was already into movies, was even more into movies, and I remember me and a lot of film school buddies, they were in film school, not me. Just like could not get enough of just like going on the internet and researching this thing that had started for Malek like decades before as this like grand idea about the origins of life and the vastness of the cosmos and the universe, but also this very intimate story of this family. Anyway, Malek has that effect on people, I guess is all I will say about it. And interesting that you mentioned saving private Ryan alongside this, I too was not allowed to see saving private Ryan for a little bit, but for whatever reason did get to see the Thin Red Line, saw it first, and then came to SPR later. My family watched it on a vacation, like my uncle and my aunt and my mom and dad, and I remember this is saving private Ryan and sneaking into the hotel like living room out of the bedroom and catching just the scene where Giovanni Ribisi dies. And I was traumatized at that point enough to be like, I shouldn't have seen that. I don't want to see any more of this right now, I'm a little lad, I'm a little birthday boy. Did you see the Thin Red Line in theaters? No, I didn't see it in theaters, but I saw it when it came out on home video and I was able to see that, but not saving private Ryan. My parents watched the video cassette of saving private Ryan, like I said, like on vacation somewhere and for whatever reason we're like, you can't watch that one, but we're fine with me watching this one. I mean, it makes sense. There's a much more kind of grisly, visceral, excessively violent war movie in saving private Ryan than in the Thin Red Line. Although the Thin Red Line is now as an adult watching both of those side by side, like to me far more potent and like just spiritually taxing and moving. And I don't know, it's a masterpiece bar nut. It really is incredible. We should talk about that for a second, because I think it's fascinating that parents were adverse to kids seeing saving private Ryan. I mean, this is anecdotal, but we can extrapolate, I think, from these experiences more broadly. Well, I think it's fair to say that, Chad, and I represent the total experience of all children of the era. You absolutely do. But I do think there's something interesting about this notion of Spielberg as a filmmaker, perhaps maybe carrying the halo of a Schindler's List or something. Parents feeling like this movie about World War II was going to be too grisly and intense, and that the Thin Red Line might be something that was a little bit more palatable. I mean, I agree with you in terms of your feelings about it now. I think that saving private Ryan is a beautiful and emotional and wonderfully crafted and very stirring movie. I fucking love band of brothers. I'm all about Spielberg and Tom Hanks doing World War II stuff. But I think it's just a pretty traditional, pretty patriotic film about World War II and the greatest generation. And I think that Terence Malick's film, The Thin Red Line, is a much more stirring indictment of the American war machine and of the carnage, emotional, physical, political, geographical of war than saving private Ryan is. Yeah, I mean, I think it's very interesting. I mean, I know for me, at least, what I remember, the lead up to the release of Saving Private Ryan was so focused on the D-Day sequence and how disturbing and violent it was. As a family, we always watched 60 Minutes every Sunday night, and I believe that there was a segment about it on that. And I think that led to the sort of trepidation where, and I wonder too if the Thin Red Line was just a little bit more, maybe under the radar, wasn't such a cultural phenomenon at that time. But it also is interesting, and I think Saving Private Ryan is a great film as well, but I remember we can get into this more later, but both of my grandfathers fought in World War II and I remember my sort of experiences with them around, because as a little annoying kid, I could only relate to things via movies. So my dad's father was first in line to see Saving Private Ryan and loved it and was very supportive of it. My mother's father was too disturbed to see it and didn't want to, and then I remember neither of them ever saying anything about the Thin Red Line. I don't know if they even saw it, and so it is an interesting thing to think about this movie as a sort of, I don't know, as a document of a sort of realistic time. I don't think it is. I think it is a more of a God's-eye view of this sort of specific conflict and the idea of war spiritually in a way that Saving Private Ryan isn't interested in, and that's okay. I think that you could make the Thin Red Line, I think that the Thin Red Line could be about any war. I would agree with you. Also important that the Thin Red Line takes place where it does, right? We're in Malice situating us because of the adaptation of the book. In the South Pacific, which I've seen the musical, I don't know if either of you have. I have not. Of course you have. Sometimes I have. But in the 80s and 90s, and when a lot of this looking back on World War II was happening in popular culture and in media, the South Pacific was not a region that was focused on a lot. We were really focusing on the European campaign, and even just in the way that it was taught to us as kids, in our history classes. Talking with Erin when we were watching the movie the other night, I was like, I don't even really remember us learning why Japan was in the war and why they were situated with the Axis powers. I don't think that was a part of what was taught to us in our US history classes. I think just also the fact that we are seeing a World War II film take place in a place that is more alien, and I don't mean that in a colonial term. I mean alien in the sense that we don't see it as often in our popular culture and in our media when we are depicting this particular conflict. I think is really important for the experience of the film and for our understanding about some of the messages it's it's waiting into. I will just say very briefly, one of my dad's my dad is a native Hawaiian and he was born in the early 30s. He's no longer with us, but he lived to be 90 years old. He had a very long full life experience like literally everything in America that could happen I think. And he was in Hawaii when Pearl Harbor was bombed. Wow. So one of his favorite films, funnily enough, is Tora Tora Tora, which I saw at a very young age because we had it on BHS. And so I saw the thin red line because my dad also was sort of predisposed to be interested in this movie. And I remember him watching it on TV. I didn't see it in theaters. I remember watching him watching it on TV and he was like totally wrapped up in it. And I watched a little bit of it with him and he was sort of talking with me about it throughout the film. That's how I was introduced to a lot of movies when I was a kid. And I was so interested in it and saw how interested my dad was in it that I eventually asked my mom if we could rent it. So next time we went to Blockbuster, I rented it and I sat down and I watched the whole thing at night by myself. And I was really moved by it, but definitely there was a lot that went over my head. But what I remember about the experience of watching the film is that I was sort of like swept up in the imagery in a way that I wasn't expecting. I had seen war movies and by that time had already seen Saving Private Ryan and lots of other things. And just remember being really moved by this film and not even really sure why, but that it was a different kind of move than a Schindler's List or Saving Private Ryan or something that's a little bit more immediately visceral. And I've watched it a couple times since then, but when we watched it this most recent time, I haven't seen it in maybe a decade. So it was really a treat to come back to it. Yeah, I mean, I think that your point, Chad, about the fact that this could be any war is astute, right? Spielberg's movie is very much about sort of the hoorah ideals of the greatest generation and of a particular conflict and sort of like the moral certainty of a war against the Nazis. And I think that the fact that this is in, as we've all mentioned, the Pacific Theatre of Combat makes it a little bit more kind of morally complex because you're not fighting an enemy that can be quite as easily sort of wrapped up in this innate evil, easily stamped on as like the Nazis could be. And it's just like a more, I don't know, it just feels more perilous. Like you said, Carly, I think I mean like alien is a good word, one less scene, one that feels just more kind of mysterious for boating. And in Malek's film, beautiful as well, right? It's not about necessarily like the ugliness of combat per se, it's about sort of like the spiritual poison of warfare and how it degrades the beauty of nature and like, and of like the human soul of humanity in general, absolutely. And to watch a movie and have all of that stuff be there, you know, specifically one that is ostensibly about also, you know, the greatest generation and fighting men and has displays of courage and cowardice and selfishness alike in it. There's something so grand, so epic about it, like it does just like stir your entire being while you're watching it. Yeah, and I mean, I don't know, I think a lot of that, it's all very interesting because it's like, and Malek talks about wanting it to be set in an Eden, you know, and like I think that that is very much captured and I think that that has something to do with it. And it's interesting what you guys have said about like how Japan is depicted in other movies and in our history textbooks and, you know, it's that it's sort of like less taught or at least less black and white, even considering the fact that they were the ones that attacked, they were the ones that directly attacked us. Yeah, you know, and yet, but then there's also things to do with, you know, they're sort of spirituality and you know, this was like the reason that they, part of the reason that they were involved in the war was their worship of their emperor, you know, which was like a God like figure and all of these things and it's like, it's an interesting sort of contrast and I think in the film, you know, with interaction with some of the soldiers, you know, the enemy soldiers that he encounters, like you're seeing that play out. And, but yes, I mean, I think that like the World War Two of it all I think really, you know, it's a jumping off point from a novel, obviously, and then, you know, just from a purely cynical perspective it's a commercial genre, you know, like it's, it's World War Two movies, you know, do well. And, you know, he, you know, he was, he was jumping off from from the point of a novel, sort of interesting to think, I'm pretty sure I'm right about this that it's his only adaptation, Alex, because I don't believe the New World is based on a book. I think it's just based on like research and things like that, but yeah, I haven't read it, but I'm curious to see the parallels. I'm going to have an opportunity to read a little bit of the James Jones novel in preparation for this, and it's very good. I'll say that much. I, you know, am only like a fifth of the way through it, you know, at the time of this recording and I'm going to finish it. Like I said, it's, it's exciting and compelling. And it does do a good job, I think, of finding room frequently for these kinds of interstitials of contemplation. And I think I read this passage to you, Carly, where, you know, the character, well, you know, Jones through a character sort of observes the, like, in consequentiality like the in humanness of all of it, as if, you know, all of this was just sort of like business decisions that it was like this enterprise about, you know, weighing the costs and the benefits of putting certain machines against other machines and the fact that there are human beings on them and have to pilot them as sort of inconsequential and afterthought. And so, you know, all of this is just like the churn and the gears of war where the human carnage isn't considered at all, you know, the little things like this happening all over the novel. Well, and it's great line property, the whole fucking things about property. Yes. So, I mean, Malick gets those little ideas in there and then also, you know, these kind of grand visions of, you know, the spiritual considerations that he's working with. I mean, from the outset of this movie, I think about the much remarked upon opening shot, which is not of a human being, it's not of warfare, it's just, it's a crocodile submerging itself in water. And Malick is able to, throughout the film, communicate so many depths of experience, of thought, of lines of inquiry, just through like a succession of images, you know, there's this idea of the push pull between good and evil in nature, the danger that nature sometimes represents, but also like the natural capacity for its own healing. Later on, you see the crocodile and other conditions that add textures to that. There's a moment in this film when they're first taking the hill. And it's shortly after like Lido sends like, you know, the two guys up the hill to charge and they both get gunned down. And, you know, there's terror that falls over all the soldiers faces where Malick pauses for a minute to just let us hear the wind rustling through the tall grass. And the sun comes out and slowly, you know, opens up this field and makes this grand almost like pastoral image. And that little exhalation, that little, you know, like interstitial of beauty before the carnage is a juxtaposition that Malick seems like really obsessed within this. And I don't know, it's a movie that to me expresses itself as much in those moments as anything that happens with the characters, any of the plot elements, any of the lines of dialogue, those all sort of happen at the periphery around like the universe of consideration that Malick is pulling out of out of this movie. I absolutely, and I mean, I think it's also about the indifference of nature to the machinations of men and war, that the first shot of the movie fucking rules so hard. And, and same with the last shot to the little sort of seedling on the beach, which I do read as hopeful, where the first shot has just, and with the Hans Zimmer score coming in, has just so much dread to it. And I do think, you know, and there's all these jokes and it's, it's, you know, hilarious about like, you know, they're setting up some huge explosion or whatever with like planes going by and, you know, trucks driving and people and stunts and all this stuff. And then Malick wants to turn the camera to the fucking parrot that's like, you know, on the, but I love that stuff because it's like, he's right, man, like, that stuff's not bullshit in this movie, like, that's the whole thing. Like, and, and we should, we should kind of shout out like the editors that he works with, you know, and I always giggle every time I see a new Malick movie because there's at least four, if not five credit editors. And then another half a dozen assistants, but like the things that they find, and, and you know, it is a lot of them because he also famously like won't watch his rough cuts. Like, finding these juxtapositions and these ellipses, like are the juice of these Malick movies like, you know, even talking about the beginning of the film and something that, you know, I'm sure none of us totally grasped on our first viewing, you know, when we were much younger, but just even understanding that, oh, okay, we're, we're in with Whit and his friend, and they're in this, you know, village that seems like paradise, and like what's happening, and it's like, oh, and then there's a boat coming and they look worried and it's like, oh, they're a wall. Like, you know, the way he elliptically delivers information is incredibly beautiful, and then we're on the boat and then we're being interrogated by Sean Penn and like now we know kind of what's going on. We know they know each other, like, it's just amazing to how he is able to keep the narrative thread, even within all of his kind of digressions, which is like something that I think he's lost a little bit in the more recent movies. What's this war in the heart of nature? Why does nature vie with itself? The land condemned with the sea? Is there an avenging power in nature? Not one power, but two? You're just fully immersed in the thing, and I think your point about the images of nature and animals and plants being like the real juice of the film. They had this effect of just carrying so much emotional heft for me when they would just materialize on screen and also serve as this kind of like grounding agent. Like, you know, you're in this maelstrom of violence and blood and explosions, and then he shows you like a close-up of an owl. And like the owl one is one where like, I like, I audibly gasped. I was just like, because it just comes like in the middle of sheer terror, and it's not even about like, is the owl watching it or not. It's just this thing lives there. And like, to your point, like it doesn't regard what's going on. It's just existing. And those moments were reprieves, but they were also ones that made, I think, the horror and the pain of what is happening in juxtaposition to them that much more potent. With the opening shot of the film, what Malick is insisting, and he does this throughout the movie, and he closes with this point, is the ever interconnectedness of humans and nature. Despite, you know, political aims or, you know, capital and property motivations, I think there is the assertion that nature is this thing that exists regardless of what we do. And then there's also this sort of pairing with that assertion, which is that we are connected to these things, whether we realize it or not. And our connection to nature and living in harmony with it is a thing that we are sort of naturally bent towards. And I think starting with wit and staying with wit for as long as we do. And even after he dies, we see the indigenous people that he, I think, were meant to believe it's the tribe that he spent time with, sailing down the river likely where they're going to see his grave. I think that the, you know, wit as sort of the, like liaison between these two worlds almost and staying with him the entire time when he sort of always has this kind of smile spread across his face is an insistence on this notion that we are most at peace and most in communion with the universe when we are in communion with nature. Yes. And I think if you're, if you can, if you can put a central thesis on this movie, it's that. And I think that it's the beginning, the beginning of the movie wit has found his spiritual connection with nature again. And we can argue about if, if connecting the indigenous people directly with nature is a little reductive, possibly. But he has found that and then the army finds him and is determined to stamp it out of him. Yeah, I think that that is kind of the central thesis of this movie. And I don't think that they succeed, but he does die. You know, but that's a pretty beautiful thing to make a movie about. It really is incredible. And again, to your point about like sort of like the elliptical quality of the film and just how direct. How direct malics meaning can be through such indirect means visually like the way that that ship cuts through this idyllic scene. There's this unnatural steel like behemoth coming through like is it just like rips you apart when you see it after like those first like 10 minutes or so of calm and peace. You see these tribes people like in communion with nature. You see Cavizal like he's in an element there in harmony and one with nature as well. And it comes back in like this horrible Titanic force that strips away everything real quick just because I think this is a good jumping off point to some production stuff as we continue along to. Cavizal feels like the biggest star in the world in this movie despite like not saying all that much much like a malic figure tends to, you know, be short on words but kind of made his career at this point and also was not necessarily the original vision of the film on paper and on script. There are countless big actors in this movie soon to be big actors in this film and also then movie stars who show up really and just like effectively cameo roles because their parts were cut down so much in the edit as the movie was being discovered. I don't know I love this process and I love talking about this this must have felt I was joking with Carly like this this must have felt sort of like the Oppenheimer casting announcements. As we like you know kind of got them one by one of its time where it's like oh literally every white guy in Hollywood is getting a role in this movie or or meeting Malick to try to to get a role in this movie. Yeah I mean even beyond the folks who are in it we're looking at who de Niro Duvall Tom Cruise Brad Pitt Pacino Gary Oldman Bruce Willis you know all of these costs are all of these guys on this yeah yeah. Yeah I mean I I making this making this movie must have been incredibly difficult I think it's it's it's hard for me to because it's it's a process that everything I've read about it and have heard about it is impossible to replicate and I don't think anyone could or would or would be able to ever make something at this scale again that's made this loosely. Whereas something like Oppenheimer I imagine is very tightly scripted and essentially you're shooting the script every day and you are casting the cast and and you know they're they're you know doing there are well crafted like normal work environment you know where you have to imagine that this movie was basically entirely improvised like and and that means that just doesn't mean like people think of improvised as like you know we're making up the dialogue on the day I'm saying we're making up the scene on the day like we're we're we're finding a location that we like and deciding to shoot something there and I think what happens over the course of a hundred days of shooting or more which is you know essentially a year out in the middle of nowhere with no product no executive oversight that Malik just slowly got more and more interested in this person and this actor and just kept wanting to shoot him. And I think that that has something to do you know we should talk about I think we should talk about Christianity you know I think that like Malik has a more at least based on his films he obviously doesn't talk about it. But you know his Catholicism I think is very based in nature and you know he obviously has they've never officially worked together but he has ties with Mel Gibson as well you know and I think a big reason why Jim Cavizio was cast in the Passion of the Christ was from this movie 100% and I think that but I think it is undeniable that Jim Cavizio who seems like a complete psychopath is incredible in this movie. Yeah I mean you know there's there's no accounting for you know hindsight's 2020 and we see now that he's a little bit of a nut job but pretty undeniable as like a very good actor and in this movie especially he's doing a wonderful job of the script he's also just shot beautifully he's got those eyes those piercing eyes that are just looking through the dirt and the grime and the blood all the time and he just he just feels massive at the center of the movie while being very stoic and quiet as well. Carly I know you were really into Cavizio when you saw him in this movie I was look you know most people in Hollywood I think actors who reach a certain level of fame I will make that distinction men in particular just they can't be normal. And you know I loved I loved Jim Cavizio so much that I watched frequency. Good film I don't know what to say. But yeah he's just stunning he is so able I think to evoke the feeling that to your point Chad that Malick is after in this film with his face with the way he moves his body. There's you know a sereneness to him that is persistent but it never feels practiced or intentional or overworked it feels incredibly organic and it feels like what we have to imagine with feels which is this profound trust in his connectedness to this other world that he's seen you know he says to Sean Penn's character pretty early on I seen another world. And the way he looks at a match that he's striking or notices a blade of grass or whatever it may be like Jim Cavizio is able to evoke this feeling simply with a look on his face and the way he holds his body and I can't imagine as you say not wanting to just capture as much of that on on screen as you possibly can. And I'm so happy that he did because he I think is the character and the presence on screen that feels the most transcendent out of everyone that we spend time with. And it's a really beautiful it's a really beautiful thing to put on film. I agree with everything that you said you know his his line about that he's seen another world and his sort of confidence in his discovery that sort of happens before the movie starts. You know when he says I can take anything you dish out I'm twice the man you are like that's one of his first lines and like you can imagine. All of these every young big swinging dick in Hollywood is in the middle of Australia shooting this movie realizing that the director just follows the whims of himself and just all angling to get on screen. And then off to the side there's this guy that is just sitting or swimming or whatever in his confidence in his beauty looking at the nature around him and and and Malick is like we need to go shoot him. Yes and I think that's exactly what happened and as much as he'll turn away turn the camera away from the explosion to shoot the parrot he's turning the camera away from Adrian Brody and shooting. Jim Cavisio yeah right and I'm sorry that that happened to Adrian Brody and he's a great actor and I'm sure someone should have called him before you know he saw it on screen and told him. Yeah but it is a that is not the type of person that Terrence Malick is I don't think that's a job for an executive or an agent or whatever. But you know he didn't do it because he hates him he is following the whims of his own artistic process and no one's feelings or egos or anything is going to get in the way of that and that's just how it is. Yes and I think that it's incredible that Malick was able to kind of I mean through force but also through reputation command that kind of will and respect during this production you know to any great filmmaker out there right now who just wants a carte blanche and to do whatever they want on a big Hollywood production. Apparently all you have to do is go away for 20 years after your your last great movie and you can do that like someone will someone will like come in and just pump money into your bank account for anything that you feel like doing because that's that's right we got you have to make bad lands for days of heaven days of heaven first and it would help to be born 50 years ago because it ain't it's not happened anymore. Yes I mean I'm sure we can shout out the the I think it's a Vanity Fair article about the making of this movie and was really came out a few years ago and was really kind of the first deep deep dive into it and like but you're right essentially what happened was you know two producers were like why isn't there been a Terrence Malick movie in 10 years and then they like track him down and see what he wants to make. And he basically just milks them for money for 10 years and it's so cool and then as soon as they start pushing back on him when it's actually starting to happen he bans them from the set. Actually I think is kind of fucked up but like you know he just he wasn't going to make a movie unless he got every single thing that he possibly could want and like you like there's a lot of filmmakers that act that way and there's a lot that that don't have the you know either the money in their bank account to back it up or the wherewithal to back it up he had he was perfectly fine never making a movie again so if if you want him you need to you know do it in the way he wants to that's it. Well look what we got right like there are plenty of you know directors and actors that act that way and don't deliver something like the thin red line right so it's kind of like yeah. This one this one it was worth it you know and I mean I think I actually think all of his films are great and I think you know there's an article to be written in the next 20 years about how he went from this kind of pace with you know between five and seven and then 20 years between projects and then made for in in a row is very interesting although he still did edit all of them for five years. So he shot them much quicker right. But yeah and he has and we as we know he has a Jesus movie in the can right now that wrapped production five years ago so you know we'll see. He's laugh every time that's on the can predictions list I'm like guys it's only been five years like give the man some time. And it's just like I mean that is honestly so up until a few nights ago I had not seen any like later malic post tree of life. I finally watched to the wonder I'm just gonna watch in order fantastic you know it's like one of those experiences where like 15 20 minutes and I'm like why the fuck did I wait this long to do this but part of it was just like the sheer overwhelm of dealing with an artist with whom I was used to waiting 10 you know 12 years at a time to like see a new thing pop up or new information arise. And then to have like four of them come out in the span of a decade in quick succession I was like slow your fucking role I can't keep up I can't keep these things organized. You're working with Affleck you got Michael Fassbender and Rudy Mara and Gossingley are they all in the same movie what is going on you're at Austin city limits now like running around with cameras just like in the mosh pit at Diane word like what are you doing. But that's awesome right and I'm excited to jump more into these and check them out but well I'm excited for you I mean I think my biggest I would say if you love to the wonder that's great because I think it's probably my least favorite of the recent films mainly because I think that it had that Ben Affleck is at worst when he's being completely earnest and that's what a malloc movie requires. And so I'm curious to see how the rest go I mean from what I understand especially song to song and night of cups were shot more or less simultaneously between LA and Austin. And then so he just you know he had a machine going for a while of just like constantly shooting new material new locations bringing people in and out all this stuff. So like the movies were really shaped more so than any of his others even in the edit even though they really all are but he's just with those he was just shooting material. Yeah, I mean it's such a fascinating way that he works and how his workflow has evolved I know that you know obviously like you said someone like Adrian Brody maybe you know if realizing that the production is shifting away from him even as it's happening and then of course finding out that the final edit has him just you know wide eyed and five minutes of the movie with a couple lines of dialogue which probably doesn't feel great but his work method also draws extreme reverence from people as well there are reports that like Woody Harrelson and John Savage on this production even after they wrapped shooting just hung out for like another month because they just wanted to see the guy work that he like he was imbued with this mythic status after essentially making the careers of Sheen, Spacek and Richard Geer you know in the 70s and then going away and all of a sudden here are all these you know actors of the moment who probably saw yes opportunity but also just were willing to do whatever famously to you know Sean Penn meets with Malick and says pay me one dollar and just tell me where to show up I'm there I'm yours. And it was also so shrouded in mystery at you know throughout this period at you know now like you know we went from like there's one known photograph of Terrence Malick to like he did like a talk at South by Southwest like three years ago or whatever or five years ago and you know so he still obviously keeps his own company and etc but it is I can't imagine after 20 years and like you know all these guys like especially people like Sean Penn you know having reverence for these 70s movies of course it makes sense that you just do anything to work with him. I mean whatever he engendered in making this film is definitely something I would want to experience whether as an actor or a person you know running cable or whatever like I feel like there's stuff here that he's able to make with his art that exists even beyond what we see on screen. I have a sort of like not related observation that I want to run by you both and it's related to the conversation about this movie and its proximity to saving private Ryan. There's a moment in this film when those landing craft mechanized boats they're called Higgins boats the boats that the men are sort of stacked in like sardines and the thing comes up and then they you know run onto the beach so these boats play a very important role in the D-Day the beach scene in saving private Ryan the one that all of us you know we're so familiar with and that was much discussed as you mentioned Chad and these boats make an appearance in the thin red line and I don't know enough about Malik's methods and if he even would care about what the fuck was in another movie but there was a part of me that wondered if the use of the Higgins boats and the insertion of those boats where they are in the film and then what happens afterwards if it was intentional with some sort of like meta textual considerations with the D-Day scene in saving private Ryan and I note this because you see these boats and you see them very similarly to the way that we see them in the saving private Ryan sequence when they're on the water rocking up and down and then we're inside the boat with the men some of them are praying and kneeling it feels pretty similar beat for beat to a lot of the stuff in the saving private Ryan sequence and then the men run out onto the beach and nothing happens so I found myself like I saw these boats and immediately that saving private Ryan scene is evoked for me and this like wash of dread and terror just came over me and then they run out onto the beach and I'm expecting them all to get absolutely obliterated and they run in and they meet up very quickly with another man who's like we've been here a week this place has deserted and we close this sequence with a soldier asking if they don't know if this place is deserted what else don't they know and then we go into a different portion of the film and I just found the meta textual like evocation of the saving private Ryan D-Day scene to make that scene in Malick's film so intense for me What are your thoughts on that? It's very interesting because it's like well so I just think it's interesting how like art talks to each other in that way you know I don't think practically it's possible that it was conscious A) I don't think Malick watches movies period he like famously throws out the television he doesn't even watch his own movies like here are these stories of like in order to get him to watch cuts he would make them turn the sound off and put on a green day CD and then he would just like vibe with like the visual cuts I'm so curious which green day CD it is too like you would assume it's probably dukey but it could be one of the later ones right like it was like whatever came out in like you know 96 97 I mean the other thing is like you know this was again this was a very long production and a very long post production period so this movie was I believe shot mostly in 96 and 97 So Spielberg and then Spielberg oppositely famously works and edits very quickly so again I don't know all the production histories of both but the timing wouldn't have worked out for him to like know what that was going to be I think it's one of those things where it's like they just like how a great artist think alike and they're you know depicting similar things and then but yeah I totally get you where it gives the it gives the moment of that it's nothing so much more weight because you're so trained to expect something like this at this time having having seen you know the and I mean even more so like the audiences at the time having seen the other movie like six months earlier like yeah but yeah I can't I can't imagine that it was intentional but it is just one of those interesting things you know I mean obviously like there's those famous movies of like that you know volcano and Dante's peak or whatever like right now the same year yeah arm armageddon and deep impact yeah where I think in those cases that's just a case of like studio executives kind of racing to the finish line right where this it's like it's almost like it almost like hurts the movie you know like but like whereas like I think saving private Ryan was probably developed made and released in two years where this that this was 12 you know like right so it's almost a movie out of its own time you know yeah and I think to like talking about with Alex you know wilderness period you read about it like it's not as if he yes he I think he moved to Paris he was teaching class but like he was still developing things he was still like talking to executives he was still looking at books he was still writing screenplays I think that like a big part of it was obviously wasn't in any rush he had just you know days of heaven was a complete blank check situation where they were the head of paramount just loved his badlands so much that they just kept funding him through a year of production and a year of post and so he had this experience where he was never going to go back to making movies in a more traditional way and I think was in no rush and it just happened to take 20 years for his next movie to get made like I don't I don't really think he was like not not like dealing with the process of trying to get a movie made during that time yeah I mean I think you're right about all of that chatter it is I think just one of those fantastically kind of coincidental things that these two scenes have such close proximity but also sort of speak to each other in interesting ways this scene is also in the James Jones book where they arrive on the beaches and meet no resistance it's made less of a thing in those pages than it is in the movie though which I think is also really interesting that they really do kind of emphasize like oh we like we're anticipating a battle and then there was none but I think also I love how long the movie withholds actual combat from us and the way that it escalates the way it takes us through pretty much like the entire middle hour 90 minutes of a three hour picture but then we get another reprieve from it on the other end there's really just like a incredible escalation and rise we're in that for some time and then you know the last hour of this movie effectively is them on R&R up until those last like 20 minutes or so well I'd love to kind of because on this viewing I really tried to kind of hone in on it narratively and sort of like I'd love to talk about kind of like the five main characters and that sort of arcs because I think they're really interesting and really sort of like how they kind of interplay with each other and again like I was saying before like part of the reason that I love Badlands and that I love his first four movies so much is that they do have strong narratives even if they're made fuzzy and elliptical by his style like they're still you know days of heaven is just is a classic like love triangle story of jealousy and you know and all and these things so like you know you have wit who I think we've we've touched on his kind of arc and then you have Bell played by Ben Chaplin who kind of has the sort of classic Dear John you know scenario happening to him but a lot of the sort of imagery that is not nature based is its flashbacks of his right and you know very sort of ethereal like doesn't speak perfect Miranda auto you know swinging on a swing set somewhere beautiful but I still I can't help it if I'm just a sucker but I still do find it powerful and just find it totally devastating when he reads her letter yes oh my god it's gutting it's gutting and it it's so it's so potent by the time we get there because we've spent so much time in his mind with these visions of her and hearing his narration to himself to her we see the ways that he evokes her when he needs something in a moment of peril he's also said to his company mates I don't even want to look at another woman because I don't want that desire to manifest itself I mean he's just so so tethered to this woman and she clearly is this beacon for him and so when he gets that letter I mean you are just devastated I knew what happened in this movie and on this rewatch I was still like is he gonna fucking kill himself? I had a moment of being like wait does he because it is you feel the weight of of that letter and he the actor does an incredible job really he's kind of like stumbling about it's a really really human moment he's amazing and like I wish he had a bigger career because I think he's incredible in this movie he's phenomenal phenomenal chaplain's really really really good and really stuck out to me on this watch to your point Chad like you know the narratives of especially those first four Malick movies Badlands Days of Heaven this and New World he definitely gets more and more into his style you know I said the other day even that I still think that Badlands might be like my very favorite Malick movie despite myself you know and he's done certainly things that are much grander and bigger than that picture but something about just the intimacy of it and the coupling of his sort of elliptical qualities and his penchant for kind of digression and experiencing nature with his camera while also telling like a very classic love on the run sort of tail exactly is so rewarding to me I adore it I think that's a very relevant favorite absolutely yes well thank you I was surprised by the lack of pushback when I said that online recently and was like I think this might still be my favorite Malick movie and everyone was like there's no wrong answer when you someone talking about five star movies like those are those are all stone called masterpieces so you just get to pick your favorite one yeah yeah and they're all wonderful like you said it yeah there was no conflict there was no battle to be had there like if you would say something with a different filmmaker but by any means I think some of what I found so compelling about the thin red line on this watch is in some of those kind of war cliches that come up and the way that Malick is still able to make them feel fresh I think of Woody Harrelson's character Keck too you know who quote unquote blows his butt off he accidentally pulls the pin on his grenade and sacrifices himself you know he kind of jumps behind a kind of clot of dirt and make sure that none of his other brothers in arms have to face any shrapnel but we get one of those very classic moments of you know to write to my wife tell my wife tell my wife I love her tell her I died like a man kind of situations that we've seen in these kinds of movies before that get parodied in other films and yet there's genuine emotion wrought from that and then the aftermath of it the scene where Dahl and one of the other soldiers kind of get into an argument where he insists what you need to write his wife and he's like fuck that I'm not doing that I'm not going to do that is the moment that is the payoff to the otherwise like cliche and that's everywhere. Coteus in this film has to talk about Mr. Elias Coteus he's just incredible for one we are you know he's a hit factory favorite we love Elias Coteus he's just phenomenal crash get out of here incredible and crash John Exotica you know his Adam McGaughan work and everything like really at this point kind of like the biggest production he's been a part of working on the thin red line and he gets to sink his teeth into the role I remember as a kid watching him in this movie and falling in love with him and thinking he was great but but thinking that he was a much more sort of boilerplate standard like hero captain in the movie and I love love love that this time around I got to see more of the intricacies and nuances of that character that yes he's beloved by his men at a certain point for sort of saving their lives and resisting the orders of Nick Nolte's character but that he really just gets like a really raw deal that he he's put upon by the machinations of war and of the battle and of the whims of these rent seeking like commanders in his unit there's so much more depth there than just like you know the the Medal of Honor recipient kind of guy who I thought he was on first watch yeah and I mean I noticed too that like and reading some plot synopsis is people write that like oh his men don't respect him or whatever and like I think that I'm not quite sure it's as black and white as that but like the scene after he sort of saves them you it is a lot more ambivalent like John C. Riley is a lot more ambivalent to him than you would think and you know I think that like it's this interesting scene where he's like I think in the moment the scene is correct and then by the time Nick Nolte gets up there the situation has completely changed so he just looks like he was too soft like like he said I mean I think it gets to like the sort of how this movie is structured in that each of these care each of these these I would I would call the five main characters of this movie which are you know with and Bell and tall play by Nick Nolte and Welsh played by Sean Penn and and then Elias Cody as Starros like if Kavizio's kind of thing that's keeping him alive is nature and Ben Chaplin's is his wife and Elias Cody is his is his men and then you know Nolte sort of all he has is his resentments and you know Sean Penn has his anger and but but then I don't know Sean Penn's arc in this movie is very interesting as well because he starts off as this sort of hard ass on Kavizio and then and then ends up doing this incredibly heroic thing that seems fruitless until he actually succeeds at it hey wait how do you make a trouble for today what do you mean well isn't that what you like to do turn left when they go right why are you such troublemaker with you care about me don't you start I always felt like you did why do you always make yourself out like a rock one day I can come up and talk to you by the next day it's like whenever you're a man lonely house now you ever get lonely only around people you still believe in the beautiful light are you do that you're a magician to me I still see a spark in you I love Penn in this movie maybe the most I'd ever liked him by the way he's phenomenal I will say what I was taken by on this walk on this watch is how not outwardly antagonistic their first conversation actually is there is a tenderness that both actors I think are able to communicate between the two of them that with insists on throughout the entirety of the film you know he says to another person I think his cellmate who is maybe on the island with him but when a wall he was like that guy hates you more than he hates poison and what is you know says back to him like I don't hate him and I don't really think he hates me like you know he he is with understands that there is some connection that they share and even when they are at odds ideologically there is a relationship there there's a relationship between these two men and I think Penn is really good at evoking it more so than I would expect from him and the type of acting that he typically does and they have these conversations that often illuminate key statements the film is making right when they're talking about their worldviews their belief systems and Penn is sort of saying like you know you still like believe in this thing and like how and could be so is like well you still have the spark in you like I know it's not gone I still see it in you and I like that Penn throughout the throughout the story is having these types of conversations with other characters there's a one point when I forget who but one of the characters is telling him like I don't feel anything anymore like I look at that kid dying there and I don't feel a thing none of it none of it means anything to me and you know born cold and and I'm I'm always going to be stuck in this place of kind of feeling and not but I'm not there and we get to see him sort of change and and grow but also kind of be this thing that he's always been over the course of the film and it really is a beautiful evolution of his character I just want to make one note about Elias Cotius I like what you said Chad about how you know there's this question of whether or not his men respect him and we see sort of like his relationships with the men and then his relationships with his superiors and how those things play out and at the very beginning when they're all like below deck on this boat before they go out onto the Higgins boats to meet certain death they're all sure that one of the characters it's the guy with kind of red hair who says he's not going to write the letter that's doll yeah he's really good oh my god he's phenomenal I wanted to hate him so badly but I couldn't dash knee hawk is yeah he's he's great a very substantial character in the novel as well so it's five Brody's character Welsh and then doll is really like one of the other very big ones he's awesome he says to someone when he's walking around the barracks to find a pistol he can steal which becomes incredibly material for him later yeah he says this is the captain's fault he is the reason we are always in these shitty situations so there is this resentment but he is also the person when Elias Cotius's character is getting shipped off by tall Nick Nolte's character he is the person that says to him we really respect the way that you stood up for us and you you suggested that flanking move we're really gonna miss you and and you know we're what can we do basically and so there's this there's this closure to their relationship to where you also realize that the men have come to see him for who he really is and appreciate their relationship with him he calls them his sons he says I'm gonna carry you with me wherever I go and and isn't it when after Sean Penn commits his sort of heroic act is isn't it Elias Cotius is the one that says I'm going to recommend you for the silver star and he says fuck you yes if you do that I'll leave this I'll leave you with these men who don't you know so it is it's complicated it had it's like I don't know it's it's hard to kind of parse out I just he has Elias Cotius just has so much I he just has such a sympathetic face that you love him and he's so sincere which is ironic considering he plays one of the scariest people of all time and crash but he's just that good but he's also really sexy in that movie too like he's like scary and also like just so magnetic well and credit to to Malek to I mean to your point about him just being drawn to Kavizel it's clear he really sees something in Cotius because at this point Cotius was not a you know he's not a Bruce Willis he's not a he's not a major star he hadn't done a whole lot that you know was would get him a lot of acclaim and that you know most audiences would know him and and yet we spend almost as much time with him as we do with wit and I think it's because as you say Malek saw something in him and in him and was like I want this person on screen exactly and I and then I do think that you know Nolte too is really incredible in this film unbelievable and you know his sort of arc where he's introduced kind of following around Travolta which I think in retrospect I would argue is the most effective cameo if we're going to separate very much cameos like I think Travolta really works in the movie and then his sort of stature as the movie star he was at the time works for the character he's playing like there's not like a disconnect there where I feel like there is with Clooney for example like obviously we have the retrospect of that but like I think that that scene I love that scene of like Nolte following him around and his voice over and you know everything you want to know about this character and then we see him we've already seen the interiority of him and then we see him do something that we disagree with and think he's wrong where we're seeing the outwardness of his insecurity manifesting as as arrogance and sort of dominance and and he's he's you know coming down on top of Elias Cody is and we think he's wrong even after we've kind of gained sympathy for his for being passed over essentially like yeah he's he's so fucking good like he's incredible he's amazing and like the meta textual element to of I think Nolte you know he's not quite in like late period stuff like I think of him in like what was it um warrior though yeah well yes that but I've been thinking like later in the 2010s was around the same time as this but yeah yeah like warrior yeah he's 10 years away from from from true like elder states men basically totally and he's sort of like aging out of I mean he's passed you know his Walter Hill collaborations like extreme prejudice or 48 hours and being kind of like you know the gruff tough talking kind of guy and into this place where that sort of you know suit of armor that he wears really really suits him really fits him he is deeply resentful and insecure and feels like he's been passed over feels like you know he's coming into the first major war of his career as as a soldier way too late way too old to make any impression I think it's fitting that Penn throws back and Cody is his face his whole thing where he's like at orders tomorrow I'm going to recommend you for the silver star and mention your heroism and he's like fuck you it's the one time where he's like the most trying to emulate Nolte and Nolte's way of kind of commanding which is for all of its like kind of gruffness for all of its sort of you know tough guy macho stuff that he cakes onto it is very how do I even put it it's kind of like by the book and very it's West Point right like he only sees things in terms of like the X's and O's on like his military theory books and seeing the way that like the seeing the lay of the land and seeing the campaign the way it's supposed to go you know he's on the phone in the morning while these guys are getting ready to go and get you know blown to bits quoting Homer and Greek to Coteus you know like just trying to be this guy but also just unable to really get past the sort of his ulterior motives to get past the idea of what looks good for him what looks good for the company and all of these awards that he can bestow that conversation with QSAC too is like so fucking bitter where it's just like you know we're gonna we're gonna recommend you for the the big one John like it'll look good for the company it'll look good for me and it's just it's so self seeking it's so and that is so disturbingly mirrored when he's dismissing Elias Coteus and saying you know I'm gonna get make sure you get I don't know whatever fucking silver star you will throw in the will throw in a poor part like what for for that scratch on your forehead like that's when you're like okay this is I mean I'll take back slightly when I said you know this movie is entirely improvised like that's obviously an exaggeration to a degree like he starts with very tight screen place he just like throws them out and I've never had the chance to read one but I know people that have and like you know the sentiment sometimes is that he writes these incredibly beautiful screen plays I wish you would shoot them and so you sort of see that like the mirroring the mirroring of those three sort of awards like kind of conversations in a movie that has very little dialogue in it is very interesting I think and telling of like what he's interested in and how that's kind of like leapfrogged and like where sort of pen rejects it and John Q's act kind of I don't think he really responds and then and then with when it's with Coteus it's so insulting John I'm convinced that the Japanese position can be broken right now all we have to do is keep going and we'll have this hill while this hill by sundown you see the spirit in these men you see the new spirit why are you going to take advantage of that before something happens to stop their strength that this battalion relieved in in a defeat or even to have it reinforced from tubes from a reserve regiment if we were stalled before reaching the top of Jesus Christ that's a hell of a lot more than I could stand I'm waiting all my life for this I've worked slave didn't know untold buckets of shit to have this opportunity I don't intend to give it up now you don't know what it feels like to be passed over I mean you're young you're just out of the academy you know you've got your war this is 15 years this is my first war some day you'll understand you're like a son to me John you know what my son does he's a bait salesman you've done a hell of a job John I'm going to make sure that you get everything everything you deserve Nick Nolte and Jim Kaviesel I think there are two characters contain the thesis statements for this film and the political thrum of what Malick is dealing here Nick Nolte's character reminds us constantly about the business of war the CEOs his executives the paperwork the meetings the decisions that are made because it is a business it's about property right and he is always always in that space he is always operating in the mindset of business and capital not humanity not human lives not nature not the organic and so you know Nolte and Kaviesel as these two sort of points that the film orbits around to ideological spheres that crash into each other is really important I think for how we understand the movie and you know Nolte to his credit who I've never like thought of him as like a particularly like he's threatened the needle kind of an actor like he's not that to me yeah he's a bull in a china shop but holy shit he does this thing in this movie that like I don't even know how he does it but he manages to be this person who is completely consumed by the mania of war and the mania of his own greed and ascension within this business of war and also communicate how deeply insecure and ill fitting this this mask is on him how much he wants to don it and how he still can't quite you know he's giving this rousing speech when they're all fucking passing out from dehydration after they just like did this thing and he's like no we're gonna charge through like we've got momentum I'm not gonna stop now and he tries to give the speech and he's like walking around and he's sort of fidgeting and he's saying all the right words but they don't like land really I mean what he's doing is just really fucking phenomenal because he has no connection with the man really nothing whatsoever he doesn't even really have connection with the words that are coming out of his mouth right like he doesn't we don't even really get the sense that he fully believes these things it is this it's this monster that's overtaken him that you know he is beset in this business he's beset in this business where he he wants the promotion he wants like to sit in the executive suite and that's you know that's what's on his mind and also to your point all of his resentments the only other thing I want to say about him is Malek does this really incredible thing where we have his voice over his interiority we have him interacting with the men in these like you know sort of painful these agonizing conversations where we we are feeling the weight of the human toll of what he is saying and he is not and then we also many times throughout the film hear his voice over a radio and I love this effect because it drives home how utterly insane and just like mechanically nuts he is there's this effect that hearing his voice over the radio where he's hollering and it's his you know Nick Nolte like growl and it's distorted over the radio frequency and you hear it and you're just like this man is going to ruin all of them like it's this feeling of like I whenever his voice would come over on the radio I was just like it was like nails on a chalkboard I was just like oh my god this guy is a fucking maniac and I just I love he's the only person we hear over the radio that we know there's like two other voices we hear over the radio at some point where they're like repeating an order or something but he is the only person that we hear over a radio as often as we do and it really really adds a layer of like intensity to his mania that I love to your point Chad like the fact that we get his interiority we hear his like you know non-diogenic monologue over those early scenes of him so docile and so just like performatively kind of groveling to Travolta I even think like there's one of the last ones we see with the two of them they smoke a cigarette together and if I'm not mistaken they're both Nolte cigarettes but then Travolta hands him the lighter so that he can light Travolta cigarette for him and then Nolte gives him back the lighter afterward it's just like it makes you sort of sympathetic to the character even as he becomes more and more unhinged and just like unrepentantly selfish Well and it's perfect casting like as we said where it's like you know Travolta is both you know a little younger more famous and you know if Nolte is a sort of like you know towering figure of traditional masculinity I think we can say Travolta's relationship with that is a little bit more complicated and so it's like perfectly they're perfect foils for one another in this scene and then you know as you said Carly like his sort of you know when he's talking about he's like I know you're thirsty you know like it's like we're gonna get water up here in a couple hours water like and and they're running in a jungle you know like and you know he just it's just so it's such an interesting it's such an interesting contrast and then it's like for another you know another movie like it would turn him in their Colonel Kurtz but it's it doesn't do that It ends up being right kind of like they take and it might just be a coincidence but they take the hill successfully and then I also love that it's something so arbitrary and worthless as a hill So all these things are in the mix so it's just like at every turn we're just like not doing this sort of traditional thing like he the fact that like Elias Coteus is like begging him to or refusing this order and in that very moment is probably right that he would be sending all of his men to their death and by the time Nolte is up there he's like what are you talking about like we could take this hill and then they do you know like it's just I don't know I think it really gets something right about this sort of chaotic nature of like any any kind of like large operation like this and and that there aren't just tidy narratives of who's right and who's wrong when Yeah it I think really conveys the randomness of all of it and one character says it I was gonna I was just gonna say John Savage's character is the one where this is evoked like literally but I think this movie more so than any war movie I've I've ever seen deals with that you know how consequence and how you know these things are meted out in a way that is indiscriminate and senseless and you know after John Savage's whole like platoon of men he says like 12 of them right they all go up the hill and they all die but him and he has that moment where he starts to kind of lose his mind yeah and he's up you know and at night before they go and take the bunker and he's standing straight up and just screaming he's like I can stand right here and cry out and nothing happens to me and all of them had to die like they all they're all gone and here I am I have to live with this and like nothing can touch me well there's another character to towards the end of the film and I can't remember which one it is that says it doesn't actually matter how well you did in training it doesn't matter if you were the toughest guy in your company if you live or die is completely up to chance if you're standing in the wrong spot at the wrong time you're dead it doesn't have anything to do with what you did at base it doesn't have anything to do with the awards you've won you know that too I think is a really interesting corollary to the groundedness of nature that mallet comes back to right but there is this persistence of of this life you know there's that beautiful shot where the leaves are silhouetted with shrapnel against a blue sky and they're you know they're in shadow and you see the holes that have blown through them but they're still hanging and I think Malick you know in many cases too tries to show us other examples of not just like the indigenous population but the Japanese troops there are you know ways that we see their connection to nature in the midst of it all their emotionality he tries to find ways for us to come back to this connection and also assert you know the ugliness and the chaos of it all yeah I mean I'd be curious to you know speak to hear what someone more qualified than me about the depiction of the Japanese in the film I mean it's obviously not interested in necessarily characterizing them but I also think that's okay but I do think it treats them as humans I mean we see some very disturbing and profound scenes of various soldiers sort of fear and chaos and of losing their minds and of also like strange and powerful connections with the American soldiers you know sometimes in the in a moment of you know just before death or you know the lead soldier that ends up shooting with like you know I these are not I would not agree with anyone that said that they are depicted as sort of faceless you know monsters or whatever like and and I also think that you have to a movie has to have a point of view a movie can't be about everything you know I think I haven't actually seen Tora Tora but like you know obviously letters from Iwo Jima is a really fascinating movie masterpiece about you know the other side of this stuff but I don't again I'd be curious to hear other perspectives on it but I don't I it doesn't feel wrong to me the way the Japanese are depicted and I think it's oh I think you are allowed as a filmmaker to not have equally five Japanese carrot like I just think movies don't work that way yeah yes completely and I'm just going to point out real quick Chad brought up Clint Eastwood on this episode not me he did it first that's true I can't believe it only took us an hour for an hour yeah I mean letters from Iwo Jima fantastic film probably my favorite of Clint's 2000s output really really wonderful go see it if you haven't but to your point about the depiction of the Japanese in this I was actually going to come to this next because I wanted to talk a little bit about the way that Malick conveys the violence of the movie and even before this he's so much more interested in the aftermath of a moment than in the actual like kind of grisiness of it like sure enough we see explosions we see you know one of the first images we see on the island is of two soldiers with like their limbs severed in like a really graphic horrible moment we see bullets going through people we see blood obviously but Malick shows us more often than like the kind of viscera the characters screaming or crying or like holding themselves on the ground or comforting one another or seeking comfort from a soldier nearby and he does that likewise in the you know ostensible victory of this moment for the soldiers when they get to the encampment of the Japanese soldiers at the top of the hill when they finally take it so much of it is shot in kind of you know some of it isn't in like a first-person perspective and study cam running basically like it's very yeah sorry no no totally it's it's very visceral but so much of it lingers on just the like horrified looks of the Japanese soldiers or their screams or the violence being doled out to them even as they're surrendering or them sitting you know shaking and in prayer and moments trying to find some surrendering to find some serenity during this chaos yeah it is absolutely not giving us like a grand victory and defeat of our enemy it is at every step of the way making you realize just how brutal it is even to like even to win exactly and to and to win you know a fairly like it's not as if I mean I guess we can agree that all war is crime but it's not as if like they're committing war crimes you know what I'm saying like it's not the scene in a pocket in platoon right where they're like shooting kids for no reason you know right it's not casualties of war a fairly straightforward battle and it is depicted as spiritually a spiritual apocalypse yes basically for these for everyone involved yes and I think that like going back to talking about how you know Malek's editing I think it's really worth noting how he depicts violence because the his sort of elliptical editing is it has produced some incredibly you know disturbing and and sort of shocking and just and also poetic like versions of violence I mean I'm thinking about when Richard gear gets shot at the end of days of heaven where it's basically like two shots it's like a what it's like a wide and then it cuts to a like a below shot inside like a pool essentially and he just like falls into the water on camera it like main character dead you know or like in Badlands where he's he you know is is taking Sissy Spacek and and says to the father one of my favorite lines and Malek he says a suppose I shot you how that be and then it like cuts to the house on fire basically like it's just like he's so good at like that kind of thing and like there's moments in this movie that do that that are just I did not expect to see you know a Japanese soldier crying and begging having already surrendered having been under no really additional threat next to one praying yes like it's just really it's it's you know I don't think there's anything else in American cinema that like depicts these kinds of things like this you know and you know I think your point about like we don't need to have the five Japanese soldiers as like the the other side of the film is a good one because I think oftentimes you can communicate a more powerful message by doing something else right by making a different decision and not thinking about this sort of like easy math of like well in order for us to like have everything be equitable we need to make sure I actually think there is more rot from the the way that we experience the Japanese troops and their horror then would be from us you know having five protagonists on on that side of the war there you know Malek's insistence on staying with a moment after violence has happened and in as you know Chad oftentimes not showing the violence we don't see Woody Harrelson's butt get blown off right he stays he stays waste up the entire time he's dying and it makes the scene and then the ensuing conversation that we know is happening right next to his dead body that much more horrible it makes his death that much more intense and I'm also thinking about you know when Savage's character is standing up and he's screaming about you know we're all just dirt we're dirt and shortly thereafter we see the face of a Japanese soldier submerged in dirt his eyes open looking out I think it's a seasonal yeah fuck incredible holy shit and he asks in narration to wit he says I wrote down he speaks to him right he speaks to him he says you know I was loved know that I was too do you imagine your sufferings will be less because you loved goodness truth he's asking these questions of like you know well who decides what goodness and truth are and you know do you think that like you ending up buried in the dirt as you do later in the film the same way that I am will you know suffer less because you believed in something different I mean these moments that Malick threads together we're all just dirt and we see the face of this boy you know 15 20 minutes later in the film and he's asking these questions of wit like this is violence that is more affecting to me than a lot of the stuff that is you know directly visceral and someone's shoulder getting blown open that is also incredibly effective in this film but it's because it is threaded it is interwoven with these moments of the aftermath and Malick's insistence on staying there I think that's incredibly well put and it goes and it goes to me in a way of like why I think that I respond so strongly to certain kind of spiritual films like as you know pretty staunch atheists where and I'm not talking about you know whatever like sound of freedom or whatever else like right you're talking about like the gods not dead serious where exactly but like talking about Malick or Bresson or Bergman or you know Tarkovsky or dryer maybe not Tarkovsky but I mean they share DNA even if he's I don't think a believer but like the other guys certainly are and but there's a kind of like not that I believe in the sort of like horseshoe theory but like in politics but like maybe it makes more sense in spirituality where it's like the way he's depicting nature as God like and finding spirituality and that at the same time it's indifferent to this you know and like and and people you know we're all just dirt can be a cynical statement or a spiritual one yes you know and I think that it's both sort of and like I don't know that and I think Malick gets that it's both too I don't think that he would reject this sort of nature is going to survive that war like you know the alligator is going to go into the lake the the seedling is going to sprout on the beach like you know these dead bodies are going to become dirt like and and they're just going to shake off this you know chaos as if it had never happened but the the humans are the ones that are left having to remember it but yeah I don't know I just find that I just find the ideas in this in this movie and his others so moving and profounds regardless of I think you're spiritual or even like religious affiliation it is something deeply human that we all recognize that there's the line that I feel like comes back a couple of times where and I think it's wit it might be one of the other characters like train or something and voice over who's suggesting like maybe we're all just the faces of the same man you know we're all one single entity which is again part of the the meaning of that incredibly potent image of the Japanese soldier covered in dirt one of the other like single most moving moments of the film to me is one with like a nameless character we see the brutality in the scene where they're taking the Japanese encampment of him well we actually don't even see it but we see him you know kind of threatening to extract the teeth like the gold or like the silver teeth and like the fillings in in the Japanese soldiers mouths we see kind of like a handful of him like having collected these teeth but later on when they're you know in their R&R period like off the front line that same character is back like shirtless sitting in the rain holding the little bag of teeth and then just like shaking and then starts to kind of embrace himself and cries to the heavens he's just like sobbing I mean it's just such a gorgeously expressive image but it's so like I don't even know I mean there's a lot there obviously but just this reckoning with the violence of it and his whole arc is contained there that's that's that's the juice you get out of making a movie in this way that you can like he could have the whole movie could have been about that guy and instead of instead of that we get we just get one piece and the final piece of it and and we've we fill in all the blanks and like and and to make an ensemble movie in this way it really does I mean I think that that you know face faces line is a thesis statement you know maybe all men got one big soul everybody's a part of all faces are the same man one big self I mean that's the movie yeah totally there's a really beautiful way that Malick uses the narration in this film too that like you know not just like adds meaning to the things that you're seeing on film as the narration is happening but those words ring in your ears as you watch the rest of the film and you come back to these questions that are asked the words that are narrated by the characters in the man who is extracting teeth narration is also really important in relation to the imagery that we see those two images we see with him when we first see him there is narration I think by train or someone else maybe it's doll that says a war doesn't ennoble men it turns them into dogs and we're seeing this is he's you know holding this handful of teeth and importantly later in the film when he's sobbing and he throws the teeth away we hear the words of the Japanese soldier that was speaking to him we don't know what he was saying but we know that this is potentially what this man is hearing when he is you know reckoning with the ugly things he's done and then narration comes in and talks about you know the sort of the way the war changes us and we have this beautiful line from Bell when he's writing his wife when he says I want to stay dangerous for you and he's talking about all the things he's seen and how it's like ripped things out of him that he doesn't know if he can get back all the you know sort of disparate musings of these characters are beautiful and like self-contained in and of themselves and they also speak to one another they also weave this like beautiful tapestry of this universe that Malick is considering in this film and that the characters are reckoning with and you can't help but you know start to think about these things as you're watching in the film too there's another really interesting like corollary of narrations where at one point someone is asking like where does evil come from like where does this ugliness sprout from and at the end of the film someone asks love where does it come from who lit this flame in us these kinds of like you know yin and yang questions that exist in the film are there to be answered by the film in many cases but I also think that they don't necessarily have easy answers as you said Chad like this movie is not black and white this thing happens and this is why and this person is a good character and this person is a bad character like it is full of complications it is full of complexities and I love the way that that narration is used in this film and that you don't even really need to understand who's talking or why or even what's being asked it is more about the feeling that is evoked as you hear the words I didn't even realize until a recent viewing that the last lines are are by you know private train who's you know not really one of the main characters he's not even really in the movie like you know look out at the things you made all things shining and like he he's kind of in the beginning and not at the end I mean he like and he also I think speaks the first lines in the movie and what's this war in the heart of nature like so it's just like I honestly I'm sure was as simple as he liked his voice like yeah I think that guy is a real and he's not it I don't think he's in hardly anything else and he or at least movies wise maybe he was in more maybe he was in more TV but you know it's like the narration in days of heaven you know by Linda Mann's it's like you know it's it's just your fucking voice man and like you know it's he just he just has a way of kind of finding something organically organically and then making it part of the tapestry like nothing in his movies I would argue that nothing in his movies feel out of place even though they're so seemingly randomly made and even like we can talk about the cameos and stuff more but like I don't know I mean like it's funny because saving private Ryan kind of does that too like you see like Ted Danson show up in that movie right Nathan Philly on like lesser so it's funny that I don't think there's a single crossover which is kind of bizarre when you think about it at the time I'd have to look that up but and also you know Clooney wasn't that famous yet we're talking about I think 890 was 98 when one fine day came or maybe that was when Batman and Robin came out but 98 is out of sight though yeah yeah and Batman and Rob was 97 so I guess he was but he wasn't that famous when he shot when he shot the cameo probably but like yeah I mean I even don't think that those things are out of place necessarily when you think about the kind of like it's almost sort of commenting on the sort of valorization and sort of hero worship of these people around this time of you know the greatest generation and whatever like it doesn't feel that at odds to me especially when it's used really well like with Travolta and then I'm trying to think of the other major one that's like I mean Woody Harrelson like I think fits in completely and like even Q Zach feeling a little jarring at first but then he does get his own little arc and it does work to me as well yeah this is also one of the films in the Great Pantheon of 90s cinema that dispels quickly and brutally with Jared Lido character also fight club as well just like beating the shit out of him and bringing his face to a pulp that's all I'll say on it I don't know I mean well as much as he maybe liked Jim Cavisio's vibe so much that he kept him around and kept shooting him maybe he felt differently and this character dispatch he's like this kid needs to die the minute he stands up to charge the field I love to that later on you know like Nolte is so disconnected from the field of battle that he's like praising Sergeant White who's Lido's character who just gets domed the minute he like stands up in that scene like minutes into the battle he's like he did a great job leading the charge like his men are doing a fine job and it's like that dude is dead that dude's dead is flat but I want to talk a little bit about that last line or those last few lines of the film because they are oft cited and there's been some debate about them and sort of like the kind of paradoxical nature of what they mean that they are sort of almost like nonsensical some people have kind of argued and you're right I believe it is trained John D. Smith is the name of the actor who really shows up at the beginning of the movie in that scene where he's kind of recounting and explaining his fear and his anxiety to Sean Penn and then at the end when he's like I know I'm young but I've lived a lot of life now and it's time for me to do something else and live a different life whatever he's good in that scene yeah he is and he's like very clearly changed over the course of this and I love that we just see him at the bookends and that he also isn't like a particularly good speaker in those moments and yet has all of these very profound lines of reasoning and meaning throughout the film the last lines he says as the boat is kind of floating away before we see the seedling on the beach they are oh my soul let me be in you now look out through my eyes look out at the things you made all things shining and I think people get kind of tripped up on this like how can you be both in your soul and have your soul looking out through your anyway it doesn't really matter to me that it maybe doesn't make sense but also I think that those two things are different like when he says look out through my eyes the command is not to the soul it both isn't but to like something divine something spiritual beyond to God right like it's it's both at the same time it's sort of the connectivity of humanity to the spirit to whatever it is this this reckoning with an idea of God as we see God you know it doesn't bug me the way it seems to bug other people and look I mean I'm no expert in in poetry but it's all of the all of the narration has always moved me deeply and you know have several kind of things memorized that I think about all the time and you know that that ending is one of them and like you know I think there's nothing to say about it other than that that it has hope in it like I don't know how you there's a profundity in holding on to hope after what we've just seen and what these what these men have experienced and I think it's interesting that it is not well I guess you know wit is dead at this point but still like that kind of armor against you know the cynicism of the experience is something that sort of you would attribute to him and so it's interesting that it's coming from a different character and I almost think it's like it could have you know maybe the anonymization of it is sort of meaning it could come from any of them you know something I've always loved about the virgin suicides is that you don't know which boy is narrating it and it doesn't matter and I think that that is kind of true here even though we do know it is this character but it's interesting because it's like you know Linda Mann's and with them in Days of Heaven like she's very much narrating in her own colloquialism like she in fact that like Malick just had her talk you know like in the booth whereas this character is speaking in a way that he does not speak in the movie you know but I don't know yeah man it just gets me I it'd be easy to call it pretentious and whatever but I'm just like well I feel sorry for you if you can't get anything out of this I don't know that's my exact same response I'm like you don't when people were like complaining about Denzel Washington's accent and I feel bad for you don't experience joy and that makes me sad that you've lost all capacity for wonder in your life yeah yeah or even like you talk about like I mean I'm always you know the like link later is more quote unquote pretentious stuff or whatever I'm like I guess you could make fun of this if you want but like why make or you could like think about it is like is like talking about our lives in the world and etc like I don't know yeah or you could just like have a beating heart like maybe right I think the problem is that with so much of this stuff like people come to it first in like a decontextualized environment right where like they're they're seeing like the Internet right or like a parodied version of Malick you know like right where and I mean trust me I'm not in the let people enjoy things camp either. Especially when it comes to like stupid bullshit. Like this is good. This is good. I'm just like imagining myself like tripping down the stairs and like holding my elbow and then myself and voice over being like, "Why does nature vibe with itself?" Yeah. It is. Absolutely. It is easily parodied. I mean, I think as we've gone further in his career, it's become more easy to parody. I think partially because we have less distance from it. Now it's not Linda Manns who was in like one other movie and then we're seeing 30, 40 years on. Now it's like Ryan Gossing and Michael Fosbender. It's easier to not have the remove that gives it the permission to be pretentious or whatever you want to call it. So I get that and but I wouldn't argue that it's like the writing to become worse necessarily. I just think that like our perceptions of these things change. But this movie still gets me every time. I mean like you can go in. I can go into this movie with folded arms and being like, "This is not as good as I thought it as it used to be." And I'm melt by minute 10. Yeah. Completely. Darkness, light, strife, love. Are they the workings of one mind? The features of the same face. Oh my soul, let me be in you now. Look out through my eyes. Look out at the things you made. All things shining. Speaking of pretentious, if you two will permit me briefly on a sojourn, I want to talk about the two totems of nature that this film opens and closes with. Yes, please. So we open with the crocodile who is submerging himself into the water. He's covered in algae. It's that beautiful blue color that Malick has so many of these like nighttime shots. A wash in and then we close with it's a coconut. Actually it's a coconut that's sprouting in the water. And the three evocations of the crocodile in the film and the three evocations of the coconut are really important. So the first time we see the crocodile, it's the opening shot. He's doing what crocodiles do. He's swimming into the water. The second time we see the crocodile, he is tied up later by the American soldiers in the back of a truck and they're sort of playing with him and they don't look like. They're kind of torturing him. They're torturing him. The third time we see the crocodile, we see a crocodile skull on the ledge of the porch that Sean Penn's character and wit are talking to one another on at the end of the film. And it doesn't matter if it's the same crocodile or not. We can extrapolate from that image that this crocodile is dead and man has killed him. The image of the coconut is slightly different. When we first see the coconut, we see we're chopping one of the coconuts down with the tribes people that he's in and we see the coconut being used in various ways by the indigenous population there. It's being knifed down from a tree. The second time we see a coconut in the film, it's a shot from the ground looking up at a coconut tree and we see a bunch of green coconuts, so ones that haven't fallen yet, all sort of bundled in this tree, like a flower. And the closing shot of the film is a coconut that is sitting on the beach and has sprouted and is going to make a new tree, which is what happens. And I love the kind of like inversion of these two totems of nature that Malick has and that there is this sort of like cycle, yes, of of what happens with nature when man interferes, but also that like even with the crocodile, who's, you know, we finish with that creature's skull, there's still this kind of like insistence on the persistence of nature, like even as man destroys it. But you know, ending with the seedling when the first time we see the coconut is when Jim Caviezel is chopping it down, I think, you know, is really intentional and it's easy to sort of say like, well, yes, this is a really hopeful image. And I think that it is, but I also think it's maybe something slightly more profound than that, which is that like, there are ways in which man and war and imperialism and the business of seeking capital interferes with the natural world. And we have to imagine that the reason that the coconut is not in a tree and on the beach rolled up on the shore in the first place is because war has ravaged the place where the coconut would be. And so what I love about what's contained in that image is that it's hopeful, but it is also acknowledging like that these things exist in the same world together, like nature and like all of this horrific, inorganic shit that we do is also very much a part of how nature responds. And like, we still have an impact on like what happens, even though nature is able to find a way to persist. I'm like kind of all over the map with this. I don't know if any of this makes sense. 100%. It does. I think it's absolutely the point that Malick is getting at. And there's like a cyclical quality to both of these, right? Like life and death and rebirth and the organic and the inorganic. I 100%. I agree with what you're saying. I think it's fascinating. And I've never, I've seen this movie 20 times. I've never noticed the the mirroring of those three sort of images. And I think that's really fascinating. I also think it's evocative of the utility of working in the way that he does, because I guarantee you that that was never planned. And the editors found that mirroring. And and that is why if he's sitting here on this interview, you know, it being interviewed, he would say, that's why you shoot everything. That's why you shoot for a year. And that's why you edit for a year, because you can find that shit. And and that is amazing. Like, it's like, I mean, I think this was the first time I've always been obsessed with the first crocodile image. And then and then it's like, then you notice the the sort of, you know, torturing of the I mean, it's not super graphic. It's just that they're like fucking with it, basically, like, and and it's that scene. And then and then I don't think I've ever noticed the crocodile skull at the end. I mean, it's like, that's great. I mean, I think the coconut thing is interesting too, because yes, potentially it could have fallen on the ground through the physicality of the of of what's been going on around it. But that is also what happens with coca like fall. And then that's how they grow or whatever. Right. So it's like, it's kind of both. And it's, you know, I don't know, it's just I I would bet you, you know, I haven't read the screenplay, but I would bet you $100 that it does not end with a coconut sprouts and the guy saying all things shining, you know, like there is like and it and it does not to get too cynical, but it makes me sad because this is not this. I mean, you guys are doing a podcast about like one of the best eras and filmmaking ever. And like, this is over and it's not coming back. No one will ever give an artist like Terrence Malick $60 million to make something like this again. It will never happen. And like, that does make me sad. But we still have this, you know, yes, because even like, I think Malick will keep making movies as long as he can, they won't be at this scale anymore. And more importantly, there will be no one that is allowed to be the next Malick. And that kind of blows. But we do have that we do have this we have his movies. We have another one coming out, you know, if we're lucky in 2027, maybe right. But I am curious to, I would love to read the book to kind of find out what Fife's character is sort of up to in this, you know, and is the book sort of narrated similarly or is most of the kind of poetry original. What I do love about the way the book is structured one, there's like, it's like 500 pages long and it's like eight chapters. So like every chapter is anywhere between like 50 and 100 pages. Like, and when it chronicles these moments, it's really kind of like a theater of space. Like the the first 100 pages or so are just them on the troop transport on the boat. And then them in the Higgins boats going to the shore and then their brief sort of like interactions on shore over that first night. And there are no sort of subheads or, you know, like ellipses or anything. It really does just start with one character and go into their interiority and explain something they're doing. And also what they're thinking, maybe their backstory. And then they interact with another person in the boat. And then it goes to them and follows them for a little while, you know. So we start with two characters who are talking shit on the coattiest character. He's got a different name in the book, but they're, you know, bitching about being stuck like three levels down instead of top side and getting on the boats first because the captains do nice. And then we go to the captain who overhears them. And then we follow the captain for a little while and he then says hello to one of the privates. I think it's doll. And then doll goes and talks to two of the other characters, queen and someone else and says, I'm going to go get a pistol. And then we follow doll as he's getting the pistol while simultaneously tracking their conversation. It's, it's very cool. It is very serpentine. So it does have a sort of God's eye view of that's very interesting in terms of perspective. It's pretty cool. Like it's at first kind of overwhelming. And then as you start to like key in on the characters, you appreciate how sort of seamlessly it goes into the interiority and into the mindset of those characters and then back out again. Is it peppered with these like existential poetic questions that the film is? No, there's no like monologues like that or like grand sort of thinking. There are moments like I said, like there's one where we're with Fife and Fife suddenly has this kind of like recollection of the war as like in industrial enterprise or as a business and suddenly feels like this deep sense of regret and anger over realizing that he might die for business rather than for, you know, something more meaningful. And then we go about the business of the characters. And there's another scene where there are medics taking care of some of the men on the shore who had been on one of the transport boats that had gotten hit by a bomber. And slowly focuses in on those characters and, you know, talks about how now that they're wounded, they exist in this sort of liminal place spiritually between between life and death. And so it does do some of those things. Well, it seems like a straightforward. Right. Totally. But like, right. Okay. Yeah. But then maybe like the there could have been enough like seedling for those questions to come about from reading the book and like exist in the screenplay. But it does sound like they are entirely like manufactured in and for the screen. Yeah. And I think that's kind of how he works too. It's like from what I from what I understand, it's like, you know, he'll he'll write these things and like, you know, give them to the actors on note cards like before scenes or whatever. And then it'll be like, wait, so you want me to say this? And he'll be like, no, like, like, no, you're, this is what you're thinking right now. And then maybe they'll record it later. Or like, maybe it's like, it's a sort of like, I think actors love it because it just like is a totally baffling process that if you just like, you he had at that point, twice had like made a masterpiece out of it. And it was so sort of mysterious that they just kind of wanted to experience it. And then I think you had this, you know, great kind of where, because of his legendary status, like, no one was going to push back on whatever eccentricity he offered. And so it'd be like, you're an octopus in this scene. And it'd be like, and they'd be like, okay, you're absolutely 100%. Yeah, I mean, Alex eccentricities are like, obviously, a thing of legend and like, fascinating. And you know, his little things like that there in that vanity fair piece, there are aside with his his girlfriend, then at the time, Michelle, who he had met in Paris, mentioning that, you know, they were raising this daughter together, her child, not unlike the premise of To the Wonder, by the way, relocating them from Paris to the heart of Texas in Austin. But that she couldn't cross the threshold of his office. And like, if she wanted to borrow a book that he would go out and buy a new copy rather than like, lend a version of the book that he had on his shelf and just these strange bizarre things, I think that there was even, it might be a quote from one of his friends, like a long time, like collaborator or producer or something, a woman who basically tells him like, I don't think you need to make another movie. I think you need to go to therapy. And his response was, if I go to therapy, I'll lose my juice. So men would rather literally whisper voice over and edit for two years with five editors before going to therapy. Exactly. I was going to say like, men will dedicate 15 years and 50 million dollars to, you know, creating a story about the violence at the heart of men and the spiritual battle between good and evil in the universe rather than go to therapy. But yeah, you can't make art like that and be normal. Sorry. He's just not, he's not correct. I think it's okay that we acknowledge that, you know, and you know, for what it's worth, like, you know, what I've, and I know some of his collaborators on some of his most recent or more recent movies and like, you know, all of them had and not actors, but all of them had really kind of profound life changing, career changing experiences, learned a ton. It was really hard. It was really frustrating, but it was not in any way a sort of like toxic kind of thing. It was just like, you were just at the whim of this guy. And that's what you were all signed up to do. And, and when you would discover something or bring something or, you know, make a contribution that was palatable, like the praise and the sort of gratitude was endless. So, you know, I think it's a, I'm, I'm absolutely fascinated to see whatever this Jesus movie is that I he made with. I, I guess, Matthias Show and Hearts and, um, and, uh, fuck, the guy from Bridge of Spies, Mark Ryland's, um, and, you know, hopefully it'll come out and hopefully I'll keep making stuff. But yeah, I mean, uh, I love his movie so much and they mean a lot to me. I'm right there with you, Chad. And I haven't even seen all of them, but the thin red line, like we've, you know, kind of said multiple times already, you watch it and it's, it's so obviously a masterpiece, like, you know, like whatever maybe little nuances or things that you could try to gripe with or however much you resist it, you watch it and by the end of its three hours, it's just all consuming and just has probed your entire being. It's just, it's an incredible feat. It's, it's an incredible movie. Uh, and I see why people dedicate millions of dollars in decades of their lives to just getting this guy to put something, uh, on celluloid and, and screen it for people because he, he really is, I mean, he, he really seems like a genius. You know, it always seems to pay off when you let him work the way he wants to work. Yes, I think he is. And, um, I'm excited for you to see song to song, which is a sort of his, uh, South by Southwest Mumble Corps movie. Right. Um, like would totally fit in with like, you know, late period, Joe Swamberg and, uh, like whatever else. Um, so, uh, yeah, I recommend that. I actually, to my, uh, bitter regret have not seen a voyage of time, either version and missed it in iMacs and theaters because I was working and only played for like a week. And so I hope that it comes back, you know, it's, it's screened again in some way because it's not really available. But that's the one thing that has that I haven't seen. Yeah. I also haven't seen that one. Uh, I will as, uh, meaningful segue here say, I believe both versions of the doc exist in the media share channel on the hit factory discord at the moment, which we have, we've got that discord, which you can get access to as a patron of the show, patreon.com/hitfactorypod. We're there for just $5 per month. You get, uh, biweekly bonus content, the full hit factory experience. Things are always popping off. That was a good tease, right? People want to want to get in there and get that. Great. Very. I might have to hit you up for that. I just got an 85 inch TV, which with my five foot living room is kind of like iMacs. Totally. Yeah. He said real close to like get to see that. Hell yeah. Yeah. I'll have to double check again, but I'm fairly certain we've got both versions floating around in there. And if not, we've got, uh, plenty of treasure seekers, uh, who will make a project out of it and maybe find something and come back for us. Can I ask Chad one question about crumb catcher? Absolutely. I, I would love to know a highlight from your experience of making this film. If you could mention one thing, what would it be? Sure. Um, so this movie was also not unlike Malick shot in a very unconventional way. Uh, it was sort of shot in like three sections. And, um, because there was like, you know, money troubles and then, you know, over scheduling and like, et cetera. And likewise, I think has paid off in a way. But, um, we, you know, we don't talk about budgets, but let's say, fair to say that it's under a million dollars. And we have a pretty incredible breathtaking 10 plus minute car chase at the, and the climax of this movie. And while trying to break it down, you can see it in the trailer while trying to break it down and figure out how to shoot it and, and, you know, structure it. I brought up to the director stuff that Steven Spielberg has talked about while making Jurassic Park, where if you do a combination of, you know, different methods of showing something, if you put them all together, the audience can't tell the difference. So in that case, it's a combination of like sort of like puppetry and, and animatronics and CGI, right? Where for us, we shot this car chase over three nights. The first night being, you know, exterior with a camera car and a, it used to be called a Russian arm. And now they call it a Ukraine, that like swings around. So you have three cars, you know, barreling down the road with all with stunt drivers. And then the second night we did with the actors, you know, on a, on a tow rig. So you can, so, so, and then a stunt driver behind them so they can act. And then you see the driver there. And then the last night we did it with all static cars that are just close-ups of eyes and we and the wheel and, and the pedal to the metal and all of that. And then you put them all together and it's an incredible, seamless sequence that has no business in a movie that's small and we're really, really proud of it. And you can see glimpses of it in the trailer, but you know, please check out crumb catcher either hopefully in theaters, but on, you know, on VOD probably in August, but it'll be across the rolling out across the country on July 19th and July 26th. I cannot wait. Cannot wait for that car chase scene. Very exciting. Crumb catcher, hopefully playing at a theater very near you. Chad, thank you so much once again for returning to hit factory and talking to us about this incredible film. Thanks so much. Thanks for having me on. I'm happy to, hopefully we can do it again sometime soon and love the podcast and thanks guys. We're so glad you were here. I love that we got to talk about this movie with you. It makes me so happy. So wonderful. Always a pleasure to host and we will 100% be doing it again sometime soon. In the meantime, Chad, where can people find you personally in your work around the internet? Sure. I'm on Twitter at Chad with two D's spelled out. That's how I spell my name. So C-H-A-D-D with two D's. You can also find me on Instagram and Letterboxed under the same name. From our end of things, you can follow along with the show @hitfactorypod, that is Twitter, that's Instagram. I already plugged the Patreon, but I'll do it one more time. If you like what you heard, you can subscribe to the show $5 per month patreon.com/hitfactorypod. Additionally, if you like what you heard, we would love to hear from you if you would like to leave us a review, maybe on Spotify, on Apple, wherever you get your podcasts. If you didn't like what you heard, disregard any of that. We are not on any of those platforms and you cannot give us a rating, just not possible for you. I will give a shout out to our capitalist overlords, Linda, Jared Murray, Jeff Zang, Andrew Eaton. Thank you so much for your continued support. We'll catch you all in the next one. Take care, everybody. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
