"The whole country was out looking for us for who knew where Kit would strike next." "That film was the yardstick by which I measure all other film experiences." "It was the first film that I worked on that I saw that film could be an art form." "Takes all kinds, sir." "We knew we were at the birth of a very, very special artist in cinema." "Hey." "The movie is based on a real character, Charles Starkweather." "He saw himself as leading a more adventurous, less mundane life than the people he was in contact with." "He was executed for the murder of her parents and just everyone that he killed through his crime spree." "Of course, this case happened in Nebraska in 1958." "He was the first of the infamous serial killers." "And I read it that night." "And it was, without doubt, the best script that I had ever read." "But I had reservations because the character in the script was 19 years old and I was already 31 at the time." "I was cast in the film before Martin." "I remember Terry saying:" ""This actor is not right for the role." "He's too old."" "He told me frankly that he was looking at a lot of guys." "And he wanted to see who paired up well with her." "I said, "That would be fine."" "We'd met with 10 or 15 actors by that time and we'd been reading the same scenes with them." "And Martin came in and, you know, us knowing he was too old it wasn't gonna work." "We were just going to be nice." "He completely blew us away." "You wanna take a walk with me?" " What for?" " I got some stuff to say." " I guess I'm kind of lucky that way." " He came and he was Kit." "He made me blush." "He made me giggle." "The scenes just took on this life." "Listen, honey." "When all this is over I'm gonna buy you a big, thick steak." "I don't want steak." "Well, we'll see about that." "One night I got a call saying that he decided to use me." "Would I be willing to do it?" "I said, "Why, sure." "I'd be happy as Larry."" "And I had to get up before dawn." "And I was driving along Pacific Coast Highway and I was listening to a Dylan song called "Desolation Road."" "Dylan was my hero, all my adult life, and I listened to his music all the time." "And suddenly it dawned on me what had just happened, that I had the role of my life." "And I began to weep uncontrollably with joy." "And I had to pull off to the side of the road and just stop and reflect on what was happening." "It was one of the most profound moments of my life because it was a realization of a dream that I never thought would happen to me." "If I'm worth a damn, I'll pick the right direction." "If not, I don't care." " See what I mean?" " No." "It was a very passionate kind of working experience." "Everyone was..." "No one was making any money." "Everyone was there because we were desperate to work on the film." "There's an excitement in nonunion films." "Everybody loves making films." "They're not worried about how much they're getting paid." "But it was so sparing." "I mean, there wasn't any money for anything." "I think the budget for the picture was probably around $ 700,000." "But we had a lot of deferments on it." "I think it actually got shot for about $350,000." "It was probably the first film that I really felt creatively engaged in." "Terry would ask me about the character." "Did it go the way it was supposed to?" "I felt like I wasn't just an actor for hire." "Well, I feel kind of like an animal living out here." "There's no place to bathe, and not any place to get anything good to eat." "Well, I'll catch you a big trout soon as we get to the mountains." "You know, it's the only time in my life that I knew from the very first encounter that I was dealing with a very special man." "It was obvious to all of us that had any contact with him that you were working with a genius." "Terry is a brilliant man, just a brilliant man, and a kind and wonderful man." "And it was heaven working with him." "If he had said, " Jump off the building and you'll fly"  I would have jumped, and I know I would have flown." "He knows as much about cinematography as the cinematographer." "He knows as much art direction as the art director." "A film for Terry is like an erector set." "You know, when you're shooting, you're building all the pieces." "And the script is his kid, you know." "He knows who his kid is." "But as you're shooting, he's..." "You know, there are other little pieces that he finds along the way." "I think he loves being on edge, you know, not knowing everything." "You know, he works hard on the script, and he has a plan with the actors." "Sometimes he'll just throw things off." "Everybody would be prepared to shoot one area, and he'd move it to another." "So the actors, anything they'd planned suddenly it, like, didn't work in this situation." "I remember the first shot we did, the first scene I shot was out on the prairie, you know, going to visit her father." "And I'd washed my hair that morning, and I was all shiny and clean-shaven and all spruced up." "And Terry came up." "And it was the first shot of the movie." "He's looking at me, and he's thinking, "Well, Martin, well, now, you know I hope you don't mind if I do this." He reached down and took some dirt in his hands, and rubbed my whole head with the dirt." "And he said, " You just look too shiny." "You all right with that?"" "I said, "Yes, sir." "I am fine." He just took the shine out of me." "They would get everything set for a location." "And the weather would be different, and he'd go, "I want to shoot there."" "And he would just go over there with Martin Sheen or Sissy and a camera and start shooting." "It disrupted all the plans the production department put together and sometimes caused chaos." "But it allowed Terry to get shots that he couldn't have gotten otherwise." "And whenever we would get a scene and he was, you know, happy, satisfied that we caught his intention he would say, " All right, now." "Well, you all do just what you want." "Just, you know, have fun with it."" "And a lot of times he used that take that we'd just had fun with." "And it began to occur to Sissy and I that he was using that as a method to really get us to relax and be free." "If you try and do everything by the book you're gonna miss some beautiful, unforeseen images." "We were never able to strike a set on that film." "And the film lasted a long time, like 16 weeks." "We'd shoot a scene, and he'd say, "Hold that set, will you?" "I might want to come back and shoot here."" "Well, at the end of the film, I was, like, taping leaves on the trees and painting them green because it was autumn." "Along the way, some of the lads were getting discouraged and quitting and complaining and whatnot along the way." "I remember clearly telling people, " Hey, hang in there." "You're gonna be real proud of this." "We're making a classic."" "I used those words." "I said "classic."" "There were some people that were not happy." "But the ones that left, I think, would probably regret it today." "I just had a feeling." "I had a certainty." "It was more than a feeling." "I knew this guy was on to something." "I always wanted to be a criminal, I guess, just not this big of one." "Takes all kinds, though." "When you're playing a character good, bad, or indifferent, you're not permitted as an actor, an artist to make a judgment on the character." "If you make a judgment it's a preconceived notion that the audience sees right through." "Even if you play Hitler, this infamous villain of all villains you can't make a judgment on him." "You've got to be free of judgment in order to play him so you give some understanding." "You show insight into that character." "Terry was directing me in a scene, and I had to use the weapon, you know." "And he said, " Well, Martin, you know, that gun is just like a magic wand." "And someone gets in your way and poof, they're gone." "That's it." "It's just a means to an end." "Nothing serious, nothing personal." "But you're in my way." "Sorry about this." "Poof." "You're gone." What an image, you know." " Cato!" " The shovel's in the truck!" "It was very clear from Terry's script that these kids, both Kit and Holly had an image of themselves that was way out of the realm of reality." "They saw the world from their view, and they projected themselves on it." "I mean, Kit fancied himself some kind of important person, you know who had great business to achieve." "Like when he built the monument on the spot he was captured and referenced it when they arrested him." "There's where you caught me." "He had this image, this absolutely moronic image of himself that had no basis in reality." "Look here." "Here's the real prize." "Must have had this about 10 years." " Look." "Who's gonna get it?" " Give me that son of a bitch." "Suddenly you become involved, you begin to care about these deeply disturbed kids, and this horrible massacre that they're involved in." "And yet you never stop caring about them." "That's a phenomenal achievement." "We're gonna take the Cadillac for a while." "How will that be?" " Fine." " Don't worry." "I won't let her drive." "Let's face it." "He was a very inappropriate boyfriend for her." "She was 13, and he was in his early 20s." "But, I guess..." "Could have been those cowboy boots." "Couldn't have been the garbage route." "Well, I know what my daddy's gonna say." "What?" " Can I be honest?" " Sure." "That I shouldn't be seen with anybody that collects garbage." "A lot of that was based on the real Carol Fugate who was very helpful during the making of the movie and very sweet, and who we showed the picture to." "And she was a good person." "There's this great line where she's talking to Cato after he's been shot." "She goes, " Is that your spider in there, in that bottle?"" "I mean, it's just..." "That's not such a weird line." "But the fact that this guy's sitting there, he's been shot." "He's obviously dying." "And she's a little kid asking about spiders in a bottle." "I sat..." "I was feeling kind of blah." "When you're sitting in the bathtub, and all the water's run out..." "It does evoke feelings of very early childhood." "And yet they're..." "She is a participant in horrific, horrific acts of violence." "And just by removing herself and that numbness that she has to it all, it's scary." " Hi." " She wasn't leaving her childhood and suddenly dealing with murder and mayhem." "She was living a sort of fantasy childhood." "And I think that to that extent the idea came up to build the tree house which wasn't in the script, but I thought would be part of that fantasy is to have a house that just sort of went from tree to tree." "And I told Terry about it, and he rescheduled some shooting and gave me a day to build the tree house." "And I was a lot younger then, and could do more." "But it was so much fun." "And the way Terry shot it and edited it made it look even more fantastic than it was." "I hadn't art-directed too many films and this one was so important to me and exciting..." "The approach that I take to art direction is, you know, more like an actor, I think." "I mean, I try to complete the character." "He practiced, and does still the Stanislavski method of art direction." "I wouldn't stop with putting the furniture in the room." "But I'd want to put their possessions in the furniture so that when Sissy as Holly Sargis was opening drawers she would find things she'd collected." "You thought I was acting." "I was just reacting to what was around me." "And the things that he left for Holly helped me understand that she had one foot firmly planted in childhood." "Having that kind of passion, and doing something together sort of bonded us." "That creative process that we were experiencing at the time you know, made for a fertile, romantic situation." "And we all knew that a romance was blossoming when one night we were shooting the scene in the Cadillac out in the desert dancing in the headlights of the car." "Terry called from off camera, and said, " Just have some fun now." "Just you guys do whatever you want."" "I gave her a little twirl, and I kicked her in the backside with my boot." "You know, just kind of a love thing." "But Jack took offense to it, and he came into the frame." "We all knew at that point there was something serious going on with these two people." "And it's lasted 30 years." "So God bless them." "When Sissy and I met, I don't think that either of us suspected that we would be together 30 years later." "But when you're working on a film at least on that film, the rest of the world didn't exist." " Gosh, I like your house." " Thank you." "I don't know if viewers realize it, but Terrence Malick appears in the film in one scene with me." "He comes to the door of the rich man's house and talks to Martin." "He played that part because the actor that was supposed to didn't show up." "I loved playing it with him." "I just loved cracking him up." "Every time I'd say, "Hi," he'd start laughing." " Hi." " And he always said to me:" ""No, I'm gonna reshoot that scene with another actor from your point of view." "I had to shoot it at that time because we were losing that location."" "And I said, " I will never, ever reshoot that scene again with anyone."" "And it was the only contentious thing we had between us in 30 years." "I said..." "He got angry with me." "I remember coming back to L. A he was still talking about it." "He said, " We gotta get out there." "You know, we gotta find a way to, you know, reshoot that."" "I said, "Not with me." "Come on, Martin."" "I said, " No, sir." "I will never reshoot that scene."" "No, that's there forever as far as I'm concerned." "And I'm so glad it is." "But he's also in the black-and-white documentary sequence." "We cut to a guy in a trench coat and he's just pointing at something." "That's Terry." "It's wonderful that he's in there you know, that film lovers today can at least..." "You can't get him for this interview, but you can see him on film." " Really?" " In all of his movies, he'll do cuts to people that you don't have any idea who they are." "And it's just to show you that..." "It's this sense of life continuing on." "Towards the very end of the movie Martin and Sissy have been taken away in a plane." "The plane hasn't taken off yet but it has taxied away from where it was on the tarmac." "And we cut to a mailman carrying a sack of mail." "And the point of that shot was to show you someone that in the midst of this chaos or tragedy life is going on in other places." "And that this guy carrying this sack of mail has no idea that there is this wanted killer on this plane that he's walking past." "Terry took the movie to New York before we were finished with it in workprint form, and screened it for the New York Film Festival." "It was bought at the New York Film Festival by Warner Bros." "And I think they bought it the day they saw it." "And I think they bought Mean Streets on the very same day." "It was a great day for all of us." "Vincent Canby's review is astonishing." "I mean, he just says basically, " Clear your head and get to the theater as soon as you get the chance." "Look out."" "You know, they printed all the reviews." "And they opened up in Los Angeles." "They opened up at the Village Theatre, which is, like, a 1500-seat theatre." "At that time, Sissy wasn't known, Martin wasn't known and Terry wasn't known." "I had a very distorted idea of this film's greatness from the get-go which was, you know, naive on my part." "And you know, when it came out, I remember thinking  " Oh, my God, there's gonna be a stampede to the theater."" "And that did not happen." "It was critically acclaimed but it didn't make a lot of money at the box office." "But you know, here we sit 30 years later..." "So I was right." "You see?" "I think it took about 10 years, and then they were calling it a classic." "I think this film is a classic because of Terry." "You know, because he approached it and made the film he wanted to make." "It wasn't that he was trying to make a film for a market or he was trying to make a film people wanted him to but he was able to make the film that he wanted to make." "I think that as an artist if you're able to do your work without compromise that you have a better chance of it standing the test of time." "I learned..." "Everything important that I ever learned about making movies I learned on that film." "It changed my life." "I mean, I approach films differently, you know." "I am so deeply and personally indebted to him." "Everything I know about editing, I learned on Terry's first two movies." "I've worked with Terry on all of his films, which was three." "Terry to me has sort of maintained his own integrity." "He's very humble." "You know, he's just very humble." "He probably thinks all these brilliant films he's made have been accidental." "I don't know." "I didn't know Terry was gonna wait 20 years between some of his films." "But I think that it doesn't matter." "I think if you do, you know, one great film, it can be wonderful." "If people say, "He only made three films." Hey, that ain't bad, you know." "I think the reason they ask that is because his films are so good." "They want more." "But, you know, you only get to paint the Sistine Chapel once." "I don't know why Terry is so uncomfortable talking about his work." "But I think that if you're an artist your work is interpreted differently by every person who sees it that they bring something to the work." "And that if you talk about your work, you kind of minimize it in a way." "He speaks through his work, through his films." "And I, quite frankly respect and admire that." "He's just not interested in a public persona." "I don't think there are interviews of him." "People think of him as, like, J.D. Salinger this reclusive monk of a director, which he's nothing like that." "So it's just fun for me that people see him like that." "And I can kid him about that." "And I get lots of phone calls..." "Not lots, but I have been called by reporters wanting to find him or get in touch with him." "You say to them, " He doesn't like to give interviews." "And so I can't help you with that." And I've had people get angry with me." "I mean, people have yelled at me over the phone that he has a responsibility to respond to reporters and I have a responsibility to let people know where he is or how to get in touch with him." "It's crazy." "I don't know anyone shyer than Terrence Malick." "It's a beautiful quality." "Only he knows what's going on inside that head of his." "I mean, Terry today we're beginning to work on another picture, and he keeps saying:" ""I wanna do it like Badlands." So he talks about Badlands." "I know he has fond memories of it, and he can't remember the hardships." "But I go, " Aren't we getting too old to be eating bologna sandwiches and staying up all night?" But he's not." "When I was nominated for editing on The Thin Red Line I didn't know what I would say if I were to possibly win it." "And you know, sometimes they'll show photographs of the director or they'll show a shot of the director in the audience." "And Terry wasn't there, and they didn't have any photographs of him." "And he wasn't there, so they showed a shot of his empty director's chair that had his name on it." "So I immediately thought:" ""Of course." "I know exactly what I'll say if I win." "I would go up, and accept the award, and say:" ""I'd love to thank Terry Malick, but I've never met him.""