We’ve all been there. Cast as the lead in a meaty, dialogue-heavy role in a surefire masterpiece from one of the most unassailable geniuses of modern filmmaking, only to be reduced to sifting through the finished film on freeze frame occasionally shouting “Look! That’s my shadow on that fern!” or “Hey! That’s the back of my head near that egret!” The one comfort we can take when this inevitability occurs, is that we’re in fine company on the Malick cutting room floor. The only question is, whose lead will we follow in reacting to our role’s excision or drastic reduction?
Terrence Malick has a storied history with actors, one that can only continue to get more thickety as his output increases, and as the casts for his films expand. But it was really only with 1998’s gorgeous hymnal to the brutalizing effect of war on nature and humanity, “The Thin Red Line,” that his propensity for entirely removing whole roles and performances found real expression, and since then the mythos of the roulette wheel one spins when accepting a role in a Malick film has only grown. It’s a little unfair — “The Thin Red Line” always had an enormous cast (it’s about a war, after all); many of those often referred to as having been cut never actually filmed a scene; and others had roles that were only ever going to be cameos removed. The key factor is that many of the affected actors on that film and since then have been very high profile, but again, Malick seems to attract big names in droves, so in droves they will fall by the wayside.
Malick’s latest, “To the Wonder,” in theaters and on (sacrilegious!) VOD this Friday, has also made headlines for who’s not in it as for who is. So we thought we’d take this chance to run through the list of actors dropped from Malick’s films, or those who had their roles greatly curtailed, and the various ways they dealt with the disappointment. Read, and judge for yourselves who did it best — that way you’ll be prepared when that phone call comes to let you know that “Untitled Malick Project” will not, after all your months of shooting in that cornfield, boast your involvement at all.
Actor: Mickey Rourke
Film: “The Thin Red Line”
How Badly Was His Role Affected: Excised completely
Bitterness Level: 8/10 lemons
What Happened & How He Reacted: On the one hand, it feels like Mickey Rourke has kind of one of the more legitimate beefs. His role wasn’t just whittled down, not a single frame made it into the finished film, and his performance, which he called in a 2005 interview “some of the best work I ever did” really only exists for public consumption in a couple of deleted scene extras on the Criterion release. And like so many other actors on this list, he seems to have felt a little betrayed or badly used by Malick — from that same interview: “I’d gone through a really bad time and Terry knew about it so he incorporated it into the character. It really worked.”
On the other hand, a lot of his reaction seems out of step with what most observers would assume were Malick’s actual motives behind the edit. While his track record makes it probable that Rourke was nixed for narrative purposes (Malick famously “finding” the film in the edit), Rourke claimed the reasons were much more personal: “There were political reasons why I was out of the movie. That really upset me… just because of the temperature of me and the industry, my scenes were cut.” Even if Malick does not in fact float on a gauzy higher plane above the dirty dealings of Hollywood, it still seems unlikely to us that he’d have gotten rid of Rourke to satisfy someone else’s whims, if he’d really loved his performance and felt it fitted within the film.
![Adrian Brody star in The Thin Red Line directed by Terrence Malick. 21APR14. [27APR2014 REVIEW FILM FEATURE]](https://theplaylist.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/adrien-brody-in-the-thin-red-line.jpg)
Actor: Adrien Brody
Film: “The Thin Red Line”
How Badly Was His Role Affected: Dramatically reduced from lead to support, dialogue down to a couple of spoken lines.
Bitterness Level: 7/10 lemons
What Happened & How He Reacted: Adrien Brody, of course, is still in “The Thin Red Line,” but his role was not the lead he expected, performed and read in the script and the book on which the script was based. Malick found his attention wandering from Brody’s character in the edit and focusing instead on Jim Caviezel‘s, to the detriment of the former’s screen time. We should remember that, significantly, this was Brody pre-“The Pianist” and it’s clear he expected his role here to be his big break. In fact, he mentioned in a 2001 Independent interview (text here) that: “The pressure on that film was that I had to carry the movie with a cast of stars that I truly admired — Nick Nolte and Sean Penn in particular. You hear horror stories about Sean Penn, that he can be a real bastard if he doesn’t admire your work.”
But after a grueling 6-month shoot in “a filthy costume which they wouldn’t wash,” only disappointment awaited. Again a sense of betrayal comes through: “I was so focused and professional, I gave everything to it, and then to not receive everything…in terms of witnessing my own work. It was extremely unpleasant because I’d already begun the press for a film that I wasn’t really in. Terry obviously changed the entire concept of the film. I had never experienced anything like that…” He went on to suggest that Malick’s own status as a filmmaker may be rather inflated: “You know the expression ‘Don’t believe the hype’? Well, you shouldn’t.”
Im about to shoot my first movie and have been fucking around for the past six days worried about a connecting scene for a complex plot explanation. Bollox to it let shoot the movie and see what happens when I arrive there. Malick and Herzog are right. Actors winging on about their fucking scenes in a Mallick movie.
3 years later Frank, we\’re still waiting, this was a sloppy article, bah humbug.
I don't find Malick's films particularly engaging, and I don't think they are masterpieces. However, they are not trash either. It is a unique vision from a unique person, and while I do not admire it, I understand it. Since he has been in the industry for many many decades now, and has a reputation for cutting roles and irking his crew… anyone grumbling about his ways is being a little petulant.
If there is a nastier person in the film industry, I have yet to meet him or her. Saving it all for my book!
We really need a way to communicate with the many trees, plants and wildlife not deemed worthy enough to make it into a final Malick cut. How do they feel? Are their leaves not good enough? Though I think it's particularly funny that anyone thinks his or her part got cut for narrative reasons. That would presuppose a Malick film having a narrative in the first place. Why all these actors think it's so prestigious to work with this man who Haskell Wexler describes as "weird" boggles my mind. Outside his cult, with each new film Malick looks more and more like he's cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. He needs to make nature documentaries and leave features to storytellers.
Im just puzzled by the amount of actors that queue up to work with him, Bale, Portman, Gosling, Mara, etc. Just wasting their time making a Malick movie, time that could be better spent making better films with better filmmakers. I hope my favorites Joaquin Phoenix, Hoffman and Amy Adams never do a Malick film.
Regardless of Malick's talent or lack thereof as a filmmaker, regardless of whether actors know going in their roles could be cut, out of professional courtesy if nothing else he should let them know. If the producer could email one of the actors to let them know, I don't see why Malick gets a pass on doing the same thing.
That said, all actors considering working with him should take note of Affleck's 'me or the tree' comment as that seems to truly sum up Malick's attitude towards his cast.
I wish someone would re-cut The Thin Red Line. I liked it, but an Adrian Brody/Mickey Rouke version with Bill Pullman and Lukas Haas sounds even better.
This seems like a large waste of money.
Nick Offerman is in Knight of Cups? Ron Swanson is in a Terrence Malick film? That's made my year.
Also, great piece, Jess.
Janit Baldwin is most likely the first actor to get cut completely from a Malick film. She played Sissy Spacek's best friend in 'Badlands' but is nowhere to be seen in the finished film.
Malick is a hack and he's obviously not a very upfront or honest person. Just because he's an artist doesn't mean he can just drag people along for 6 months and put them through hell and just cut them. There's something called being a stand-up person. People like Pt Anderson and Richard Linklater are very upfront and honest with their actors from most accounts. It seems that Malick didn't even tell many of these actors that they could be cut and not just cut but cut completely. Doing that to Adrian Brody is just a crappy thing to do.
Seriously, Tree of Life was sooo ridiculous. Such pretentious bull it's unbelievable. The exalting the beauty of nature has been done soooooo many times. It's not original! Look at every bad poem out there. "The sun, the moon, the beautiful waves blah blah" we get it. I look out at nature every day here in VT. The guy isn't interested in people. He treats actors like Hitchcock treated actors, like cattle and that's BS.
Great article. But you forgot a big one: Richard Gere in Days of Heaven. "We shot a much more richly verbal movie, with much more high emotions, much more dramatic. And when I came to loop the movie and I saw that it wasn't that, I clearly was not too happy about that because all of us could have saved a lot of brain cells in the process."
Glad to see a filmmaker who sticks to his guns. He creates his vision and no one elses and that's why he still remains one of the most unique directors around.
Lukas Haas was in the final cut, though his part was trimmed immensely. He has no lines, only reaction shots mostly and a short scene of him dying in someones arms.
Cue Paul Mahler Jr. to come and add his pretentious farts to this article in 3.. 2…1…
But Rourke being cut WAS politics — there's a Nolte documentary out there which includes an anecdote. . . Nolte and Medavoy are lunching with Malick pre-TRL and Rourke walks past. Malick says he wants Rourke in the cast, that he loves Rourke. Medavoy says no way, it won't fly. Compromise: Malick gets Rourke, but then gets bored with the actor's past beefs with execs becoming a factor in the cutting and deciding which elder actors and which newcomers get ultimate focus.
I like this writers style. I feel like Penn and Plumer's assessment of Malick's process/style is spot on. I've never read the Tree of Life script but I'd imagine if there was more narrative (as Penn says there was) it couldn't have done anything but help the movie. I mean I love Badlands as much as the next guy but it's kind of crazy that he keeps cutting actors and making really polarizing films (most people seem to either adore his work or find it pretentious to the point of silliness) yet people still line up to work with him. I wonder if that will still be the case in five years if all of his movies keep following in the footsteps of TOL/To the Wonder?
I have zero sympathy for anyone post-The Thin Red Line. It's obvious by now that Malick creates his films in the editing room, that's his style. If you sign up for one of his projects, you should know there is a non-trivial chance you'll be cut or reduced and complaining about it after the fact is just moronic. If you want a film that stays closer to the script, then don't sign up for a Malick project.