The New World

[matt35mm]

QUITE excited.

[Pozer]

I think Colin Farrell's voice will work perfectly in a Malick film.

[Sunrise]

That's interesting...I had not considered his "voice". Is there any word on whether Malick used multiple narration for The New World like The Thin Red Line or the singular point of view like Badlands and Days of Heaven? My guess would be the latter but I have not heard.

[MacGuffin]

Is there any word on whether Malick used multiple narration for The New World like The Thin Red Line or the singular point of view like Badlands and Days of Heaven? My guess would be the latter but I have not heard.

From the article I posted on the previous page:

Malick then retired with four editors into the cutting room for a year, whittling the movie down to 2 hours and 40 minutes, deleting reams of dialogue -- the movie is often silent -- and adding interior voice-overs for the three leads that were not in the original script.

[Sunrise]

Great. I'm wrong and lazy.

I love how Malick whittled it down to 2:40. Perfect.

[MacGuffin]

It's a brave 'New World' for Malick
Scott Bowles, USA TODAY

He has made just four films in 32 years, but Terrence Malick has a legendary, almost mythical, reputation in Hollywood as a director unrivaled in plumbing the depths of the human psyche. Except his own.

Malick, 62, whose movies include Badlands, Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line, remains the J.D. Salinger of filmmakers. He refuses to grant interviews and is rarely photographed.

So it should come as no surprise that the reclusive director's latest project, The New World, which opens in New York and Los Angeles Dec. 25, arrives relatively quietly amid the crush of films with Academy Awards aspirations.

Instead of press junkets, talk shows and magazine covers, Malick sends forth as his envoy the film's young star, a 15-year-old former street performer whose first-ever kiss came on screen with co-star Colin Farrell.

"I'm still not sure how to handle questions and reporters," says Q'orianka (pronouced kor-e-ahn-ka) Kilcher, the ingénue who plays Pocahontas in the $30 million film and who, until recently, was making money singing on the streets of Santa Monica, Calif.

"I know Terry is famous and classrooms study him and he's a genius," she says over a plate of fruit in a Santa Monica deli. "So why me? I'm just ... me."

But for friends and colleagues of the director, the pairing is fitting for a man who at once dazzles and puzzles Hollywood with his reticence, brilliance and occasional disappearing acts.

"Terry has never played the game," says Sarah Green, a friend of Malick's and producer of New World. "He doesn't live here (in Los Angeles), he doesn't worry with marketing and test screenings and box office. He just wants to tell a story that speaks to him. Like Q'orianka did. I don't think it mattered to him whether she was someone people really knew."

There's a lot in New World that breaks from the Hollywood norm. To re-create the story of the 1607 settlement at Jamestown, Malick built a fort and Native American village 5 miles from the original site in Virginia.

He insisted that the sets be constructed only with wood available in the Virginia forests. Costumes for the Indian tribes were hand-stitched with materials available at the time of the colonial settlements. He used no artificial lighting for most of the film, relying on sunlight to illuminate his outdoor sets.

And he wanted a child to carry his film.

The actress needed to be young, about the same age as the real Pocohantas, who historians believe was 12 or 13 when she came upon explorer Capt. John Smith.

She needed to be beautiful, but still a child. Naive, but learning fast. "She was going to have to represent America," says Green. "We must have gone through 800 actresses before we lucked onto Q'orianka. But when we found her, we knew right away."

Will audiences find the movie? Historical epics, particularly centered on colonial America, aren't typical blockbuster fodder. Pocahontas has already received the Hollywood treatment, in Disney's 1995 animated film that raked in $141 million. And Malick's film was shut out at this week's Golden Globes nominations.

And for all the accolades from his peers, Terrence Malick isn't a household name. His three previous films have generated 11 Academy Award nominations and one win, but none has been a box office hit. His biggest movie, 1998's Line, did $36.4 million.

"Terry may not get nervous about it, but I do," Green says. "I really want people to find his work. And find Q'orianka. There's a lot to discover in this movie."

Kilcher came close to going undiscovered. The distant cousin of singer Jewel Kilcher had hopes of becoming a singer and dancer when she and her family moved to Los Angeles from Hawaii nearly a decade ago.

Kilcher, who is Peruvian on her father's side and Swiss on her mother's, built a sizeable following on Santa Monica's Third Street Promenade, where she would perform her own pop and folk songs while her family played backup.

But in 2000, the family's musical equipment was stolen from their car. The Los Angeles Times ran a front-page story about the theft. The story caught the eye of an agent at William Morris, who gave her money to replace the equipment and offered to help the 9-year-old audition for films.

She landed a bit part in 2000's Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas as a choir singer, but got no other nibbles until she auditioned last year for a role in Steven Spielberg's television series Into the West. A casting director saw her head shot and decided she looked more appropriate for New World auditions, tossing the photo onto a pile of hundreds of other hopefuls.

"Everything happens for a reason," Kilcher says. "If I hadn't got my equipment stolen, I never would have been found by an agent. If I hadn't tried out for one role and not gotten it, I wouldn't have found this movie."

Not that she realized what she had found. When told that she would get to read for the lead in a movie by Malick, starring Farrell, Christian Bale and Christopher Plummer, she had just one question: Who are those guys?

"I really don't know the whole Hollywood thing," she says, grinning at an uncle who accompanied her by bus to the interview. "I knew it was about Pocahontas, and that it would be like a camping trip."

Indeed, the New World crew essentially created its own for the four-month shoot.

"We were going for authenticity with everything we did," says Jack Fisk, the set designer for New World and a friend of Malick's for more than 25 years. "We were going to build real villages. We were going to film in the woods with a camera and as few people as possible. Nature has always played a big part of Terry's movies, but I'd never worked on anything like this."

It's a common sentiment among those who have worked with Malick, whose movies are as much a meditation on life as a depiction of it. He was the toast of Hollywood by his first film, 1973's Badlands, a drama starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek (who is married to Fisk) based loosely on the case of a 1950s serial killer and his teenage girlfriend.

He followed that five years later with Days of Heaven, a lethal love triangle starring Richard Gere. Both films, which blended the beauty of nature with the tormented nature of man, cemented his reputation as a filmmaking virtuoso.

Then he disappeared. For 20 years, he lived in Paris and Texas with no public explanation for his exit. The hiatus fed wild theories: He had become consumed by early fame; he was consumed with a masterwork; he was driven from the business by numbers-crunching executives and egotistical stars.

Friends remain fiercely loyal to Malick and refuse to engage in much speculation. Most say he continued writing scripts, but didn't pen one that inspired him until The Thin Red Line.

"Terry once told me that pondering is important to storytelling, to films," says Peter Guber, former head of Columbia Pictures and current Mandalay Pictures chairman. "He's always taken his time not only making movies, but thinking about them. Do you know how rare it is to find someone who thinks as much as he talks?"

That's not to say Malick is a brooding, mad filmmaker, Green says. When in a comfortable social circle, he's quick to joke and is a fan of comedies, especially There's Something About Mary and Meet the Parents.

"He loves Ben Stiller," Green says. "I think because his movies are so thoughtful, they think Terry is a very serious guy. That's not true. He just is careful with his words."

And he asks actors to be the same. In one of Kilcher's first meetings with Malick, the director asked her to act out a scene that included several pages of dialogue, but she had to do it silently.

"He just wanted to see how I could express myself with my face, my eyes," she says. "I guess it worked."

And how. Shortly after the silent audition, given in front of Malick and Green, the producer asked what else Kilcher could do.

"Well, I can sing," Kilcher offered.

"We were expecting something childish, like Mary Had a Little Lamb," Green says.

Instead, Kilcher belted out the blues classic Doctor Feelgood.

"She made you think she'd had her heart broken 10 times," Green says. "That's when we knew she was the one. She can say a lot with a little. Just like Terry. That's what makes them such a good match."

[Pubrick]

"We were expecting something childish, like Mary Had a Little Lamb," Green says.

haha what a bitch.

[JG]

I haven't seen it personally, but my grandmother told me that Ebert and Roeper called the New World the best movie ever made.  They might have said best of the year.  Anybody see the show?  Furthermore, what's the word on releases for this movie?

[MacGuffin]

Furthermore, what's the word on releases for this movie?

Very last line of this post:
http://xixax.com/index.php?topic=7024.msg209092#msg209092

[lamas]

I haven't seen it personally, but my grandmother told me that Ebert and Roeper called the New World the best movie ever made.  They might have said best of the year.  Anybody see the show?  Furthermore, what's the word on releases for this movie?

they said it was one of the best of the year.

[SoNowThen]

I am the only one who thinks that the trailer for this makes it look like the biggest piece of shit, hokey, crap-flinging, joke-version of the first 20 minutes of Thin Red Line???

Why do seemingly smart directors keep casting Colin Farrell? This guy's as Irish as drunkenness and a huge head -- he just doesn't fit as anything else but a useless Irish twat. I wanna believe that Malick is still untouchable, but you just gotta laugh when someone asks what your new movie is (especially when your new movie comes out on average every 5 - 10 years) and you say "the pocahontas story"... "no, really, what's your new movie", "seriously, it's the whole Indian thing -- you know, them old Indians, the ones we can't call Indians anymore"... "(laughing) oh you kidder, you, no really, you must have picked something interesting, right?", "no, I swear, we got this huge budget so we could make the white guy - native chick love story".... (looks at him sideways, like he just shat on the table) "um... whatever, man..."

[Pubrick]

but you just gotta laugh when someone asks what your new movie is ... and you say "the pocahontas story"...

i don't get it, the story of the american indians is extremely fascinating.

that whole bit you played out is a conversation with a total moron. are you saying american history is not interesting? cos that's what the idiot (who thinks he's being funny) is saying in your scenario.

[SoNowThen]

I don't find it interesting in any way. Don't you think it's a little odd that Malick is doing a Disney Story? Not that his version will suck like Disney's, but from the trailer it seriously looks like a live action version of the cartoon.

In which case, the brilliant young man (in my scenario) has a fantastic point.

[Pubrick]

holy shit you think the story of the first permanent English settlement in America is first and foremost a disney movie????

fuck. that's all i have to say to that. FUCK.

[Gamblour.]

yeah to say or be convinced that the colonization and discovery of a new race of people and then the eventually rape and genocide of those people, a noble kind defeated by greed and Christianity.....yeah, that's naive. you need some original Zinn in your life.