12 Things You Need To Know About The Making Of Terrence Malick’s ‘The Tree Of Life’ - Page 4 of 4

the-tree-of-life-terrence-malick-MalickQuote11. So How Long Did ‘Tree Of Life’ Actually Take To Make?
Development aside, according to Brad Pitt, the film started in “the spring of 2008.” “[It was] after I did ‘Burn After Reading‘ and before ‘Inglourious Basterds.’ I remember that Angie was pregnant then [with the twins she gave birth to in July 2008] and we were trying to think of names for our kids, and now they’re almost three,” he told Time Magazine. And yes, as noted from our “Q” sections, it’s a film that’s been being worked on for some shape or another for over 30 years. “There’s this mystique around the film, because this is the movie Terry took his hiatus on. It’s gone through many incarnations since, but he started shooting [some of the Cosmos footage] then,” Pitt said.

the-tree-of-life-terrence-malick-screenshot-lrg-1412. Malick’s Process Is “Imperfection” According To The Film’s Star Who Has Seen The Film In Many Versions That You Never Will
“Someone called Terry a perfectionist, and I said no, he’s an imperfectionist; he’s trying to mess it up. He sets up a scene and then “torpedoes” it — that’s his word,” Pitt said. “Say, if the parents are arguing inside the house, he’ll send one of the kids in and see how we handle it. Instead of doing little rewrites of scenes to be shot on a certain day, Terry would get up in the morning, and meditate, and write his thoughts about the day’s work. And we got handed these four pages, single-spaced, and they’d be these stream-of-consciousness ideas that we would incorporate into the day’s work.”

The_Tree-of-Life_Terrence_Malick_still_photo_03People drool about the 5-hour cut of “The Thin Red Line,” which no on will ever see, because it wasn’t ever meant to be seen; these were just various stages where the film was shown so the editors and filmmakers could decide what to cut. Well, let the legends live on because there were (naturally) longer versions of “The Tree of Life,” but according to Pitt, you’re not really missing much. “I’ve seen the film in its four-hour incarnation, then three-and-a-half, two-forty-five, back to three-thirty, and now at two-and-a-quarter. In essence, it’s the same.”

This feature could go on and on all day, and hell, who knows, maybe one day we’ll revisit it when more stories surface.

“The Tree of Life” his New York and L.A. today on four screens, but it will be expanding soon and will eventually hit wide release on July 8th. This is our first in a series of Did You Knows about Terrence Malick films, so keep an eye out next week, building up until July 8. Here’s the full roll-out plan for the film. See when it hits your city.