6. Wexler was initially not pleased at being given a simple “additional photography” credit on the film and felt he deserved more recognition for his work.
The Haskell Wexler extra on the Criterion DVD opens with a portentous and perhaps cryptic quote from the legendary DP. “Whatever I say I believe is true. I truly believe it’s true,” Wexler said. “However, I also truly believe it may not be true.” Considering nothing of major controversy is said after that point, we have to wonder what might have been cut out from the rest of the interview.
What Wexler is likely hinting at is his screen credit, or lack thereof. According to Roger Ebert, Wexler’s grief (perhaps anger) over not getting what he deemed his proper credit extended for a very long time after the film was finished. In Ebert’s 1997 reappraising review of “Days of Heaven” he wrote, “There is a small credit at the end: ‘Additional photography by Haskell Wexler.’ Wexler, too, is one of the greatest of all cinematographers. That credit has always rankled him, and he once sent me a letter in which he described sitting in a theater with a stopwatch to prove that more than half of the footage was shot by him.”
While that may be the case, according to Almendros’ biography, he worked on “Days of Heaven” for thirty five days, while Wexler worked on the picture for nineteen. The sting must have hurt Wexler even more when Almendros went on to win an Oscar for work that wasn’t entirely his, but he’s since admitted he was wrong.
“I had a pretty strong ego trip there for a couple of weeks actually, wanting to get co-credit with Néstor,” Wexler admitted on the Criterion DVD. Ultimately his cooler head prevailed, according to this interview, and he understood why he was brought in. “My job was to see Néstor’s footage, try to maintain what he’s done and to do it to the best of my ability, and I was in awe of what I saw in the editing room, but I was also honored that they wanted me to go up there and [finish] it.”
According to Wexler in this Criterion interview, producer Burt Schneider tried to get him more credit just as the Criterion disc was coming out but he turned down the offer. “It’s just photography, that’s what lasts,” he said, finally sounding content with his contribution to the picture.
7. Actually there was a 3rd unnamed cinematographer who worked on the film as well.
“What people don’t know is that a year later we shot for about two weeks with neither of these guys (Almendros or Wexler) involved,” Richard Gere said on the DVD extras, not naming who he was talking about. “But a lot of the movie was done in those two weeks we shot later.”
Jacob Brackman is credited as the second unit director but Paul Ryan was the second unit DP who shot all the nature footage in Montana (principal production took place in Alberta, Canada), so it’s possible he was the cinematographer in question. Though surely any Malick scholar would likely tell you that Gere’s “a lot of the movie was done in those two weeks” claim is overstated. Someone have Weber or Fisk’s phone number?
Interestingly enough, Ryan’s 2nd unit shooting was “all secret,” according to Weber. “No one knew he was shooting. Néstor had no idea Paul was shooting anything.” Why was it kept secret? “It was a union thing,” he said. [Producer] Harold [Schneider] was concerned about it.”
8. In the script, “Days of Heaven” was a dialogue-heavy, emotionally rich piece of work and Richard Gere was unpleasantly surprised that the final cut was very, very different.
Gere admitted that at the time he was upset much of his work didn’t make it into the final product.
“[‘Days of Heaven’] ended up being a much more silent movie than the original script which was very much a full, normal kind of script,” he said. “In the end Terry was as interested in watching the ducks in the water as he was in us walking down the road. And I think a dramaturgical approach – which was what we shot and what was in the script – ultimately, it just felt too normal and easy for him.”
Malick had a greater ambition that was at the expense of the words he wrote and the acting. “The game he was playing was much more elusive than that,” Gere said. “From an acting point of view, we had done a lot of intense work in it that no one will ever see, but at the same time, it is an extraordinary film that we’re all proud of.”
9. Malick originally wanted John Travolta for the lead role that Gere would eventually get. No, really.
It’s a relatively little-known fact (depending on how big a Terrence Malick fan you are) that the director wanted John Travolta for the lead. This is confirmed and discussed on the Criterion DVD. “Richard was cast when John Travolta fell out of the picture,” Weber said. Diane Crittenden, the casting director said, speaking on behalf of Malick,”He just felt like [Travolta] was very real, that he had the qualities, that blue-collar kind of quality that he wanted, and he worked very, very hard to try and make it work out, even giving up all his points in the film to [producer] Aaron Spelling,” she said. “He was producing ‘Welcome Back Kotter‘ and telling him that he would let John Travolta travel back for those couple days, that they would need him for [‘Kotter’]. And it was a no go, they just wouldn’t do it. And so we knew we weren’t going to get John and sort of had to go looking for someone else pretty quickly,” Crittenden said on the Criterion DVD.
Even then, Malick went on with casting for over a year trying to match specific actors with other complimentary actors. “Terry can’t make a decision anyhow. This went on forever,” Gere laughed. “I surprised him and said, ‘Look I can’t do this anymore so you need to make a decision.’ ”
Losing Travolta was once rumored to be the reason why Malick left filmmaking for 20 years, that he was so heartbroken that he could not get his lead actor. However, like most Terrence Malick legends, there seems little foundation in provable fact. Note, in Peter Biskind’s book, “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls,” he contends that Malick tried and failed to get Dustin Hoffman or Al Pacino to star in the film, but the details on that are also very thin.
Sidenote: Casting director Diane Crittenden initially wanted Tommy Lee Jones for Shepard’s part, but what Malick liked the most about Shepard was “that he was really unknown as an actor – and he’s not an actor, he’s a playwright,” she said (Malick also let Shepard write one scene). “So he liked the honesty of [Sam’s] character.” She also mentioned that Canadian actress Geneviève Bujold (De Palma‘s “Obsession,” Cronenberg’s “Dead Ringers”) was also someone they looked at closely for the lead before they chose Brooke Adams.
10. Years later Travolta would swear his absence in “Days Of Heaven” was the reason Malick abandoned film for 20 years.
Why did Malick vanish without a trace? ”That’s easy,” Travolta told EW in an 1999 interview. ”He hired me for ‘Heaven,’ I couldn’t do it, it broke his heart, and he never wanted to do a movie again. It was the most romantic notion I’d ever heard.” It sounds like an absolutely absurd notion perhaps one brought on by ego, but Travolta swears by it. ”He cried and cried,” Travolta recalled. ”I looked at him and thought, ‘Well, I feel bad, but I’m going to get over this. He’s claiming he’ll never get over this. He will. It’s a matter of time.” ‘ Travolta even says he revisited the issue with Malick several times, in fact every time he saw him. ”If I asked him once, I asked him five times, ‘Was it really that?”’ Travolta said. ”Terry always said, ‘Yep. There was something about how Hollywood worked that [casting issue] that made me feel unsafe about doing movies.’ He marches to his own drum. I’m still not sure what drum it is, but I like it.”