Terrence Malick - The Howard Hughes of Hollywood

1999 was a dream year for movie lovers. Three veteran directors, each of whom hadn't made a movie in over a decade, were releasing a new movie that year. George Lucas returned with the first installment of the "Star Wars" trilogy, "The Phantom Menace." It was Lucas' first film as director in 22 years but he had stayed in the limelight as he continued working as producer on such films as "The Empire Strikes Back," "Return of the Jedi," and the "Indiana Jones" trilogy. He was also noted for producing such colossal failures as "Howard the Duck" and Radioland Murders." Also back on the scene was Stanley Kubrick with his Tom Cruise/Nicole Kidman erotic thriller "Eyes Wide Shut." Kubrick had been in the movie news for three years since the project had been announced. Kubrick, infamous for taking his time making a movie, spent two years shooting the movie and, sadly, died the morning after studio executives got a look at the movie for the first time.

And then there was Terrence Malick. Malick was an acclaimed director in the 1970's who, after two movies, disappeared from the movie world for twenty years without a word of explanation. Malick became known as the Howard Hughes of the movie industry prompting a producer to exclaim in the mid 1990's, "I just know one day I will run into Terry and he will have gray hair down to his knees and fingernails a foot long." Actually Malick more resembles a high school history teacher with a balding head and gray beard.

In the early 1970's Malick would write and direct his first feature, "Badlands." The film was a huge critical hit but a box office bomb. He was hailed as a master filmmaker and regarded as one of the top directing talents on the horizon on a list that also included such names as Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Brian DePalma, William Friedkin, Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich and John Milius. Milius told Vanity Fair in a 1998 article that Malick was "far and away the best director in the group. And there isn't one of us that won't admit it."

Then as suddenly as Malick disappeared, he re-appeared with his usual lack of explanation.