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Perhaps because of this, Malick's colleagues tend to adopt a cheerfully reassuring tone when answering reporters' questions, which inevitably boil down to more polite versions of, Isn't he a bit, well, loony? "He's very mysterious, very private, but it's not like he's crazy. He's a lovely and charming man who just wants to keep things to himself," says Laura Ziskin, president of Fox 2000, the division of 20th Century Fox that is financing The Thin Red Line's $50 million to $60 million budget. "He's fun. He's not reclusive or dark. He just has a strong sense of privacy," says George Stevens Jr., the film's executive producer and a longtime friend and patron of Malick's. The supposed recluse could be glimpsed one day last month filming a scene of troops slogging through a jungle clearing amid real mud, real biting ants--they're green here--and enough fake smoke to impress even a young, hot, video-trained director. Fifty-three years old, Malick this day cuts a modestly dashing, mildly eccentric figure in work shirt, blue jeans, big black rubber boots, a wide-brimmed hat slung over his back Zorro-style and a surgical mask strapped Michael Jackson-style across his nose and mouth (the smoke, a producer says, is irritating a Malickian sinus condition).
Though he is tall, bald, possessed of a hawkish, handsome nose and a striking snow-white beard, Malick's most distinguishing feature may very well be the intensity of his gaze--appropriately enough for a filmmaker--which has an unsettling quality of being both wide-eyed and penetrating. As it happens, these are also qualities that associates and friends ascribe to the man himself. He is also said to be, in no particular order, difficult, honorable, secretive, deeply spiritual, sweet, vindictive, humble, mercurial, self-possessed, insecure and the best-read person on the planet. "He's a genius," says a colleague. "That's the good news and the bad news."
Though his current employment means he is no longer the J.D. Salinger of the movies, Malick can still lay claim to being their Thomas Pynchon. While allowing journalists to visit the set of The Thin Red Line (and acting the gracious host in an informal, off-the-record chat), he continues to refuse formal interviews, something he hasn't done since a 1974 chat with Women's Wear Daily. Indeed, his last recorded comment of any kind was, "Well, I, I, uh, I guess I don't want to talk about it..." when journalist David Handelman cold-called him in 1985 and asked what he was up to. Nor will he allow himself to be photographed, not even by the official set photographer or by a video crew documenting the shoot for the inevitable "making of" promotional film.