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There are, of course, plenty of other things to do in life, especially for someone with a c.v. like Malick's: high school football player; oil-field worker; Harvard graduate; Rhodes scholar; lecturer in philosophy at M.I.T.; journalist for both Life and the New Yorker--and all that before he had even thought about making a movie. While on "sabbatical," he traveled the world, indulging his love of nature, studying religion--Malick is a devout Episcopalian--and eventually began dividing his time between Paris, where he married a Frenchwoman (his second wife, from whom he is currently separated), and Austin, Texas, which is near where he grew up and where he now lives full time. He also kept a hand in Hollywood, writing numerous scripts for hire. The only one that saw anything approaching the light of day was an early draft of Great Balls of Fire, the 1989 movie about the singer Jerry Lee Lewis.
The Thin Red Line's genesis goes back to 1988, when Robert Geisler and John Roberdeau, two aesthetically ambitious but financially limited producers, approached Malick about writing a screenplay and settled on an adaptation of the Jones novel, to which Malick was drawn in part by its vision of the intense love that bonds men under hellish duress. A number of drafts later, the producers brought the project to Medavoy's Phoenix Pictures in 1995 in the hope of actually getting it made. At the time, Malick wasn't planning to direct it. He was talking about returning behind the camera, but for something smaller. None of the principals can identify the exact point when Malick decided to tackle The Thin Red Line, but soon he was discussing casting with nearly every major young actor in Hollywood, most of whom were enthralled at the prospect of working with a near mythic director.
Executives at Fox were initially nervous about trusting such a large-scale project to a man who hadn't worked in 20 years, but doubts were dispelled after Malick, in exploratory meetings, displayed a confident grasp of production details. For his part, Malick was just as wary. "Early on," says Nick Nolte, "Terry called me. He wanted to know what had changed in Hollywood. I told him I didn't think a thing had changed. I said maybe the fear is more pronounced, and the greed, but it's basically the same game."
Thus fortified, Malick plunged ahead. To do so, he may have indulged in a bit of self-deception. "Terry kept telling me before the film started that it was going to be a small movie," says Jack Fisk, the movie's production designer, who worked in the same capacity on Days of Heaven and Badlands. "I don't think Terry realized how big it was until the first day, when he showed up on location and saw the tents and trucks."
What's intriguing about The Thin Red Line is the chance it offers to watch the more indulgent filmmaking style of the 1970s collide with that of the 1990s. Roughly midway through its shoot, the film was only a half-day or so behind schedule--an incredible achievement considering both the scope of the production and the fact that the schedule must take into account Malick's fondness for multiple takes, for improvisation, for stopping to shoot, Days of Heaven-style, any flora and fauna that catch his eye ("He's obsessed with grass and feral pigs," notes a young cast member).