A War of Nerves

The film’s director hasn’t made a movie since Jimmy Carter was president and Leonardo DiCaprio was in preschool.

In August, in his hometown of Austin, Texas, a local theater featured a tribute to him as part of a “great directors” series that included two of his movies--his only two.

He doesn’t do interviews and won’t be doing any to promote his film, even though Hollywood is bankrolling him to the tune of more than $50 million.

So why is Terrence Malick’s “The Thin Red Line,” based on James Jones’ 1962 novel about the World War II battle of Guadalcanal, so often referred to as “the most anticipated movie of the year,” as it is in the latest issue of Esquire magazine? Why for months has conventional Hollywood wisdom concluded that it’s a strong Oscar contender, even though only a handful of people have seen even a frame of the movie?

Why were stars of such caliber as John Travolta, George Clooney, Woody Harrelson, Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, Bill Pullman and John Cusack lining up to appear in the film, even if some are in it for a couple of scenes, at a fraction of the salaries they normally get?

And, while the film clearly is anticipated in Hollywood, who says that anyone outside the 310 area code will care? Especially when so many moviegoers have been to the multiplex to see Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan,” which since August has grossed nearly $190 million domestically?

Few movies have ever posed as many enigmatic questions as “The Thin Red Line,” scheduled for release in late December by 20th Century Fox. And few movies have presented more unique and difficult marketing obstacles.

“This is a giant marketing challenge,” said one senior executive at a Fox rival, who, like other executives interviewed about the film, didn’t want to be named. “The only way to sell it is if it’s a compelling story. It’s coming in second to ‘Saving Private Ryan,’ and the director isn’t known at all outside of a few film schools and in Hollywood. It has to be a great movie to work.”

The handful of executives who have seen it insist it is a great film--although industry cynics note that executives always say that. Still, Fox sources insist it’s a much different film from “Saving Private Ryan,” more of an intense psychological tale, and that about the only thing the two movies share is that they take place during the same war, albeit in battle theaters half a world apart.

“There’s definitely room for more than one war movie. It’s not like it was when there wasn’t room for two movies about a volcano with lava coming out,” said one Fox executive of the studio’s dismal “Volcano” that came out on the heels of Universal Pictures’ volcano movie “Dante’s Peak.”

Such dilemmas are common for studios, with mixed results. “Deep Impact,” about an Earth-threatening comet, and “Armageddon,” about an Earth-threatening asteroid, grossed big numbers at the box office. But neither a Walt Disney film nor a Warner Bros. movie about 1970s track star Steve Prefontaine proved a box-office smash. Still unclear is whether the strong performance of DreamWorks’ “Antz” will hurt Disney’s upcoming “A Bug’s Life.”

If nothing else, “The Thin Red Line” has succeeded in becoming an obsession for movie buffs, film writers and critics.

Internet sites are filled with talk and anticipation. Members of the James Jones Literary Society in suburban Chicago are looking to the film to revive interest in the author, who died in 1977. During the recent press junket for their release “The Siege,” Fox executives were peppered with questions about “The Thin Red Line.”

Entertainment Weekly in its current “Power List” ranks Malick and the equally reclusive Stanley Kubrick, who with “Eyes Wide Shut” is making his first film in 11 years, at No. 101. The magazine calls them “The Hermits” and asks, “Who’ll recognize them at the premieres?”

Aside from film buffs, few moviegoers know much, if anything, about Malick, let alone have seen his two previous films. Malick’s debut was 1973’s “Badlands” with Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek, loosely based on a killing spree in the 1950s, and 1978’s “Days of Heaven” with Richard Gere, Brooke Adams and Sam Shepard, which takes place in the Texas plains in the early 1900s.

Both films were critical gems--”Days of Heaven’s” sweeping visual look is still cited as one of the best ever made in Hollywood--but they were not especially commercial. Neither received Oscar nominations for best picture, and neither showed up earlier this year on the much-ballyhooed American Film Institute list of the 100 top U.S. films of all time.

Following “Days of Heaven,” Malick, an Oklahoma-raised Harvard graduate and Rhodes scholar who once wrote for the New Yorker magazine, retreated from the film business. The reason remains something of a mystery, although people who know him say he never intended to stay away for 20 years. He lived for a while in Paris, reportedly studied Buddhism and eventually settled in Austin, where he has lived without much attention, save for periodic references to him in the press as a reclusive, J.D. Salinger-like figure.

Although he shunned directing, he dabbled in writing, working on, of all things, the Jerry Lee Lewis bio-pic “Great Balls of Fire,” starring Dennis Quaid, and on a potential Broadway play.

For the most part, Malick disappeared from the radar screen of Hollywood and the film press, becoming a stranger to many young Hollywood executives unfamiliar with his work, and a cult figure to those who were.

So when Malick, who turns 55 later this month, decided to end his self-imposed exile last year to make the movie for Fox--after Sony Pictures turned it down out of concerns the studio wouldn’t make money--the buzz began in earnest. Malick teamed with some of his old acquaintances, including veteran film executive Mike Medavoy, Malick’s former agent, whose Phoenix Pictures is financing the film with Fox.

Malick’s film, which he first started adapting nearly 10 years ago, is based on the novel by Jones, whose earlier book “From Here to Eternity” was made into one of Hollywood’s classic war films. “The Thin Red Line” is considered the second part of a trilogy by Jones about World War II. Malick’s version is the second “Thin Red Line” film Hollywood has made, the first having come in 1964. The title comes from an epitaph in Jones’ novel that reads: “There’s only a thin red line between the sane and the mad.”

Chronicling the experiences of a 60-man Army rifle corps called “C-for-Charlie Company,” the book traces its first combat experience during the August 1942 battle to take Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands from the Japanese, in what was one of the most intense and bloody battles of the war. Malick’s film is said to be less of a classic war film than a powerful look at the psychological stress the boyish soldiers endure in the inch-by-inch struggle to take a single hill on an island whose capture was one of the war’s turning points.

“The bad guys aren’t the Japanese as much as the bad guy is war,” one Fox executive says.

The film was shot in the Australian jungle beginning in June of last year. Malick and Fox have kept a fairly tight lid on developments about the film. Some journalists were allowed to visit the set but were not granted any formal interviews with Malick, who hasn’t done one in 24 years.

As Malick has edited the movie, the studio has fought persistent rumors that it won’t be ready on time, which would be disastrous. That would mean the film would miss the all-important window of opportunity to be seen by critics compiling their year-end lists of best films.

Fox sources say that Malick, very much a perfectionist, is working every day on finishing the film in Los Angeles, and will probably push his deadline to the limit. “He’ll probably still be working on it even when it’s in theaters,” said one source close to the movie.

But, studio sources say, critics will start seeing the film in early December, although it will be an unfinished version.

That decision to show an unfinished print to critics shows how crucial good reviews are to the film if it is to find mainstream success rather than be viewed as a big, expensive art film. Indeed, earlier in the year, Premiere magazine said Hollywood wags were calling it “The Thick Red Ink” because of what some view as bleak commercial prospects.

“The critics are going to have to be rooting for us,” said one executive close to the production.

The movie also has battled talk that it will be exceptionally long, in the three-hour-plus range. Fox sources insist the length will be closer to 2 1/2 hours.

The film’s release date is still in flux but will probably be on or just before Christmas Day. The first trailers will appear in larger markets such as Los Angeles and New York with “The Siege,” although they are designed to tease audiences and aren’t likely to reveal much.

Fox is expected to release the film first in New York and Los Angeles for a couple of weeks, then, hoping to ride the crest of good reviews and possible award nominations, will slowly spread it across the country. That will put it most directly in competition with such highly anticipated films as Universal’s “Patch Adams” with Robin Williams and Disney’s “A Civil Action,” starring Travolta.

Marketing executives in Hollywood are split as to whether the movie will be hurt by the success of “Saving Private Ryan.” “They should have waited until next year,” said one executive.

But another doesn’t believe it’s a given that the film will be hurt by Spielberg’s success.

“ ‘Private Ryan’ can work against it or for it. If the public perceives that the film is another ‘Private Ryan,’ then it hurts. But if one assumes ‘Private Ryan’ opened up the subject matter and opened up this time in history to people, then audiences may be ready to see another chapter,” the executive said, adding that it is critical for Fox to convince the public that the two films are very different.

“If I was dealt this hand of cards to play, I’d work hard to say, ‘Yes, it’s a battle in World War II, but it’s not the same movie as ‘Saving Private Ryan,’ ” the executive said.

Despite the intense curiosity about Malick, Fox doesn’t plan to push the director angle too hard in trying to sell the movie. Part of it is due to the studio’s hand being forced by Malick’s refusal to do interviews and publicity because he is notoriously obsessed with his privacy. And, Fox figures, everyone who would see it strictly because it’s a Malick film knows about the movie and will see it anyway.

Fox instead plans to emphasize the ensemble cast, figuring moviegoers will conclude that a group of top-name actors wouldn’t get together for a movie without having exceptional enthusiasm for the material and the prospect of working with Malick.

Despite the big names, much of the film is carried by young, up-and-comers. The cast includes such lesser-known actors as Larry Romano, Ben Chaplin, Adrien Brody, Jim Caviezel and Nick Stahl. Penn, Harrelson and Nolte are said to have the sizable roles of the bigger names, with Travolta and Clooney having small ones.

Indeed, in an online interview last summer, Clooney, a huge fan of Malick’s “Badlands,” described his role as “a tiny, tiny part” involving two scenes in the movie.

But, Clooney said, he wanted to be in the movie so badly that he called Malick and said: “I’ll carry your camera case, I’ll do anything you want.”