Badlands

Also the inspiration for "Nebraska" by Bruce Springsteen.

(insert churlish never-heard-the-record-already-made-up-my-mind comment here.)

all directors ending in "ick" are overrated: discuss

(b/l = ok, i don't hate it by any means, and i like sissy space, but onscreen anomie is pretty easy to do, and he doesn't do much else...)

Pauline Kael said that 'Badlands' was the best first-time fl-ick by a director since 'Citizen Kane', which I admit is going it a bit...

yo ant.....

I think it was intended to be a comment on how tennous a paradise created by violenceis , how it can be destroyed by violence . In this way , with its innocent Sissy SPacek and the Cruel father , it becomes an almost oepedial gloss on revoluitonary politics.

haha......yeah, ok buddy

http://www.anomie.co.uk is a very odd site.

among other things the feed-lot montage is really vivid and strange and sort of rips your eyes out of your sockets. this film has really sunk into me-- i can't think of another one i know more closely; think more about; or would more enjoy watching again.

Malick has a cameo doesn't he? is he the man the comes to "the rich man"s door with a roll of paper?

Martin Sheen has everything to do with it being funny. A lot of the funny is just his delivery. His finest moment?

Little by little we fell in love. As I'd never been popular in school and didn't have a lot of personality I was surprised that he took such a liking to me especially when he could have had any other girl in town if he'd given it half a try.

&

We had our bad moments like any couple. Kit accused me of only being along for the ride while at times I wished he'd fall in the river and drown so I could watch.

They're both disturbingly funny.

"I got him in the stomach."
"Is he upset?"
"He didn't say nothing to me about it."

Its influence on especially 1990s outlaw-romance road movies wherein Juliette Lewis pouts and some guy tortures some other guy and everybody has guns and sweats a lot, dud.

I much prefer Malick's last 2 films to his '70s "classics."

Nothing Really Ends
(with The Sissy Spacek Singers)

Don't say goodbye
let accusations fly
like in that movie
You know the one where Martin Sheen
waves his arm to the girl on the street
I once told a friend
that nothing really ends
no one can prove it
So I'm asking you now
could it possibly be
that you still love me?
And do you feel the same
Do I have a chance
of doing that old dance again
Is it too late for some of that romance again
Let's go away, we'll never have the chance again

Just watched this again.

My dad's thoughts on the voiceovers and tone: "This is like Stephen King meets Jack Handey."

I love the how this movie is so quietly strange but - and this is what separates so many "quirky" films these days - it has other things going for it. If you remove the humorous moments and the dark humor the story, characters, acting, direction, cinematography etc etc is still top notch. It isn't just desultory conversation, weird segues and a whimsical tone.

I want to also add that one of the reasons this movie works so well is that the movie is about social anomie without being a product or implicit endorsement of it. The couple in Badlands can be bored, psychotic, stupid and egotistical but the world they live in, and the characters they encounter, are perfectly normal. The people they murder and rob aren't unnecessarily degraded so you could sympathize with the heroes ala Bonnie and Clyde, and the murders themselves aren't neat and Hollywoodian; when he shoots someone with a shotgun the victim still staggers and clings to life for a few minutes before dying, the body doesn't fall out of the camera's vision to disappear (like in a videogame).

This kind of contrast between the depravity of the main characters and the recognizably human world they commit their evil deeds in makes it all the more interesting than most of the movies that essentially paint the entire universe as being mindless and nihilistic.

An oral history:

"It just went on and on. Terry just kept shooting. He was about ready to lose his whole shooting crew. It was almost like Mutiny on the Bounty."

http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and-tv/201105/badlands-oral-history?printable=true

more like a snore-al history!

just saw this for the first time and wow, this is a pretty amazing movie. and yeah the line about wishing he would fall in the water and drown so she could watch mentioned above is all time.

Ace film. That dEUS song that nath mentions just upthread is really lovely too.

Badlands is *FUNNY*

for some reason it's easy to forget this, but it's completely otm.

Watched the Criterion edition last night... it is stick-in-the-throat funny at times, but that's hardly the dominant mood. Sheen is creepy through his forced attempts to ingratiate, Spacek with her offkilter voiceover, which is one of the best ever. Their anomie is so particularized it rescues the movie from the idea that Malick engaged in offensive rehabilitation of Starkweather's deeds, by omitting his slaughter of a baby, and having Warren Oates shoot his daughter's dog.

I guess I didn't know that Malick shows up in a bit part.

what are the bonus features like?

(i only ask b/c i've seen the actual movie 50 times by this point)

i feel like it was "inspired" by starkweather and only resembles his story in broad outline, so I don't really object to malick taking license. you're probably right that it "humanizes" sheen's character more than he could or should have, but the scene where he shoots the couple on the ranch (?) pretty much puts an end to my empathy for him. but it's funny i tend not to think about this film in terms of character engagement at all, it's just so... distanced.

40 mins of Sheen, Spacek, Jack Fisk (prod designer) reminiscing

co-editor Weber, maybe 15 mins

producer Ed Pressman (most revealing re Malick's conflicts w/ more conventionally minded crew members, and how WB disastrously sneaked the movie at a screening of... Blazing Saddles)

all OK.

most revealing re Malick's conflicts w/ more conventionally minded crew members,

hidden in our library's microfilm collection is the transcript of an AFI seminar malick did in 1974, where he talks extensively about how badlands came together (not as a script but in terms of financing) and how dealing with his crew was. he managed to blow through three cinematographers, eventually settling on his old professor at the AFI institute after he had conflicts with the other two. supposedly they each shot roughly 1/3 of the film.

IIRC he said that the crew would openly laugh at him when he would ask for a particular shot and his DP would either refuse or do so under protest. sounds like he built up a bit more authority as the shoot went on. but I wouldn't be surprised if most of his memories of making this movie are bad ones.

i hear lots of stories of jerky old-school DPs making life difficult for their whippersnapper directors, arthur penn had some problems w/ this early in his career.

Kubrick recalls, “When I was directing Spartacus, Russell Metty, the cameraman, found it very amusing that I picked the camera set-ups myself and told him what I wanted in the way of lighting. When he was in particularly high-spirits, he would crouch behind me as I looked through my viewfinder, holding his Zippo cigarette lighter up to his eye, as if it were a viewfinder. He also volunteered that the top directors just pointed in the direction of the shot, said something like, “Russ, a tight 3-shot,” and went back to their trailer.” The collaboration with Kubrick, or lack thereof, would go on to garner Metty his first and only Academy Award for Best Cinematography (Color) for Spartacus in 1961.

isn't there a story of Malick and someone else on set (maybe a producer) getting in a full-blown fistfight.

SHEEN: Lou Stroller made some comment about Mrs. Malick, and Terry was not having it, and beat the hell out of him. In true Texas style—he was so Texas. Didn't even hesitate, just started swinging. They were down like two buffalo—they were big guys—and they were on the ground, rolling around, and Terry just whupped him. Oh, I acted outraged—"What a breakdown of discipline, this fighting on the set!"—but I couldn't have been prouder of him. Can you imagine? If more directors would beat up their producers, we'd have a lot more artistic freedom.

http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and-tv/201105/badlands-oral-history

Pressman mentioned that the line producer quit....

Watched this last night. Visually striking but overbearing narration is basically my kryptonite. So many scenes where it either redundantly described what was on the screen or artlessly filled in gaps (occasionally wondered whether Sissy was describing what Martin said because no actor could actually pull off the lines she was describing). Pretty impressive for a first movie but man...this was more "student film project" than I expected.

Caril Ann Fugate In Critical Condition After Car Accident

Caril Ann Fugate was just 14 years old when she was arrested as an accomplice to her boyfriend, Charlie Starkweather, who allegedly killed eleven people in Nebraska in the late ’50s. Three of the victims were Fugate’s mother, stepfather, and 2-year old sister, and though Fugate claimed she was Starkweather’s hostage, many at the time said she should have died in the electric chair with him.

Fugate is now in critical condition after a horrific car accident in Michigan which claimed the life of her husband, 81-year old Frederick A. Clair, who was driving. Reports say Clair drifted off the road, crossed over two lanes of traffic and rolled into the median. Authorities say Fugate is expected to live.

Cute pic of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate! pic.twitter.com/RMMfABSj94

— 𝕿𝖗𝖔𝖚𝖇𝖑𝖊 𝕰𝖛𝖊𝖗𝖞 𝕯𝖆𝖞 (@NickPinkerton) August 24, 2018

Badlands is astonishingly great as a director's first feature length film

It really is. He was fully formed from the outset. It’s a perfect film and I still get hit by its strange alchemical magic whenever I see it.

Also a cool national park!

agreed x 3

Those landscapes and dust clouds make me swoon

Rich guy got out of the death sentence by playing it exactly as cool as Kit? Refuse to believe it was random. Stomach in my throat as he closed them in the room, gun in hand.

Spacek helicopter pick-up being shot as a religious accension was great too. And dancing in the headlights on the badlands? So many 5 second shots I wish went for a whole minute. Real feast this one

Agree about the movie---any of yall seen this True Crime mini-series I didn't know about? Like most True Crime TV, some of it's "recreated":

1,559,446 views Jan 24, 2023 #SHOWTIME #OfficialTrailer
THE 12TH VICTIM is a four-part docuseries that sheds new light on the infamous 1958 Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate murder case, in which the teenage couple was charged and convicted of brutally killing 11 victims at random. Told through a stylistic blend of archival and recreated footage and countless film and television series inspired by the killings, THE 12TH VICTIM reexamines Fugate’s guilty verdict, who was 14 years old at the time of the killings, through a modern lens, questioning the media and judicial system’s treatment of her despite her self-proclaimed innocence. All episodes streaming Feb 17 on SHOWTIME.

Can't decide if I like Badlands or Lynch-Badlands better. I want to call the ending of Wild at Heart more sincere/less morally-repugnant.... But Malick pulls a magic trick in his portrayal of Kit at the end of Badlands. Humanises Kit without moralising him. But I am an absolute sucker for the Malick's transcedent-amoral aestheticising; the man cornered his view of the world and transforms it into film in such a special way. You can't help but respect it, even if you disagree with it