'No one knows anything about the movie'

March 4, 2016 7:55 AM

Comedy actor Thomas Lennon describes what it's like to play a cameo on elusive director Terrence Malick's latest film Knight of Cups.
posted by fearfulsymmetry (27 comments total)

I want to keep an open mind about the film in spite of that trailer, but if The Tree of Life is any indication, Terrence Malick's movies are just becoming epically long trailers.
posted by Beardman at 8:12 AM on March 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

LOL!!

I guess I'll be honest (why the heck not!!) and say I didn't read this vlog but I do really like John "Thomas" Lennon! There's a reason I wanted him in my new movie, "The Knight of Cups", which I wanted to call "The King of Queens" but they said that was too "confusing." If you want to know the reason: (SPOILER ALERT LOL!!) "The Knight of Cups" is a movie version of "Bob's Burgers"!!

I'm glad I can finally reveal it here on Meta Filter! John "Thomas" Lennon was in "Bob's Burgers" (THE TVE SHOW) and I tried to bring back all of the rest of the cast but no one else answered my phone calls. So I had to cast other people instead!! I gave my friend Ben Affleck a call and I said "Hi Ben!!" and he said "I'M BATMAN" except that it was really loud and I had to put the phone down and wander around a twilit wheat field for the rest of the evening.

SO I had to get a different Batman for my Bob's Burgers movie ("The King of Qeens") and called Christian Bale. He plays MISTER Bob Burgers himself! I wrote a special script for him so he never says anything except that he whispers "I'm Batman" a lot in voice over (That's a joke at Ben (AFFLECK!!)!)!

Anyway I hope you live my movie! It's even funnier than my other movies I think so far, and one of my movies had AIRPLANE CLOWNS. Like Kierkegaard said, "The pleasure is disappointing, the possibilities Never"!!!!!
posted by "Doctor" Terence Malick at 8:21 AM on March 4, 2016 [29 favorites]

“I was cast as Christian [Bale]’s douchey Hollywood Hills friend. I realized if his character was a shallow Hollywood screenwriter, two of his really good friends probably would be Joe Lo Truglio and me,” Lennon said. “Terrence Malick actually is a genius.”

Tom Lennon is a fucking national treasure.
posted by Etrigan at 8:23 AM on March 4, 2016 [16 favorites]

Lennon: "Is this how it goes?"
Bale: "Yeah."
Lennon: "Every day?"
Bale: "Yeah."
Lennon: "How long have you been doing this?"
Bale: "This is, like, day 25."

posted by Elementary Penguin at 8:31 AM on March 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

Seriously loved To The Wonder. So much.
posted by balmore at 8:35 AM on March 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

..."sometimes you like raspberry then sometime you want strawberry"...

(only thing I could make out watching the trailer)
posted by sammyo at 8:35 AM on March 4, 2016

The trailor is roughly equivalent to watching a middle aged bathrobe clad hungover white guy masturbating in his LazyBoy recliner.
posted by pjsky at 8:37 AM on March 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

Also I love the idea of Malick watching Reno 911
posted by balmore at 8:39 AM on March 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

It's a great film if you're sympathetic to the plight of rich white guys plagued by too many beautiful women drifting in and out of their lives.
posted by roger ackroyd at 8:42 AM on March 4, 2016 [5 favorites]

I love this crazy parody of a movie trailer that Lennon has made.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:45 AM on March 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

That was a wonderful read, thanks!

When Malick came back, Lennon asked him what the scene was about. Malick started off by saying that in the movie, Bale plays a Hollywood screenwriter, and Lennon didn't need to hear anything else — he suddenly knew why he was there.

“I was cast as Christian [Bale]’s douchey Hollywood Hills friend. I realized if his character was a shallow Hollywood screenwriter, two of his really good friends probably would be Joe Lo Truglio and me,” Lennon said. “Terrence Malick actually is a genius.”

I love Malick's movies, but I can absolutely believe this is how he works.
posted by languagehat at 8:53 AM on March 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

I would listen to Tom Lennon talk about reading the phone book. He has this perfectly calm, competent, introspective humility that I think actually comes from all this experience staring absurdity in the face and going, "Okay, we're doing this then. Let's go." He is a master improviser.

Writing Movies for Fun and Profit has the same tone, and I will listen to any podcast he guests on.
posted by Lyn Never at 9:18 AM on March 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

I just want to say that I'm deeply worried about the safety of that baby crawling out onto the deck, and as a result the entire trailer leaves me feeling anxious.
posted by aramaic at 9:23 AM on March 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

Saw Knight of Cups as part of the Berlinale film festival.

Those Berliners take their cinema seriously -- there's no popcorn allowed, because it's too noisy.

And even they walked out on the movie. Dozens of people left before the credits, too confused to be engaged with the film.

But that didn't stop the Germans from waiting, in the February cold, for Christian Bale to emerge from an interview. He only had a light jacket on, and he still hung around for a good hour, mugging with the crowd.

He's a Mensch but that movie was just two and a half hours of him walking into the sea with his clothes on.
posted by seinwave at 9:24 AM on March 4, 2016 [8 favorites]

Those Berliners take their cinema seriously -- there's no popcorn allowed, because it's too noisy.

I'm with the Germans on this. I don't know why anyone puts up with the endless noisy cud-mashing and giant soda straw-slurping of others when trying to watch any movie that isn't a deafening action flick. (So, sadly, I rarely fork over the $15+ these days for the privilege.)

Also, just to seal my cranky old man image: the (interesting) trailer for Knight of Cups could use an NSFW warning.
posted by aught at 9:46 AM on March 4, 2016

So, I read the article and I was like, okay I'll give this movie a try, sounds interesting. But the trailer left me cold. What I guess I'd like is more articles like this one, but from Cate Blanchett or the camera crew, and so on until it takes on a life of its own; like a complete oral history outside the film itself.
posted by dawg-proud at 10:21 AM on March 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

Never forget, Malick wrote the screenplay for Pocket Money, Paul Newman's favorite role, and maybe one of the most off-kilter comedies of the seventies.
posted by rock swoon has no past at 10:29 AM on March 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

I have a more or less unreserved love of Terence Malick and his movies. I've seen KoC and will almost certainly watch it again.

More evidence, were any needed, that I am half a step away from being an alien from Tau Ceti Prime.
posted by Emperor SnooKloze at 10:36 AM on March 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

Terence's Malick's late career is the most compelling argument that art best thrives in the presence of constraints.
posted by leotrotsky at 11:05 AM on March 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

I love the idea of Malick watching Reno 911

They say one of his favorite movies is Zoolander. No kidding.
posted by fungible at 11:06 AM on March 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

I absolutely loved Malick's work until I saw Tree of Life, which made me realize something: his career has basically been one long decline. Each film he makes is worse than the one before it. The rule is exponential: his first few are so good you barely notice the slope, but by the time you hit Tree of Life, man, that trend is steep.

By the look of the trailer, Malick's Law is holding true.

Tom Lennon's story gives me some idea why. And if the film is broadly autobiographical, I get a little more where all the Christian metaphysical drivel is coming from: 70s Hollywood drove him to some come-to-Jesus moment his filmmaking has yet to--and probably never will--recover from.

At least we get pretty camerawork out of it, I guess.
posted by cudzoo at 11:15 AM on March 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

They say one of his favorite movies is Zoolander. No kidding.

Confirmed.
posted by maxsparber at 11:32 AM on March 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

I walked out of this turd.
posted by hoodrich at 12:37 PM on March 4, 2016

^
Something I haven't done in a very long time.
posted by hoodrich at 12:38 PM on March 4, 2016

"Dr. Krank Malick, what have you learned from your many years of monkey actor torture?"

"They hate it."
posted by infinitewindow at 1:23 PM on March 4, 2016

The trailor is roughly equivalent to watching a middle aged bathrobe clad hungover white guy masturbating in his LazyBoy recliner.

So, "The Comedy II?"
posted by rhizome at 1:30 PM on March 4, 2016

i can't quite figure out the new malick's--obsessive, mystical, visual, obsessed, on teh edge of decadence, but with a core from bresson--but he just shoots so beautifully, that i watch them for the 20 minutes or so that i would see from no one else. (see esp tree of life.)
posted by PinkMoose at 4:49 PM on March 4, 2016 [2 favorites]