Credit: Far Out / Jester-being

The bizarre modern comedy movie loved by Terrence Malick

Sun 6 August 2023 10:00, UK

There are some filmmakers who have produced some mesmerising pieces of cinema yet are constantly overshadowed by their more commercial peers. The American cinematic master Terrence Malick is a prime example of such a person, regularly being ignored by movie lovers across the globe in favour of the likes of Steven Spielberg, Denis Villeneuve, Martin Scorsese and other directors who have adopted a similar style of filmmaking.

Emerging onto the world stage with a trio of iconic movies, Malick’s debut came in 1973 with the release of Badlands, a fascinating deconstruction of the American psyche starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek as a contemporary budding Bonnie and Clyde. After taking a five-year hiatus, he returned with Days of Heaven, a gold-tinted romance shot entirely within the ‘Golden Hour’ of sunlight.

The last of his miraculous debut trilogy came over a decade later, in 1998, with the war movie The Thin Red Line, an adaptation of James Jones’ 1962 autobiography about the Guadalcanal conflict during WWII. Starring the likes of Jim Caviezel, Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, George Clooney, Adrien Brody, John Cusack and Woody Harrelson, the film may well still be Malick’s most commercial venture to this very day.

But, for a filmmaker who is so well-known for his deep explorations of humanity, his favourite movies are certainly unusual.

Whilst you’d think that Malick would love the films of Stanley Kubrick, Ingmar Bergman and Andrei Tarkovsky, it turns out that one of the director’s real loves is Ben Stiller’s 2001 comedy flick Zoolander.

Co-written by Stiller, alongside Drake Sather and John Hamburg, the frivolous flick tells the story of a clueless fashion model who is brainwashed and forced to kill a political figure. But truthfully, not much care is given to the plot of the movie, with the performances of Stiller, Owen Wilson and Will Ferrell sticking out as the most memorable parts of this surreal Hollywood epic.

Revealing his fondness for the movie in an interview with Texas Monthly in 2017, Malick exclaimed that he loved the dialogue and would regularly quote it on set. After hearing this fact, Stiller sent over a ‘Happy Birthday’ video to the filmmaker in the style of his Derek Zoolander character.

Bizarrely, this isn’t the only curious movie that Malick has admitted to loving, holding a small flame for the 1999 shark film Deep Blue Sea, which starred Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Rapaport and Thomas Jane. What’s more, Malick also expressed his fondness for the 2006 action movie Smokin’ Aces, starring Ryan Reynolds and Ray Liotta, praising the film for its solid direction style.

It should also be said that the lesser-spotted Malick loves a classic too, previously calling 1965’s Mickey One and 1953’s Beat the Devil some of his all-time favourites.

Take a look at the trailer for Stiller’s Zoolander below.