Christopher Plummer Speaks Out Against Terrence Malick and More Other Oscar Roundtable Moments
At age 82, Christopher Plummer (Beginners) doesn’t really have to worry about being a little too outspoken or grumpy. Earlier this week, he refused to be photographed with Uggie (the dog from The Artist) at Newsweek’s Oscar roundtable, and made a point to tell the magazine that “[Beginners] had the better dog.” At the event, the actor was also asked about his involvement in Terrence Malick’s The New World (2005) and he didn’t pull any punch, saying that “the problem with Terry is he needs a writer, desperately. He insists on overwriting until it sounds terribly pretentious… and he edits his films in such a way that he cuts everyone out of them.”
To Plummer’s credit, many actors have been dumbfounded to see their roles completely wiped out or significantly diminished after Malick’s notoriously extensive editing of his films. Adrien Brody fully expected to be the star of The Thin Red Line only to find out when the film premiered that he was a minor supporting character with almost no screen time. Just recently, Sean Penn ranted about his role in The Tree of Life which he thought was kind of aimless. Heck, even George Clooney seemed to completely agree with Plummer’s assessments during the roundtable.
Plummer adds: “Terry gets terribly involved in poetic shots, which are gorgeous, they are paintings all of them, but he gets lost in that and the stories get diffused. Particularly in The New World. The first half hour of that film is sheer magic to look at… then the story starts to [wander].”
“I was put all sorts of different spots and suddenly my character was not in the scene that I thought I was in, in the editing room. It was very strange. It completely unbalances everything. And a very emotional scene that I had suddenly background noise,” Plummer said about his work in the film. He added afterward that he wrote Malick a letter: “I gave him shit. I’ll never work with him again.”
And here are more interesting tidbits from the Oscar Roundtable:
- Tilda Swinton on acting: ” I’m sitting here listening to real actors talk about real methods, and I’m thinking once again that I’m an interloper. I am more and more in awe of professional actors. I come to all this from the art world. I started with filmmakers who constantly trained me as a performer to have an awareness of the frame, above all … and if I know that all that is in the shot is my elbow, that’s all I’m going to give. I am super lazy in that sense of it.”
- Viola Davis on actors who are difficult to work with: ““There are two very dangerous [kinds of actors]. The ones that just haven’t put in the time yet, and they experience success at a very young age. And they take it too seriously. Or people who have been in the business for 40, 50 years and never experienced the success they thought they should have had. And so they want to punish you. I’ve had the old bitter ones.”
- George Clooney on not making movies for the money: “I’m trying to make movies that last longer than an opening weekend. I don’t have to make money. I do make films for scale and I can go do coffee commercial overseas and I make a lot of money doing those. People will go ‘that’s a sellout’, you go ‘well you know what: fuck you [...] I don’t rape the budget of a movie… We are not killing the budget of these movies so we get to make these films.”
32 Comments
““Terry gets terribly involved in poetic shots, which are gorgeous, they are paintings all of them, but he gets lost in that and the stories get diffused.”
That is an amazingly accurate assessment of my issue with the movie. It’s stunning to watch, aesthetically, but 20 minutes of dinosaurs and streams aren’t particularly helpful for the exposition or any other aspect of the story.
Yea it seems that the more we move forward, the more indulgent Malick is becoming.
Very interesting to read and watch that roundtable (ironically it is a triangle table)!
I didn’t know that about Adrien Brody and The Thin Red Line, but I do remember Sean Penn having a big issue with his final edits of Tree of Life. and yet, he is up for an Oscar for his most recent film.
Yea, because it’s an amazing movie despite its flaws
haha! I was waiting for your response to that! LOL nice work
Why didn’t they all go to Sam Shepherd or Richard Gere on working with Terry?
Because that’s an Oscar roundtable and they aren’t in contention this year?
That Tilda Swinton quote is a little painful this afternoon, since apparently the Academy thinks she’s an interloper too.
Yea kinda ironic that she said that and then gets snubbed for Melissa McCarthy
See! I told you Beginners had the better dog!
That’s what you people say!
No way to listen to this whole thing all the way through? What a crock.
Yea I’m not sure where the whole thing is available. If you haven’t checked the link above, there is 10 short videos from the roundtable though.
It looks like you have to get the new Newsweek App for iPad in order to watch the video in full.
Damn, those are some harsh words. I don’t necessarily agree but I can see an actor in one of his movies would be upset by his methods.
Also, I loved Clooney’s comments about making his money from coffee commercials overseas.
I watched a bunch of the clips on youtube (daily beast channel). quite interesting stuff.
Call me crazy, but I’d much rather be cut from a Terrence Malick film than be featured in a meaningless and infantile hipster Mike Mills crapfest. But maybe that’s just me.
Oh, and the dog was one of the most cloying narrative devices I’ve had to endure in a long time. He can keep that one too.
Shocking statement from Plummer. But I guess he has all the experience to could actually say that.
By the way, how wide was that smile from Fassbender? Ha2
Fassy is an attractive guy but he kind of has a weird, almost scary smile, ahah.
Ahaha almost like a fake smile
It is easy to see where Plummer is coming from. At least half of The New World leaves one wondering where everyone went and how the grass plays into the conflict.
Yea, The New World is my least favorite Malick movie. It does… wander a lot.
You… don’t… say…
I only watched that 3 minute clip but it was fascinating to see them all chatting.
I still haven’t seen The Tree of Life so I’m even more curious about it!
Definitely check out the 9 others available at the link up above.
I can see where Plummer coming from, though I do think it’s an ego thing, I mean any actor always want to get the most screen times, right? In any case, it’s not like there is a shortage of people who want to work with Malick, even at the risk that their work ends up in the cutting room floor!
I don’t think it was about having the most screentime with Pluumer, i just think when he signed on he expected his role to be much bigger than it ended up being. Plus there is a good possibility the movie didn’t end up being close to the script when Malick was done editing it.
But no Malick movie is ever close to the script after he is done editing
The smug dismissal is a little much to take honestly. ‘How dare someone follow an artistic vision, this is HOLLYWOOD, we don’t allow such things here’.
The guy wants to make movies on his own terms, god forbid that he doesn’t sate your ego as much as you are used to. Nauseating.
I defintely see Plummer’s point whether it’s an ego thing or not. Malick can be terribly self-indulgent.
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