Malick & Me

A lot of my journalism isn't on the Internet, but when people write to ask me for a copy of an article, it's never, say, when I took the Beastie Boys to Graceland. No, what they clamor for-- still -- is a piece I did 25 years ago, that by now has become my equivalent of a defining first hit single that a band never recovers from. But -- as I often tell actors who bemoan being identified with one role -- it's better to have one of those than none, right?

It's a piece I'm proud of -- the 24-year-old me spent six months reporting it, for pittance pay, for a magzine that few read. The reason for its legend is the subject: visionary, esoteric director Terrence Malick, who at the time hadn't made a movie in the seven years since his previous movie, Days of Heaven, a gorgeous big-screen fable which itself was seven years after his peerless low-budget debut, Badlands, a fictionalized version of Charles Starkweather's killing spree -- and had stopped giving interviews even earlier.

Malick's of-necessity cameo in Badlands as a man who
stumbles on the killing spree. He's never acted before or since.

One school year I screened 146 movies here. 

After being obsessed with Malick's films from viewing them repeatedly at the Harvard Square Theater revival house [right], I painstakingly tracked him down

"Well.....How Did I Get Here?"

Although I left the staff of Rolling Stone around 1991 and have only done a few pieces for them since then, the tag "Rolling Stone writer" still follows me like a tin can on a "Just Married" car. Which is fine with me. It was probably the most sustained fun I ever had at a job, though, as with so many things in youth, I didn't realize it at the time.

As Talking Heads -- my first cover subjects -- hauntingly sang, "You may ask yourself -- how did I get here?" How did my level of pop-culture fandom, consumerism, and opinionating rise above the normal American level and become a profession? Simplified answer: childhood trauma.

I still remember the moment I became aware of pop music as something I needed to know more about.