Ryan Gosling was already in Austin shooting Terrence Malick’s next movie, as yet untitled, and now Michael Fassbender has joined the cast at the last minute, which means the The Gos and The Fassbender are in a movie together—and yes, they have scenes together —and the universe is ending because all the Hey Girl-ness will create a black hole into which we shall all disappear.
Sometimes I wonder about directors like Malick and how in tune they are with the more pop aspects of their decisions. I’ve been around a couple super artistic directors and both of them had surprisingly low-brow senses of humor and were aware of the pop culture baggage their actors brought to the table. Malick is arguably the most artistic director working in American film today—I consistently compare his movies to tinfoil dresses: beautiful but impractical and he is every inch the consummate filmmaker, but then he puts Gosling and Fassbender in a movie together and I go—does he know? It’s not first priority by any means, but does the inevitable glut of new Tumblrs cross his mind? The plague of gifs to come?
I mean…what if Terrence Malick is punking us? We all know his reputation—he’s famous for cutting actors out of movies. Adrien Brody thought he was the star of The Thin Red Line until a member of the press informed him otherwise at a junket (his part was reduced to like, one line). Sean Penn was publicly pissy about how drastically reduced his role in The Tree of Life was (or it was just a Tuesday, whatever). And most recently Rachel Weisz was cut from To The Wonder, which is on the festival circuit now. You’re never safe in a Malick film, no matter how famous you are /big your part is. So what if we get excited about Gosling/Fassbender working together and then the movie comes out and they’re nowhere to be seen?
Wouldn’t it be funny if this was Terrence Malick’s idea of a practical joke?
Attached - Fassbender shooting with Natalie Portman in Austin yesterday. (Lainey: they’re also supposed to be working together on the upcoming Jane Got A Gun playing possible ex-lovers -- click here for a refresher on that.)
