FirstShowing.Net on the interview:
The interview itself focuses on the filming of Badlands - Malick's 1973 directorial debut, which he also wrote, starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek in a "dramatization of the Starkweather-Fugate killing spree of the 1950's, in which a teenage girl and her twenty-something boyfriend slaughtered her entire family and several others in the Dakota badlands."
The quick-fire Q&A between the writer/director and G. Richardson Cook (the interviewer who also happened to be a Production Assistant on Badlands) is a fascinating conversation about making an independent feature outside of the studio system and without a distributor in place at the time of production in an era of Hollywood during the '60s and '70s where this type of filmmaking was still kind of emerging and evolving (in comparison to modern independent filmmaking at least). So much was different and yet so much was the same (for example, approaching dentists and lawyers for funding and lying about your production costs).
In response to Cook's question "How was Badlands financed?" Malick said "It was financed like a Broadway play - that is on a limited partnership arrangement with a lot of investors who didn't know one another each coming in for a small piece, anywhere from $1000 to $50,000." (the budget onBadlands was supposedly "under half a million dollars" though Malick reveals he had been advised to say that.)
If you're an independent filmmaker yourself, a fan of Malick's work, or just a film lover in general, this vintage gem is a must read for sure.
http://www.firstshowing.net/2011/rare-interview-with-terrence-malick-from-1974-filmmakers-newsletter
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