Terrence Malick
Terrence Malick (born November 30 1943, Waco, Texas) is an enigmatic American film director and screenwriter. His reputation as a filmmaker rests on three pictures: Badlands, Days of Heaven, and The Thin Red Line. Badlands and Days of Heaven are considered modern masterpieces of cinematography (Martin Scorsese once commenting that any frame of Days of Heaven could be blown up and hung on the wall). Another person who himself has said to be inspired by him is indie-filmaker David Gordon Green.
Terrence Malick grew up on a farm and worked as a farmhand before studying philosophy at Harvard. After graduating he went to Magdalen College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar but left before finishing his thesis (on Martin Heidegger) after a disagreement with his advisor.
He moved back to the United States and taught philosophy at MIT while freelancing as a journalist.
There has been a great mystery towards his person and his attitude towards fame. After making his first two movies he disapeared from the spotlight for 20 years.
He is said to be a socialist, something which one could agree with when seeing how the farmworkers are portrayed in Days of heaven for example.
