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Created by Matt Zoller Seitz
Directed by Judith Carter
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
Haruki Murakami
Terrence Malick is the most enigmatic film director currently working. Since the early seventies, his work has won top prizes at film festivals worldwide and brought him wide recognition as the cinematic equivalent of a poet. His life is shrouded in mystery, leaving audiences with rumors, few established facts, and virtual silence from the filmmaker himself following his last published interview in 1979. This has done nothing to dim the luminous quality of his films, from Badlands (1973) and Days of Heaven (1978), to later works such as The Thin Red Line (1998), The Tree of Life (2011), and A Hidden Life (2019). The Magic Hours: The Films and Hidden Life of Terrence Malick is the first true biography of this visionary filmmaker. Through interviews and in-depth research, John Bleasdale reveals the autobiographical grounding of many of Malick's greatest films as well as the development of an experimental form of filmmaking that constantly expands the language of cinema. It is the essential account for anyone wishing to understand Malick and his work.
Review
"This splendid book tells a compelling story of Terrence Malick's life and work―a gift to film lovers who long to know more about the gifted director."―George Stevens, Jr., author of My Place in the Sun: Life in the Golden Age of Hollywood and Washington and founder of the Kennedy Center Honors and the American Film Institute
"Bleasdale's biography of Malick is as smart, readable, and penetrating as fans of the great director's films could wish for―a thrillingly engaged piece of work."―Tom Shone, author of The Nolan Variations
"Terrence Malick is one of the most brilliant yet enigmatic of American filmmakers, a contemplative visual poet beyond compare among modern auteurs. After a stunning debut with two of the finest movies of the 1970s, he vanished without public explanation for two decades, only to come back with several ambitious feature films that have been embraced by a devoted audience of admirers, and others that have flopped with both viewers and critics. John Bleasdale, one of our most thoughtful and best-informed film journalists and scholars, dives deep to explore the life and work of an elusive artist who has consistently challenged us with powerful, intense, and idiosyncratic movies that smash through the boundaries of conventional filmmaking."―Glenn Frankel, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author of Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation, and the Making of a Dark Classic
"Offering in-depth accounts of the making of Malick's films, Bleasdale details how the director's stubbornness and inexperience hamstrung the production of his debut feature, Badlands, and how he privileged authenticity when filming The New World, erecting full-scale recreations of colonial Jamestown and its neighboring Powhatan settlement using only locally sourced materials and period-appropriate construction techniques. Background on how Malick's personal life influenced his films open a window onto his work."―Publishers Weekly
"A myth-shattering look into the life and career of the legendarily publicity-shy cinematic visionary. . . . But his in-depth research uncovered a very different picture from the media-crafted version of the director that developed during the lengthy gap between his second film, Days of Heaven (1978), and its follow-up, The Thin Red Line (1998). In doing so, the author tells of a complex artist and human being whose films, good and bad, are among the most thrillingly original works of art on the planet. . . . No matter how you feel about Malick's oeuvre, this book is a must for cinephiles."―Kirkus Starred Review
"John Bleasdale's impressive new biography The Magic Hours: The Films and Hidden Life of Terrence Malick reveals many crucial and insightful details on the filmmaker's life course, from his Persian family history and fledgling youth in Oklahoma-Texas to an ongoing artistic career, spanning over half of a century. . . . For those curious as to how Malick curated such a sui generis approach to filmmaking, this text serves as both a series illuminating windows into the myth of the artist and a tonic for any doubts one might have levied against him. . . . While honoring aspects of Malick's known preference for privacy, Bleasdale imparts many formative and absorbing details on this mysterious figure. In so doing, he humanizes the mythic Malick and illuminates the biography of a man whose fascinating personal journey through life is truly the stuff of legend."―Film International
John Bleasdale is a film critic and writer whose work is regularly published in Variety, Sight and Sound, the Economist, Financial Times, and the Guardian. He has contributed to two books: Terrence Malick: Film and Philosophy and The Way of Nature and the Way of Grace: Philosophical Footholds on Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life. He also hosts the podcast Writers on Film, which was featured in Time Out's Top 20 Best Podcasts.
MZS.Press is the online arts bookstore founded by author, critic, and filmmaker Matt Zoller Seitz and Directed by Judith Carter. It offers new, used, signed, collectible, and rare books on film, TV, music, photography, and the visual arts. The store was launched in 2019 on a different platform and has expanded to incorporate arts books published by MZSPress's private imprint: titles currently include Seitz's The Deadwood Bible: A Lie Agreed Upon and Dreams of Deadwood, about the HBO Western, and Walter Chaw's A Walter Hill Film.
Our deepest wish is to promote, encourage, and distribute work by small presses, academic presses, and individuals. Extraordinary work tends to get swallowed up on giant platforms like Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The titles featured here are personally selected by a group of curators and advisors, including Seitz and an array of critics, artists, journalists, educators, publishers, and arts mavens who are known for their ability to suss out what Seitz's jazz musician dad liked to call "the good sh*t."
In Honor of the greatest auteur of our time, Judith is using one of her favorite quotes by him.
"Every day, once a day, give yourself a present"
David Lynch (January 20, 1946-January 15, 2025)
Matt Zoller Seitz
Critic, Author, Filmmaker, MZS Press Creator
Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large and film critic of RogerEbert.com; Features Writer for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, Contributing Writer for D Magazine and Texas Highways as well as finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism. His writing on film and TV has appeared in Sight and Sound, The New York Times, Salon.com, The New Republic and Rolling Stone. Seitz is the founder and original editor of the influential film blog The House Next Door, now a part of Slant Magazine.
Seitz has written, narrated, edited or produced over a hundred hours’ worth of video essays about cinema history and style for The Museum of the Moving Image, Salon.com and Vulture, among other outlets such as Texas Highways and AARP. His five-part 2009 video essay Wes Anderson: The Substance of Style was spun off into the hardcover book The Wes Anderson Collection. This book and its follow-up, The Wes Anderson Collection: Grand Budapest Hotel were New York Times bestsellers.
Other Seitz books include the New York Times bestsellers The Sopranos Sessions and Mad Men Carousel; TV (The Book), The Deadwood Bible: A Lie Agreed Upon, The Wes Anderson Collection: The French Dispatch and the new The Wes Anderson Collection: Asteroid City. He is also an interviewer, moderator, and film programmer who has curated and hosted film and TV presentations for the Museum of the Moving Image, IFC Center, San Francisco's Roxie Cinema, and other venues. In October 2024 he brought the legendary filmmaker Oliver Stone back to Dallas for a historic return to the city and the Texas Theatre, considered the biggest film event of Dallas in 2024 by Dallas Observer!
Judith Carter was in the Upscale and Luxury Hospitality Industry for most of her life. In 2004 she had a beautiful baby boy with Special Needs and put the pause on her career until 2017 to dedicate herself to him and then others, assisting and volunteering as a legal advocate ensuring the best medical care, evaluations and educations for Special Needs children and their families.
Matt and Judith were family friends for over 20 years. She was there with her family in support when his wife Jen passed away suddenly in 2006. Then just 6 weeks later while Matt was in Dallas; he and his Father, Dave, and Step-Mother, Genie, were there as support, when Judith was alone and her son received the first of many diagnoses that changed the trajectory of their lives. So it made sense in the turbulent year of 2020, Matt asked Judith to take over running the online store that has become MZS.press. The rest as they say is, "Their"-story.