Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Is Malick's 'Red Wing' actually 'Marfa Lights' retooled?

UPDATE: No, Red Wing is not in fact Marfa Lights, I am told by a source very much in the know. The film just wrapped.

I told you here two weeks ago about the film Red Wing being shot in the North Texas town of Whitewright with film auteur Terrence Malick's stepson Will Wallace directing. But it took the trades finally reporting on the movie to clue me into the screenwriter behind the project: Kathleen Orillion.

 
What difference does that make? Well, Orillion was also the writer of Marfa Lights,  which producers Malick and Ed Pressman were pushing as the first film from Burnt Orange Productions, a for-profit project of the University of Texas that closed down in 2008. 

When Burnt Orange was set up in 2003, Malick worked with screenwriting students in UT's Michener program to adapt for the screen six works of fiction that had entered the public domain. Orillion adapted George Sand's book Le Petite Fadette into the family saga The Marfa Lights. The novel has a twist. Red Wing's plot has been described as having a twist. Both are small town love stories.

An article in the Dennison, Texas, newspaper seems to bear this out. (Perhaps they had read my blog?)

Oh, and additions to the cast I hadn't previously reported on include Joelle Carter and Fort Worth native Bill Paxton. They join Luke Perry and Frances Fisher.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Aren't most movies these days similar to ones from the past? I don't care. I could watch movies similar to The Birds or Dumb and Dumber all day and love each one just as much.

Joe M. O'Connell said...

That wasn't really the point of the post....