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Malick officially shooting in Smithville
The Statesman’s Michael Corcoran — sort of a blend of Bob Woodward and Kelso — shoots us this crackling dispatch straight from the perilous terrain of Smithville:
It’s official. After weeks of rumors and speculation, the location manager of “Tree of Life,” the Terrence Malick project starring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn, addressed the Smithville City Council on Monday night to talk about filming there, which will begin at the end of March.
The shoot will last approximately three months, location manager John Patterson said.
“Security is going to be a big issue with( the film company),” says Smithville city manager Tex Middlebrook, who laughed and said he’d met notoriously private director Malick a few times without knowing who he was until recently.
Middlebrook says he helped the crew find and move a 60,000 pound live oak — the title tree — to a back yard in Smithville last week. Many of the cast and crew on the film, a 1950s period piece, have rented houses in Smithville, a town of 4,000 located 45 miles east of Austin.
Although Pitt has not been officially confirmed, he recently told Charlie Rose in an interview that his next project would be “Tree of Life.” It’s not known if Angelina Jolie and the kids will accompany Pitt to the town that might as well be called “Pittville” for the next four months.
Malick, shooting ‘Badlands’ in the ’70s
A tree
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