Trivia / Days of Heaven

• Acclaimed Flop: The movie cost $3 million—not including the marketing, manufacturing, and shipping costs. It bombed at the box office grossing just $3.4 million. Nevertheless, it received positive reviews on its original theatrical release; its photography was widely praised, although a small number of critics considered only this aspect to be worthy of high praise. It did win an Academy Award for Best Cinematography along with three nominations for the score, costume design, and sound. Malick also won the Best Director Award at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival.
• Creator Breakdown: Supposedly because of the stresses of making this movie, Terrence Malick took a twenty-year hiatus from films until returning for The Thin Red Line.
• The Danza: Linda, played by Linda Manz.
• Troubled Production: Production was so stressful that Terrence Malick didn't make another film for twenty years.
  • The production schedule was loosely structured at best from top to bottom to allow actors to improvise. The call sheets were sparsely detailed, while the schedule was changed at short notice to take advantage of changes in the weather. Although this may have allowed the cast more freedom, many crew members who were more used to tighter organization took it as a sign that Malick and cinematographer Néstor Almendros had no idea what they were doing, leading to several resignations.
  • Two weeks into production, Malick, disheartened by what he was seeing in the dailies, decided to throw out the script and "go Leo Tolstoy instead of Fyodor Dostoevsky" by shooting whatever seemed like a good idea at the time and making plans to trim the film down in the editing room, causing the film to fall badly behind schedule and go hugely over budget. On a day originally set aside for shooting the locust invasion, which involved two helicopters dropping peanut shells to simulate the insects, Malick changed his mind and decided to shoot scenes involving period cars, but he kept the helicopters on hold, further inflating the costs. Producer Bert Schneider had to mortgage his house to cover the $800,000 overages. The film's props were as difficult to work with, with the harvesting machines frequently breaking down, so that filming for the day began in the late afternoon, mere hours before nightfall.
  • The delays forced both Almendros and camera operator John Bailey to leave midway through production to honor their commitments to François Truffaut's The Man Who Loved Women. Almendros persuaded his friend and fellow cinematographer Haskell Wexler to take his place and worked on the film with him for a week to ensure the film's visual style would be preserved. Wexler was responsible for around half of the footage that ended up in the finished film but was dismayed to find himself credited only for "additional photography".
• What Could Have Been:
  • Terrence Malick originally wanted John Travolta for the role of Billy, but he was busy with Welcome Back, Kotter. Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino also passed on it.
  • Geneviève Bujold was considered for the role of Abby.

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