Christian Bale, Natalie Portman Explain All the T&A, and Daily Dialogue Tests on Terrence Malick's "Knight of Cups"

Portman wasn't sent a script, but instead was sent movies, poems, books and music beforehand; when she arrived on set she'd receive approximately "30-pages-a-day with suggested lines of dialogue,"  and Portman said she was "free to choose what resonated with [her]."

Bale had no lines to learn, but instead had to react to whatever was resonating with the revolving cast: “I never had any lines to learn, but I would see other people coming [to set] and they’d have pages,” Bale said. “I would try to look over their shoulders to see what I was going to be being told that day, because I never knew at all.” Bale did say that this approach actually made his performance easier. “If it had been script with a character who doesn’t say very much, that would have been very challenging.”

On Los Angeles, and all the T&A (watch the trailer)

“Los Angeles is this great goldfish bowl and a very colorful backdrop,” Bale said. “There are superficial, decaying, and ugly elements, but within that, you get great beauty and an awful lot of substance. There’s spirituality where you would not expect to find it.”

When asked about all the various women that Rick (Bale) encounters (including Portman, Blanchett, Freida Pinto, Imogen Poots, Teresa Palmer, and others) and the T&A involved, Portman offered that, “Rick’s journey reflects the great diversity of the types of people—male and female—you find in Los Angeles, from the superficiality at a Hollywood party, and how women are treated there, to Cate Blanchett’s character, who has soul, generosity, and humanity,” Portman said. “The city can encompass both those extremes.”

Indiewire revealed that the European distributor is eyeing an April release date, so a springtime US release is probably in the (tarot) cards. And we'll finally get to see what Malick hedonism is like.

[via Vulture]