heart of man journey

Frequently Asked Questions

Q:  How long will I have access to The Journey Course? A:  You will receive 5 months of access (155 days) while you are making monthly payments of $24.99. Your 5 months of access begins on your purchase date. 

Q: I need (or want) more than 5 months to go through The Journey Course. How should I do that? A:  Enroll in Lifetime Access. Email [email protected] with a request for lifetime access and we will send you a custom link. 

Q:  I want to go through this with a group, does everyone need a subscription? A:  Yes! We take our terms of use seriously. Additionally, one of the signature features of this journey is a personalized assessment. This will be utilized throughout the curriculum to help users identify their core unwanted sexual fantasies and the key contributors to their unwanted sexual choices.

Q:  Is there group pricing? A:  Yes! We have group pricing for $180 per person for LIFETIME ACCESS. Group size must be 5+. This course was built for groups and most go through this material more than once. Email [email protected] and tell us how many people will be going through this course. Be sure to checkout our fantastic Group Leader's Guide after purchase.

Q:  Is there bulk pricing? A:  Yes. We have bulk pricing available for organizations, ministries, and denominations. Minimum orders are required. Email [email protected] and tell us how many people you hope to enroll in the course. Be sure to checkout our fantastic Group Leader's Guide after purchase. Q:  Is this something I can do with my accountability partner? A:  Yes! We strongly encourage you go through this with an ally. After you complete your order, download our participant and leader's guide to see our recommendations for how to set you and your ally up for success. Q:  Do I have to join the private Facebook group? A :  No. The Facebook group is designed to help answer questions that come up for people as they journey through the curriculum. We fully respect that some individuals and groups would prefer to stay off a private FB page as they journey through the curriculum Q :  How is The Journey Course different than other recovery programs? A: The premise of this guided journey is that embedded within your unwanted sexual behavior are clues to guide you to the freedom you seek. Other approaches to sexual integrity however are primarily centered on accountability, lust management, and learning about the nature of addiction. This leads to programs that more or less encourage you to combat, monitor, or suppress your lust. 

We are different because we are asking you to listen and study your lust. We believe unwanted sexual behavior can actually be a roadmap to healing, not a life sentence to sexual sin. Further, this program is comprehensive in its approach – there is an assessment tool, full length episodes, and detailed assignments that accompany you over a 5-7 month period of time. Unlike traditional “courses” that offer 20-40 minutes of content in short videos, this program has approximately 10 hours of material across 18 episodes. Q:  I am a therapist, coach, pastor, or small group leader...would this be a good course for my clients or participants to use? A:  Yes, we have many leaders who are doing just that! Here is a testimonial from Ken, a Licensed Professional Therapist has over 20 people going through The Journey Course groups in his practice. Here's what he has to say,  “ I am a Certified Sexual Addiction Therapist (CSAT) and have replaced my former curriculum with Journey into the Heart of Man and my group progress and participation has exploded. It is truly amazing the growth I see every week with over twenty individuals that I currently have in various groups.”  Q:  I am professional counselor, pastoral counselor, or life coach who wants to get trained to use this material and the sexual behavior self-assessment. Does Jay Stringer offer training? A:  Yes. Jay runs groups for leaders who are hoping to go deeper into their stories and grow their practice. After you complete the training groups, you will be eligible to become a Certified Journey Guide. As a Certified Journey Guide, we will do our best to pair you with participants who want to to through the Journey Course with a trained professional. Email us at [email protected] for more details.

Q:  Are there refunds? A:  All sales are final. If you're still considering purchasing the course, please watch the preview episode on the website, read Jay Stringer's book Unwanted , and take the Sexual Behavior Self-Assessment . If you appreciate those resources, we're confident you'll find tremendous value in the course.

Q: Can I transfer my purchase to another person? A: We'd love if you could, but no, use is for the purchaser only. If you want to buy it as a gift, contact our support team at [email protected] and we'll coordinate with you from there. Please allow 48 hours for a response, Monday through Friday.

Still have more questions? Feel free to email us!

The Bible App is completely free, with no advertising and no in-app purchases. Get the app

The Heart Of Man: Overcoming Shame And Finding Identity

Our shame is a bridge, not a barrier. It's the very place that God wants to meet, inviting us to leave behind our broken, legalistic and religious way of thinking and relating to Him. It's freedom from performance. Freedom from managing our behavior so we appear “acceptable” to God. Freedom from our addictions, compulsive behaviors, and double lives. Experience the 7-day journey into The Heart of Man based on the feature film re-releasing nationwide October 17, 2017. heartofmanmovie.com

We would like to thank The Heart of Man for providing this plan. For more information, please visit: http://heartofmanmovie.com/

Related Plans

Killing Kryptonite With John Bevere

Choosing Each Day: God or Self?

All Things New With John Eldredge

Whisper: How To Hear The Voice Of God By Mark Batterson

The Silent But Deadly Trio

How To Lead When You're Not In Charge

I Declare War: 4 Keys To Winning The Battle With Yourself

Daily Power By Craig Groeschel: Fuel For Your Soul

Spiritual Warfare Battle Plan

Dig Your Ditch

YouVersion uses cookies to personalize your experience. By using our website, you accept our use of cookies as described in our Privacy Policy

• About the Film
• Continue the Journey
• Frequently Asked Questions

CONTINUE THE JOURNEY

Welcome to the room of grace. the heart of man film experience reminds us all that shame no longer holds us hostage and we are all free to pursue life more fully. no matter where you are on your journey, we want to encourage you by surrounding you with people, ministries and resources that will support your journey of freedom., – the filmmakers, a guided journey for men and women out of unwanted sexual behavior., other resources, for those early on or just starting their journey, these tools will help you on your way., for those getting to know their story & learning to walk in freedom., privacy preference center, privacy preferences.

Director: Eric Esau

Writers: Eric Esau, Jason Pamer, Jonathan Sharpe (co-writer)

Composer: Tony Anderson

Starring: Robert Fleet, Serena Karnagy, Justin Torrence, William Paul Young, Jackie Hill Perry, Dr. Dan Allender

Genre: Documentary, Christian

Originally released in the United States in the latter half of last year, if The Heart of Man sounds familiar to you, then it may be because it has popped up in your recommended viewing list on Netflix or iTunes. Featuring the testimonies of many prominent Christian figures, including but not limited to William Paul Young, the author of The Shack , The Heart of Man is an odd film that breaks genre but seeks unity between God and the Prodigal Son. “I don’t think you’ll have seen a film like this,” Jason Pamer stated at the Sydney premiere, while actor, Justin Torrence, echoed sentiments about remaining open-minded.

A film that is also accompanied by a Participant’s Guide–a book that’s a “six-scene journey” structured similarly to a Bible Study–does The Heart of Man provide a confronting experience for Christian audiences, or is there a reason why this one may have been originally overlooked?

Content Guide

Violence/Scary Images: A man, in a trance, jumps off a cliff and battles the waves once in the ocean. A man is tricked into kissing a corpse. Maggots swarm a man’s body, causing him to panic. Physical assault–a man’s head is bashed against rocks during a fight, scarring his face and drawing blood. People talk about the real-life physical and sexual assault they have experienced in the past, some as children.

Language/Crude Humor: The s-word is said once.

Drug/Alcohol References: None.

Sexual Content: Several people (men and a woman) give their real-life testimonies about how they dealt with their sex-related sins. They speak openly and rather bluntly about pornography use, marital affairs, sexual assault, and casual sex. One talks about a homosexual relationship. A man is seen tempted by a woman. They both disrobe–the bare back of the woman is shown, while the man is seen shirtless. They kiss.

Spiritual Content: This is a Christian documentary containing the testimonies of people who have struggled and overcome their sin by understanding their identity in Christ. On screen, there is a silent, metaphorical retelling of the Prodigal Son.

Other Negative Content: None.

Positive Content: All the testimonies are gathered together and structured similarly to the story of the Prodigal Son; a tale about our separation from God due to our sinful desires, but His love is forever faithful, despite our apparent unworthiness.

Jason Pamer certainly didn’t over exaggerate The Heart of Man ’s defiance of genre convention. It’s a tough movie to define. The film operates mostly like a self-help documentary, though it’s brutally honest with its content and lacks any intent to manipulate the audience into a particular response. At its core is a collection of several unsanitized testimonies, all interwoven with each other, as the interviewees attempt to articulate their struggles with sexual-based addiction and the shame that prevented them from connecting with God.

To keep the film visually engaging, not resorting to a series of talking heads, these conversations are overlayed with a silent dramatic retelling of the Prodigal Son. Though it’s not a scene for scene Biblical account of the story. Rather, The Heart of Man takes advantage of the film medium and creates a pastiche of powerful images that express the essence of the original story.

For instance, an everyman figure plays the violin alongside an older man–The Father. It’s beautiful to watch them create music together, though the everyman’s interest wanes and his gaze is mysteriously drawn to the horizon, where an unknown, unexplored island beckons his attention. We know this story–it’s familiar. That island away from the presence of the Father will contain nothing but misery. The Heart of Man is a parable of a parable if you will; a metaphorical representation of a well-known Biblical tale.

It’s a deep, delightfully messy exploration into the human soul. While the testimonies are edited together to resemble a three-act structure, all resoundingly praising God’s love and forgiveness, this isn’t a solidified message, seeking to convert or necessarily preach to the audience. The Heart of Man mercifully isn’t one of those pushy Christian films. These are real people, sharing their experiences, still grappling with the metaphysical nature of God and their relationship with Him. On that level, it’s something that all Christians can relate to, and the film is driven by a desire to form a connection with the audience and to develop a sense of community; we’re all in this together.

The people interviewed are extremely frank about the sins that they have committed in the past, ranging from pornography usage to marital affairs. It’s confronting at first to hear such bold confessions, though it quickly becomes refreshing as these topics are rarely ever spoken about with such bluntness.

Jackie Hill Perry’s testimony was of particular note for me. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a woman speak about her struggles with an addiction to pornography, not only in Christian circles but also in society in general. Considering that some statistics state that upwards of 70% of young adult females have watched porn within the last six months, it’s a wonder why this issue isn’t broached more often. So I applaud The Heart of Man for providing a different viewpoint on a sin that affects so many.

On a technical level, The Heart of Man is incredibly beautiful. The cinematography is gorgeous, gently sweeping across luscious forests and ferocious oceans, or jarringly framing some of the horrors found in God’s absence. There’s no dialogue between the actors, though the movie’s soundtrack fulfills all of the communicative means. A technical marvel, it’s hard to fault this movie.

While this is a wonderful film from an objective standpoint, subjectively it may not resonate universally with audiences as much as the filmmakers might have hoped. As mentioned previously, it does not present a direct adaptation of the Prodigal Son. In many ways, the silent narrative in this film is a conglomeration of Biblical truths, with the Prodigal Son being the most prevalent, but it nonetheless strays from the some of the nuances found in the parable.

For people who identify with that story–the rebellious nature of the son, along with the humiliation endured and the humbled yet apprehensive walk back home–may take issue with the film tweaking these aspects. Instead, in the movie, the son leaves seemingly out of compulsion, and it’s the Father that steps in amongst the son’s sins and pulls him out of it. It’s not an incorrect point; several times throughout Scripture, God rescues Israel out of their oppression, sometimes even when they haven’t asked for rescue. But it’s disingenuous to say The Heart of Man is only pulling from the Prodigal Son narrative.

As much as the filmmakers tried to make this movie about the trappings of sin in general, it is predominantly about sexual sin, though there’s some wriggle room for the messages to also apply to addictive and repetitive, destructive behaviors. Throughout the film, I found myself doing some mental gymnastics in order to recall a time where I felt that level of unworthiness before God. On one hand, it’s comforting to see how I’ve grown in my relationship with Christ, yet on the other, this struggle to relate to the depths of suffering experienced by these people, feeling shackled by their sin, did, unfortunately, distance me from the film. “I just wasn’t feeling it,” to put it crudely.

That’s not to say that The Heart of Man isn’t useful for people who are more confident in their identity in Christ. As I’ve touched upon, it is wonderful for reflective purposes. There are also many beautiful images and moments that operate as great illustrations and will assist in communicative purposes. It also builds empathy and understanding about what people with addictions are going through in terms of their faith. Overall, The Heart of Man is a gorgeous film that any Christian (that is age appropriate) should see, though your level of engagement with the content is dependent upon your own personal experiences. For some, this will be a deep, impactful, life-changing film.

The Participant’s Guide

To clarify, it’s important to emphasize that this is a film study. While there was nothing that struck me as being theologically incorrect, the Participant’s Guide is rather filtered from the original source material. That is since The Heart of Man is not a close adaptation of the Biblical narrative, consisting of metaphors and testimonies, and then the Participant’s Guide is based off the film, the book is therefore now two artistic steps away from Scripture. There are no Biblical passages directly quoted within the guide (actually, there is one, but it’s not noted as such).

This is not a good or bad thing–this generalization of Biblical lessons may assist some people who struggle with the language contained within Scripture or are fairly new to the faith and feel rather daunted approaching an ancient text. Other times it’s refreshing to see what we can glean from another’s interpretation, much like sermons. But it’s just something to flag, because ultimately this guide doesn’t replace Scripture, and it’s important to refer back to God’s Word. Having an additional study about the Prodigal Son before watching the film may be a good workaround for those that are uncomfortable with the book’s lack of Bible quotations.

A larger concern involves how this study should be run. The writers suggest that the series can be approached as an individual or as a group, though it becomes clear as the weeks go on that it’s more intended for the latter setup. To quote from the guide’s introduction: “Authentic community is absolutely essential to begin breaking our painful, destructive patterns, so whether you are experiencing this journey individually or with a group, make sure to share with others what you are learning about yourself.” The book definitely encourages opening up to others, though participants may want to take note of the key suggestion there; that it needs to be an authentic community .

It’s a hardcore study designed to make people feel welcome enough to discuss their sexual sins. Other ailments of the soul could be applied, though the language adopted throughout the guide works best when it’s referring to addictive behaviors. As drug and alcohol rehab health workers will know, seeking a community is vitally important for the vast majority of sufferers, as it helps to manage their addiction. However, for Christians that are blessed to not experience this level of compulsion, and are merely going through the daily grind, then this study is too intense and sometimes overly dramatic for their average means. It’s not suitable for a normal, casual Bible Study.

Maybe think this one through before jumping right in. If you’re a facilitator, read the book first to determine whether it’s right for your group.

The problem, of course, is that people can’t always be trusted, and sadly there have been incidences of spiritual abuse within the Church. Care and discernment must be utilized when deciding whom to trust with our darkest secrets. Taking those concerns into account, if I may be so bold as to make a few suggestions, I believe that The Heart of Man ’s Participant’s Guide will work best under the following conditions:

• It must be run by a knowledgeable and experienced facilitator. While the guide tries its best to take a broader approach, attempting to not always be about sexual sins, the fact is that it is subconsciously catered to that market. In doing so, discussions surrounding this topic have a high chance of uncovering past trauma. Facilitators must be equipped to know what to do in these situations. It must be a safe space.
• Due to the personal nature of the questions, this guide may work best in a one-on-one set up, or a specialized support group. If one does have a desire to run this as a larger event, then it must be made clear from the start that the questions are very forthcoming. Therefore, by attending, people have consented to be willing to share at that level. Take note that the official website offers some guidance and support as to how to run this as a church-wide or “Table Experience” event.
• Consider doing this series as an intensive, two-day workshop as opposed to a seven-week course. This is due to how each study is structured. It’s not like a streak of sermons where each message turns back and ends with the Gospel message. While the movie has a three-act structure and eventually concludes with the good news of God’s forgiveness, the guide only analyzes a scene at a time, so there’s not as much of a resolution at the end of each session. For instance, in the third week, participants focus on what sins have pushed them over the edge, however, it’ll then be a few more weeks to learn about how God is still with them. That’s a long time for someone struggling with their faith to potentially ponder over their separation from God. While the content is heavy and requires some time to mull over its depth, a shorter time period than what the guide recommends may work better for those who are unclear about God’s salvation.

If an authentic community within a safe environment can be achieved, then this study has the potential to be a wonderful tool, one that will help people reconnect with God. It will change some people’s lives for the better. If you work in mental health, substance abuse clinics, or specialize in sex-related matters, and are looking for new ways to help others, then this movie and guide certainly deserves your attention. For others, it’s an insightful, thought-provoking look into how we fall victim to sin, though while some lessons will serve as reminders to not become complacent, other times the questions seem too intense to be relatable. A great study, but discernment must be adopted when considering its use.

The Bottom Line

Juliana purnell, leave a comment cancel reply.

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

GDPR & CCPA:

Privacy overview.

Literary Articles

• A Farewell to Arms (1)
• Absurd Drama (5)
• African Literature (11)
• Agamemnon (2)
• Agha Shahid Ali (1)
• American Literature (32)
• Amitav Ghosh (6)
• Anita Desai (1)
• Aristotle (6)
• Bengali Literature (4)
• British Fiction (20)
• Charles Dickens (8)
• Chaucer (1)
• Chomsky (11)
• Classics (12)
• Clear Light of the Day (1)
• Cotton Mather (1)
• Death of a Salesman (5)
• Derek Walcott (3)
• Derrida (1)
• Descartes (1)
• Dr. Samuel Johnson (7)
• Edward Said (1)
• Elaine Showalter (2)
• ELT Terms Difined (20)
• Emily Bronte (6)
• Emily Dickinson (3)
• English History (9)
• English Language (2)
• English Literature (2)
• Great Expectations (7)
• Greek Literature (7)
• Heart of Darkness (2)
• History of English Language (15)
• History of English literature (9)
• Indian Literature (18)
• Indian Literature in English (2)
• Indian Poetry in English (23)
• Irish Literature (4)
• John Donne (2)
• John Keats (5)
• John Locke (2)
• Kamala Das (17)
• Kim by Kipling (2)
• Latin American Literature (2)
• Life and time of Michael K (3)
• Linguistics (13)
• Literary Criticism (28)
• Literary Terms (7)
• Literary Theories (19)
• Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1)
• Machiavelli (2)
• Magic Realism (2)
• Marvell (2)
• Maupassant (1)
• Measure for Measure (3)
• Metaphysical poetry (3)
• Native Son (1)
• Nissim Ezekiel (4)
• Oedipus Rex (2)
• Othello (5)
• Phaedra by Seneca (3)
• Philosophy short notes (1)
• Postcolonial Reading (1)
• Postmodernist reading (2)
• Pride and Prejudice (4)
• Psychoanalytic Reading (1)
• Quartet (1)
• R K Narayan's The Guide (10)
• Red Badge of Courage (1)
• Riders to the Sea (1)
• Robert Frost (4)
• Roland Barthes (3)
• Romantic Literature (13)
• Romantic Poetry (4)
• Ronald Barthes (3)
• S .T . Coleridge (4)
• Samuel Beckett (1)
• Saul Bellow’s Seize the Day (1)
• Seamus Heaney (1)
• Seize the Day by Saul Bellow (4)
• Shakespeare (22)
• Shakespeare's Sonnets (6)
• Shelley (2)
• Song of Myself by Whitman (3)
• Sonnets (3)
• Sons and Lovers (5)
• Sophocles (2)
• South Asian Literature (2)
• Strange Pilgrims by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (3)
• T. S . Eliot (10)
• Teaching Language Through Literature (5)
• Tempest (4)
• Tennyson (1)
• The Ancient Mariner (5)
• The Great Gatsby (3)
• The Iliad (1)
• The Old Man And The Sea (1)
• The Playboy of the Western World (3)
• The Return of the Native (4)
• The Scarlet Letter (2)
• The Spanish Tragedy (1)
• The Turn of the Screw (3)
• The Waste Land (2)
• The Zoo Story by Adward Albee (4)
• Things Fall Apart (4)
• Thomas Hardy (4)
• Victorian Literature (5)
• W. J. Mitchell (1)
• W.B. Yeats (11)
• Waiting for Godot (3)
• Western Philosophy (13)
• William Blake (3)
• Wole Soyinka (5)
• Wordsworth (11)
• Workhouse Ward (1)

Friday, June 19, 2009

Conrad’s use of journey motif in heart of darkness, writer's profile.

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Trouble logging in?

By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.

Email not verified

Let's keep in touch.

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

• Upcoming Movies and TV shows
• Trivia & Rotten Tomatoes Podcast
• Media News + More

By clicking "Sign Me Up," you are agreeing to receive occasional emails and communications from Fandango Media (Fandango, Vudu, and Rotten Tomatoes) and consenting to Fandango's Privacy Policy and Terms and Policies . Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences.

OK, got it!

Movies / TV

No results found.

• What's the Tomatometer®?
• Login/signup

Movies in theaters

• Opening this week
• Top box office
• Coming soon to theaters
• Certified fresh movies

Movies at home

• Fandango at Home
• Netflix streaming
• Prime Video
• Most popular streaming movies
• What to Watch New

Certified fresh picks

• Hit Man Link to Hit Man
• Am I OK? Link to Am I OK?
• Jim Henson Idea Man Link to Jim Henson Idea Man

New TV Tonight

• Star Wars: The Acolyte: Season 1
• Ren Faire: Season 1
• Sweet Tooth: Season 3
• Clipped: Season 1
• Queenie: Season 1
• Mayor of Kingstown: Season 3
• Becoming Karl Lagerfeld: Season 1
• Criminal Minds: Season 17
• Power Book II: Ghost: Season 4
• Erased: WW2's Heroes of Color: Season 1

Most Popular TV on RT

• Eric: Season 1
• Dark Matter: Season 1
• Tires: Season 1
• Evil: Season 4
• Star Wars: Ahsoka: Season 1
• Trying: Season 4
• Best TV Shows
• Most Popular TV
• TV & Streaming News

Certified fresh pick

• Star Wars: The Acolyte: Season 1 Link to Star Wars: The Acolyte: Season 1
• All-Time Lists
• Binge Guide
• Comics on TV
• Five Favorite Films
• Video Interviews
• Weekend Box Office
• Weekly Ketchup
• What to Watch

The Bad Boys Movies Ranked by Tomatometer

All 73 Disney Animated Movies Ranked

What to Watch: In Theaters and On Streaming

House of the Dragon : Season 2 First Reviews: Gorgeous and Expertly Crafted, with Epic Dragon Fights

Renewed and Cancelled TV Shows 2024

• Trending on RT
• The Acolyte First Reviews
• Vote: 1999 Movie Showdown
• The Watchers

The Heart of Man

Where to watch.

Rent The Heart of Man on Prime Video, or buy it on Prime Video.

Critics Reviews

Audience reviews, cast & crew.

Justin Torrence

Serena Karnagy

Robert Fleet

Serena Taylor

Screenwriter

Upscale Magazine

Unveiling the Heart of a Man: A Raw Exploration of Love and Relationships from a Male Perspective

Step into the forbidden zone of storytelling with “The Heart of A Man,” masterminded by Ardre Orie. Held at Synchronicity Theatre on May 18th from 2:00 pm to 7:00 pm for one night only, this production invites audiences on a transformative journey of realization, triumph, inspiration, and ultimately, love. Award-winning author, playwright, and director Ardre Orie crafts an immersive experience, offering women a uniquely orchestrated opportunity to delve into a man’s true feelings and innermost thoughts.

It takes a village to direct and produce a production like “The Heart of a Man.” Let’s meet the talented trio who helped Ardre achieve this milestone. Directed by Stevie Baggs, Jr., a veteran and acclaimed actor known for his roles in Tyler Perry’s “Ruthless” and STARZ’s “BMF” series, the film was produced by multifaceted creatives Rashed Randle and Karon Joseph Riley.

During Mental Health Awareness Month, “The Heart of A Man” emerges as a powerful testament to the imperative of acknowledging and empathizing with the societal challenges confronting men. Through its all-male cast, the production adeptly navigates audiences through a narrative journey of awareness, triumph, and love, delivering stirring monologues and heartfelt disclosures. Ardre Orie, renowned author, playwright, and director, orchestrates an exceptional performance that intricately weaves the authentic sentiments of the male psyche and heart into a narrative that profoundly resonates. This production offers a distinctive opportunity for women to delve into the deepest emotions and thoughts of men, nurturing understanding and empathy across gender lines. With compelling narratives, sincere performances, and captivating fashion highlights, “The Heart of A Man” stands as a testament to the transformative and enlightening power of storytelling.

In conclusion, “The Heart of a Man” is a groundbreaking production that provides a raw and authentic exploration of dating, marriage, sexuality, and love from a male perspective. Visionary creator Ardre Orie, director Stevie Baggs, Jr., and producers Rashed Randle and Karon Joseph Riley have skillfully crafted a film that delves deep into the emotional and psychological landscapes of men. By challenging societal norms, it initiates a much-needed dialogue about the male experience in relationships, making it essential viewing for anyone seeking to understand the heart of a man. Discover what audiences are saying about this groundbreaking production.

To delve deeper into Ardre Orie’s journey with “The Heart of a Man” and beyond, visit her website at https://ardre-orie.mykajabi.com/we-ve-got-stories-to-tell

Yours in mental wellness and style,

Dr. Courtney A. Hammonds Senior Fashion Editor, Upscale Magazine

We value your insights! Share your thoughts on this article by leaving a comment below. Your feedback is both welcome and appreciated.

Disclaimer: The images and videos featured in this video are not the property of Upscale Magazine. This content is used in accordance with fair use guidelines for educational purposes, review, research, and discussion.

2 People reacted on this

I am a professional guest blogger with over 4 years of experience. I can write high-quality guest posts for your website that will help you rank higher in google search results and I offer a guest posting service that can help you achieve these goals. I would love to talk with you about how we could help you improve your website’s ranking and get more customers. https://upscalemagazine.com/the-heart-of-a-man-emotional-journey-insightful-theater/#comments Would you be interested in hearing more about my services?

Best Regards,

This is a fabulous article. Talk about beautiful black people. Thanks Upscale for keeping us in the know.

Leave a Comment

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Terrence Malick’s ‘The Thin Red Line’: The Traumatic and Poetic Journey into the Heart of Man

By Sven Mikulec

Twenty years have passed between Days of Heaven , Terrence Malick’s second feature film, and The Thin Red Line , his great 1998 comeback, the third film in a rich, influential and thoroughly unique career of one of the most interesting, inspirational and poetic filmmakers of our time. Twenty years is a very long time , but as The Thin Red Line proves, genuine talent and a true filmmaker’s heart isn’t something that withers and dies easily. Always careful about making bold statements and generalizations on the subject of filmmaking, ever so restrained in stating judgments about the unprecedented or unmatched qualities of certain films, we somehow feel safe to say The Thin Red Line is the greatest anti-war film we’ve ever seen. The same year Steven Spielberg blew the world away with the WW2 adrenaline bomb called Saving Private Ryan , Terrence Malick introduced a film organically different. More intimate, less sentimental; more soulful, less flashy. The Thin Red Line is a traumatic, contemplative, visually stunning journey into the heart of man. In the story of a company of American soldiers fighting the remaining Japanese troops in Guadalcanal, Malick opted for a more profound, philosophical approach, relying on great acting performances, meaningful imagery, and Hans Zimmer’s great score. At the end of the long road from concept creation to the film’s premiere, Malick got a comeback more significant than anyone could have hoped for, Jim Caviezel became a sought-ought commodity after delivering the performance of his lifetime, and the joint effort was rewarded with as much as seven Oscar nominations.

But how did it all began? It was back in 1978 when producer Bobby Geisler first contacted Terrence Malick, suggesting he should direct a film adaptation of In the Boom Boom Room , a play by David Rabe. The filmmaker refused, but ten years later met with Geisler once again. The producer, accompanied by partner John Roberdeau, wanted Malick to write and direct a film based on D. M. Thomas’ 1981 novel The White Hotel , but the stubborn director declined the offer once again, offering to write either an adaptation of Tartuffe (The Impostor / The Hypocrite), the acclaimed comedy by the French giant Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, or a war film based on the American novelist James Ramon Jones’ The Thin Red Line . Geisler and Roberdeau agreed to the second proposal and gave Malick a quarter of a million dollars to write the screenplay. Malick started working on the project at the very beginning of 1989, and five months later, sent his 300-pages-long first draft to his producers. Even though Malick’s relationship with Geisler and Rogerdeau was good, as the producing team believed in the project and full-heartedly supported the filmmaker’s vision by supplying an abundance of additional literature, Malick, however, took his time with creating The Thin Red Line , working on numerous other projects simultaneously.

It was 1990 when the filmmaker approached the original author Jones’ widow Gloria and daughter Kaylie to talk about the film adaptation, but the process took a lot of time to develop. In January 1995, Geisler and Roberdeau reached the end of their financial stability and patience with Malick’s mix of meticulousness and indecisiveness, so they decided to approach Malick’s former agent, co-founder of Orion Pictures and now chairman of a newly established production company Phoenix Pictures, Mike Medavoy to help bring the project to life. This was a crucial moment for the production of The Thin Red Line , as Medavoy supplied the team with a starting budget needed to get the film off the ground. Thanks to Medavoy’s connection with Sony Pictures, Malick finally had the financial backing needed and started scouting locations, checking out Panama and Costa Rica before finally choosing northern Australia as the home of this Guadalcanal-placed story. In April 1997, just a couple of months before the shooting should have started, Sony backed away as new chairman John Calley lost faith in Malick’s film. However, Medavoy and Malick solved the problem with a trip to Los Angeles, where the pitching process left The Thin Red Line in the hands of 20th Century Fox. The 52-million-dollar budget was covered with a joint effort by Fox, a Japanese Company called Pioneer Films and Medavoy’s Phoenix Pictures. The filmmaker’s dedication to the project and the difficult task of channeling his focus to it, as well as the obvious budgeting problems discussed above, might have been a serious issue that left the film’s future uncertain, but a completely different kind of a problem arose when it came to the issue of casting.

As we’ve stated earlier, two decades have passed since Malick’s classic sophomore picture Days of Heaven , and the anticipation and interest both from the public and from the members of the film industry were at their peak. This is the reason why Malick encountered a problem not many other filmmakers ever had to face: a whole gallery of established and talented movie stars lined up to express their interest to join the project. There are several interesting anecdotes regarding the casting process which serve as best examples of the level of eagerness and anticipation of movie stars. “Give me a dollar and tell me where to show up,” Sean Penn allegedly told Malick when they sat down for a meeting. Stars like Brad Pitt, Gary Oldman, George Clooney and Al Pacino all offered to work for a fraction of what they would usually take, while some of them actually expressed the desire to work pro bono. Bruce Willis offered to pay for first-class tickets for the casting crew just to get a couple of lines for the film. Matthew McConaughey skipped a day of filming A Time to Kill to see Malick, Leonardo DiCaprio came from Mexico, where he was making Romeo + Juliet , to talk to Malick at the Austin airport.

A staged reading was held with Martin Sheen handling screen directions. On the other hand, the large concentration of stars within a film whose first version had to be cut down ostensibly resulted in several actors being either altogether cut from the film or having their screen time severely limited. Bill Pullman, Mickey Rourke and Lukas Haas completely disappeared from the final cut. John Travolta and George Clooney were reduced to brief symbolic appearances, and Adrien Brody, whom Malick presented the role as a significant one that “carries the movie,” was shocked to see his two lines that survived, as he testified in his 2001 interview for The Independent . “I was so focused and professional, I gave everything to it, and then to not receive everything… in terms of witnessing my own work. It was extremely unpleasant because I’d already begun the press for a film that I wasn’t really in. Terry obviously changed the entire concept of the film. I had never experienced anything like that.” Sacrifices needed to be made and it was the filmmaker’s job to make them. Malick didn’t even flinch to do what he thought was needed, and many were simply grateful to have been given a chance to participate in making the film. Woody Harrelson and John Savage, in fact, stayed for an extra month after they had shot all of their scenes just to watch Malick work.

I don’t know if this will make sense the way a normal film does. Terry’s wildly intuitive and impressionistic. He wrote a script based on the novel, and he’s making a film based on the script, but he’s not shooting the script. He’s shooting the essence of the script, and he’s also shooting the movie that’s up there on the hill. He’s trying to transcend the book and the script and himself. He’s just out there. He’s a wild cat . — John Cusack on Malick

Terrence Malick is oblique. He would start shooting the scene, but watch the sky. And about six, when the sky was just right, he’d say ‘That’s enough of this scene, let’s revisit the scene we shot the other day.’ Nothing will match, but that’s fine. He was finishing the scenes in golden light. He couldn’t tell the studio he was only going to shoot in golden light, they would have freaked, so he would hold these scenes off. The actor didn’t get to do what he wanted to do, John Toll didn’t get to photograph it the way he wanted to, and Terry didn’t get to shoot it as he’d written it. All those elements were thrown out, and the only new element was this light that’s what it was about. — Nick Nolte on Malick

  Accompanied by his Academy Award-winning cinematographer John Toll ( Legends of the Fall , Braveheart , The Last Samurai , Gone Baby Gone ), whom he hired at the beginning of 1997, Malick started principal photography in June the very same year. The Thin Red Line was shot for a hundred days in Australia, twenty-four days in the Solomon Islands and three days in the US, and the actual battlegrounds of Guadalcanal were inspected and recorded, but both malaria concerns and logistics issues made it impossible to shoot the entire film on site. When the filming was finished, editor Leslie Jones came to Malick with a five-hour-long first cut and then spent seven months editing under Malick’s guidance, with Billy Bob Thornton hired to provide three hours of voice-over material, which was later scrapped. Editor Billy Webber joined the team, and 13 months of post-production was spent on the excruciating editing process, with Malick apparently cutting out scenes with dialogue whenever possible. In December 1998, cinematographer Toll did the first color correction and the film was ultimately given a limited release on Christmas, with the wide release scheduled for the middle of January 1999.

The Thin Red Line was largely greeted by the critics and made a solid box office result but the film’s significance and legacy were only to be established in the years that followed. Written and directed by Malick, with Toll’s cinematography, Zimmer’s music and led by a gallery of very talented actors such as Caviezel, Penn, Ben Chaplin, Elias Koteas and Nick Nolte, The Thin Red Line is unlike any other WW2 film we’ve ever encountered. It’s unlike any other war film, or anti-war film, as well. It wouldn’t be a shameful exaggeration to say it’s unlike any other film we’ve seen.

A monumentally important screenplay. Screenwriter must-read: Terrence Malick’s screenplay for The Thin Red Line [ PDF ]. (NOTE: For educational and research purposes only ). The Blu-ray of the film is available from the Criterion Collection and other online retailers. Absolutely our highest recommendation.

DEATH AND THE MASTER

“The herculean struggle to get Terrence Malick’s first movie in two decades—a film version of James Jones’s war epic The Thin Red Line —to the screen was complicated not only by its elusive director’s reticence but also by the two producers who believe they made it all happen.” — Death and the Master by James Wolcott

JOHN TOLL, ASC

Since The Thin Red Line is one of my favorite anti-war films of all time, I wanted to know a bit more about the process of making it, about his working relationship with Malick. “He’s just such an incredible visualist,” Toll starts by stating what most fans of Malick’s work would perhaps deem obvious. “Many of his ideas are spontaneous. He definitely had specific ideas about the visual approach to the film, but he also wanted to leave himself open to opportunities that we would find as we were shooting. It was like a combination of being very specific about what we were going to do and being very open to when new ideas came about.” This immediately reminds me of James Mangold and what he recently told me about the importance of being ready to adapt to new circumstances and new ideas that spring out in the process of making a film: “[Filmmakers] had an idea about what a scene was supposed to be, and it could be a very brilliant and informed idea, but then some kind of magic is happening and they resolutely ignore that magic because it contradicts or complicates their original plan. I really think it’s the director’s responsibility to take advantage of whatever magic is happening and make it look like their plan. There’s no greater myth than that the director saw it all in advance.” Malick and Mangold, it seems, would get along just fine. “He was very open to adapting to any opportunities that might happen because of the unique nature of the locations and the amount of time we had,” Toll continues. “He sees everything in terms of nature, natural environments. We were working in incredible exterior environments, and when things would change in those environments, he would be eager to take advantage of those things.” — John Toll: ‘There’s No Difference Between Feature Films and TV Shows—It’s All Filmmaking to Me’

  The following is an interview from American Cinematographer © 1999 ASC, written by Stephen Pizzello, ‘John Toll, ASC details his experiences on The Thin Red Line , an existential combat film that marks the long-awaited return of director Terrence Malick.’ Subscribing to American Cinematographer is highly recommended.

The Battle of Guadalcanal was one of World War II’s pivotal conflicts. Early in 1942, Japanese forces in the South Pacific were advancing toward the Solomon Islands, which had been selected as the strategic site of an airfield that would extend the range of the Axis power’s air force. When U.S. intelligence relayed this information back to Washington, America’s military brain trust decided that the airfield, which would threaten Australian sea lanes, had to be controlled—at any cost. Mobilizing much more quickly than the Japanese had anticipated, the U.S. sent in the First Marine Division, which quickly took over the lightly defended airfield at Guadalcanal’s Lunga Point. The Japanese soon mounted a counteroffensive that led to six months of brutal combat, during which the Marines managed to repel wave after wave of seasoned troops. After a gradual buildup of forces by both sides, the Americans finally hammered out a decisive victory. The Thin Red Line is the story of a rifle company within the Army’s 25th Division, which arrived on Guadalcanal in November of 1942 to reinforce the Marines. At that point in the battle, the thousands of Japanese troops who were still on the island had adopted defensive tactics, retreating into the territory’s grassy hills. There, they would face a torturous attrition exacted by malaria, starvation and the Americans, who were ordered to flush them out. This historical event served as the backdrop of James Jones’s 1962 novel, a semi-autobiographical work which offers some searing insights into the human condition. Director Terrence Malick ( Badlands , Days of Heaven ), who hadn’t helmed a motion picture since 1978, made the book the basis of his screenplay, which generated a loud buzz in Hollywood. Malick’s long-awaited return to active duty lured in some of the industry’s biggest stars, including John Cusack, George Clooney, Woody Harrelson, Nick Nolte, Sean Penn and John Travolta, as well as such capable but lesser-known actors as Adrien Brody, Jim Caviezel, Ben Chaplin, Elias Koteas, Jared Leto and John C. Reilly. In selecting a director of photography for his haunting, elegiacal war drama, Malick chose two-time Academy Award-winning director of photography John Toll, ASC ( Legends of the Fall , Braveheart ), whose work on The Thin Red Line recently earned him both the New York Film Critics’ and National Society of Film Critics’ awards for Best Cinematography. Toll recently spoke with AC about working with the reclusive director and supervising the lengthy and often arduous location shoot. setREVStartSize({c: 'rev_slider_229_2',rl:[1240,1024,768,480],el:[868],gw:[1240],gh:[868],type:'standard',justify:'',layout:'fullwidth',mh:"0"});if (window.RS_MODULES!==undefined && window.RS_MODULES.modules!==undefined && window.RS_MODULES.modules["revslider2292"]!==undefined) {window.RS_MODULES.modules["revslider2292"].once = false;window.revapi229 = undefined;if (window.RS_MODULES.checkMinimal!==undefined) window.RS_MODULES.checkMinimal()}   How did you land the assignment to photograph The Thin Red Line ? I knew one of the producers, Grant Hill. He’s from Australia, and he worked on the first picture I shot, Wind, which was filmed there. After that project, he came over to the States, where he’s been [a unit production manager] on films like Titanic and The Ghost and the Darkness . He’d been working with Terrence Malick on The Thin Red Line for about six months, and he called me when they began looking at directors of photography. Terry had already talked to several cinematographers when I finally got on the phone with him, but we just happened to hit it off. Was that call your first encounter with Malick? Yes, I didn’t know anything about his personality. I’d seen Badlands and Days of Heaven , of course, and they’re both great pictures. Whenever you see films like those, you always think, ‘Well, it would be great to work with a director like that, because he’s obviously interested in making films, as opposed to just commercial product.’ Back when Terry made those pictures, there wasn’t such a clear line between commercial pictures and ‘thinking’ pictures; nowadays, there’s a real distinction between those types of films. I understand that the film industry is a business, but we don’t all want to go through our careers just making commercial projects. The idea of making the type of picture that Terry seemed to be going for with The Thin Red Line was obviously desirable. I’m sure that the other cinematographers he spoke to were just as enthusiastic about working with him as I was, but I just happened to get lucky. When did you finally meet Malick in person? What were your first impressions of him? I was actually working in Tennessee, and I had to come back to L.A. one weekend. Terry was living in Austin, Texas, so I stopped off there and we spent a day talking about the project. I didn’t know what to expect, but I found him to be very low-key, personable and unpretentious. He’s a straightforward person, and he was extremely collaborative right from the start. It was always, ‘Well, what do you think? Here’s what I’m thinking.’ He never said anything like, ‘Okay, we’re going to do this and this and this.’ His approach is a bit more nonlinear. He doesn’t have a precisely defined vision of things from the very beginning, but he’s intuitive and knows where he wants to go with the material. The specifics are things that he finds along the way. He feels the direction, can see it out there, and knows that as he moves toward it things will become more clearly defined. He attempts to plot every stage of the trip before you begin, and then sort of fine-tunes his approach on the journey. It’s a process of discovery, and he feels that it’s a bit pointless to define the parameters any further until you’re closer to your objective. Did your director’s 20-year absence from the industry have any effect on the production? Not really. One of the great things about this project was that several key members of the filmmaking team [production designer Jack Fisk, assistant director Skip Cosper, casting director Dianne Crittenden and editor Billy Weber] had worked with Terry on his previous films. So even though it had been two decades since Terry had made a picture, he came back into this core unit. They just sort of picked up where they’d left off, and we didn’t really feel that 20-year gap. Of course, there was 20 years of technology that he wasn’t particularly familiar with [laughs], but he’s a great filmmaker and he picked up those types of things very quickly and intuitively. Were you immediately drawn to the script? The idea of this particular project was really interesting to me, and not just because it was a war movie. I remembered reading the James Jones novel when it first came out, and finding it to be just fantastic. I wasn’t in the film industry at the time, but I recall thinking that it would make a great motion picture. A film adaptation was actually made in 1964, but it was a pretty low-budget version, and I was a bit disappointed with it. The book is an incredibly realistic depiction of the experience of combat. Jones was a member of the Army’s 25th Division; he was at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii during the attack on Pearl Harbor, and he also participated in the Battle of Guadalcanal, so From Here to Eternity and The Thin Red Line are both based on his firsthand experiences. The most interesting thing about The Thin Red Line is the way it gets into all of these soldiers’ different personalities. While we were shooting the picture, Terry and I kept talking about how interior the narrative was; there’s an enormous amount of material in the book about what the characters are experiencing internally—as opposed to what comes out in their conversations, which usually represents an entirely different aspect of their personalities. Terry wanted the viewers to know what was happening within the minds of the characters without necessarily presenting those thoughts through dialogue. The characters in this story are very well-drawn and diverse. Some are heroes, some aren’t, and some are just there to do their job and get out as quickly as possible. It’s really a story about the tragedy of war. I got very caught up in the book when I read it, particularly the realistic aspects of being involved in that kind of experience. It was a very truthful story that presented all of the good stuff and all of the bad stuff. You just knew that Jones had been there. setREVStartSize({c: 'rev_slider_230_3',rl:[1240,1024,768,480],el:[],gw:[1240],gh:[868],type:'standard',justify:'',layout:'fullscreen',offsetContainer:'',offset:'',mh:"0"});if (window.RS_MODULES!==undefined && window.RS_MODULES.modules!==undefined && window.RS_MODULES.modules["revslider2303"]!==undefined) {window.RS_MODULES.modules["revslider2303"].once = false;window.revapi230 = undefined;if (window.RS_MODULES.checkMinimal!==undefined) window.RS_MODULES.checkMinimal()}   From what you’ve said about Malick’s personality, I’m assuming he isn’t big on storyboards. Actually, we did storyboard a few sections of the film. At the beginning of the picture, the troops are on a transport ship on the way to Guadalcanal, and there’s a big landing sequence. We storyboarded that because we didn’t have the resources to have the numbers of real ships and transports that we needed; we had to do some CGI, so we used the sketches to simplify our lives. Whenever you have a sequence on the water, you can immediately get into trouble if you’re not prepared. What other kinds of prep work did you do? There were a lot of conversations, and we also scouted in Guadalcanal, which was an unbelievable experience. The place has changed, but not a whole lot. It’s a beautiful island, but it’s extremely tropical and not very developed, because the region has one of the highest malaria rates in the world. During the war, enormous numbers of people came down with malaria; it was worse for the Japanese, because they weren’t well-supplied. That was one of the biggest drawbacks in their battle plan, and many of those crack troops wound up just starving to death. It was a basically a win or die situation, because the Japanese simply would not surrender. One of the things that struck us immediately during the Guadalcanal scout was how loaded with color this tropical environment was; after all, we’re used to seeing black-and-white newsreels of World War II combat. At one point, we did talk about shooting the picture in black-and-white, but that notion didn’t really take hold. The idea of all of this violence taking place in such a rich and colorful environment was very striking, and we felt that representing the story any other way just wouldn’t be accurate. We got a lot of ideas about tones and colors as we explored the area. Eventually, you opted to shoot most of the film in Australia. What led to that decision? We didn’t want to work in Guadalcanal for all of the same reasons that you wouldn’t want to go there during a war. There’s still a 50 percent rate of malaria, and it just wasn’t feasible logistically if we wanted to have the kind of technical support we knew we’d need. It’s still a bit difficult to get on and off the island, and we had some scenes that involved 200 or 300 extras. We would have had to bring everybody to Guadalcanal, and financially it just didn’t make sense. The real battlefields depicted in the book basically consist of grassy hills, and we began looking all over the world for that type of terrain. When we went to Australia, which is just 1,000 miles from the Solomon Islands, we found the same types of terrain—beaches, beautiful coral reefs, and grassy hills on the north coast near Queensland. Australia also has some great crews and resources, and a good lab, Atlab, right there in Sydney. It made an enormous amount of sense to shoot there. I still knew a lot of people from my experience on Wind, such as gaffer Mick Morris and key grip David Nichols, and many of them were hired for this picture. In the end, we wound up shooting for 80 days in Australia and another 20 in Guadalcanal. Did you have any specific visual inspirations for the look of the film? During the shoot, Jack Fisk brought us this book called Images of War: The Artist’s Vision of World War II [1992, edited by Ken McCormick and Hamilton Darby Perry], which presents 200 paintings by many different artists. These were artists who spent time in the front lines and came back with this fantastic artwork depicting the scenes they had witnessed, including many combat situations. All of the artists had different and unique styles. We didn’t necessarily try to reproduce these pieces of art, but they did give us good ideas about color schemes and so on. The illustrations basically served as a guide to the kind of atmosphere we were after. We’d looked at many photographs from the war, but they seemed too detailed somehow, and I wanted the imagery of our film to be a bit less clearly defined. The paintings were great because they were much more impressionistic and abstract in a way that I found more interesting than the photographs. For example, there was one drawing of Japanese prisoners sitting on the ground, and the light they were drawn in—bright contrasty sunlight which left their faces in shadow—looked very similar to the light conditions we were shooting in. There was detail in the prisoners’ faces, but the highlights of the background were bright and burned-out. I thought it looked fantastic. In some scenes [that I’d shot to that point], I had lit the actors’ faces or had used fill in situations with heavy contrast, but I’d begun doing it less and less because I started to like the way the film looked when I didn’t use fill—overexposing quite a bit, getting detail in the shadows and letting the highlights burn out. It looked much less controlled in an interesting way. After seeing the drawing, which was a much more exaggerated version of what we’d been doing photographically, I went with less and less added light. setREVStartSize({c: 'rev_slider_231_4',rl:[1240,1024,768,480],el:[],gw:[1240],gh:[868],type:'standard',justify:'',layout:'fullscreen',offsetContainer:'',offset:'',mh:"0"});if (window.RS_MODULES!==undefined && window.RS_MODULES.modules!==undefined && window.RS_MODULES.modules["revslider2314"]!==undefined) {window.RS_MODULES.modules["revslider2314"].once = false;window.revapi231 = undefined;if (window.RS_MODULES.checkMinimal!==undefined) window.RS_MODULES.checkMinimal()}   How did those ideas factor into your overall stylistic approach? Terry has a basic honesty, which is part of the reason that we get along. We were trying to re-create this historical event in a way that was truthful. The film is not a documentary, but we wanted it to have the integrity of a great documentary. We didn’t necessarily want to shoot it like a documentary, but we tried to lend the story a natural kind of realism. We sought out to capture the book’s honest depiction of the various types of reactions to the combat experience—the full range of human emotions. War itself, and the infantryman’s experience of it, is probably as fundamental and basic as you can get in terms of the human condition and how people react to its extremes. It pushes people to their limits, and what emerges can be very surprising in both good and bad ways. Somehow, we had to weave that sense of honesty into the visual presentation. Terry and I agreed that this film really needed to feel as realistic as possible. Naturally, there is a certain amount of visual stylization in the film, but we tried to lend the images an integrity so that viewers could believe that they were watching a real event—without feeling as if they were being overly manipulated by a great filmmaker. I sometimes see great visual films that are obviously so well-stylized and well-controlled that I feel slightly overmanipulated; it might be fantastic, beautiful work, but in my mind I don’t feel as if I’m watching reality. Why did you choose to shoot in true anamorphic rather than Super 35? We chose straight anamorphic over Super 35 because I don’t really like the idea of having an optical step at the end of the answer-print process. I want to know that what we’re seeing during dailies is definitely what we’re going to get in our original neg prints. Terry and I had always planned that this would be a widescreen picture because we wanted to see the characters within their environments; after all, that’s the major focus of the story. What kind of camera package did you assemble for the shoot? Everything came from Panavision in Los Angeles. We took a couple of lightweight Platinum camera bodies, one for the Steadicam and one for the handheld stuff. I still really like the Gold camera, so I used one of those as my primary sound and dolly camera. [Cinematographer] Gary Capo headed up our second unit, and he had a couple of Panastars and an Arri. In terms of the lenses, we used Primos as well as C-series lenses on the Steadicam. We also had 3:1 and 11:1 zooms, but we didn’t use them very much. It was pretty much a wide-angle movie, so we shot mainly with wider lenses, like the 40mm and 50mm. Our close-ups were mainly done with the 75mm or 100mm. We were constantly fighting to get as much of the geography into the frame as we could. Every time we put on a tighter lens it just felt as if we were missing something. There’s quite a bit of camera movement in the picture. Were you trying to create a subjective point of view? Right from the beginning, we talked a lot about making the viewers feel as if they were watching this story from close up, almost as if they were participants. A lot of what the characters go through emotionally is unspoken, so it was necessary to convey those moments in a visual way. We wanted the camera to tell the story and yet somehow be part of the story—almost as if the audience was making the same journey as the characters. Terry and I talked extensively about creating a sense of movement throughout the whole picture. He loves to speak in metaphors, and he kept saying, ‘It’s like moving down a river, and the picture should have that same kind of flow.’ How did you achieve that sensation technically? During prep, we had talked about various ways to create that kind of style, but we never settled on a single approach. On the first couple of days of the schedule, we shot some scenes with a moving camera on a dolly, and some with stationary cameras incorporating conventional coverage and angles. It was all technically correct, and there was nothing wrong with the scenes, but when we viewed the footage, it sometimes felt very ‘staged’ and overly structured for the camera. We knew we wanted something more, so we decided to loosen up our approach a bit. As a result, there’s a lot of Steadicam and handheld work in the picture. We had a great Australian Steadicam operator named Brad Shields. We allowed the camera to explore a bit, and Terry encouraged the actors to try something different if they felt like it. At times, the camera would drift from one actor to another; we might not get conventional masters or coverage, but it didn’t seem that important. Every scene became a unique situation, and we just shot what seemed to be most appropriate for a particular sequence. We allowed the camera to follow the emotional thread of a scene without worrying about much else. What seemed to emerge from that was a feeling of unpredictability which completely supported the idea that Guadalcanal was a strange and dangerous place that these characters suddenly found themselves in. setREVStartSize({c: 'rev_slider_232_5',rl:[1240,1024,768,480],el:[],gw:[1240],gh:[868],type:'standard',justify:'',layout:'fullscreen',offsetContainer:'',offset:'',mh:"0"});if (window.RS_MODULES!==undefined && window.RS_MODULES.modules!==undefined && window.RS_MODULES.modules["revslider2325"]!==undefined) {window.RS_MODULES.modules["revslider2325"].once = false;window.revapi232 = undefined;if (window.RS_MODULES.checkMinimal!==undefined) window.RS_MODULES.checkMinimal()}   Terry got into that style of shooting immediately; he has a rather spontaneous and unpredictable personality, so the idea made a lot of sense to him. Using Steadicam and handheld camera certainly isn’t a new idea, but the challenge was in shooting scenes that way without drawing unnecessary attention to the techniques themselves. I wanted to use the fluid, mobile camera movement as part of the overall style of the film, but in a way that supported the story. Those techniques are very effective during a key sequence in which the Americans finally overtake the Japanese in a bivouac area. That scene is basically the Japanese soldiers’ last stand. Some of them are dying of starvation, some commit suicide, some surrender and others decide to fight to the last man. I think we really captured the chaos and tragedy of that type of battle. No one really wants to be there, but they have to follow orders, and whether given individuals survive or get killed is really just a matter of chance. The whole sequence was done with either a handheld camera and/or the Steadicam—primarily the Steadicam—and Brad Shields did a great job on it. The Americans are running into the area and the Japanese are all around them, so you don’t know if the guy next to you is friend or foe. Once we set up for that scene, we had the actors go in and improvise action. We then kept repeating the sequence over and over, following different characters through this nightmarish situation. It was semi-controlled chaos, and it wasn’t over-rehearsed to the point where everyone always knew what they were going to do. There were many extras in the scene, a lot of people firing at each other, and various guys taking some predetermined hits. We just let the camerawork be as free-form as possible. You also made extensive and interesting use of the Akela crane in the film. The Akela was a great asset. One of our biggest challenges was a daytime battle sequence in these grassy hills. The Japanese were in the hills, and the Americans had to go up there, find them, and kill them. To deal with those scenes, we brought in the Akela, which came with two American technicians. The terrain was very uneven; the grass was about waist-high, and underneath it there were a lot of rocks and holes. We spent weeks climbing up and falling down these hills. At times we could use the Steadicam really well out there, but at other times it became impossible because we wanted to see the soldiers actually going up the hills. One of the tougher challenges we faced was preserving the look of this waist-high grass. You couldn’t walk through the grass more than a couple of times without leaving these huge paths. It was like working in snow, where you’ve got to cover your tracks. There’s only so much you can do before you destroy the look of the location. I was contemplating this problem long before we got to the location, because I knew what we were up against with the grass and the steep hills. I began thinking about using the Akela crane, which has an extremely long, 72′ arm that would allow us to get the camera into places where we couldn’t walk or lay dolly track. The only problem was that I wanted to install the crane on the sides of hills, which involved building some fairly substantial platforms, because the Akela weighs about 6,000 pounds. It worked out fabulously, though. The Akela’s arm does have a slight arc, but it’s a much more minimal arc than any conventional crane arm. Because of that, we could make shots that had the appearance of a dolly shot. That was the whole reason for bringing in the Akela, and we constantly had it at very low angles; I don’t think we used it more than once or twice for a high-angled shot. Our expert technicians, Michael Gough and Mark Willard, kept wanting to show off how high it would go, but I kept hammering them with my mantra: ‘It’s a dolly, not a crane.’ We basically turned our crane technicians into dolly grips, but they did a fantastic job. There are some great Akela crane shots in the film where we follow the soldiers over really long distances. We did have to train the actors to stay with the crane arm, because it doesn’t move in a perfectly straight line. If we were ahead of them, they could just follow the lens, but if we were shooting from behind, we would trace out the arc so the actors could follow it. But using the Akela really allowed us to get down in the grass and get shots that just wouldn’t have been possible with a dolly or even a Steadicam because of the uneven terrain. setREVStartSize({c: 'rev_slider_233_6',rl:[1240,1024,768,480],el:[],gw:[1240],gh:[868],type:'standard',justify:'',layout:'fullscreen',offsetContainer:'',offset:'',mh:"0"});if (window.RS_MODULES!==undefined && window.RS_MODULES.modules!==undefined && window.RS_MODULES.modules["revslider2336"]!==undefined) {window.RS_MODULES.modules["revslider2336"].once = false;window.revapi233 = undefined;if (window.RS_MODULES.checkMinimal!==undefined) window.RS_MODULES.checkMinimal()}   What kind of remote head were you using on the Akela? We attached a Libra 3 head, which worked out great for us. I’d used an earlier version of it, called the Megamount, on Braveheart. Nick Phillips, who’s based in London, designed both versions. I knew that the Libra 3 was a good remote head, and it has all of these stabilization characteristics that other remote heads don’t have, such as an electronic gyrostabilizer rather than a mechanical one. We were moving the crane arm really fast and coming to abrupt stops, and the Libra really helped to take any wobble out of the arm. Part of the initial motivation for bringing in the Libra 3 was that I wanted to have a really stable camera for the shipboard scenes in the landing sequence. We put the Libracam and head on a crab dolly with a hydraulic arm that we could raise and lower. When we set that rig up on the deck of the smaller landing craft, it stabilized the horizon gyroscopically; we got these fantastic shots where the troops and the craft itself are in the foreground, and you really get a sense of the movement because the horizon is absolutely stable. It almost seems as if the camera’s not really on the landing craft, because the boat is moving up and down all around it. You really get a sense of the sea motion. Later on in the picture, we put the Libra head in the back of a truck that was transporting some of the characters through the airfield. The road was so bouncy that you couldn’t even look through the camera, but the Libra 3 completely smoothed it all out. There’s a particularly interesting flashback shot of one of the American soldiers’ wives on a swing. How did you get such an unusual perspective? We didn’t even use a head for that shot. The camera was actually upside-down; I think it was Terry’s idea. Once we put the actress on the swing, I wanted to get the camera at her eye level, so we just put the camera on top of a ladder behind her. When she swung back, she was heading right toward the camera, which was just off to the side of her; it was about two feet from the actress’s face when she got to the top of her arc. We initially tried the shot with the camera right-side up, but when we flipped the camera over and did it again it looked great. In addition to the Australian hills, you also had to deal with a jungle. How did that affect your lighting strategy? In those situations, scouting is everything. We would basically clear out a path to get the gear in, and then take the actors in another 100′ and let them struggle. [Laughs.] We did haul some lights into the jungle, but when we turned them on, they completely changed the character and nuances of the natural light. It was beautiful in there, but we were dealing with extremely low light levels. There were subtleties in the colors and gradations of the natural light that completely disappeared when we mixed in any artificial fill. There was plenty of contrast, though, because the sunlight that did filter in created great hot highlights. I decided to just expose into the shadows as much as possible and go for the natural falloff of the shadows to compensate for lack of detail. It worked out okay. This became a general approach to lighting most of the exteriors. I started out using some amounts of fill, but I became less and less interested in controlling contrast; I would expose for the shadow detail that I wanted and then usually let highlights go. At times, we would use indirect light bounced from muslin or beadboard to lift faces, and maybe use black for negative, but when we were working in heavy contrast, I was quite a bit overexposed from what a more normal exposure would be in those situations. When it was sunny, it was extremely contrasty, but rather than trying to balance everything by adding fill, I just ignored the highlights. I thought the film actually started looking much better when we lost the details in the highlights; it seemed more appropriate for the story. The more contrasty things got, the better, because it felt as if things were out of control—just as they were in the story. Can you give me an example of how the lighting conditions affected your work with the actors? There’s a sequence that I like between Nick Nolte, who plays this mad colonel, and John Cusack, who’s his adjutant. In the scene, which occurs about halfway through the battle, Nolte tells Cusack not to worry about the men and to focus on the charge up the hill. We were on top of a hill in an area with all of these burned-out tree trunks. It was extremely contrasty, but we really wanted to get into the faces and show the actors’ expressions. We chose to shoot in a direction that would allow us to take advantage of the light. We put them in areas where they were in direct sunlight that was broken up by the trees, and we also added smoke to soften the sunlight. We wanted to show the environment, but we also chose angles that were good for close-ups and dialogue. We used some white fill and black negative to give the characters some shape and contrast, but choosing the right angles was the most important consideration. setREVStartSize({c: 'rev_slider_234_7',rl:[1240,1024,768,480],el:[],gw:[1240],gh:[868],type:'standard',justify:'',layout:'fullscreen',offsetContainer:'',offset:'',mh:"0"});if (window.RS_MODULES!==undefined && window.RS_MODULES.modules!==undefined && window.RS_MODULES.modules["revslider2347"]!==undefined) {window.RS_MODULES.modules["revslider2347"].once = false;window.revapi234 = undefined;if (window.RS_MODULES.checkMinimal!==undefined) window.RS_MODULES.checkMinimal()}   Days of Heaven is probably the most famous ‘magic hour’ film ever made. Were you able to do that kind of work on The Thin Red Line ? Because this is a Terrence Malick film, a lot people will just assume that we sat around waiting for magic hour, but we simply didn’t have the luxury of doing that on this picture. We had a 180-page script, and after we shot all of that we went to Guadalcanal for 20 more days of unscripted improvisations. We shot relentlessly every day, in every conceivable lighting condition, from seven in the morning until it got dark at about six p.m. Yes, there are magic-hour shots in the film, but only because we had to shoot until it got dark! [Laughs.] It’s amazing to me how often I hear cinematographers say that they think shooting good-looking day exterior movies is all about sitting around and waiting for the right light to happen, and then just pointing your camera at it and shooting ‘pretty pictures.’ Doing good work in day exterior situations means that you must be able to make great images all day long, even when the light isn’t ideal for pretty pictures. You must make choices that will allow you to take advantage of natural light in existing conditions. Even when the light is ‘bad’ it is possible to do good work by making wise choices. The predominant day exterior lighting conditions on this film were either sunny high-contrast or soft contrast resulting from overcast conditions. Because we were shooting all day long and didn’t have the luxury of waiting for ideal light, we had to decide how to make existing light work for the scenes we were schedule to do on a given day. It was impossible to entirely control all of the light in our shots because we were using wider-angle anamorphic lenses and constantly moving the camera. None of the traditional methods of light control, such as putting up silks, were possible, because of the terrain and the nature of the shots. Sometimes, if we were doing extended dialogue and didn’t like the way the contrast was affecting the actors’ faces, we would try to create an artificial ‘overcast’ look by staging scenes under trees or in the shadow of a hill. At other times, we would stay in the open and go with the existing high contrast, exposing the faces and letting the contrast go. There were also days when we had both overcast and high-contrast sun happening simultaneously because of low clouds moving quickly and causing severe light changes. We had some days when the light changes happened so quickly that we just shot through them. It could be blistering hot one moment, and completely dark the next—sometimes in the same shot. But that represented the reality of the situation, and we just went with it. We didn’t fight the conditions; we just tried to make them part of the story. In fact, for one Akela shot of the soldiers climbing up the hills, we waited specifically for a light change to happen. The scene starts out in heavy cloud cover, but the sun comes out and reveals these guys sneaking through the grass. That particular light change worked well for us. The point I’m trying to make is that good daytime exterior cinematography is not comprised solely of making ‘pretty pictures’ at magic hour; it’s about being knowledgeable about your craft and being able to create interesting images in all of the various daylight conditions. What kind of look did you go for in scenes that had to be lit? There are some scenes at the beginning of the film that take place within a troop transport ship. We wanted to play those scenes really dark, and we used a lot of Steadicam. The ship interior set was actually built on a covered tennis court in Australia. We used every inch of that court, because we didn’t have anything resembling a stage. We basically lit the ship interior with practical fixtures that were outfitted with really hot incandescent globes. It was mostly hot toplight that created little pools of light. In areas where we didn’t have a practical fixture, we just cut a hole in the ceiling and popped a light down through it. Once again, we tried to create as much contrast as possible; the light was about three to four stops overexposed, and the shadow areas were very dark. I used more light in those scenes than I would have if it was a spherical picture; I was shooting at about T4.5 to get as much depth as possible. We were trying to really capture the claustrophobic feeling that exists within that type of ship. setREVStartSize({c: 'rev_slider_235_8',rl:[1240,1024,768,480],el:[],gw:[1240],gh:[868],type:'standard',justify:'',layout:'fullscreen',offsetContainer:'',offset:'',mh:"0"});if (window.RS_MODULES!==undefined && window.RS_MODULES.modules!==undefined && window.RS_MODULES.modules["revslider2358"]!==undefined) {window.RS_MODULES.modules["revslider2358"].once = false;window.revapi235 = undefined;if (window.RS_MODULES.checkMinimal!==undefined) window.RS_MODULES.checkMinimal()}   There were also a few tent interiors in the picture with a nice look. There’s one scene that I really like with Sean Penn and John Reilly. We just got well back and bounced an enormous amount of light [into the tent] from a distance. Throughout the picture, we were attempting to re-create the look of the natural-light situations that we were encountering. Which film stocks did you use? It was primarily a day exterior shoot, so I used Kodak’s [100 ASA EXR] 5248 outside. For the lower-light situations and interiors, I used the Vision [500T] 5279. I would basically switch to the faster stock when we started to get a light reading below 2.8; I didn’t want to shoot 48 wide open on anamorphic lenses because of the lack of depth. I used the faster stock to maintain my depth of field. I find that the sharpness of the Vision stock worked well for this picture, because we were after a sense of hard reality. I still feel that the Vision stocks are slightly too contrasty, though. I prefer the older T-grain stocks like 5293, which is a really great stock. Of course, I should point out that 90 percent of the film was shot on the 48. Do you have an ‘optimum’ T-stop that you prefer to work at? I don’t normally like to work deeper than an 8, and I never work wider than 2.8 in anamorphic. I feel much more comfortable working at around 4. Shooting wider than 2.8 in anamorphic is pointless, I think, because at that stop there’s just not enough information in focus. Did you use any filtration on this picture? No, we shot everything clean. Every once in a while we’d throw in a grad filter if we got into some heavy, burned-out backgrounds, but we had so much camera movement that we didn’t use them a lot. Have you applied any special lab processes? I did a lot of testing at Technicolor before we left to go on location, and I was initially planning to do ENR prints because I really wanted to get the richest blacks possible. At the last minute before we answer-printed, though, I tested the new Kodak Vision print stock and it looked great. The blacks were very good, and I felt that the color rendition of the Vision stock was more appropriate for this picture than ENR. The ENR process is a great look, but it does desaturate some colors to a certain extent. I wanted to maintain the richness and variety of all the natural color we photographed in our tropical environments, and therefore switched to the Vision stock. Kodak was great, and we were able to get enough Vision print stock for the entire release. While I’m on the topic, I must mention the work of color timer David Orr at Technicolor. He did a great job timing this movie on a very tight schedule. He was able to match the light in some sequences, which I was slightly nervous about. I actually was blessed on this picture with two great timers, because my dailies at Atlab in Australia were supervised by Arthur Cambridge, whom I’d first met on Wind. Arthur is the premier color timer in Australia, and I couldn’t have been in better hands. The presentation of violence in the film isn’t quite as visceral as the battle scenes in Saving Private Ryan . Was that by design? The combat was certainly important to the story, which is about men experiencing warfare for the first time. However, the graphic and visceral aspects of that experience weren’t nearly as important to Terry as the individual soldiers’ reactions to the situation. Therefore, our presentation of that type of action isn’t as hyperreal as it is in Private Ryan . I was initially interested in taking that kind of approach, but it wasn’t Terry’s focus. Gary Capo and the second unit did a lot of the combat footage, and they did a great job, but we weren’t aiming for the same degree of intensity that Private Ryan has. This is a different kind of movie. setREVStartSize({c: 'rev_slider_236_9',rl:[1240,1024,768,480],el:[],gw:[1240],gh:[868],type:'standard',justify:'',layout:'fullscreen',offsetContainer:'',offset:'',mh:"0"});if (window.RS_MODULES!==undefined && window.RS_MODULES.modules!==undefined && window.RS_MODULES.modules["revslider2369"]!==undefined) {window.RS_MODULES.modules["revslider2369"].once = false;window.revapi236 = undefined;if (window.RS_MODULES.checkMinimal!==undefined) window.RS_MODULES.checkMinimal()}   Were you keeping tabs on Private Ryan while you were in production? We were shooting at the same time. My wife, Lois Burwell, was the chief makeup artist on Private Ryan . She was in Ireland and England while I was in Australia, and we would talk by phone or send e-mails back and forth. She was very excited about the work they were doing. She was designing amazing prosthetic devices and making elaborate blood rigs. She would tell me something like, ‘I can’t believe how great the dailies look. It seems so real; it’s like you’re actually watching the war. I’m really excited.’ And I would say, ‘Oh, that’s really wonderful, dear. You must be so happy.’ Of course, I was really thinking, ‘My God, no, that’s what I wanted to do on this film!’ I had been trying to get Terry to do more graphic combat right from the beginning, but he didn’t see the picture that way. After talking to my wife, I’d tell him, ‘Hey, Lois is doing all of this graphic blood stuff on Private Ryan . And he’d reply, ‘Oh, really? I don’t think I want to do anything like that.’ We were obviously interested in seeing how Private Ryan turned out, but it didn’t have any influence on what we were doing. Now, after seeing Private Ryan , I must say that I think Steven Spielberg, Janusz Kaminski [ASC], and the crew of that picture created a whole new level of expertise with that type of action and effects work. They did the best job ever of creating that kind of combat experience on film. Ryan is a fantastic film. Did you use multiple cameras for any of the battle footage? We didn’t do that as much as I had on Braveheart . There was only one day when we had a combined first and second unit and we shot with four cameras. The majority of the time, the first and second units shot with two cameras. I was almost reluctant to do this movie because of Braveheart ; I thought that the last thing I should be doing at this point in my career was another day exterior battlefield movie [laughs], but I was drawn to the material and the idea of working with Terry. I tried not to think about Braveheart while we were shooting, and this movie didn’t have that kind of scale. It didn’t involve the same numbers of people, and we didn’t put as much emphasis on the fighting itself. The battles weren’t as grand in scope. How extensive were the practical effects in those sequences? Again, it wasn’t quite as involved as the work in Private Ryan . We had a great special effects team, headed by an Australian named Brian Cox; they did a terrific job, but [the combat] wasn’t the most important aspect of the picture. We had several mortar and artillery barrages that were fairly big, as well as nighttime pyro effects for a bombing raid on the airfield. All of our lighting in that sequence came from the explosions themselves; we played the soldiers in silhouette as the ‘bombs’ went off. We did some tests with the effects guys to determine how hot their explosions were going to be, and then exposed at around T4. What kind of footage were you after when you went back to Guadalcanal? One aspect of Guadalcanal that wasn’t in the book, but which interested Terry very much, was the ethnographic aspect of the island. The story of the Melanesian people who lived there during the war is really interesting. They had existed for centuries in this very peaceful and tropical place when they were suddenly invaded by all of this large-scale violence. Even today, it’s a fairly isolated environment. When we went back to the island, we wanted to find some native people to put in the picture. One of the lead characters, Witt [played by Jim Caviezel], spends time in a Melanesian village, and that’s where the picture opens. Terry wanted to introduce this idea early on, and he wanted to present these people in their traditional lifestyle, as it had existed back in the 1940s. We did a lot of research, and we discovered that this culture no longer existed in the areas of Guadalcanal that were logistically accessible to us. We therefore put together a special third unit to find a village and shoot anthropological footage. The unit was headed up by Reuben Aaronson, who had done a lot of National Geographic shoots. He and his team went to this traditional village on the south side of the island, and stayed there for a couple of weeks. setREVStartSize({c: 'rev_slider_237_10',rl:[1240,1024,768,480],el:[],gw:[1240],gh:[868],type:'standard',justify:'',layout:'fullscreen',offsetContainer:'',offset:'',mh:"0"});if (window.RS_MODULES!==undefined && window.RS_MODULES.modules!==undefined && window.RS_MODULES.modules["revslider23710"]!==undefined) {window.RS_MODULES.modules["revslider23710"].once = false;window.revapi237 = undefined;if (window.RS_MODULES.checkMinimal!==undefined) window.RS_MODULES.checkMinimal()}   How did the Melanesians react to having a camera crew in their midst? Sometimes it worked out, and sometimes it didn’t, but that’s the nature of ethnographic work. Reuben had an anthropologist with him, Christine Jourdan, who has made a career out of studying the people of the Solomon Islands. She really knew the people, and how to blend in with them. They shot footage of these people existing with no trace of modernity around them, and some of it’s in the picture. Reuben had never shot 35mm, and he suddenly found himself working with a Panaflex and anamorphic lenses. He did a great job, though. When the first unit went in later, we re-created a portion of the village in an area that was accessible to us, and got some of the locals to come in and interact with our actors. They spent a few days getting to know each other, and then we improvised a few sequences. The people were very natural, because all they had to do was be themselves. We used a very reduced unit to make them feel more comfortable. What else did you shoot on Guadalcanal? We were able to get some shots that established the geographic continuity between Savo Island, the beach, the palm trees and the hills. Savo Island was the site of several horrendous naval battles, and the huge coconut groves on Guadalcanal really had the signature look of the South Pacific. In addition, the hills on the island are within a mile or two of the beach, but those areas didn’t exist in Australia. By shooting on Guadalcanal itself, we were able to establish that connection. How did that experience affect you personally? Going to Guadalcanal was the best thing we could have done to get a sense of the real circumstances of the war. In fact, there are still a lot of artifacts from the war lying around. The locals showed us pieces from their collections, which included weapons, uniforms, helmets, and so on. We were constantly finding remnants of the battle at some of our locations. One of the assistant directors even tripped over a spent artillery shell that was buried in the ground. Being there also helped to give us a better appreciation for what everyone there must have gone through. The jungle on the island is an extremely uncomfortable environment—it’s very hot and humid. We visited the sites of many of the battles described in the book, and they were pretty amazing. You just cannot imagine how horrible it must have been. The idea of these men living out there for months at a time in such dangerous and brutal combat situations seems just incredible to me. I think we all came away with a real sense of the sacrifice that was made by everyone who participated in the war. Hopefully, our film works as an illustration of that. As much as any film I’ve ever worked on, this picture was about an idea. I believe that what Terry wanted the film to be about, most of all, was that the real enemy in war is the war itself. War, and not necessarily one side or the other, is the great evil. It isn’t often that one gets to work on films of this nature, and I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to participate in making it. — John Toll, ASC details his experiences on The Thin Red Line setREVStartSize({c: 'rev_slider_238_11',rl:[1240,1024,768,480],el:[],gw:[1240],gh:[868],type:'standard',justify:'',layout:'fullscreen',offsetContainer:'',offset:'',mh:"0"});if (window.RS_MODULES!==undefined && window.RS_MODULES.modules!==undefined && window.RS_MODULES.modules["revslider23811"]!==undefined) {window.RS_MODULES.modules["revslider23811"].once = false;window.revapi238 = undefined;if (window.RS_MODULES.checkMinimal!==undefined) window.RS_MODULES.checkMinimal()}

THE EDITING OF THE ‘THE THIN RED LINE’

“Can you imagine working on a picture that shot a million and a half feet of film and the director never watched dailies? Or a $50-million film released without even one preview? These improbable scenarios occurred on Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line , according to editors Billy Weber and Leslie Jones” — Conversations with Billy Weber and Leslie Jones

A look at the editing of Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line .

CONCEPT AND STORYBOARD ART

A special mention should definitely go to Mark Bristol’s storyboarding efforts, which helped bring to life one of the most important films of the nineties. Mark is a brilliant, brilliant artist.

  “With the release of The Tree of Life I am featuring my work on this amazing masterpiece that I was very fortunate to have worked on. As a result of all the recent interest in this collection I dug into the archives and posted more boards from the film. Enjoy.” — Mark Bristol

“Terrence Malick is oblique. He would start shooting the scene, but watch the sky. And about six, when the sky was just right, he’d say ‘That’s enough of this scene, let’s revisit the scene we shot the other day.’ Nothing will match, but that’s fine. He was finishing the scenes in golden light. He couldn’t tell the studio he was only going to shoot in golden light, they would have freaked, so he would hold these scenes off. The actor didn’t get to do what he wanted to do, John Toll didn’t get to photograph it the way he wanted to, and Terry didn’t get to shoot it as he’d written it. All those elements were thrown out, and the only new element was this light that’s what it was about.” — Nick Nolte on Malick

  John C. Reilly on The Thin Red Line .

“We were up in far north Queensland in the rain forest area of Australia and then for about a month in Guadalcanal. He’s an amazing guy. He’s, despite his reputation, he’s not some Howard Hughes-like hermit figure whose afraid to talk to people. He’s very open and friendly and warm and encouraging. He’s just a very private person. He’s almost like… I heard that he’s studied philosophy before he started directing films, before he made Badlands , when he went to AFI, the American Film Institute, using their first class. He was a philosophy student before that, and it makes sense when you meet him, because it doesn’t really, he doesn’t really seem like a film director. He doesn’t have any of that… he just seems like a truth seeker. He’s someone… I’ll give you an example of a story. We’re making The Thin Red Line and there was this day when there was this army base, and there was hundreds and hundreds of extras and this huge base with tents and trucks, and vintage airplanes taking off and landing. It was this big massive shot, and the camera was gonna’ be in the back of this truck with some of the main actors, myself included, as it drove through the camp.”

“So in order to get the shot, they had to orchestrate this massive group of people, like an entire camp, and they were like, ‘STAND BY! SHOOT THE AIRPLANES! GET THE TRUCKS GOING! OKAY, EXTRAS!’ There was dust everywhere and there was noise, and everybody’s waiting you know, and we’re in the back of the truck, ‘Here we go, here we go…’ and ‘STAND BY!’ And all of a sudden, Terry’s like, ‘Oh look, there’s a Red-Tailed Hawk! Look! John, John [Toll] get the camera! Get the camera! There he is!’ We’re all like [imitating a confused slack-jawed look]. ‘Are we really filming a hawk right now? Are you kidding? There’s airplanes taking off!’ And we sat there for five or ten minutes while he got different angles of this bird flying through the sky, you know, but that’s how, it was like the script didn’t really matter to him, the story didn’t matter, although we shot the script and we shot the story, the movie didn’t really resemble the script by the time he finished editing it. I think that shows real vision, you know, he didn’t let anything distract him from what he found to be truthful or meaningful, whether it was a Red-Tailed Hawk or whether it was a bug landing on a leaf, or whether it was an extra suddenly starting to cry because he was moved by something, or whether it was the main actor doing a speech. So, it was just like he was gathering moments, just taking them with him and then he’d get back and say ‘Let’s turn this into a movie.’” — John C. Reilly on The Thin Red Line

  Conquest of Paradise is the second chapter of the Directors Series’ examination into the films and career of director Terrence Malick, covering his pair of experimental historical epics: The Thin Red Line (1998) and The New World (2005).

  Interview from 1998 with producer Grant Hill on Malick’s The Thin Red Line .

  “ Thin Red Line was the hardest. Terrence Malick wanted me to write the music first. Usually you compose to a rough cut. I threw all my previous knowledge out the window and started again. I needed to provide a structure for him to build the film on. The one thing Terry gave me was the ability to be a better composer. I wrote for nine months without a day off. It was incredible pressure in the cutting room.” — Hans Zimmer

“HE’S A SCREEN POET, THERE WAS NO OTHER WAY TO DESCRIBE IT”

Rosy-Fingered Dawn is a film on Terrence Malick. It is about the making of Badlands , Days of Heaven , The Thin Red Line , and the personal involvement of some of the most representative figures of the American culture itself. The testimonies of Sam Shepard, Arthur Penn, Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, Sean Penn, Jim Caviezel, Elias Koteas, Ben Chaplin, John Savage, Penny Allen, Haskell Wexler, taking the cue from some of the most salient themes that inspired Malick’s production, converge in a passionate portrait of contemporary America, amplified by the voices of the characters who have been called up and often recited by the actors themselves. This medley of voices has given origin to a journey throughout the whole United States, from California to Colorado, from Virginia to Minnesota, passing by New York and Los Angeles. Every stop represents an ideal set in which all the characters of the films come to life once again giving place to a growing flow of memories. The narrative dimension of Malick’s cinema resounds and opens a new horizon on the visible contradictions of the American culture; no easy judgement but a critical consciousness is what emerges from this coral speech, together with a definite need: the necessity of art. A need that Terrence Malick was able to satisfy.

  War is hell: video essay explores the cinematic landscape of war movies by Adam DJ Laity.

  Here are several photos taken behind-the-scenes during production of Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line . Photographed by Merie Weismiller Wallace © Fox 2000 Pictures, Geisler-Roberdeau, Phoenix Pictures. Intended for editorial use only. All material for educational and noncommercial purposes only.

  We’re running out of money and patience with being underfunded. If you find Cinephilia & Beyond useful and inspiring, please consider making a small donation. Your generosity preserves film knowledge for future generations. To donate, please visit our donation page , or donate directly below:

Get Cinephilia & Beyond in your inbox by signing in

You may also like

Defying Gravity: The Cosmic Corn of Christopher Nolan’s ‘Interstellar’

Nick delgado’s ‘sangre’: an upcoming vampire coming-of-age story from a promising young filmmaker.

To Live and Die for Authenticity: How Friedkin Made One of the Best Films of the Eighties

Neil Marshall’s ‘Dog Soldiers’: A Force to Be Reckoned With

It Was Only the Wind, My Dear: The Undisputed Greatness of Jack Clayton’s ‘The Innocents’

‘I Am Insane, and You Are My Insanity’: The Captivating World of Terry Gilliam’s ’12 Monkeys’

The artistic triumph of sir alan parker’s still beating ‘angel heart’, neil marshall’s ‘the descent’: humans are the scariest things.

Universal Soldier? The Emersonian Combat Experience of Terrence Malick’s ‘The Thin Red Line’

• Sports & Outdoors
• Biographies

Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime Try Prime and start saving today with fast, free delivery

Amazon Prime includes:

Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.

• Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
• Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
• Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
• A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
• Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
• Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access

Important:  Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.

Buy new: .savingPriceOverride { color:#CC0C39!important; font-weight: 300!important; } .reinventMobileHeaderPrice { font-weight: 400; } #apex_offerDisplay_mobile_feature_div .reinventPriceSavingsPercentageMargin, #apex_offerDisplay_mobile_feature_div .reinventPricePriceToPayMargin { margin-right: 4px; } -12% $15.80 $ 15 . 80 FREE delivery Thursday, June 13 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35 Ships from: Amazon Sold by: LUNALLC44

Return this item for free.

Free returns are available for the shipping address you chose. You can return the item for any reason in new and unused condition: no shipping charges

• Go to your orders and start the return
• Select your preferred free shipping option
• Drop off and leave!

Save with Used - Good .savingPriceOverride { color:#CC0C39!important; font-weight: 300!important; } .reinventMobileHeaderPrice { font-weight: 400; } #apex_offerDisplay_mobile_feature_div .reinventPriceSavingsPercentageMargin, #apex_offerDisplay_mobile_feature_div .reinventPricePriceToPayMargin { margin-right: 4px; } $7.85 $ 7 . 85 FREE delivery Thursday, June 13 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35 Ships from: Amazon Sold by: GreatBookDealz

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

A Fighter's Heart: One Man's Journey Through the World of Fighting Paperback – Illustrated, January 21, 2008

Purchase options and add-ons.

• Print length 320 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Grove Press
• Publication date January 21, 2008
• Dimensions 5.25 x 0.75 x 8 inches
• ISBN-10 0802143431
• ISBN-13 978-0802143433
• See all details

Frequently bought together

Similar items that may ship from close to you

Editorial Reviews

Product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Grove Press; Reprint edition (January 21, 2008)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0802143431
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0802143433
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.25 x 0.75 x 8 inches
• #25 in Martial Artist Biographies
• #58 in Boxing (Books)
• #299 in Martial Arts (Books)

About the author

Sam sheridan.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Top reviews from other countries

• Amazon Newsletter
• About Amazon
• Accessibility
• Sustainability
• Press Center
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Sell on Amazon
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Supply to Amazon
• Protect & Build Your Brand
• Become an Affiliate
• Become a Delivery Driver
• Start a Package Delivery Business
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Become an Amazon Hub Partner
• › See More Ways to Make Money
• Amazon Visa
• Amazon Store Card
• Amazon Secured Card
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Credit Card Marketplace
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Amazon Prime
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices
• Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices

• Free Live Psychics Chat »
• Free Live Psychics Chat
• Love Compatibility
• Daily Horoscopes
• Weekly Horoscopes
• Monthly Horoscopes
• 2024 Horoscopes and Predictions
• Love Horoscopes
• Zodiac Signs
• Divisional Charts
• Zodiac Woman
• Birth Chart
• Transits Report
• Join as Astrologer
• Astrologers Near You
• Birthday Analysis
• Your shopping bag is empty. Go to the shop

Online Psychic Reading »

Decoding the Enigma: Unraveling the Mysterious Taurus Man’s Heart

Key takeaways.

• **Unveiling the Enigmatic Heart of a Taurus Man:** Gain insights into the complexities of a Taurus man’s emotions, unraveling the signs that reveal his true feelings and fostering a fulfilling connection.
• **Recognizing the Subtle Signs of Affection:** Decipher the subtle cues that indicate a Taurus man’s growing attachment, such as prioritizing your time, offering heartfelt compliments, introducing you to his inner circle, and showing attentiveness to your schedule.
• **Unlocking the Secrets to His Heart:** Discover the key to capturing a Taurus man’s heart by demonstrating consistency, patience, unwavering support, and loyalty, creating a stable and secure foundation for a lasting love.

In the realm of love, Taurus men are renowned for their steadfastness, loyalty, and unwavering devotion. Their relationships often endure the test of time, weathering life’s storms with remarkable resilience. However, understanding the emotional landscape of a Taurus man can be an enigmatic puzzle, leaving many yearning for clarity. This guide delves into the intricacies of their heart, deciphering the signs that reveal their true feelings and illuminating the path to a fulfilling connection.

Unmasking the Taurus Man’s Emotions: A Journey of Discovery

Taurus men are often perceived as stoic and reserved, their emotions hidden beneath a veil of practicality. They may suppress their feelings, resorting to stoicism as a protective shield. This behavior, while appearing distant, does not negate the depth of their emotions. In fact, beneath the surface lies a passionate and sensitive soul, yearning for genuine connection.

Signs That a Taurus Man is Smitten: Unraveling the Enigma

Recognizing the subtle signs of a Taurus man’s affection can be challenging, yet these indicators provide valuable insights into his true feelings. Let’s explore the telltale signs that reveal his hidden desires:

1. Making Time for You: A Testament to His Devotion

When a Taurus man makes a conscious effort to spend time with you, adjusting his schedule to accommodate your needs and seeking opportunities to be together, it’s a clear indication of his growing attachment. He cherishes your presence and craves your company, prioritizing your well-being above his own.

2. Thoughtful Compliments: Expressions of Admiration and Appreciation

Taurus men are not known for showering compliments indiscriminately. However, when they do, their words carry weight and sincerity. Their compliments are genuine and heartfelt, demonstrating their interest in you and their appreciation for your personality and appearance. These compliments are not mere flattery; they are affirmations of their deep admiration.

Is your partner the one? Confused? Get clarity now.

3. introducing you to his inner circle: a sign of trust and commitment.

If a Taurus man introduces you to his close friends and family, consider it a significant milestone in your relationship. This act signifies that he values your presence in his life and trusts you implicitly. He wants to share his inner circle with you, allowing you to become an integral part of his world.

4. Familiarity with Your Schedule: An Indication of His Attentiveness

Taurus men may surprise you by showing up at your favorite hangouts or remembering small details about your routine. This demonstrates their attentiveness and desire to be present in your life. They pay attention to your likes, dislikes, and habits, showing that they genuinely care about you and want to be a part of your world.

5. Hesitancy and Nervousness: A Reflection of His Vulnerability

Taurus men may appear shy or hesitant, especially at the beginning of a relationship. This is not a sign of disinterest; rather, it reflects their vulnerability and the depth of their feelings. Once they become comfortable and secure in the relationship, they will express their affection more openly and confidently.

6. Possessiveness: A Manifestation of His Desire for Exclusivity

Taurus men tend to be possessive, wanting to know that they are the only person you are interested in. They may display mild jealousy and make it clear to others that you are committed to him. This behavior stems from their intense desire for security and reassurance in the relationship.

Bonus: Unlocking the Secrets of a Taurus Man’s Heart

To truly capture the heart of a Taurus man, consistency, patience, and unwavering support are key. Demonstrate your commitment through actions, not just words. Be a reliable presence in his life, offering stability and a sense of security. Respect his need for alone time and independence, but make sure he knows that you’re always there for him. Taurus men appreciate loyalty and devotion above all else, so let your actions speak louder than words.

Conclusion: Embracing the Journey of Love with a Taurus Man

Navigating the emotional landscape of a Taurus man is a journey of discovery, filled with both challenges and profound rewards. By understanding his unique traits and learning to appreciate his unwavering devotion, you can forge a connection that stands the test of time. Embrace the journey, celebrate the milestones, and revel in the enduring love that a Taurus man has to offer.

Frequently Asked Questions:

1. how can i tell if a taurus man is interested in me.

Look for signs such as making time for you, giving you thoughtful compliments, introducing you to his close friends, showing familiarity with your schedule, and displaying possessiveness.

2. What are the best ways to attract a Taurus man?

Be patient, consistent, and supportive. Demonstrate your commitment through actions, respect his need for alone time, and let your loyalty and devotion shine through.

3. How can I maintain a healthy and lasting relationship with a Taurus man?

Focus on building trust, security, and stability in the relationship. Be understanding and supportive, and always communicate openly and honestly.

Leave a reply Click here to cancel the reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Related Posts

• Unveiling Your Cosmic Career Path: How Astrology Can Guide Your Professional Journey
• Unlock Prosperity and Positivity: How Indoor Plants Can Transform Your Life
• The Unfiltered Truth: How Honest Are the Zodiac Signs? A Journey Through the Stars
• Rakesh Jhunjhunwala: The Big Bull of Indian Stock Market, An Astrological Perspective
• Cosmic Cuddles: Unveiling the Most Loving Zodiac Signs for Your Heart’s Desire

• Live on Sky
• Get Sky Sports
• Sky Mobile Apps
• Kick It Out
• Black Lives Matter
• British South Asians in Football

Kobbie Mainoo's footballing talent is now clear to us all. What the 19-year-old has also proved over the course of this season is his elite sense of timing. A nose for the big occasion.

Calling Mainoo's first Premier League goal a 'late winner' doesn't do it justice. Not when it came in the 97th minute, requiring him to weave past three Wolves players before bending the ball into the bottom corner to snatch a 4-3 victory at Molineux.

Mainoo's first senior goal at Old Trafford was pretty special, too. What better way to announce yourself to your home fans than by whipping a finish into the top corner against Liverpool , your great rivals.

And with United desperate for a shock win over noisy neighbours Manchester City to end a tough season on a high, of course it was Mainoo who stepped up to score the winner at Wembley.

Mainoo is no stranger at the national stadium - he'd already been named player of the match on his first start for England in March.

Still a teenager, Mainoo is already vital to United's future and looks ready to shine for England at this summer's Euros.

But through interviews with those who watched Mainoo's rise, Sky Sports delves into his past to trace a journey that looks set to end at the top.

Kobbie Mainoo is Next Up.

"He could just do things that I've not seen kids of that age do"

Steve Vare, Mainoo's coach at Cheadle and Gatley Junior FC

"He was then what he is now. He's mastered the ball - he manipulates it brilliantly"

Nick Cox, Manchester United academy director

"He is 10 times the player I was at 19"

Paul Scholes

'He just used to glide through games'

Most of us had to wait until Mainoo was in his late teens before witnessing his talent. But Steve Vare - who was Mainoo's first coach at Cheadle and Gatley, just south of Manchester - saw it up close.

"It was apparent from a very early stage that he was an exceptional kid," Vare tells Sky Sports . "It's hard to say when they're so young but you could just tell from the minute he came in."

Mainoo grew up in nearby Cheadle Hulme and joined Cheadle and Gatley when he was just four.

"What struck me was how strong and wiry he was," recalls Vare. "He had a really hard shot on him for such a young kid.

"He was just really powerful - he'd be scoring goals from everywhere. He could just do things that I've not seen kids of that age do."

Picture courtesy of @kobbie

Naturally, it quickly became clear to Vare that Mainoo needed special treatment.

"I used to have to do a separate warm up for Kobbie because everything else was just too easy," he explains.

"We used to have to say to him, ‘you can only score with your weaker foot’, ‘you can only have two touches of the ball’, or, ‘you can't score, you have to pass to a team-mate'.

"Never complained. He just loved being challenged."

To anyone who witnessed the dramatic winner against Wolves in February, Mainoo's ability to beat several opponents before calmly producing a finish from the edge of the area in the dying minutes of the game may have raised eyebrows. But Vare had seen something similar over a decade previously.

"He would just dominate and score lots of goals, weaving in and out of players," he says.

" He just used to glide through games."

Your browser does not support this video

'He's a Man Utd fan - it was a natural choice'

By the age of six, Mainoo was ready to branch out, with Vare explaining: "His dad, Felix, and I used to have chats at the end of each session to say 'how can we test him even more?'

"I got to the point of saying to Felix, ‘Kobbie is ready to play for a professional academy’."

That would come in time. But first, Mainoo made the move to Failsworth Dynamos, based north-west of Manchester. Some early adaptation was necessary, recalls Ian Kelly, Mainoo's coach at his new club.

"He was all tricks, skill, taking people on," Kelly told The Athletic earlier this season. "It took him a bit to learn how to play in a team."

Mainoo celebrates winning the 2022 FA Youth Cup with team-mate Rhys Bennett

But after a few months, Mainoo was up and running, playing as a forward for Failsworth and continuing to demonstrate the potential he showed at Cheadle and Gatley.

"I knew it wouldn’t faze him - I could tell when he came to us," said Kelly.

Even at the age of six, word of the precocious young talent from Cheadle Hulme had spread around Manchester. It was no surprise that both United and City's attentions were peaked.

Paul Newton, one of Mainoo's coaches at Cheadle and Gatley, also worked for City as a coach and scout for their junior sides and ensured the club were aware of his talent.

Mainoo trained with City's academy - but he'd also been playing with the Man Utd Foundation and was invited to work with their academy by Dermot Clarke, one of United's scouts. Mainoo and his family had a decision to make.

City may have been on the way to winning their first of eight Premier League titles back in 2011, but United had a trump card.

"He's a Man Utd fan," says Vare. "It was probably a natural choice."

'As a youngster, he was a centre forward'

Entering the Manchester United academy, a famous factory of talent that produced the Busby Babes and the Class of '92, is no mean feat.

But of the thousands of kids that spend time at a club of United's size, only a handful will possess the talent, drive and fortune to make it as professional footballers. Even fewer still will progress to the United first team.

That alone speaks to Mainoo's technical and mental qualities - all of which were apparent to Nick Cox, United's academy director.

"All of our boys are high-potential but you certainly could see that Kobbie had some attributes that meant we wanted to continue working with him," he tells Sky Sports .

"As time unfolded, it became clear he potentially had the ability to go on and play for our first team.

"On the pitch - even as a little 'un - he was then what he is now. He's mastered the ball - he manipulates it brilliantly.

"You could tell he had athletic potential and now you see a powerful, explosive player.

"As a little kid, we were waiting for that to come, but we could sense it was a matter of time."

Not that Mainoo had been dominating the midfield from an early age. "As a youngster, he was a centre-forward and scored a lot of goals," revealed Cox.

"I've seen him play in all sorts of attacking positions. Around the age of 15, 16, he was more of an attacking midfielder."

Not that United was Mainoo's only focus. He continued to play for Shots, a grassroots club coached by Paul Newton, who previously worked with Mainoo at Cheadle and Gatley.

Kobbie Mainoo may be known all over Europe now but Shots was home to some famous names - Kai Rooney, Jacey Carrick, Ben Aguero, Roman Walker and Tyler and Jack Fletcher have all been through the club.

But Mainoo's ability to make a name for himself was in evidence back in 2017, when he scored the winning goal as Shots claimed the North West Junior Champions League - a competition Newton said he had been trying to win for a decade.

'He was a little bit too comfortable'

It's not just Mainoo's technical abilities that were immediately obvious to the coaches that helped guide him during his childhood. Time and again, it's Mainoo's calm temperament that those who worked with him remember.

"One of the things that struck me with Kobbie was, even at that young age, he was very calm, very laid back and soaked everything up," says Vare.

"That's one of his super strengths. He doesn't seem to be phased by anything."

Cox tells a similar story, saying: "Probably his most impressive quality was his character and his personality.

"Kobbie's always been humble, laid back - maybe even quiet off the pitch."

As others fell by the wayside, Mainoo's progress through the age groups at United was smooth and he made his debut in the UEFA Youth League - an U19s tournament - aged just 16.

But the highlight came at Old Trafford in May 2022, when United beat Nottingham Forest 3-1 in the FA Youth Cup final. Alejandro Garnacho scored a brace as United lifted the trophy in front of more than 67,000 fans.

That same month, Mainoo signed a professional contract with United. Eleven years after first training with the club, he was now finally on the verge of the first team.

Yet the cool, calm and composed Mainoo still had some improvements to make in the eyes of Erik ten Hag. The manager felt he was possibly a little too laid back.

"I think very quickly I saw him," explained Ten Hag, who joined United in the summer of 2022.

"I thought he was playing a little bit too comfortable in the U21s. He should be much more dominant."

A first-team debut came against Charlton in the Carabao Cup in January 2023, followed by one brief appearance each in the FA Cup and Premier League.

The plan was for Mainoo to be incorporated into Ten Hag's squad for the 2023/24 season - that was until he suffered an ankle injury on United's pre-season tour of the USA that would keep him sidelined well into the campaign.

For the first time, events were conspiring against Mainoo. But his time was coming.

'This boy is special'

Mainoo isn't used to being upstaged but, after seeing Garnacho grab the headlines in the FA Youth Cup final two seasons earlier, the Argentina international did it again at Goodison Park last November.

Aged 18, Ten Hag handed Mainoo his first Premier League start against Everton. All eyes were on the academy graduate - at least until the third minute, when Garnacho scored a goal for the ages.

No matter. United won 3-0 and Ten Hag had been convinced by Mainoo. Having never previously started a top-flight game, he was only left out twice for the remainder of the season.

Gareth Southgate was convinced, too. Less than five months after his first Premier League start, Mainoo skipped the U21s and made his senior England debut against Brazil - although 17-year-old Endrick snatched the headlines by scoring the winner.

Not to be outdone, Mainoo ensured he was the star act three days later, being named player of the match on his first international start as England drew 2-2 with Belgium in the final camp before the Euros squad was announced. Once again, Mainoo's timing was impeccable.

Less than two weeks later, he scored that goal against Liverpool. Less than two months later, he scored that winner against City - the team he turned down more than a decade ago.

Mainoo's rise is no doubt a source of pride for Cox - who first encountered the local boy when he was just 11 - but it's not just his exploits on the field that have caught his eye.

"As much as I've been impressed by what he's done on the pitch, I've been really impressed with the way he's dealt with the media and coped with the spotlight," says Cox.

"He's remained cool but expressed the side of him that we've known since he was a little boy."

But for United midfielders - especially those emerging from the academy - there can be few greater sources of praise than the player Xavi and Zinedine Zidane agreed was the greatest of their generation.

After witnessing Mainoo's match-winning display in the FA Cup final, Paul Scholes wrote on social media: "Read a few comparisons between me and this kid last week... don't waste your time. He is 10 times the player I was at 19.

"Just love the way he receives the ball, the calmness, the awareness of what's around him and of course big goals in big games. This boy is special."

Kobbie Mainoo is Next Up .

Sky Sports' Next Up

- Next Up: Endrick is no longer a name, he is a reality

- Next Up: How to follow and what's coming up...

Stream the Canadian GP, T20 World Cup, US Open and more

• Upgrade Now

NEWS... BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT

Dad-to-be found dead hours before his daughter was born

Share this with

A father-to-be was found dead on the couch hours before his daughter was born after doctors misread an abnormal heart scan.

Thomas Gibson, 40, was so excited to be a dad to baby Harper that he spent every weekend building furniture for his future daughter.

But he never replied when his partner Rebecca Moss tried to wake him for ‘baby day’.

Nothing seemed out of place when Moss, who woke early for a planned caesarean section on June 7 last year, found her ‘caring, charming and funny’ partner lying on the couch.

She told an inquest : ‘Tom was asleep on the couch. I was trying to cheer him up and was saying “Wake up, it’s baby day”.

‘Tom didn’t respond, so I went over to the couch to give him a kiss. He was lying in his usual sleeping position.

‘When I touched him, he was cold and stiff. He wouldn’t wake up.

‘I called 999 immediately. They asked me to pull Tom onto the floor and perform chest compressions. I started chest compressions until the ambulance arrived.

‘The shock, trauma and not to mention the physical exertion of having to pull Tom off the couch and perform chest compressions at 39 weeks pregnant was overwhelming.’

Their daughter, Harper, was born hours later. She celebrates her first birthday this Friday.

Moss said: ‘He won’t be there for any of her birthdays. He won’t ever be there on Christmas morning, and he won’t be there on Father’s Day .

‘Harper will instead visit her dad’s grave when she’s old enough to understand.

‘We say good night to his picture every night before bed and she has a quilt which has been made from his favourite jumpers.

‘Tom will live on through his daughter but that doesn’t change the fact that he should still be here with us today.’

Gibson died from a sudden cardiac death after a doctor missed abnormalities in a heart scan.

A physically fit man who worked in a timber yard, his death came after three weeks of a stomach bug, causing cramps and diarrhoea, the inquest heard.

This led to a visit to A&E at Wythenshawe Hospital, Manchester on May 27, where he was seen by Dr Oliver Handley just 11 days before he died.

Recognising signs of abnormality in Gibson’s ECG, which records the heart’s electrical activity, he referred it to a more senior medic, the medical registrar Dr Thomas Bull, for a second opinion.

But Dr Bull decided no further investigation or treatment was needed.

Dr Bull believed the abnormality to be an intraventricular block, ‘not an uncommon finding’ that is not clinically ‘significant’ without other heart-related symptoms.

He told the coroner’s court: ‘I advised if there’s no heart symptoms generally then that would not require any investigation at this time.’

Gibson died 11 days after being discharged and was told to return in a week if his severe stomach illness did not improve.

A pathologist concluded it to be a sudden cardiac death.

Lawyers for Mr Gibson’s relatives said Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust has made a full admission of liability that it provided negligent medical care to him in the days before his death.

Dr Matthew Thornber, a consultant at the hospital, said the two ECGs taken were not ‘textbook’ examples of looking like a heart block condition and such diagnosis requires nuance and experience.

He said: ‘This is not a barn door easy miss.’

The inquest continues.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at [email protected] .

For more stories like this, check our news page .

MORE : Deadly diets could be fuelling rise in colon cancer in the young

MORE : My poorly dad had a catheter inserted in an A&E cupboard

MORE : What your in-flight tipple really does to your health

Sign Up for News Updates

Get your need-to-know latest news, feel-good stories, analysis and more.

Privacy Policy

Get us in your feed

• the bachelorette

Meet the men vying for 'The Bachelorette' Jenn Tran's heart

Tran's journey to find love begins July 8 on ABC

LOS ANGELES -- Filming of "The Bachelorette" has wrapped and we are meeting the 25 men vying for Jenn Tran's heart this season.

Jenn's guys are between ages 24-35. Among the suitors are Aaron, an aerospace engineer, Dakota, a sommelier, Dylan a medical student (Jenn is studying to become a physician assistant), Tomas A, a physiotherapist and Marcus, an Army Ranger.

You can get a glimpse of them here and see the full cast descriptions below.

Jenn was a contestant on Joey Graziadei's season of "The Bachelor," and was sent home just before hometown dates. Joey eventually picked and got engaged to Kelsey Anderson.

When Jenn spoke with Ryan Field, Jennifer Matarese and me on our "Playing the Field" podcas t, she said being the Bachelorette was an opportunity she would definitely consider and "a chance to date 32 men and find my love? I would absolutely take that."

And she did take that, as former "Bachelorette" Charity Lawson announced Jenn's new job on "After The Final Rose" back in March. When host Jesse Palmer noted she is the first Bachelorette of Asian American descent in franchise history, Jenn replied, "I am so grateful and honored."

You can join Jenn's journey to love when "The Bachelorette" premieres July 8 on ABC.

The 25 men who will vie for Jenn's heart are the following:

Aaron, 29, an aerospace engineer from Tulsa, Okla.

Austin, 28, a sales executive from San Diego, Calif.

Brendan, 30, a real estate broker from Vancouver, British Columbia

Brett, 28, a health & safety manager from Manheim, Penn.

Brian, 33, an aesthetics consultant from Boynton Beach, Fla.

Dakota, 27, a sommelier from Paradise Valley, Ariz.

Devin, 28, a freight company owner from Houston, Texas

Dylan, 24, a medical student from Elk Grove, Calif.

Grant, 30, a day trader from Houston, Texas

Hakeem, 29, a medical device salesman from Schaumburg, Ill.

Jahaan, 28, a startup founder from New York, N.Y.

Jeremy, 29, a real estate investor from New York, N.Y.

John, 25, a medical student from Delray Beach, Fla.

Jonathon, 27, a creative director from Los Angeles, Calif.

Kevin, 35, a financial analyst from Denver, Colo.

Marcus, 31, an Army Ranger veteran from Raleigh, N.C.

Marvin, 28, a luxury event planner from Santa Monica, Calif.

Matt, 27, an insurance executive from Atlanta, Ga.

Moze, 25, an algebra teacher from Albany, N.Y.

Ricky, 28, a pharmaceutical representative from Miami, Fla.

Sam M., 27, a contractor from Myrtle Beach, S.C.

Sam N., 25, an entrepreneur from Carlsbad, Calif.

Spencer, 30, a pet portrait entrepreneur from Dallas, Texas

Thomas N., 31, a retirement advisor from Tucker, Ga.

Tomas A., 27, a physiotherapist from Toronto, Ontario

Disney is the parent company of this ABC station.

Related Topics

• ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
• THE BACHELORETTE
• ON THE RED CARPET
• BACHELORETTE

The Bachelorette

Former 'Bachelorette' Gabby Windey comes out on ABC's 'The View'

'The Bachelorette,' 'Claim to Fame,' more set summer premiere dates

'Live' returns for 36th season | See the guest lineup

What 'The Golden Bachelorette' casting directors are looking for

Top stories.

Suspect hits and kills woman at end of chase near S. Loop, HPD says

• 44 minutes ago

Residents annoyed by neighbor's 'junk' yard get meeting with city

• 32 minutes ago

Stabbing victim's dying moments in driveway captured on camera

2 suspects sought after kitten set on fire, 9 animals rescued: Pct. 1

• 39 minutes ago

UIL hits Fort Bend Austin HS athletics programs with 3-year probation

• 37 minutes ago

3-year-old student sent home from HISD with unexplained head injury

Officials look to grow HPD after more than 260,000 cases suspended

• 2 hours ago

Bridge that collapsed during May flood could remain closed until 2025