Lanton Mills

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Lanton Mills is a rarely-seen seventeen-minute comedy written and directed by publicity-shy director Terrence Malick. It was completed in 1969, whilst he was a student at the American Film Institute. The story concerns two cowboys (Harry Dean Stanton and Warren Oates) plotting to rob a bank in Texas. Paula Mandel (who plays a hysterical customer) is rumoured to have starred in an even more scarce Malick short entitled Old Age at around the same time.

The film was distributed non-theatrically (ie., to college film societies) in the 1970s but today reportedly can only be viewed in person at the AFI by researchers.

[edit] References

• Theresa Schwartzman: Can Terry Malick tell a joke? The serious and the absurd in Terrence Malick's Lanton Mills. IN: COP: Why you did it? I don't know. I always wanted to be a criminal, I guess.* Edited by Dietmar Schwärzler & Sylvia Szely. Vienna: Sonderzahl, December 2005 (Rohstoff: Eine filmhistorische Recherche nach der kleinen Form: Fanzine #2), pp. 21-23, online here