Jeff Wells, using the pseudonym "Joe Gilles" profiled Mr. Terrance Malick for the LA Times way back when. I love this part:

"Director Terrence Malick is profiled. Since his last films were produced in 1979, Malick has vanished from the scene, continuing to write scripts but never putting them together to direct.

It was Norma who first told me what becomes a legend most. "Absence," La Desmond barked, between sucks on her cigarette holder. Now, 40 years after Jimmy Dean screwed up, I see her point. I also see that if she took her own advice, I would be alive today--or at least a lot less cynical--but that's another movie.

As it is, I floated around, establishing, in the process, the Guinness record for writer's block (death will do that to a person). This went on, of course, until the management of this publication rescued me from the mai-tai limbo that is the Formosa.

Or so they tried. Trouble was, as I began to write more, I quickly realized that my best sources were the regulars back at the bar. Who can forget the days of splendor in the glass, I reminded myself, when a bunch of us unemployables could sit back and dish (without a twinge of irony) all those Industry legends making quite a career out of not working. Beatty, for example. For a long time after Reds, Warren developed a famous case of producer's block--the seducer trapped by his own seduction. He'd shuffle one big deal after another ad nauseam, but never commit. Foreplay became his lifestyle, on and off the court.

But the mother of all paraplegics, to mix another metaphor, had to be Terrence Malick."

Sound familiar? Listen: Stand up, pay the bar tab, slip away before your friends notice, don't say "see ya", just  walk on home and sit at your desk and write. Didn't hurt so bad, did it? Go here to read the article.