It's organic. It's like a river. One stream comes in and it meets another stream and becomes the Amazon.

Malick is so far on the other side of the spectrum in terms of his character. Malick is a complete recluse, and not at all driven by ego or championing who he is as an individual. It's all about the art. Whereas Herzog is constantly placing himself into the engine. Malick is such a gentle poet.

So to watch that production was just the most insane vision of a filmmaker being unrelenting in his will to create. Learning more about that was what we wanted to do. To find out how in God's name anyone could do that.

First, the three of us holed up in winter in a cabin and took the 500 hours down to twelve hours. Then we found an editor, Lambis Haralambidis. He took that twelve hours and brought it to five. Then we get together and started taking the ax and chopping off different parts of our film.

What we definitely agree with Walter on is that filmmaking is teamwork. It's one of the only arts that is truly based in the work of a team. Anyway, Werner he told us a lot of practical things. How to hang a hammock. He'd circle a map and give us a notebook with directions to get to certain places that were out of the way. He told us to drink the river water and not use purifications tactics that only "New Age assholes" used. He said that if we saw piranhas, we should jump in and swim with them. We did all of this. We took his word as gospel.

It's organic. It's like a river. One stream comes in and it meets another stream and becomes the Amazon.

I worked on "Tree of Life." It was just magical. It was like a little family. A fleeting, beautiful alliance to forge something meaningful. It was amazing, like a transcendental experience to be on the set.