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.

Fitzcarraldo is a mad dreamer. He's willing to sacrifice everything in order to make his vision of an opera house. That metaphor of pulling the boat over the mountain is so integral to anyone making any creative effort. It's that universal Sisyphean struggle.

Because of Walter, we did it the other way around. We also worked with an awesome sound designer named Will Patterson who just worked for four years on Terrence Malick's films. He did a lot of conceptual work to make the soundscapes in the jungle have this surreal quality, to blend these two films because a lot of the images are about this parallelism between the movies. The sound was very integral to fusing everything.

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.

There were the classic challenges any tourist faces, like getting lost, getting sick, losing things, getting in a fight... All these things happened numerous times. The only point of the trip that was defiantly challenging was a point that's not actually in our film.

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.

The biggest lesson we took was when Werner [Herzog] said in a meeting with us that the mother of all challenges is to get your film seen in theater. To finally share this film has been so gratifying. The way audiences have responded, too.