Learning on the Job
Malick — who later said that he decided to go to film school because it didn’t seem worse than any other option — was a member of the first class of students at the American Film Institute Conservatory. One of his classmates, David Lynch, said that his time there was “completely chaotic and disorganized, which was great … you quickly learned that if you were going to get something done, you would have to do it yourself. They wanted to let people do their thing.” Another member of that first class, Paul Schrader, reported that
