The Thin Red Lino
When Dupont developed a radical new industrial technique for high durability micro-thickness flooring material, they decided to hire Malick to shoot their advertising campaign. Unfortunately they baulked at the six hour run-time of his original workprint, and at having to pay for a bunch of actors including Edward Norton, Matthew McConaughey, Billy Baldwin, Edward Burns, Josh Hartnett, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Stephen Dorff, Leonardo DiCaprio, Nicolas Cage, Tom Sizemore, Bill Pullman, Mickey Rourke and Lukas Haas whose parts all had to be cut out of the radically trimmed final version, which aired as a thirty-second spot; they didn't ask him back.