TMZ DISCOVERS ITS BIG SCOOP AFTER THE FACT

The gossip website TMZ on Wednesday headlined “Terrence Malick — TMZ Captures a Hollywood Bigfoot!” Problem is, as the website itself admitted in an article accompanying the video, “Something INCREDIBLE happened and we didn’t even realize it — TMZ got footage of THE MOST elusive superstar in Hollywood!!!” As the video reveals, the TMZ reporter/cameraman points his camera instead at the actor accompanying Malick, the reclusive Oscar-nominated director, whose The Tree of Life won the top prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. The actor, Benicio del Toro, fends off an inane question by the TMZ cameraman about whether Cuba should become part of the U.S. (Del Toro was born in Puerto Rico), while Malick walks a few steps away, apparently attempting to avoid the ambush. Fewer than a half dozen still photos of Malick have surfaced over the past 30 years or so — and even fewer videos — all of them grabbed recently during location shooting in Texas. (He does not personally promote his films and did not show up at Cannes for either the Tree of Life red-carpet ceremony or the awards presentation.) Reporting on the TMZ “exclusive,” Britain’s Guardian newspaper commented, “The video … means the world now has another image of Malick to add to the shot that has illustrated just about every news article about the director published in the last three decades. It also suggests that in the era of social networks and video-enabled smart phones it may be nigh on impossible for the famous to remain incognito.” An article about the TMZ video also appeared on the Deadline.com website, whose contentious editor, Nikki Finke, shares Malick’s camera-shyness.