Lanton Mills is a rarely seen seventeen-minute comedy written and directed by Terrence Malick

Terrence Malick

Terrence Frederick Malick is a U.S. film director, screenwriter, and producer. In a career spanning almost four decades, Malick has directed five feature films....

 and starring Warren Oates

Warren Oates

Warren Mercer Oates was an American actor best known for his performances in several films directed by Sam Peckinpah including The Wild Bunch and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia...

, Harry Dean Stanton

Harry Dean Stanton

Harry Dean Stanton is an American actor, musician, and singer. Stanton's career has spanned over fifty years, which has seen him star in such films as Paris, Texas, Kelly's Heroes, Dillinger, Alien, Repo Man, The Last Temptation of Christ, Wild at Heart, The Green Mile and The Pledge...

, Paula Mandel and Terrence Malick

Terrence Malick

Terrence Frederick Malick is a U.S. film director, screenwriter, and producer. In a career spanning almost four decades, Malick has directed five feature films....

. It was completed in 1969

1969 in film

The year 1969 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* Last year for prize giving at the Venice Film Festival until it is revived in 1980...

, while he was a student at the American Film Institute. The story concerns two cowboys (Harry Dean Stanton

Harry Dean Stanton

Harry Dean Stanton is an American actor, musician, and singer. Stanton's career has spanned over fifty years, which has seen him star in such films as Paris, Texas, Kelly's Heroes, Dillinger, Alien, Repo Man, The Last Temptation of Christ, Wild at Heart, The Green Mile and The Pledge...

 and Terrence Malick

Terrence Malick

Terrence Frederick Malick is a U.S. film director, screenwriter, and producer. In a career spanning almost four decades, Malick has directed five feature films....

) plotting to rob a bank in Texas. Paula Mandel (who plays a hysterical customer) is rumoured to have starred in an even more scarce Malick short entitled Old Age at around the same time.

The film was distributed nontheatrically (i.e., to collegiate film societies) in the 1970s but today reportedly can only be viewed in person at the A.F.I.

American Film Institute

The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...

by researchers.

Reference

• Theresa Schwartzman: Can Terry Malick tell a joke? The serious and the absurd in Terrence Malick's Lanton Mills. IN: COP: Why you did it? I don't know. I always wanted to be a criminal, I guess.* Edited by Dietmar Schwärzler & Sylvia Szely. Vienna: Sonderzahl, December 2005 (Rohstoff: Eine filmhistorische Recherche nach der kleinen Form: Fanzine #2), pp. 21–23, online here