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New York — Woke up this morning, took a drag off my Parliament, and looked out the grimy window of my 100-square-foot apartment. Saw a homeless man peeing on a schoolchild.

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Malick is not interested in deconstructing Hollywood conventions or in reinventing them, which seems to be the preoccupation of Godard, for example, in his early films. Neither is Malick someone who brings the French New Wave to the United States in a more palatable form. Rather, Badlands is a film that explores what genre conventions and other clichés offer its characters.