For five years I’ve despised this photo of Rooney Mara and Neon Indian‘s Alan Palomo, and for reasons that don’t add up. It was snapped during Austin’s SXSW music festival in March 2012, and more particularly during filming of a scene from Terrence Malick‘s Song to Song (which back then was being called Lawless). Every so often I’d click on it and mutter to myself, “God, that photo”…Rooney’s too-short bangs, Palomo’s chill convivial manner as he whispers something in her ear, the HE perception about Neon Indian being an oodly-doodly band, etc. In defiance of logic and buttressed by my own perversity, it’s been a source of faint distress over the entire span of the second Obama term, all through the 2016 election cycle and two months into Trump. Worse, Pitchfork‘s Amy Phillips reported a couple of days ago that Palomo’s speaking role hasn’t been cut out of Song to Song (Broad Green, 3.17). Footage or scenes containing footage of Arcade Fire, Iron & Wine and Fleet Foxes have been deep-sixed along with whatever Christian Bale did when the camera was humming. Phillips didn’t mention whether appearances by Cate Blanchett, Haley Bennett, Val Kilmer, Benicio del Toro and Holly Hunter have been kept or discarded, but you know Malick.