Terrence Malick doesn’t get out much. The notoriously elusive filmmaker, once and perhaps accurately referred to as “the world’s most private director,” doesn’t usually spend time promoting his films—or at least that’s been the case for the last few decades. This changed suddenly and to great excitement over the weekend, as Malick made a surprise appearance at his new film Song to Song’s South by Southwest world premiere. And he even stuck around to chat.

Malick joined the film’s star Michael Fassbender to discuss the making of Song to Song, along with moderator, friend, and fellow director Richard Linklater. The three artists spoke wistfully about Austin, Texas, Linklater’s hometown and where Malick shot Song to Song over 40 days. “You can’t live in Austin and escape the music,” Malick said of how the city inspired him creatively.

According to the Film Stage, this was Malick’s first recorded public appearance in over 40 years, though he’s shown a willingness to get out in public a little more of late. Last year, he gave a small, private talk at Princeton University.

At SXSW, he confirmed that he made the movie in his trademark, semi-improvised style: without a finished script, over very long days, and at an initial final cut of eight hours. “We thought, ‘Is this a miniseries?’ It really could have been,” Malick said. “It took a long time to cut it down to a manageable length.”

Malick also shed some light on why he goes through such an unconventional process. “We keep rolling to keep it spontaneous,” as he put it, adding that he prefers to show “bits and pieces” rather than linear narratives of his characters’ journeys. “You never know at the end of the day what you actually got … The editing takes a longer time than usual. You have to ask the patience of the studio or the financier—sometimes more than once.”

And while Malick indicated difficulty articulating his ideas behind Song to Song, he did leave his audience with a poignant idea to mull over to finish the talk.

It goes to that quotation that can you live in this world just moment to moment, song to song, kiss to kiss, as [Rooney Mara’s character] says, and try to create these different moods for yourself, and go through the world as in that [Virginia Woolf] quote: ‘without a self’ …. It’s a hard thing to convey and we didn’t know how, so doing lots of locations and lots of songs was our best guess about how to do that.

Song to Song hits theaters March 17. You can watch Malick's talk above.