Marlon Brando Interviews Page: 2
Home Biography Filmography Trivia Quotes Interviews Awards & Nominations THE GODFATHER MOVIES BRANDO AS YOUNG REBELL LAST TANGO IN PARIS IMAGES: Picture Gallery 1 Miscellaneous Pictures Picture Gallery 2 Miscellaneous Pictures Picture Gallery 3 Movie Stills Picture Gallery 4 The Godfather Photos Wallpapers MARLON BRANDO POSTER SHOP: M. Brando & Godfather Posters, Prints, Photos	Interview with Marlon Brando Candid conversations with the Leading man Interview with Marlon Brando during the filming of the movie by Bruce Cook, Copyrights United Artists. "What's it like," I ask, "working with Brando and Nicholson your first time out?" It's a dumb question, but sometimes it's best to be direct. "What can' I tell you? It's what you would think. It's many things." "Name one." "Well, I mean the energy there is incredible. It's very intense in front of the camera. All I can do, all I try to do, is to stay open for all the moves. Things get going pretty fast, and I don't want to fall off." If Jack Nicholson is feeling that kind of pressure, he isn't showing it; He's a hard guy to get a fix on. Casual enough, friendly in a superficial way, but there is something oblique, indirect, almost withdrawn about him. He confirms what I had figured: that this is the first Western he has appeared in since Ride in the Whirlwind, one of the famous "lost" movies from the days before he first hit it big in Easy Rider. "That's when. I learned to ride a horse, making those two Westerns with Monte Hellman. This is a crazy business. You learn that kind of stuff making movies-how to ride a horse, how to shoot guns. . . ." "How to ride a motorcycle?" I prompt him. "That, too." From time to time we are interrupted by members of the crew and a few locals who have talked their way onto the set. They ask to take his picture, to have a picture taken with him. He's. cooperative, pleasant, affable. But his mind seems elsewhere. I notice that he is looking rather often' at'Brando, who is off to one side, getting ready for a take that will be shot across a wide gorge, a long shot which Penn and the camera crew are setting up even then. I'm reminded that Nicholson is said to live in roughly that sort of relationship to Branda back in Los Angeles, on Mulholland Drive. His house is on a hill, directly opposite Brando's, which stands close by on another. Maybe that means a lot to a guy like Jack Nicholson. You can be sure it means something. As Brando waits while, the shot is being set up, he practices throwing a mean-looking four-pronged pike into a fence post; it is one of the arsenal of rare killing instruments with which the Brando character, Robert Lee Clayton, dispatches his victims. Nicholson watches, saying nothing for a while, and then admits: "I was just thinking. You look at those two guys, and you realize the difference in temperaments we've got working on this movie. One of them is throwing a pike in the post-looks dangerous. The other guy" -he points across at Arthur Penn-"is looking down at the ground, trying to decide what to do next." He hesitates, then adds, at his own expense: "And me, I'm in the middle, talking to a writer. I call that an unbeatable package." Nicholson suddenly laughs. "I hope the combines didn't bother you last night, Mr. Brando." "No. That stuff doesn't bother me. Nothing bothers me out here. I like it." Marlon Brando is talking with the people who own the ranch on which the movie is being shot-or at least this piece of the movie. Since he is staying right on the set in his camper, he is their guest, too. They like that. They are decent people, and he is being decent right back at them. Their daughter Ona comes over, and they introduce her. He, in turn, tells them about the beautiful rocks he has found in the vicinity -"Even saw some petroglyphs, three of them, down there among the boulders." And so on. But about this time he notices me as I face unobtrusively in the opposite direction, taking it all down in my notebook. It's a sneaky way to operate, I admit, but I had been warned Brando probably wouldn't talk to me, so I 0 thou,ght, what the hell, I might as well take down whatever I hear, because he might say something interestirig. I had tried to be discreet but somehow he had noticed, and before I am quite prepared, here he is, a huge presence, regarding me sternly, asking me who I am and what I am doing with the notebook. I tell him who. I tell him why. And he says, "Forget it. I'll talk to you." And he hustles me into the little cubicle section of the trailer dressing room. It is warm but it is private. "Go ahead," he says, "ask me what you want." I am suddenly convulsed with a paroxysm of uh-uh-uh's-unable, quite, to come up with the kind of magic questions that may unlock him, so I fall back instead on one about all the changes in the script, and the improvisations on it I've heard so much about. He shrugs. "Well, we're shooting on the run. But with almost any good movie it's impossible to plan it until you're right there. When you live in the circumstances. the reality of it comes to you, for better or for worse. Movies are actually improvisations. The best young filmmakers are the ones who realize that. Take Martin. Scorsese. He works quickly and cheaply, but what makes him so good is that he has this improvisational quality to his work that lends itself to the technique of making pictures." "So it's kind of an existential process," I observe. "Yes. And, in that way, very reflective of the times. I mean, you've got to keep your radar going all the time and react right away these days. Like you just now. You're dressed just like the crew. I wouldn't have noticed you at all except for the pad you were writing in. And that wouldn't have bothered me, either, except-well, you understand." I nod. Yes, I understand. "It's all in flux. The times are in an impressive turmoil. Things-effects and responses-are foreshortened. What took fifty to one hundred years to happen now has its effect in twenty years or less." But there Brando breaks off and shrugs again. "All this was said well in Future Shock. I don't need to repeat it now. "The problems are planetary. It's irrelevant if you belong to Sierra Leone or to Australia today, because the problems are the same. It's the same pollution. It's the same energy shortage. It's going to be the same hunger in a few years, too. And we all seem to be at the mercy of these same strange new countries that have been formed which are called international cartels. They are somewhat less populated, but they speak loudly, and they carry a very big stick. Companies like Standard Oil and IBM are sort of the new city-states. The multi-national companies have no loyalty to anyone or responsibility to anyone. There's a patina of loyalty to investors, but that doesn't mean anything. They've got their own intelligence system , political forces, everything." He slows down, then grinds to a halt. He is a rapid, forceful talker, associative rather than logical (like most of us) in the way he jumps from topic to topic. What is really remarkable, though, is his concentration on his listener (me) as he talks. There is a compelling intensity to his manner that demands-and gets-total attention. "Wouldn't movies be a good way to communicate this to people?" I suggest. "To more or less sound the alarm?" "I think," he answers, "Francis Ford Coppola said something like this in The Godfather, don't you?" "Well. . ." "Besides, what about movies and communicating the message? We're always going to change the world by communication, but it never quite works out, does it? We thought in the old days that radio would transform things-just get the message out to the people. Then it was computers that stirred people's hopes and dreams. And what did the computers give us? Vietnam. It was in The Best and the Brightest. They kept feeding the data into the computer, and the computer said we would win, so we kept right on sending troops, and bombing, and killing people, until they finally began to see the computer was wrong." "But," I ask him, "don't you think that movies are really pretty influential?" For years it was important to Brando to be in pictures that said things-things he really believed in. "What have they influenced?" he counters. "At least with television you know that there is some direct influence. People buy food, air conditioners, automobiles, electric tweezers, because they've seen them advertised on television. But how do we use that machine? And how do we use movies? It seems to me there is some kind of pomposity to the idea that if we communicate these ideas people will listen, sparkles will come, and the cool breeze of truth will blow." Brando sounds far more pessimistic than I had expected, or even imagined. It becomes evident as he talks on that he has been plunged into gloom by what he sees as the planetary crisis just ahead. Art won't help. Communication won't solve these problems. The only glimmer of hope he sees is in ecological experiments like those he has wider way on his island in Tahiti. He calls it "the Master. Plan of Tetiaroa-the development of an island so that it can become an ecological paradise." He is completely serious about this, and as practical as it is possible to be. He explains at length how he plans to use solar energy for the electrolysis of water; how he plans to see what can be done with wave pumps; how he has experiments under way to see if methane gas can be produced in quantity from human waste-literally, shit power. But what good-he resumes-is communication if it can't prevent genocide and injustice? "I mean, the reasoning is so devious. The dreams of idealism in one man's mind are the nightmares of another man. We worry about Russian slave labor camps and ignore torture in Brazil, tui:n our backs on our own shame on the Indian reservations and the ghettos, all of it. We-" He breaks off suddenly, hesitates, then plunges on: "Two gentlemen from the FBI visited me yesterday, asking me questions. And I asked them some. It wound up that we had a two or three-hour conversation. They were. . ." He shrugs. "They were nice men. Their big question was, would I aid a man who was a fugitive from justice?" (Meaning, in particular, the Indians who are now fugitives from the latest shoot-out at Wounded Knee.) "And my big question to them was, if a friend of theirs with the FBI killed someone wrongly, would they turn him in and testify against him? Basically, it's the same situation looked at from two different sides. A man on the wrong side of the law may be a fugitive from justice, but a man on the right side of the law, if he doesn't tell the truth, can become a fugitive from the truth. And really, you know, there was such lying, such awful mendacity during that Minneapolis Wounded Knee trial. It was shameful. That's the kind of thing I was talking about, trying to get the FBI men to face." Just about that time a timorous knock comes at the dressing room door, and Brando is informed that it is time to change for the next scene, his second of the day. He nods, says he'll be ready when they are, and begins shucking off his clothes. He's overweight-massive but not flabby. Underneath about thirty or thirty-five extra pounds, the boxer's physique is still there. I make as if to back out of the small cubicle. But he says, "Nah. Stick around. We can resume this after the take. Movies is a compartmentalized business, anyway. " And that reminds me of something that has always bothered me about the making of movies. "Look," I say. "I don't see, considering the process, how any level of dramatic intensity can be maintained from scene to scene." He smiles his crooked smile. "It can't be done. I found that out long ago. I used to leave my performances in the dressing room. I'd get to the set at seven and listen to records to psych up and aU that. Then I'd lose it all before I got up in front of the camera. I honestly think it's best to take the moment as it comes. It's that existential thing again we were talking about earlier. But this one's just a cowboy picture, anyway. Like shooting fish." It may be like shooting fish to Marlon Brando, but you'd never know it from the way he goes at it. In all, I saw a couple of scenes in which he was supposed to be stalking Nicholson's gang of rustlers, spying on them, setting them up for the kill. Each time he did a take, he managed to get a little something extra into it. This is a man who can act with his eyebrows, who will ad lib something in German-in German-when he thinks the script could use a little spritz. And somehow it all makes sense. It adds depth and. dimension to the character. Every little movement has a meaning all its own. lust like the song says. What he is doing in The Missouri Breaks is challenging himself, introducing elements into the character and plot that may not be quite present in the script. It's dangerous, it's chancey, it's playing close to the line, but he's willing to take the risk. I wind up on the bank of a little creek that feeds into the Yellowstone River a little farther down the line. Right here it's quiet. The only movement comes from the frogs that jump occasionally, minnows that twist through the clear water, and from a big log-like object bumping slowly along with the current. It is Brando, of course, a crown of grass and creek weeds covering the bit of his head that moves along above the water, all but obscuring the pair of binoculars through which he peers, as he supposedly observes his quarry downstream. The camouflage was his idea. It makes him seem somehow monstrous, like the green man of English folklore. He does take after take for Penn, soaked, muddy, willing. Then, finished at last, he clowns for a couple of still photographers as the crew packs up, stalking the frogs among the reeds. He grabs at a couple, but they elude him, jumping just ahead. But he has quick hands. He submerges again, calling out to the crowd on the bank. "I'll get under the water again, like a big crocodile." He floats just below the surface for a moment, and a fish, not much larger than a minnow, swims close by. In a flash he reaches out and has it. Streaming water, he jumps to his feet, fish in hand, and in practically the same motion, bites it in half. That causes quite a stir. "Yeccch!" somebody on the bank calls out. There is also some nervous laughter. Brando grins. "Go ahead and laugh," he yells to the crew. "You guys don't know what you're missing." Maybe he developed a taste for raw fish in Japan when he was making Sayonara. Or maybe he's just never lost his desire to shock people once in a while with some new schrecklichkeit-a momentary reversion to the old Brando of The Wild Ones. Minutes later he is out of the creek, though,. for the day, ready to return to his camper. He invites me onto the back of his Honda for the ride back. I learn then why Jack Nicholson was bouncing around so high on the back of that bike... Brando's camper is modest on the outside and spartan on the inside. There is nothing at all luxurious about it. But he prefers it to a motel room or a house in Billings, because he can be alone here, and he puts great price on his privacy. How does he spend his time? He reads. He wanders around collecting rocks. "Look at these," he says, hauling out his rock collection. "They look like they're not worth shit, but when you lick them"-he does it-"they turn just like magic into something beautiful." He holds it up for my inspection, and he's right. It is beautiful. "I got this one by the Yellowstone River. This is great country for rocking." As I look at it, he looks at me. "You know, I must say I think your business is haywire when a writer is sent out to talk to a bunch of horse's asses making a cowboy picture. What has that got to do with anything that advances us? Practically zero. I think the news business is pretty generally screwed up, anyway. On television news, what do you get? Misery squeezed between ho-ho-ho and buy-buy-buy. I don't know. It seems to me we're all caught up in the same racket. There's not a writer around in your business who doesn't want to go off to a cabin in the woods and write a novel and enjoy the good life. But everybody's got a family to support. He's got to get by. It's a fearsome choice for anyone to try to playa square game." Brando pauses for a moment, and then plunges on: "And trying to get at the truth is just about impossible. Listen, let me tell you something. Several years ago I was in Baffin Bay up in Canada all by myself, just me and a bunch of Eskimos in the dead of winter. I fell down on an ice floe and dislocated my hip and broke my wrist. The Eskimos came and got me and put me on a dog sled and took me to an old, old woman in their village, encampment, whatever you'd call it. Anyway, right away she puts a foot in my crotch, takes hold of my leg and twists my foot back into place. The funny thing was it didn't hurt much. Then-she spoke no English at all-then without a word she gets behind me and started tapping my shoulder in one place. Just tapping, but gradually my wrist grew numb. No feeling in it, and a few minutes before it hurt like hell. She set my wrist then, and I heard the bones crunch, but I felt absolutely nothing. Then she wrapped it in a kind of cast of unborn otter skin, and in a.few days' time everything was okay. It was amazing! And it shows what utter disregard we have for folk medicine, that we won't learn what they have to teach us." This was great! As far as I know, Brando had never talked about this before. I could tell from the somber, earnest way he talked about it that it had been a harrowing and an important experience for him. And he was revealing it, maybe for the first time, to me. This was what Louella Parsons used to call an "exclusive." "Now what I just told you," Brando resumes for a moment, "was a complete lie. But I just wanted to demonstrate to you what happens when an untruth is presented in a completely serious and straightforward way by a trained liar. That's what actors are, and so are politicians. Nixon was certainly one of the most skillful. Now, I just conned you, and maybe you're pissed off at me, but we get conned every day-on television commercials, and in the TV news, and especially when people give speeches. That's how the news gets screwed up." "But what about your own craft?" I put in. "Your own racket. How do you get by in that?" He shrugs. It's somehow an ingratiating gesture. "I don't know. I'm like a lot of old boxers. The more you get hit, the easier it is to take a punch. Pretty soon you're moving intuitively. You .don't remember what happened between the fourth and the eighth round, you're just slipping and ducking, and moving. With me, I go into it, and I say to myself, wbere have I seen this scene before? All these scenes in this movie have been seen nine thousand times before. But you're locked into a cowboy situation which is admittedly acut above Hoot Gibson, so it's essential to think of new things to try just to stay ahead of the audiences. Unconsciously, they know how the scene begins and what the actor will say. I've got to upset those expectations." At about this point I ask about his Indian movie project, and I find that it is much further along than I had realized. It is to be as graphic and honest a statement of the Indians' situation today as he can make it. There is a script that has been approved and accepted for backing by Columbia Pictures. Brando, as producer of the film, is now acting as go-between, working with the studio and the Indians of the American Indian Movement (AIM), who have total approval, and trying to work out an agree ent on the director so the film can get under way. Would he consider directing it? "No." The crooked smile. "I gave that up with One Eyed Jacks." I tell him I thought that was a good movie and that a lot of other people do, too. He nods his thanks. That is more or less that. "But you will continue acting, won't you?" I think it would be a disaster if he really did end his career- for him, for us, for everyone. "What kind of future do you see for yourself?" He leans forward and says with more urgency than I was prepared for, "I would like to conduct my life and be a part of a society that is as good as grass grows. I'd like to be a blade of grass in concert with other blades of grass. Ants do well; sharks and cockroaches. They survive. I'm for survival." There. Chief Joseph, the eloquent, vanquished leader of the Nez Perce Indians, couldn't have put it better himself. A society as good as grass grows. Interview- Copyrights United Artists Next Page Previous Page	Next Page Previous Page ACTORS: Al Pacino John Wayne Johnny Depp Leonardo DiCaprio Orlando Bloom Owen Wilson Pierce Brosnan