"Pacino:" "I was a teenager." "And it was in some obscure movie house somewhere in Manhattan." "It was like the third - you know, the third playing of "on the waterfront."" "You give it to Joey." "You give it to dugan." "You give it to Charley, who was one of your own." "You think you're God almighty, but you know what you are?" "You're a cheap, lousy, dirty stinking mug, and I'm glad what I done to you!" "It was on a double bill with "member of the wedding."" "There wasn't even a question that I was going to leave." "I was going to sit through the entire "member of the wedding"" "to see "waterfront" again." "There wasn't any going to the bathroom or anything like that." "'Cause it might go away, right?" "It could go away." "And I had seen something i had never seen before." "I had related to a movie in a way I had never related before." "Who are you, some girl who makes sandwiches or something?" "Your father wears a hat says he's a big, important man, you start telling me what to do?" "Nobody tells me what to do." "You keep needling me, and if I want to," "I'm gonna take this joint apart." "And you're not gonna know what hit you." "Travolta: "Streetcar named desire" or "wild one."" "That was probably the first time I saw him, but the truth is that i was probably more influenced by his later work." "Godfather, i don't know what to do." "I don't know what to do." "You can act like a man!" "What's the matter with you?" "This is how you turn out in Hollywood?" "A little girl that cries like a woman?" "What can I do?" "What can I do?" "Duvall:" "When I first saw Brando, i was, like, in college, trying to find my place." "And I was - you know, I was..." "I was just lost." "And my parents, coming from a military family, kind of pushed me into acting." "And I started in, and I was liking it." "And then I saw Brando in something." "He was so much different than anybody else in films." "More unique and more - it was kind of a..." "It kind of stopped you in your tracks." "I want to know why!" "Tell me why!" "Listen, baby, when we first met, you and me, you thought I was common." "Well, how right you was." "I was common as dirt." "You showed me a snapshot, a place with them columns." "And I pulled you down off them columns, and you loved it, having them colored lights going." "And wasn't we happy together?" "Wasn't it all okay till she showed here?" "Fonda:" "I think the first movie that I saw him in." "Was "streetcar nhnamed desire," and it was such a phenomenon." "I'd never seen anything like that on the screen." "Depp:" "Marlon revolutionized acting." "I mean, he was, without question..." "He was the pioneer." "He changed it." "He changed it completely." "Murrow:" "Marlon Brando is an actor of very considerable talent." "Two nights ago he won an academy award, the youngest actor ever honored in this way." "He will be 31 on Sunday." "Tell me, are you planning a long career as an actor?" "Well, I'll tell you, ed." "Up to last year, i sort of regarded acting as a means of making a living and not much more." "I was interested in other things, but I've taken a pretty active interest in it." "And since I don't do anything else well and up to this time, i haven't decided what else i would like to do," "I might as well put all my energies into being as good an actor as I can." "Brando:" "We lived in a small town." "Farming community." "We lived on a farm." "My mother taught me to love nature, and..." "I guess that was the most she could do." "In front of our house, we had this big field, meadow." "It was a mustard field in the summer, and we had a big black dog named dutchy." "And she used to hunt for rabbits in that field." "But she couldn't see them." "And so she'd have to leap up in this mustard field, look around very quickly, see where the rabbits were." "And it was..." "Very beautiful." "She never caught the rabbits." "Gossell:" "The Brando family moved to libertyville about 1939." "Buehrer:" "Frannie was bud's older sister." "Who was a junior when we were freshmen." "And then his other sister was older." "Jocelyn." "He was sort of a different type of a person but he liked to play the drums, remember?" "Aemisegger:" "Yeah, he drummed on everything, too." "He sat behind me in my algebra class, but he never really paid any attention." "He would cross his foot like this, and he'd drum on the bottom of his foot with his drumsticks or on his algebra book here with the drumsticks." "And he never paid any attention to the class." "Sullivan:" "Now, tell me..." "When did you get this, uh, develop this wonderful affection for drums and drumming?" "Well, I'll tell you, ed, i, uh... it's a funny thing." "Ever since I was a kid," "I've always been facsincated by rhythm." "And I remember when I was - years ago, when I was living on the farm," "I used to love to listen to the donkey engine." "There used to be a donkey engine for the water pump." "And I used to love to listen to that thing pulsate." "And it just had something to say to me." "It had an appeal for me." "Some people are drawn to tone and others to color and form." "And I think that is..." "How does a donkey engine sound?" "I've never heard a donkey engine." "Well, it's a..." "It goes - it's an eccentric kind of - it's off rhythm." "It goes..." "Pope:" "Bud and I met when we were both 15 years old." "He was a real cutup." "One night, we had a date." "And I opened the door, and there he is." "He has an album of phonograph records on his head." "Well, we went down to the bus stop." "We got on the bus." "We went downtown Chicago." "We went out and had a soda and went home again." "He never took the album off his head, and I never asked him why." "And when he came for a date, he usually stayed." "And he'd stay one day, two days, sometimes three days." "And my mother would really worry about it." "She'd say, "bud, does your mother know where you are?"" "And was very sad, because he'd say, "no." "But she doesn't know where she is, either."" "I never met his parents." "He evidently didn't want his friends to meet his parents." "My father was a tough whore fucker, bar fighter, supermasculine..." "And he was tough." "My mother was very..." "Very poetic, and also a drunk." "Adler:" "Dodie had been in the theater when she was young." "And apparently - he never told me this." "I learned this later - she was a very good and very ambitious actress in Omaha." "Fonda:" "In fact, marlon's mother." "Was the one that got my father into the theater." "She was very active in the Omaha community playhouse." "And she suggested to my father that he play the lead in "merton of the movies,"" "which is what got him interested in acting as a profession." "Englund:" "His mother, by 10 o'clock in the morning, would be gone from him, drunk." "And he didn't want her to be away from him like that, drunk." "The concept of drunken, he didn't have." "He's maybe 7 or 8 years old." "And so he'd stand in front of her and imitate their animals - the cow and the horse." "And that would awaken her, and she'd come and smile, and so he would do more." "And then he would start to imitate the people that - their neighbors - make her laugh, because he did it so tellingly." "It would cut glass, what he would do, even then." "I mean, I know this because he would imitate himself doing it in front of his mother." "And that's why he basically hated acting." "That's how it started." "That's how he started acting." "Loving:" "Being drunk or not, she represented the family." "He got his warmth and sympathy from his mom, for sure." "But the opposite was from the father." "Marlon sr." "Was a very imposing and very handsome person." "He was the sort of classic traveling salesman who could have a girlfriend in various places." "His idea of bringing up children is definitely - you had to maintain a discipline." "When he came in the door, you would hear this "thump, thump, thump" of the footfall, and the children would be seated and quiet." "They were supposed to be quiet." "There was that kind of formality that marlon really rebelled against." "Underbrink:" "He never rebelled terribly at libertyville." "He was just extremely erratic." "He just didn't do his work, didn't pass courses, didn't show up for things." "My father was the principal who had to deal with it and couldn't figure marlon out." "Well, finally marlon's father shipped him to shattuck military academy in Minnesota, where he really rebelled." "Englund:" "Form was his enemy." "Was his - why is it like that?" "Why can't you climb up the bell tower?" "That's what he got thrown out of shattuck for." "Why can't you put horse droppings on the teacher's desk?" "That's funny." "His "why" about everything - he would not conform." "I mean, that's the epicenter and the living, breathing soul of his art - nonconformity." "But he did play football there, and that's where he injured his knee." "And that injury is what kept him out of the draft and world war ii." "Right after he left shattuck, he went to New York, not knowing what he was going to do." "But that was a sort of demi-paradise for a single kid who looked like marlon in those days - an endless feast." "And marlon fed himself handsomely." "Pope:" "He went to New York." "Because his mother and his sister were there." "Jocelyn, she wanted to be an actress." "You know, his mother said," ""why don't you concentrate on being an actor?"" "Adler:" "He was better at acting." "When he was in the military academy than anything else." "That was the only time people complimented him, was if he did a play at school and he was good." "He was an elevator boy, and I think he just wandered into the new school, where he studied with my mother." "Turturro:" "Stella adler was considered a wonderful actress." "She was a daughter of Jacob adler, who was a great, great actor in the yiddish theater." "She went to Paris to work with stanislavski." "And method acting, you know, really comes out of the whole stanislavski approach." "Woman:" "What is the method that they talk about?" "Brando:" "That's what 50 million actors would like to know, too." "That's an age-old argument." "And, you know, you could spend 12 hours in walgreen's drugstore arguing about that." "Pacino:" "Well, there's just..." "There's just no such thing." "That's the best way to explain it." "It is, I guess - well, I guess you could say it's coming from the personal." "It's how personal you are method acting is so varied." "It's so..." "I don't even understand it." "Brando:" "Acting comes easily to everybody." "All I've done is just simply through the extraordinary talents of Stella adler, who is my teacher and mentor, learned how to be aware of the process and how to access my own feelings." "Landau:" "Stella was a force." "When Stella liked you, she liked you." "And if she didn't, she didn't." "But she recognized in marion an innate theatricality that wasn't conventional." "He was theatrical..." "Without being theatrical." "It came out of an honesty." "But because of its size and scope, it had style." "And she was smart enough to see that." "No wonder he gives her credit." "Hopper:" "Stella said you work from the object." "So marlon was working from the outside in to get an inner reaction." "Her idea was that from the object, it affects your senses and your recall of memory." "And it frees you to, like, be free enough to improvise, so you live in the moment - moment-to-moment realities." "The idea of the achieving, or method, situation." "Depp:" "You were watching someone feel." "So what became infinitely more important was what was going on underneath the words when you watched marlon Brando." "Adler:" "I came home from high school one day." "This is - in 1944." "And there was marlon in the apartment - this unbelievably beautiful thing, like the most beautiful cat." "I've never seen anything like it." "We went to the movies, and in the movie, he put his arm around me." "The night I met him," "I said, "i think I have a crush on that actor."" ""Crush."" "And my mother said, "he's a great actor." "He's the greatest actor since papa."" "Her father was a very great actor." "And we started to see each other." "We'd go to the movies and then come home and listen to music all night long - endless, endless music." "We listened to prokofiev and shostakovich." "He liked music that was enormously, enormously emotional." "He became familiar with a certain kind of family life in a Jewish home." "And also, we had all these really great New York intellectuals and artists." "And they all liked marlon a lot." "So for a time, he had this moment of really just living the life of an actor." "McCarthy:" "I'd just gotten out of the army." "And my wife said, "say, there's something in the paper" ""about a new play that..." ""Harold clurman and kazan are doing." ""Why don't you go down there, Kevin, and see if there's something there for you?"" "I got myself down to 40th and Broadway, and I got the most terrific welcome." "Maxwell Anderson was there." "It was his play, "truckline cafe,"" "and I read this marvelous part." "Whoa, golly." "I thought, "that's just right how did they know I was coming?"" "And they said, "oh, no, no, no, Kevin." "No, no." "That part's taken."" ""That part's taken?" "Who else in town is gonna play it any better than I will?"" ""The actor's name is marlon Brando."" "I said, "well..." "Could I understudy that part?" ""And one of these days, it's gonna happen." ""This guy, whoever he is," ""is not gonna be able to cut the mustard." ""And I'll walk out there and do it, and you'll be damn glad I'm here."" "Stroock:" "I guess the first time I really met him." "Was at the table read." "And I couldn't understand a word he was saying - not a single word." "He was not doing anything at all at rehearsal." "He was talking into his coat." "He was upstaging himself." "He would sort of walk through, traipse through." "He was talking inside of his sweater." "He had his hands covering over his face, you know?" "And quite honestly, most of us in the show were thinking," ""he's never gonna end up in the show." "They're gonna fire him."" "And we felt that Harold clurman was being so patient with this actor because Harold's wife was Stella adler, marlon's teacher." "And I'd think, "i can't wait." ""Can't wait to get on and show them how this part should be played."" "Stroock:" "One day, Harold dismissed everybody for lunch." "And I was sitting in the wings, and everyone left." "And Harold said, "marlon, don't go yet." "Come here."" "And he said, "sit down."" "And there was an ice-cream table downstage center." "And he said, "start the scene."" "So marlon started the scene and within a second, started to get up." "And Harold said, "no, no." "Stay." "Go on, go on, go on."" "So he goes on, and a second later, he's getting up." "And he said, "no." "Stay." "Go on, go on." "Come on, come on."" "And he starts to do this scene." "And there is so much rage in him that he starts to pound on the table, beat up the table, practically." "And I remember that he wrapped his leg around the base of this iron table." "It was like seeing a caged, wild animal." "But he wouldn't let him move." "Then the scene builds." "And he's talking about the murder." "And he shot his wife 10 times." "And I remember sitting there with, you know, just chills." "And I felt like there was a volcano that I could see just starting to erupt, and then it just exploded." "And when he finished," "Harold said, "that's it, marlon. don't lose it." "Now, go to lunch."" "McCarthy:" "We were all sort of standing around." "All of a sudden, i heard this voice " ""i killed her!" "I killed her!"" "I didn't know what to think." "I still can't." "I mean, I still feel it." "Malden:" "When it was over..." "I never heard so much cheering and shouting and clapping and stomping of their feet and standing up." "The play couldn't start for about a minute and a half." "And that's a long time with nothing happening." "And he stopped the play." "Wallach:" "I saw "truckline cafe."" "He came on and did a scene of about four minutes and absolutely stunned the audience." "We were left empty - empty and wounded by this actor." "That man, that young man - he was about 21- went out there and just..." "Destructive." "Destroyed by ideas of how - what it's all about." "So there was no further thought that I was gonna play that part." "Wallach:" "He became a triumph." "From then on, everybody wanted him to act - everybody." "What was magical about him is young actors are eager to get the job." "He reversed the process." "He'd say, "I'm not interested." "And that made them all go nuts to get him." "Pope:" "After I moved to New York i moved into a crazy building." "All young, budding actors trying to work in New York." "And bud used to come almost every Saturday and play charades with us." "I think just being a cut-up was his greatest joy in life." "I was always very aware that marlon behaved in a very, very unorthodox way." "I mean, he was so playful." "He was always doing something to make you laugh, to make you crack up." "You were supposed to be serious." "He would start to laugh." "And I remember we went to some party with my mother and Harold, and he was putting olive pits in some man's pocket." "I was always embarrassed by him." "Jones:" "I met him in New York." "It was in front of birdland." "He was running in and out of the Alvin hotel with a red fedora on." "We'd go to the palladium on Sundays." "And 5 o'clock we're partying with the red fedora." "Brando:" "I had an opportunity, being a white kid from the midwest." "I never saw a black person." "And then, when I came to New York, it was all different, man." "I had a lot of black friends in those days." "And the whole thing that brought me together with the palladium on Wednesday night, Saturday night to get involved with the mambo contests was music, because I played conga." "And I admired it so much." "Back then, it was a lot of discovery going on and enthusiasm and passion, you know." "Marlon was attracted to it because of the passion." "He didn't know whether to dance, play conga, or both at the same time." "And he used to dance when he was playing conga, you know." "Marlon was a great dancer, too, because he spent a lot of time around the Catherine Dunham group." "He was basically after the girls, you know." "And it was a favorite phrase he used to use." "He'd say "q, let's go out and jiggle the molecules."" "And that's a very graphic way of describing marlon " ""the molecule jiggler."" "'Cause that was his favorite expression." "Leachman:" "We had dance class once a week." "In the actor's studio." "And that's when he saw me for the first time - marlon did." "He asked me to go out a few times, and I never would go out, because..." "Well, he had a raccoon, and I like animals." "And I would like raccoons, too, but I didn't." "I had a picture in my mind of a bed in the corner on the floor." "And, also, I think he had a reputation then of breaking hearts." "And I certainly didn't want to get mine broken..." "Ah." "...by marlon." "He hated getting to the theater - to get up to go to the matinee and get there on time when he would have preferred to be in bed and sleep or with a girl." "He had all kinds of other things that he liked better than getting to the theater on time." "One weekend, my wife was not there, one weekend evening." "But marlon was there." "And monty clift, who was a great friend." "And we decided to make a little skit." "We had a camera." "And this was a camera that I had borrowed from my brother-in-law." "You'll see this delight he takes." "He's got himself all sort of keyed up in a funny way." "We're all sort of in female - in drag of some kind." "I'm wearing one of my wife's easter hats." "And marlon is adjusting his bosoms." "He's got some kind of canisters underneath his shirt." "He's there fixing himself up." "But it's just a stunning moment in our memoirs." "Ha!" "Woman:" "Marlon, what were the shows you've done in New York?" "Name one, or two." "I was in "candida" with Katharine Cornell." "And I was in "eagle rampant" with tallulah bankhead." "And..." ""I remember mama."" "With Sophie Rosenstein." "Right." "And..." "Oh, "truckline cafe."" "Oh, yeah." ""Truckline cafe."" "That's good enough." "Now, will you turn your head for us?" "Sure." "Turturro:" "Marlon did a screen test for Warner brothers." "From a scene that was from - in the early stages of "rebel without a cause."" "And, you know, it's the first time, I guess, he worked on camera." "And I think you can kind of see it in some ways, so it's very interesting to see that even he had to adjust to it." "Woman:" "Action!" "What's Tony and riggs been - been cooking up?" "Some job they want to pull." "I'm glad you're back." "Why'd you say that?" "Yeah?" "What - what kind of job?" "Oh, I don't know." "You still see, you know, potential there and stuff." "But you do see him sort of push a little bit, which I'm not used to seeing him do in movies." "I tried to lie to my old man." "He didn't even give me a chance." "He hit me before i even said anything." "I hate him." "I hate his stupid face!" "Harold, your mother was worried about you while you were away." "Yeah, she was worried!" "don't make me laugh!" "In Brando's performances, you rarely see him straining for emotion." "It's usually there, or he's almost - he has it, and then he's trying to conceal it." "And in the screen test, you see him actually kind of, you know, showing it all." "You know, he starts to cry a little bit very quickly." "You don't see sort of how it builds." "Kazan:" "Very often the most talented people cannot work quickly." "And need care and patience in their handling." "The only way I can find talent is to do it very slowly - to get to know them, take a walk with them, to meet their girlfriend or their mother and father and so forth." "I find out who they are and what is inside them, what their souls are, what materials they have inside them for our art." "And when I find that, I know whether they have talent or not." "Voight:" "I'll make an assumption that the meeting with kazan." "Was a very remarkable moment for him." "Kazan was a perfect person for a guy like marlon because he was his intellectual equal." "They were both iconoclasts." "So that match came with "streetcar,"" "and all of a sudden, marlon Brando showed up." "Williams:" "Kazan sent him up to provincetown to read for me." "And the plumbing wasn't working." "The electric lights had gone out." "And we were stranded in this little cottage between provincetown and truro." "And he came in there four or five days after i was told to expect him." "He repaired the plumbing." "He repaired the electric lights." "Cavett:" "Brando?" "Yes, and he sat down and he read." "And all of a sudden, margo sprang up, and she said, "get kazan on the phone." "I've never heard such a reading in my life."" "And, of course, I hadn't either." "Hunter:" "Where's Stella?" "Brando:" "She's outside getting some air." "How do I look?" "You look okay." "Many thanks." "Well, looks like my trunk has exploded." "Yeah, me and Stella was helping you unpack." "Well, you certainly did a fast and thorough job of it!" "Well, it certainly looks like you raided some stylish shops in Paris." "Thomson:" "December 1947, "streetcar named desire" opens, and it's still one of the seminal Broadway openings of the last 100 years." "Would you think it's possible that I was ever considered to be attractive?" "Your looks are okay." "I was fishing for compliments, Stanley." "I don't go in for that stuff." "What stuff?" "Compliments to women about their looks." "I never met a woman yet that didn't know she was good-looking or not without being told." "And there's some of them that give themselves credit more than they've got." "Stroock:" "The next day, the whole city was talking." "About this young man." "You know, people started - even on shows - started to imitate, "Stella!"" "You know, everybody knew who marlon Brando was." "Schulberg:" "From the moment that he came on the stage, you had the feeling that the whole way of..." "Way of acting had changed." "Silva:" "The thing that impressed me was, I didn't see an actor." "I thought somebody had made a mistake and walked on the stage." "But at the same time, my hairs were standing up, because he was so full of this contained energy." "Landau:" "Huge is the word." "And brutal and real." "Malden:" "He would do the scene, and I'd say, "boy, that's great."" "The next day, the same scene - different." "Completely different." "And you say, "wow," you know?" "He just - he had something..." "That no actor I've ever acted with and very few that I've seen have it." "He's a genius." "Pope:" "I was an understudy for Kim hunter." "Well, one evening, i got to play with Brando, and I was thrilled." "The scene where he hits me and Stella runs upstairs - that famous scene where he yells, "Stella" " "I started coming down the stairs, and I looked at him." "And tears are just pouring down his face." "He would dig inside of him and pull out all the hurts, and he had a lot of them from his childhood." "Arthur penn:" "We're all inhibited, and we don't want to let people see into that, whatever it is - sexuality, anger, pain." "Those are things we keep private." "And yet acting on the stage and in film is opening an Avenue to personal privacy." "And it takes, in the case of Brando, somebody who really believes it, so deeply, that he commits to it." "Committed to it every night." "Look at yourself." "Look at yourself in this worn out mardi-gras outfit rented for 50 cents from some ragpicker." "You know, I've been onto you from the start, and not once did you pull the wool over this boy's eyes!" "You come in here and you sprinkle the place with powder, and you spray perfume, and you stick a paper lantern over the light bulb." "And lo and behold, the place is turned into Egypt, and you are the queen of the nile, sitting on your throne, swilling down my liquor." "You know what I say?" "Ha ha!" "He became a star." "And of course, then he left and did the film." "The screen does a great deal for marlon because you can get close into his face, and catch all these wonderful flickers of - mercurial flickers of emotion that he has and that all great actors have." "Pacino:" "He got a lot, as an artist, through his relationship to the camera," "I think, a lot of it." "You must be Stanley." "I'm blanche." "Oh, you're Stella's sister." "Yes." "Oh, hiya." "He was doing what I aspired to do - what I do - acting, you know?" "And he was doing this with it." "Hey, Stella!" "Pacino:" "He was taking it and turning it into something." "That was not just someone you went and appreciated, but took it into another place, to a place where you laughed to yourself." "You had a private joke with yourself when you watched him work;" "because he touched those things in us, those private places." "And of course, "streetcar," you just go "whoa." "Hold it," you know?" ""Whoa." "What are you doing?" "People are looking at this!"" "Norton:" "There's sometimes a tendency to focus on." "What an icon of kind of masculine energy he was." "But I think, for me, it's kind of a juxtaposition of things in him." "It's that he - he's, at the same time, incredibly masculine and incredibly feminine." "Turturro:" "You just go to him." "I mean, if you're a guy and you're, like, heterosexual down to your toes, if you see him as Stanley, you're like, "uhhn-huh."" "You know, you're like..." "Like... he's irresistible." "Murrow:" "Well, marlon, you've played something like 14 roles." "In 10 years now." "Which has been the most important one so far as you're concerned?" "Well, I think "streetcar" was the most important and perhaps the most satisfying because I had a great respect for Tennessee's play." "It had another unfortunate - excuse me - aspect." "And that was that people invariably associated me with the part I played, so that it was difficult to believe that I didn't eat off the floor or that I didn't run in the street with my shoes off." "And so it's been a hard thing sort of living that down." "I am not a polack!" "Landau:" "Marlon, if you knew marlon was nothing like that guy." "I mean, he was aesthetic and poetic and oddly romantic in actuality." "I mean, there were sides of marlon." "And what marlon was able to do is to extend sides of himself and subordinate - completely subordinate - others." "Forrest:" "Most actors up until that point sort of re-created life." "When they acted." "They didn't act within the moment." "Marlon would just be the person." "Sean penn:" "Marlon brought all of that kind of raw, surprising, dynamic humanity to everything that he did." "When people struggle to be real, they're dishwater." "When people struggle to protect themselves from their own reality, they're marlon Brando." "Hunter:" "Your face and your fingers are disgustingly greasy." "Go wash up and then help me clear the table." "Now, that's how I'm gonna clear the table." "don't you ever talk that way to me." ""Pig," "polack," "disgusting," "vulgar," "greasy."" "Those kinds of words have been on your tongue and your sister's tongue is too much around here." "Who do you think you are, a pair of queens?" "Just remember what huey long said, that every man is a king, and I'm the king around here." "And don't you forget it." "My place is all cleared up now you want me to clear yours?" "Winner:" "Before Brando, actors acted." "They acted." "After Brando, they behaved." "That is the difference." "Extraordinary effect on the history of drama and on the history of movies." "Turturro:" "Well, it's postwar, after the atomic bomb had gone off." "So obviously, the world had changed." "You know, the movie stars before were - you know, there were the Warner brothers guys." "There was bogie, there was cagney," "Edward g." "Robinson." "There was Clark gable." "You had your great Paul muni, your Cary grant or Gary Cooper." "Humphrey bogart and, like, you know - and cagney." "Turturro:" "Jimmy Stewart, Cary grant." "Sinatra - all these guys were still around, still priming out." "And there were new actors coming out, new things." "Film noir was coming out." "Robert mitchum came out." "Bill holden." "Kirk Douglas just appeared, so there were these new guys." "Burt Lancaster, you know, anti-hero, rebel type of guys." "And also there was these guys like Brando, and Montgomery clift who were tremendously sensitive." "James Dean came then." "Pacino:" "These three icons - so they were like three different painters, but all on the same tapestry." "They release so much personal stuff that they're like a walking sore, you know?" "There was so much humor in it, too." "There was so much humanity in it and so much of someone who was also a little on the outside." "But what I think was with marlon mainly was, for some reason, we identified with him." "Everybody just disappeared and suddenly, and marlon was..." "Marlon was the one." "Pacino:" "Then, of course, there was the series of films." "That followed with marlon - the great ones he did early on." "Turturro:" "You know, if you look at, you know, "the men,"." ""Julius Caesar" - "streetcar," "zapata,"" "that period, you know, to '54." "I mean, look at those performances." "Those are pretty great performances." "Especially the performances of when he was with kazan." "Brando:" "An actor always needs a director, and sometimes it's a very lonely world there in front of the camera with a director who is inept, who cannot articulate what is needed." "And an actor always needs to be turned on." "And gadge kazan does that." "He knows exactly what you need to feel in relation to the scene and how to get it out of you." "And feeling is the only thing an actor really has." "You know, if someone can just touch you in that nerve area like a Japanese masseur and say, "that's it," and you're off." "Silva:" "Kazan - he had an incredible way." "Of bringing everything out that you didn't even suspect you had." "And he didn't do it by screaming or - he would just say certain - he was always whispering to me." "But in "viva zapata,"" "he was really wily and mean-spirited." "Quinn:" "Because we were playing brothers," "Mr. kazan suggested that we spend a lot of time together, but we didn't really know what to do with each other." "I was totally different from marlon Brando." "And I must say that, although I admire him, and find him a fascinating human being," "I did not feel totally comfortable with marlon Brando." "That's not in any sense a form of criticism." "It's just that maybe our egos, maybe something did not quite jibe." "Silva:" "Kazan would walk up to Tony Quinn and say, "Tony..."" "Because Tony had played "streetcar."" "And he just said to him, "i don't want you to repeat this," ""but I'm doing this 'cause I'm your friend." ""Marlon is going around telling people that in 'streetcar, ' you cannot measure up to him."" "Then he would walk up to Brando and say, "hey, marlon." ""Tony Quinn, when he was doing 'streetcar'," ""he was saying that his 'streetcar'" ""was so superior to yours." ""He saw yours, and he thought that you were not even an amateur."" "Brother, be careful what you say to me." "Silva:" "Marlon blew up - i mean, just went crazy." "That's what kazan wanted." "Did you take the land away from these people?" "I took what I wanted." "Wanted?" "I took their wives, too." "What kind of an animal are you?" "I'm a man, not a freak, like my brother." "Get out!" "The terrible thing was that after the film was over, kazan, he never told them." "And for the rest of their lives, they were kind of a little bit - just a little bit, you know, like two fighters, who's gonna take the first swing?" "Kanter:" "I first met marlon." "After he had finished doing the play "streetcar named desire."" "I was a young agent at mca." "I had gotten a treatment of a film called "the men,"" "and he agreed to do it." "I went to the train station to pick him up." "And I said, "marlon, all the agents at mca would like to meet you."" "And he said, "why?"" "And he said, "i don't have to meet anybody." "You can be my agent."" "And I mean, here I was, a young guy, kind of the low man on the totem pole." "And lew wasserman, who was head of the company, got a big kick out of this because he was getting calls from the heads of the studio - you know, Louie b." "Mayer and Darryl zanuck and Jack Warner." "And they all wanted to meet marlon." "And lew said, "well, you'll have to speak to Jay kanter."" "And they said, "who's he?"" "Frederickson:" "Even when he was president of mgm, you had to go to Jay kanter to get marlon Brando." "You had to call the president of mgm - because marlon wouldn't - he stayed with him forever." "He was offered everything, and..." "And the interesting part of it is, he never liked to work." "I mean, as an agent, it was not at all difficult to get him work." "It was always difficult to talk him into doing something." "He was a total nonconformist, and there was a rebel part of him that I kind of looked up to and admired." "You know, he would ride his motorcycle into a place and, you know, into a club in his t-shirt and his levi's, you know - because the whole strip, the sunset strip was all black-tie " "ciro's, mocambo, the interlude - all those nightclubs." "But you couldn't have dinner on sunset strip without wearing a tie - till marlon came along, rode his motorcycle into the interlude or the crescendo or wherever, and ordered a beer." "Forrest:" "I saw him in "the wild one" at first." "It was 1954." "I was in high school." "It made a strong impression." "Stanton:" "Yeah." "Very naturalistic." "Naturalistic approach, where you saw him thinking and all that stuff." "I'd never seen anything like that." "The idea is to have a ball." "Now, if you're gonna stay cool you got to wail." "You got to put something down, you've got to make some jive." "don't you know what I'm talking about?" "Yeah." "Yeah, I know what you mean." "Well, that's all I'm saying." "My father was going to take me on a fishing trip to Canada once." "Yeah?" "We didn't go." "Crazy." "Forrest:" "We all wanted to be like marlon." "One time I had a date with a girl, and I had just seen "the wild one."" "So I finally got a date with her for this reunion or prom." "And I hadn't seen her since she was about 13." "She moved away." "Did you get laid?" "No, I acted like "the wild one."" "She thought i was rude as shit." "The whole evening, man, this poor girl." "I would be mumbling around." "I would be acting like marlon, you know?" ""What do you got?" You know?" "Everything was grumpy." "Hey, Johnny." "What are you rebelling against?" "What do you got?" "I remember my grandfather saying to me, "you like that guy?" "He mumbles all the time."" "I thought, "what do you mean, mumbles?" "I hear every word he says."" "It's just that people get the reputation." "They threw out "mumbler" on marlon for some reason." "It stuck with him because it was the one thing you could say about him to deal with the phenomenon." "You say, "well, he mumbles."" "Thomson:" "The people behind the picture " "Joseph mankiewicz and John houseman - they both knew that there was a classical actor in there." "And that, in fact, this whole thing that Brando had cultivated of being inarticulate was a myth." "And that it would be a fantastic box office coupe if Mr. mumbles came out in front of the forum and did "friends, romans, and countrymen"" "as if you'd never heard it before." "Friends, romans, countrymen, lend me your ears!" "I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him!" "The evil that men do lives after them." "The good is oft interred with their bones." "So let it be with Caesar." "Voight:" "Shakespeare is a very, very specific thing, isn't it?" "It's the iambic pentameter." ""To be or not to be." "That is the question" - five beats." ""Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer."" "So if you learn that iambic pentameter, that will sustain you and help you do these speeches." "And then you're made aware of something else other than your own internal timings." "So here you have marlon, who is over here somewhere." "And we were saying, "can he make it all the way over here, to be able to do this?"" "And, of course, he did it so brilliantly." "Gielgud:" "Marlon was very modest and very sweet." "We had one scene together, and at the end of the scene, he said - when we rehearsed, he said, "what do you think of that?"" "I said, "do you really want me to tell you?" He said, "yes,"" "so I went through the speech with him, suggesting certain inflections and colors and phrasing and so on." "And he listened." "And the next morning we came down and shot the scene." "And he did exactly..." "Instantaneously, all the things I had suggested, and I was very thrilled." "I blame you not for praising Caesar so, but what compact mean you to have with us?" "Will you be pricked in number of our friends or shall we honor not depend on you?" "Therefore I took your hands, but was indeed swayed from the point by looking down on Caesar." "Fox:" "I thought gielgud was acted off the screen by him." "Which is what I always thought, because one of the reasons i love Brando and I love the whole movement of American film in the '50s and postwar period." "Was because I thought the English actors were overrated." "And he just destroyed them." "I think it's really one of the best Shakespeare performances that I've ever seen." "Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood." "Over thy wounds now do I prophesy." "Which like dumb mouths do ope their Ruby lips to beg the voice and utterance of my tongue." "A curse shall light upon the limbs of men." "You tried to persuade him to do Hamlet on the stage?" "Gielgud:" "I did." "He was superb in "streetcar,"" "but he didn't ever go back to the stage after that." "I would imagine what would have happened to him." "With his kind of intelligence and his gifts, it would have meant a great deal to his life and to his performances." "Turturro:" "That was his choice." "To do what he wanted, to live the way he wanted to live." "And that probably was part of his genius." "Scorsese:" ""On the waterfront" - it's a film I just walked in off the street to go and see." "And it's the old story about the cliche?" "Of changing your life, so to speak." "Schulberg:" "My interest in it was reading a series of articles." "By Malcolm Johnson called "crime on the waterfront"" "about not only the exploitation of the longshoremen in the harbor of New York but the way that the men were more than oppressed - were really terrorized and frequently murdered." "Joe Doyle!" "Aah!" "We had decided that we wouldn't have any sets so that the film, unlike almost any Hollywood films, was in many ways a documentary." "Marlon said that he'd like to get into his Terry malloy outfit and have me walk him through hoboken." "Nobody thought he was anything but a longshoreman." "Say, you're Terry malloy, aren't you?" "So what?" "What he would do over and over again, which was so interesting, was - he would add bits of business that were so right, that were so instinctively right." "When the two crime commission investigators come to him..." "We just want to ask you some questions about some people you may know." "...marlon turned the other way." "People I may know?" "That's right." "You better get out of here, Buster." "Now, slow down, boy, huh?" "And if you just watch his body language and how he does it, it's both, like, dismissive, and like, tender." "He's just saying, "beat it, buddy." "I'm not gonna talk to you."" "In terms of Terry malloy - Brando..." "I knew him." "It was as if somebody had taken a home movie of where I came from." "I knew guys like him who were really good kids, trying to make a living, and they were treated like Terry." "Externally, he's very gritty." "He liked the streets." "He liked those people." "He liked the longshoremen." "He used to lay around on the roof and talk to them." "The thing is that, in Brando, there is an ambivalent side." "And the ambivalence consists of a toughness, an exterior toughness, and a tremendous desire for gentleness and tenderness." "And the best scenes in the movie, from my point of view, are the love scenes with eva Saint where he's asking her to understand him, where they're sitting in the cafe." "He's great in those scenes." "What's the matter?" "What's the matter with you?" "Turturro:" "He has helped set up her brother to be murdered, and he gets conflicted." "He's saying, "I'd like to help," because she wants to find out who killed her brother, Joey Doyle." "Help me if you can, for God's sakes." "And then she touches his face." "It's very surprising, her gesture." "She says, "i know you would." "I know you'd like to."" "And he really could." "And you just see the guilt and the shame and the longing to be a good person." "You're sore at me." "What for?" "Well, I don't know." "For not..." "Not being no help to you." "You would if you could." "Shame - it's a hard thing to convey." "You know, anger or great emotion sometimes is hard, but not as hard as shame." "It's that dichotomy within his performances that are so wonderfully complex." "And the delicacy in how he delivers it." "Brando is exactly what I believe in in an actor." "He's exactly the thing that I like in actors." "There's a hell of a lot of turmoil there." "There's ambivalence there." "He's uncertain of himself and he's passionate, both at the same time." "And it's all there and available to a director if he agrees with you." "Schulberg:" "We only had one fight, really." "Kazan told me - he said, "bud, we've got a problem." ""Marlon doesn't like the taxicab scene." "He said the scene is unplayable." "I can't play it."" "I said, "what the hell?" What doesn't he like about it?" "Brando says, "look." ""Steiger pulls a gun on me." ""And all the time that he's got the gun on me," ""I've got all this stuff to say." ""And nobody would go on talking, even if it's his brother with a gun pointed at him."" "Listen to me, Terry." "Take the job!" "Just take it!" "No questions!" "Take it!" "Kazan says, "well, marlon, what if you just reach out, and gently put the gun down?"" "Charley." "Marlon says, "oh, that'll be fine."" "That was the entire fight that had been raging for weeks." "And that's very typical of marlon." "He was not very articulate." "In other words, he couldn't say," ""there's one detail about the scene that bothers me."" "Marlon would say, "i can't play it."" "Remember that night in the garden?" "You came down my dressing room and said, "kid, this ain't your night."" "We're going for the price on Wilson."" "You remember that?" ""This ain't your night."" "My night, i could've taken Wilson apart." "So what happens?" "He gets a title shot outdoors in a ballpark, and what do I get?" "A one-way ticket to palookaville." "You was my brother, Charley." "You should've looked out for me a little bit." "You should've taken care of me just a little bit so I wouldn't have to take them dives for the short-end money oh, I had some bets down for you." "You saw some money." "You don't understand!" "I could've had class!" "I could've been a contender." "I could've been somebody." "Instead of a bum, which is what I am." "Let's face it." "Landau:" "What comes out in that scene with rod steiger." "Is such pain at his brother." "And it's not self-pity, even though he says, "i could have been somebody."" "But what he's basically saying is, "you let me down."" "I still love you, but look what you did to me." "That's good acting." "And that's why I say he raised the bar." "In a funny way, there's no difference in terms of Terry malloy and Brando from what I was living in and what I saw up there on the screen." "You ratted on us, Terry!" "I grew up in a world where the worst thing you could do is mention a name or give up somebody." "So, yet..." "This particular film, through his performance, through the way it's pulled together - kazan, schulberg - all of them - something I knew to be an athema was accepted." "Am I on my feet?" "You're on your feet." "Because ultimately, he suffers for all of us at the end." "He stands up, and it's calvary." "You know, it's the walk of the Christ figure." "It's for all the suffering of all those working-class guys, all those poor guys who can't get anywhere." "They're stopped by the unions, they're stopped by wiseguys, they're stopped by the government - for whatever reasons, and he suffers it all for them." "What is it about genius?" "It's hard to call it." "It just happens." "It connects." "He makes these connections - the humanity." "And the reach - his reach - you could see his reach." ""Man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?"" "Right?" "There it is." "You saw it." "You saw the future with marlon Brando, you saw the change of acting with marlon." "You saw it." "It was right in his DNA." "Man:" "Actress Bette Davis." "Announces the top film actor of the year." "And on hurrying feet, marlon Brando makes for the stage." "It's a wonderful moment and a rare one, and I'm certainly indebted." "Thank you." "Look, the academy awards is a funny thing, isn't it?" "Like we say, "the best actor in the world."" ""Oh?" "Is that right?"" "Everybody who gets one of those has got to say, "really?"" "Because, after all, it's a popularity contest, in a certain sense." "And poor marlon didn't want to go out in public." "You can imagine marlon walking down the street." "I mean it just was a tough deal." "The Oscar?" "That's all manipulated nonsense." "Johnstone:" "Well, you stood up and collected it." "For "on the waterfront."" "I did indeed." "To my shame, my despair, embarrassment at this point in my life." "I did, and I had - as I was changing into my clothes coming from the airport," "I had one leg in the tuxedo trouser and the other leg dangling in the air." "I thought, "well what am i doing?" "What am I doing this for?"" "And I thought, "well, let's do it once and see what comes of it."" "And..." "It was silly." "He makes six films in a row, which you could argue - and people still argue - are the six greatest films anyone's ever made in a row in America, because they're all brand-new." "They're all daring." "They're all tough." "They've all got this psychological realism." "And he's probably the most famous actor in the world apart from Olivier." "Olivier:" "I adore marlon." "Woman:" "Marlon Brando?" "He's not very much like Laurence Olivier." "There's a bit." "Yes?" "Yes." "I think we're a bit alike." "Englund:" "So just being a star - there are only a few that really survive it, because even in marion's case, he was suddenly a star." "Last Thursday he was working at schraft's." "And then, no one's told you how you do that, how you be that thing in our culture, that luminous thing that people suddenly line up like iron filings toward." "It's a strange thing being a movie star." "I wouldn't want it for anything in the world." "Marlon, this matter of privacy, the loss of your anonymity - does that bother you very much?" "Well, it's tough sometimes, because you really don't get to relate to people as you normally would." "They always sort of regard you specially." "He used to go in the subway and just watch people when he was in New York and study everybody." "And when he got famous, people watched him, and he was trapped." "Kanter:" "He was very careful in people." "That he got close to because he was worried that so many people wanted to become friendly with him because of who he was, not what he was." "Englund:" "He said to me, when we finally met," ""i always thought cloris" ""was the most talented one of all of us at the studio, and I wanted to see who she'd married."" "He said to me, "i always wanted to meet the man that cloris leachman married."" "I like my version better, because it has a little more..." "Yeah, but mine is the truth." "No, but - who cares about that?" "This is Hollywood." "That was the beginning of a friendship." "Couldn't know that at that moment, but that's what it was." "He and George were the rest of each other." "We both could make each other laugh, and that became a kind of friendly competition." "And we both had an outsider view of life." "He, for sure." "He used to talk about marriage." ""How do you do it?" ""What do you get out of it?" ""Why would you want to be married?" "You don't have the kind of laughs we have."" "And I said, "no, but there are compensating virtues, marlon."" ""What?" "What?" "I mean, the same face all the time?"" "Fonda:" "He had a blast with the various friends." "I mean, they were tight, tight, tight friends, the male friends." "With the women, forget about it." "Thomson:" "Winning, conquering, having, possessing as many women as possible " "I think you could make a case that it was the most pressing ambition in his life." "He was a dangerous man." "Mm." "He had so many women." "You can't imagine the women." "I looked at him, and I thought, "oh, boy."" "He said, "I've spent my whole life chasing women."" "It's a good thing i wasn't single." "He was almost irresistible." "Wow." "Angie, contain yourself." "It's too late." "He was very sensual and tactile." "He might just take your hand." "And he'd take it in both of his and knead it and press it in the most intimate way." "So you would want to say, "I'm with Harold here." "Do you mind?"" "And yet he was just holding your hand, you know, it seemed like." "But the message was so pronounced, so glacial, that he was moving toward your lower extremities." "I'd like to talk just for two seconds about your voice." "It has a very nice quality, a very restful quality." "Very soothing, kind of like pulverized walnuts with - what do they call it?" "Sandalwood." "Oh, I hope all of our listeners are playing close attention." "He was so naughty." "His concentration was like a gorilla, you know?" "It was so deep and silent and looking." "And he followed you with his brain and with his mind so profoundly and with such concentration that it was intoxicating." "How old are you?" "Like 23?" "No." "I'll be 21 in march." "21 in march." "He could see if a person had a scar here or a scar here." "He saw everything about the other human being." "He could really enter into the other person." "You talk out of the side of your mouth." "Did you ever notice that?" "When you talk - it's charming." "Unintentional." "It's a physical idiosyncrasy, but it's a charming one." "Your hair is over your eyes." "I can't see your right eye." "Oh, no." "Talking from the side of my mouth and covering - wouldn't want to do that." "He knew how to hold a smile until it almost cracked through, and he'd finally let it come through, and that dimple would just surface a little bit." "He'd take you out." "Like, the girls, man." "Please." "You were dead, you know, when he did that." "Dead." "In the trailer at lunch and what have you - oh, he was just..." "You were in the trailer at lunch?" "Of course." "Holy smoke." "And then, once he'd ridden to the top of the Mountain and had her hand..." "Then, the other side of the Mountain - suspicion, accusation." "He didn't let anybody in." "He couldn't." "That was his genius, was abandoning you." "He was very, very close and focused on you." "And there was nothing else, and you got used to that." "And then he would go, and you wouldn't hear from him." "And so you were completely destroyed." "I never can figure out if he knew that he hadn't called you or if it just was not in his mind." "He had a lot of rage in him." "A lot of that came out with women." "Englund:" "Of course, the agony of when it happened." "Was reliving the things with his mother again." "It's not that precise, that congruent, that simple, but that's the wellspring - no question about that." "It was a getting even - punishment, retribution." "Adler:" "When he was a little boy, he was absolutely abandoned, having already been abandoned by the fact that his mother was an alcoholic." "And there was this nanny." "And he slept in the bed with her, and she left." "And he was never told why." "And yes, she was dark-skinned." "Woman:" "So you are rather typical of the kind of woman." "That marlon Brando finds very attractive?" "Very attractive." "Englund:" "We were in the commissary at Paramount one day, and at a nearby table, Anna kashfi was there - and what, I guess maybe 19 years old, 20- and she was the Brando woman incarnate dark-skinned, exotic looking, had a lilting English accent." "And he was - it was a performance - absolutely stellar." "Cary grant, charming, showing a little knowledge of India and being interested - devastating." "He did everything but a tango there for her, and you melt." "You put the movie-star canopy on top of it, and it's irresistible and overwhelming." "So I think he was still in that mode when they got married." "Of course, marriage itself is a catalysis." "The chemistry frequently changes in the months right after that." "So it was with them, and there were great, great fights, arguments." "Was it a stormy marriage?" "Very stormy, yes." "But you must remember, it wasn't a one-night stand." "It took a year." "I bore a child, and the battle went on for 20 years." "It deteriorated into real anger and abuse and abrasion." "When they had their son, Christian, the battle came into full flower." "All the tensions and negative things centered around custody of Christian." "Adler:" "After Anna kashfi, he married movita, who had been in the first "mutiny on the bounty."" "Englund:" "She could confound him." "She was much more difficult to defeat than many of the women he knew." "But that was a very strong relationship." "Two children were produced - miko and Rebecca." "Marlon and I, from the earliest days, talked about how we both wanted to be good fathers." "But he could get interested in anything that came along." "Forget responsibilities." "Forget I'm supposed to do this - be a father..." "Anything." "Adler:" "I think living with him must have been very, very hard." "The minute anybody who wanted to be with marlon and live with any kind of order - that's out of the question." "You had to leave behind what your mother taught you." "But he never could have settled-down, settled down." "Englund:" "One day, he said," ""there's something i want to talk to you about."" "And he said, "it's now advantageous for movie stars" ""to have their own production companies." ""And I've started mine, and I'm calling it pennebaker." "That's my mother's maiden name" " Dorothy pennebaker."" "So first thing he wanted me to do was to meet his father, and I was glad to do that." "He said, "I'm making my father the President of the company."" "My first impression of him was," ""what a sophisticated-looking man."" "And he was investing marlon's money in cattle and oil and things like that." "And I thought, "how terrific that he knows about those things."" "It didn't take long to find out he didn't." "Ruddy:" "Marlon actually brought his father to California." "To run this company and actually empowered him to make investments on his behalf." "Which seemed to be a good idea until they're buying fishing boats in Peru." "Then I forget if the boats either sank or the fish ran out, but the money ran out." "But it didn't matter to marlon." "He kept his father running the company." "He hated his father." "I can use that word accurately." "He was sulfuric about him." "I hate him." "I hate his stupid face!" "His father never complimented him, never showed approval - always denigration, always criticism." "He wasn't going to amount to anything." "And that was the laboratory in which the frankenstein marlon was made." "I said a couple of times," ""why did he want his father there to be in the company?"" "Because it seemed so tenuous." "And marlon would come to the office and always, they'd have a hug." "He'd give his father a hug." "Murrow:" "Good evening, Mr. Brando." "Good evening, Mr. murrow." "I imagine you're just a bit proud of your son right now, aren't you?" "Well, as an actor, not too proud, but as a man, why, quite proud." "Mr. Brando, tell me this." "Was he hard to handle as a child?" "I think he had the usual, uh, childhood traits." "I think he had probably a little more trouble with his parents than most children do." "One day, marlon came in, and he went right into his father's office." "And when he came out, he was ashen." "Face tight." "He closed the door to my office and he said, "my father just said he wanted to fire you."" "He then acted out what had happened." "The father was sitting at his desk." "He went over the desk..." "Homicidal impulses and said," ""you don't fire anybody around here." "You don't do anything unless you had my permission."" "He'd just cut off his reproductive organs, and he was still shaking from it when he came in." "In the interests of justice and fairness, would you like 30 seconds to defend yourself?" "Well, I really don't feel i need to defend myself." "I can lick this guy with one hand." "So, uh, let it go." "Malden:" "In the three movies that we did, we had a hell of a good time." "And when we did "one-eyed Jacks,"" "one thing I'm proud of - a high point in my career - when he called me and said, "Karl," ""I'm going to direct and produce this picture." "I got a part for you." I said, "let's go." "When do I start?"" "I was ready." "Without reading the script, i was ready to go." "We don't want his kind around here!" "I'm going to teach you a lesson you'll never forget." "Thomson:" "Malden, his character is named dad longworth." "And it's a vengeance story because he feels that the character betrayed him." "There's a scene where the father whips the son, which I think meant a great deal to Brando." "I mean, I think his father had beaten him physically." "Now let's see the kind of stuff you're made of." "That's a pretty good start." "Fox:" "He skewed his characters always to make himself - or very often to make himself a victim." "Turturro:" "He plays a christlike figure." "Gets pounded." "And he certainly had a lot of christlike deaths in his films." "In "zapata," they riddle him with like, you know, 500 bullets." "Maybe because that's what he needed in life." "He had an understanding of suffering." "And I think there was an obsession to sort of display that or to express it - of human suffering." "And he wasn't afraid to go there, for whatever reasons - just for being human, just for living and dying." "Fox:" "He skewed his characters to become a victim." "Look how that has taken over in our culture today." "And he was the first one who began to feel..." "You know, "it's not my fault," you know." ""I can do nothing about it."" "So what an influential person in the 20th century." "Your gun days are over." "Malden:" "He made a great director." "As brilliant as he was as an actor, he was a brilliant director." "Scorsese:" "I think maybe he was searching for something." "Or he had surpassed so much, he had surpassed even maybe himself to that point." "Who is he gonna work with?" "Where was he gonna go?" "You might as well direct it yourself." "Just from the opening scene, the bank robbery, where he's eating a banana." "Sitting on the - he's eating a banana." "They're robbing the bank." "Now, that's a choice." "You know you're in for something unique." "As a director, he had to learn one thing." "His film ran overbudget." "Two and a half months." "It was supposed to run like it ran six months." "But he couldn't be pushed by the front office." "There's a scene where his hand is broken and now he's out there at the ocean." "And the morning we came out, about 8:30, 9 o'clock, he looked at the ocean, and it was a smooth ocean." "And he said, "when will we get waves here?"" ""Around 12 o'clock."" "He said, "okay." "We'll wait till 12 o'clock."" "They said, "well, he waited for days for those waves to come in and out of monterey."" "Well, yeah." "Malden:" "And when you saw the sea." "And when you see the scene, it was right." "Those waves, the torment of his not being able to solve." "And the waves backing against that, just rushing up there - the torment was there." "It was wrong to say, "let's go someplace else."" "That's what he wanted to do." "And that makes a good director." "Thomson:" "But long before they finish shooting, he's losing interest in the film." "And he actually walks out on the editing and leaves it to other people to do." "Hopper:" "I wished that he would have stayed with it." "But he got antsy." "And they'd cut some scenes, and there was fighting." "It was taking too long, and he sort of abandoned it." "Scorsese:" "There's no doubt the film was truncated." "And practically ruined, I think." "It was a 5-hour version." "It's too bad that the footage doesn't exist." "I talked to him about that one time." "He didn't like it." "He dismissed the film." "He didn't like what he did in it." "At least that's what he told me." "At a certain point, he lost interest." "And I think he started looking at acting as more - not a serious job for a person." "In light of all the other causes that people with wealth and power and money should become involved in." "Brando:" "It doesn't matter if they killed medgar evers, because it's on the move." "Civil rights is a wave that's going to sweep the country." "It's incredible that in 1966, that a negro in America should have to march on any highway anywhere." "I hope to, as a private citizen, contribute to the protest and the redress of grievances." "I was walking down the street in Hollywood." "He suddenly pulled over and said, "what are you doing on Friday?"" "And he said, "well, you're going to this - you know, marching."" "So he took me down to Selma and Montgomery, got involved with king." "I would like to hear a Mississippi cheer for Mr. marlon Brando." "Man:" "Black power, marlon!" "Black power, baby!" "Black power, marlon!" "Got to put this on, baby!" "Black power!" "Okay." "Right?" "Man:" "Today many top stars in Hollywood." "Are actively participating in politics." "Such as was the case in Los Angeles, when marlon Brando pounded the pavements to protest an act of alleged discrimination in a new housing development." "We actors are always inhabiting other people, and that is destabilizing." "And we do need to connect with something real that we can really feel about ourselves." "And so he really did, and he really committed himself to it, and he really did good." "He'd just go into a territory that most Americans - non-black Americans - would not even think about, you know." "Marlon - he never had that fear because he was informed." "He was well-informed on the history of this country and the other countries, too - and governments and so forth." "And I always admired that, because it was very real." "Mr. Brando, i last saw you in Washington at the negro march." "And here you are, backing the Indians' problem." "How come?" "Well, I feel that a great many things recently in our country have come to light, and the condition of the negro generally was not known." "And the condition " "I'm amazed with the ignorance that I see concerning the Indian." "Because most scholarly people, the most informed people, the intellectuals, the academicians know nothing about the American Indian." "Begley:" "He felt he had a responsibility." "How could he just do another movie and not talk about these things?" "He thought the injustice was so great, he wanted to use that as a, you know..." "Use that spotlight to their advantage." "And I realized as soon as I came in this room that civil rights is gonna win." "Seale:" "Someone called and says marlon Brando was there." "And he wanted to talk to me." "I says, "marlon Brando wants to talk to me?"" "And I call up eldridge cleaver and says, "we're coming over."" "And, my God, we talked from that afternoon, evening, all night long - till 4:00 or 5:00 A.M. in the morning." "Here was one of my earlier-life heroes way before I got into civil rights, you know?" "I just always loved the way he always said," ""i don't make no deal with no cops."" "Wow." "I said I don't make no deal with no cop." "He was also explaining about the fact that he's an oppressor of black revolutionaries in the islands in this screenplay "burn."" "And that his - really, he was honest with his intent." "He wanted to know us, you know." "We were real, authentic black revolutionaries in America." "Man:" "And we're gonna say to the whole damn government," ""stick 'em up!" "This is a holdup!" "We've come for what's ours!"" "Brando was right at the brink of saying, "I'm a black panther."" "Carson:" "It was in the headlines in one of the papers yesterday." "That you have stepped out of a motion picture that you were going to do with ella kazan," ""the arrangement," for a very important reason." "And I thought you might like to mention why, and then we'll pick up from there." "It was a very tough decision to make, because I can't think of a director that's better than gadge kazan." "To me, he is the best director." "And I have looked forward, during the intervening years since I worked with him last, to working with him again." "It's, of course, the story of the year, perhaps the last two years." "And I wanted to do it more than anything." "And, uh, king got shot." "And..." "I sat in front of the television set, and I wondered what it meant to me, that he's dead and that he died, and his last act was trying to get a 15-cent wage increase for garbagemen." "He was really - you're talking about a mah that was hurt." "And so he says, "you going to the funeral?"" "And I said, "I'm trying to get some money."" "He says, "don't worry about it whatever you need, let me know."" "Two days later, Bobby hutton is killed." "Little Bobby hutton was my assistant, you know, to run off mimeograph stuff - to do whatever, et cetera." "We find out that a shootout has gone on in Oakland." "They just murdered him and shot him 10, 11 times." "But marlon was very, very hurt that little Bobby hutton was killed." "That could have been my son lying there." "And I'm gonna do as much as I can." "I'm gonna start right now..." "To inform white people of what they don't know." "The reverend said..." ""The white man can't cool it because he's never dug it."" "And I'm here to try to dig it, because I, myself, as a white man have got a long way to go and a lot to learn." "Fonda:" "When I first became an activist, there weren't very many movie stars that I could look to as role models." "I mean, it's hard to think of marlon as a role model for anybody - at least for a woman." "But, you know, he had taken a very active stand in support of native Americans and in support of black panthers who were in jail." "And I was interested in those issues, and it was to marlon that I turned to get information and to talk." "Seale:" "To me, he was a revolutionary." "I mean, if I say constitutional Democratic civil human rights, it's like it lit him up, you know what I mean?" "Are you saying that America's losing the cold war because we're pushing these countries into the hands of the communists?" "Brando:" "I'm not saying that." "I'm saying we can't hope to win the cold war..." "Unless we remember what we're for as well as what we're against." "Morrison:" "I think that taking the medium of film, which he knew from his own life to be very persuasive, and intermixing it with a message, a point, a cause, a reason, and making both together more powerful " "I think he really believed in that." "He did do "burn," which is a very interesting movie, and I think a good movie, actually." "Now, listen to me, you black ape!" "The picture really holds up, and it just analyses imperialism and the reflection of the war that we were having in southeast Asia at that time." "It wasn't i that invented this war." "And furthermore, in this case, i didn't even start it." "I arrived here, and you were already butchering one another." "We all believed that the picture was worth making." "And it was a flop, an enormous flop." "Scorsese:" "The film got a bad rap when it first came out," "I think his performance is underrated for that film." "Brando wanted to play the characters and rather than playing the good guy, play the bad guy." "He was no longer - he wasn't the hero." "He embraced evil and made it accessible and made it understandable and played it out." "Morrison:" "In these political dramas, playing the opposite of what he would believe in, it would be to draw attention to the issue and to challenge people's thinking." "Every authority in genetics has attested to the fact that the racial groups around the world are genetically indistinguishable from each other." "So, commander, in other words..." "All men - hybrids included." "Are created equal." "You're bringing tears to my eyes." "don't you know all this equality garbage was started by a..." "A Jew anthropologist?" "There were very few people whom I can recall beforehand who put their acting reputations on the line to make films that got across a message that he believed in." "He had the nerve to do it." "He had the passion to do it." "Jones:" "He did a lot, you know - just his presence on the front lines when it wasn't very fashionable." "He was interested in everything - in having a good time, in doing something that means something for the right causes and so forth." "I don't know - just living - being in your skin." "Living in your skin, you know, while you're here." "Thomson:" "By the end of the '50s, it is famous that he's unmanageable." "Directors say, "marlon, what do you want to do today?"" "Because they know that they can't direct him anymore." "He becomes a tyrant." "You don't remember me, do you?" "Thomson:" "By the end of the '50s, it is famous that he's unmanageable." "Directors say, "marlon, what do you want to do today?"" "Because they know that they can't direct him anymore." "He becomes a tyrant." "Englund:" "At the beginning of "the ugly American," he said," ""i tell you what." "It's your show." ""If I've got anything to say," ""I'm going to put it in the suggestion box." ""You look at it, and if it's good, fine." "If not, fine."" "And then one day it started, and it was hellish." "I mean, we had shot a scene." "It was an emotional scene." "His best friend is gonna be killed." "He just wouldn't play it with the emotion that it demanded." "We can't save those who are already gone, but we can keep others from dying." "So we shot it about five times, six times." "And when I talked to him, he'd give me the profile." "You know, usually you want to do it, but he'd turn profile and do a little floor work while I was saying what I wanted him to do." ""Okay."" "He'd do exactly the same thing - 17 takes." "I got so furious, i called an hour and walked off the set." "He could do it to you." "He could eviscerate you, unman you, and then God knows what else." "It was a natural jungle pairing off between him and a director, 'cause the director's the authority figure, the father." "And at some point, sooner or later, you've got to decapitate him." "Announcer:" "Now Metro-goldwyn-Mayer." "Crystallizes the lure of adventure that beckons from beyond the horizon in one of the most extraordinary motion pictures ever made." "Make ready for sail, Mr. Christian." "Aye, aye, sir." "Hands to stations for leaving harbor!" "Aye, aye, sir." "All hands to stations for leaving harbor!" "Thomson:" ""Mutiny on the bounty"." "Is probably, in Brando's career, the single biggest rock thrown at him regularly." "Till the day he died, old Hollywood, if they wanted to tell you the anti-marlon Brando story, it began with "mutiny on the bounty."" "He had an extraordinary, extortionate contract on the film, where he had money up front and he was paid something for every day over they went." "And those people on the film believed that from the word "go,"" "he intended this film to go as far over as it could." "Any excuse to retard our progress, eh, Mr. Christian?" "But you wrong me, sir, if you believe that I would willfully obstruct our progress." "Come, now." "Why don't you admit you wouldn't lift a finger to speed it?" "But that's absurd, sir." "Whey should I not wish to do my best?" "He started quarrelling with everyone." "Trevor Howard, a very considerable actor, was driven to absolute apoplexy and frustration by him." "Englund:" "In one scene, Lewis milestone gave an action." "And did they the scene, and marlon had so confused and punished him that he just went into a kind of a sleep, and the scene was over, and nobody knew whether to say "cut" or who would say it." "So marlon just looked over at him " ""hmm, not doing well, is he?"" "Kanter:" "I know marlon got a lot of flak for it, and I think a lot of it was undeserved." "One of the basic problems with "mutiny on the bounty"" "was the fact that at the time the studio started the movie, they didn't have a finished shooting script." "I don't think it was his fault at all." "If one flogs a man half to death for a minor infraction, then how does one punish him for a serious offense?" "Man:" "Marlon Brando, who as Fletcher Christian." "Was charged by the Saturday evening post with staging a real-life mutiny, and who responded by suing the magazine for $5 million, recalls the troubled voyage of the bounty." "Very often we received our parts the morning that we were to play them." "It was impossible to memorize them." "Everybody was just beside themselves with confusion and desperation, disappointment and disgust, and there was a great deal of friction." "A couple of people landed up in jail, and some of the actors had to be fired, and some of them died." "Some of them just got too old for their parts." "Penn:" "In my heart, I don't believe that that was Brando's fault." "It was just a rats' nest of vituperation and blame, and apparently it just grew dysfunctional." "Thomson:" "During the making of "mutiny on the bounty,"." "He begins to fall in love with that area and the female natives of that area." "Englund:" "He fell in love with the young tahitian lady, tarita, who played maimiti, his leading lady, and so she was for some time." "He and tarita had two children together, teihotu and Cheyenne." "To me, nothing so announced who he was as the fact that he had either marriage or near marriage to both of the women who played maimiti, movita and tarita." "And he could - he loved the innocence, the purity, the laughter." "Nothing was depressing there." "And the great dance is the tamure." "And he could do that till hell and heaven." "I mean, he could snap his hips, you know, and he was perfect tahitian in that sense." "And they live perfectly happy there." "The tahitians don't work, except when they want something specific." "They have bananas, they have coconuts, they have breadfruit, they have fish in a lagoon." "If they want a house, they stick some palm fronds together and a few hunks of wood." "It was during the making of "mutiny on the bounty"" "that he saw tetiaroa, and I think it was a few years later that he actually made the contracts to purchase it." "Brando:" "As I get older, I've become more convinced." "That a simple way of life, i think, is fundamentally more wholesome." "I think that richness and success just so poorly distorts life." "It hasn't really meant anything." "In other places in the world, it doesn't matter who I am, and I'm just another two-legged person walking around." "Ruddy:" "He loved it." "That's where he wanted to hang out." "He brought his kids up there, thought there'd be - bring them up a different way, get out of the crime and violence of Los Angeles." "Brando's son:" "He liked everything that lived on this island." "It's like a living laboratory." "He would put a mask on and spend hours in three inches of water, just watching i don't know what, just releasing." "I guess that's the whole thing actually." "That is what this place is for, just releasing everything, releasing Hollywood." "He thought it would be a good idea to have lots of turtles just swimming around the lagoon." "I think he was right." "Dad was ready to teach tahitian kids about their environment before their own government did." "It was supposed to be the first marine biology school here in Tahiti in the whole French Polynesia." "We have 10 different modules with different size of rooms, laboratories, faucets." "Anything that a lab needed for a university of marine biology was ready to be used by students." "Yeah, it never happened." "What a shame." "This module is where dad used to stay." "That was his latest staying quarters, right over here." "Dad liked to - he spent a lot of time underneath the ironwood tree to listen to the wind going through the needles." "And it has a very special sound." "Hear that?" "We did a lot of, you know, stargazing on the beach at night, night sailing in full moon, canoe paddling at night." "A lot of things at night we did, and not talking - a lot of not talking, just looking." "Just looking at this place, you know, you have all the answers." "Yeah, he fell in love, huh?" "Being an actor now became a means to support." "In the context of a whole life, he thought of it a little disparagingly." "It's not that he doesn't care." "He cares on the scene, at the moment, because that's where he is." "In the proper environment, in an atmosphere with a company and a director that he was comfortable with, he would do magical things." "Englund:" "His aptitude for assembling, for marshaling knowledge, was extraordinary." "And what impressed me was the techniques that he knew, everything about how you make a film." "And he'd ask me, said, "what lens you got?"" ""50." "Here, about here?"" "He'd have it exactly." "Winner:" "You forget, with the method acting, he's going to be all over the place." "But he knew everything." "He knew continuity." "The only thing that's very funny with marlon when you directed him - he was a very slow starter." "You'd say, "action."" "And he'd say, "oh, Michael, could you just stand a bit further back, Michael?"" "And then he'd rush off the screen." ""Keep the camera running," he'd say." "And he'd rush off the screen, look at the script, and rush back onto the screen and then, "Michael, would you go a little bit to your right?"" "And this went on for, like, quite a long time." "And suddenly he'd start acting." "Depp:" "I don't know that you directed marlon Brando." "I don't know that anybody did." "I certainly didn't even attempt to." "You just turn on the camera, capture whatever he's willing to give you." "And basically, a guy like that is just gonna give you a zillion options." "He's gonna go this way, then he's gonna make a sharp left, and he's gonna try this, and he's gonna do things that surprise you and astound you, you know, so the thing to do is just keep your mouth shut," "turn the camera on, and let it rip, you know?" "Bergman:" "There was a moment once - we were doing a scene." "I used to chew bazooka bubble gum on the set." "That was my nervous habit." "And he said, "you got any more of that gum?"" "I said, "here's the deal." "If you get this take right, I'll give you a piece of gum."" "He said, "all right."" "He went out, nailed it, boom, and he came out like this, with his hand outstretched like a trained, you know, chimp in the circus." "That was a very delicious moment with him." "Talk about, you know, the method." "You know, here's the method - one piece of bazooka bubble gum." "Penn:" "When we were doing "the chase," one scene, which is a terrible scene of a bunch of town bullies coming down and beating up the sheriff - and I started to do it in the conventional way," "which is, you know, "let's get some stunt men in here, and let's have them lay out the scene."" "And marlon said no." "He said, "have you ever seen a fight - a real fight?"" "I said, "yeah." "I was in the war, marlon, you know."" "He said, "get them to throw a punch."" "And he said, "let's undercrank a couple of frames a second."" "Ordinarily, a film is shot at 24 frames a second." "But if you move down to 20 frames, you can speed it up, speed up normal action, and we'll add the velocity, and it turned out just marvelously." "That's enough!" "You're gonna kill him!" "This was a lesson for me, because I used it later on on the ending of "Bonnie and Clyde,"" "of changing speeds, and I ganged four cameras together, all running at different speeds." "And it came from this experience with marlon." "Schulberg:" "In the '60s, he started making some movies." "That I thought were beneath him." "Fonda:" "I don't think he took movies that seriously." "I think it's as simple as that, you know?" "He had to pay the bills." "Caan:" "It wasn't like Brando could just say," ""i think I'll do another 'streetcar' tomorrow."" "Look at the directors." "Look at the writers he worked with." "They're not there in abundance." "Voight:" "He was looking for kazan again." "He was always looking for the kazan." "He found people that he liked for different reasons and worked with them and helped them and stuff like that, but that artistic camaraderie and real partnership was something he couldn't find again." "Scorsese:" "Which director is gonna tell him - not kazan, besides kazan - who's gonna tell him what to do?" "And I don't mean i tell you what to do." "Who's gonna collaborate with him in the same way?" "What goals are they gonna reach?" "Turturro:" "Great people need great material, need great directors, and that wasn't really happening, so he was searching for that." "And then he hit some turkeys." "We must find that place - lie down - which we call the center of all breath." "My lungs?" "No, no." "It's not that simple." "Englund:" "People say he squandered his talent." "That's a completely outside view." "That's not his view of his life at all." "It became about the deal." "And a lot of his pictures are just that, they're deals." "Winner:" "Nobody wanted him." "Universal pictures rang me." "They had a deal with marlon Brando for $300,000 for the last of a series of pictures." "They said, "we so don't want to see marlon Brando again" ""anywhere near the universal studio," ""may we consider your film to be our film," ""and may we pay him the $300,000 just so we never have to see him again?"" "So I rang marlon, I said, "marlon, dear," ""universal would like to give you $300,000 to get rid of you." "The question is do you want it?"" "He said, "yes, I do want it." "I'm very pleased, Michael."" "And, of course, immediately after "the nightcomers,"" "he did "the godfather."" "Pacino:" "You know, all due respect, it was my idea to have marlon Brando in the picture." "You're gonna laugh, and I don't want to take credit for the casting, because it's about Francis's reaction to it " "Francis coppola's reaction to it - because I said I thought marlon would be able to do it." "So, Francis said, "you think we could?"" "I said, "it's worth trying, you know?"" "And then, of course, the studio didn't want him - didn't want me either, of course." "Ruddy:" "Nobody wanted marlon." "Oh, they wanted Anthony Quinn or Ernest borgnine." "Who were some of the names?" "They were doing all the cliche?" "Names." "But they were afraid of Brando." "He literally was out of the business never as an actor, but as a star." "And the reason they didn't want him was it didn't mean anything anymore." "They thought he was box-office poison." "Caan:" "As a matter of fact, these geniuses at Paramount, who now, of course, lay claim to everything, who were there at the time, they told Francis, "if you mention Brando's name again," "you're fired."" "That's when Francis went to the house." "Yeah, Francis went up and did the whole little screen test with a little super-8 video movie camera." "When we saw the footage, we were blown away when we saw the footage." "He had the padding in his mouth with the de nobili cigar." "When the guys at Paramount saw it, they didn't know who it was." "When they said it's marlon Brando, they went running to the screen." "It was mind-blowing." "Marlon Brando, from the moment he showed up on "the godfather,"" "the most unassuming - everyone loved him." "They got nervous for a second when he showed up, but he did everything he could to - not ingratiate himself - he was one of the guys." "Caan:" "My old buddy duvall, who's, you know, the greatest maniac that ever lived - we're driving home, and it was the very first day, and I had just met Brando, and we're driving down second Avenue," "and there's Brando." "He's in a station wagon in the backseat." "So Bobby was, "Jimmy, moon him!" "Moon him when I pass him."" "I said, "Bobby, what are you, nuts, man?" "What are you, crazy?"" ""Come on, you've got a hair on your ass." "Just moon him!"" "So he pulled up next to him." "And for whatever reason, i dropped my drawers and stuck my ass out the window, and all I saw - Brando was he just laughed." "Duvall:" "Jimmy's got such a small butt, i don't even know if - he's so skinny with big shoulders," "I don't know if Brando ever saw it." "That was our first meeting." "I showed him a lot of respect." "Goddamn duvall, but it was all fun from there." "Pacino:" "They seemed to enjoy the mooning thing." "It would give them laughs." "So I pretended to like it, myself, because I just didn't quite get it." "I mean, you show your ass to somebody." "But it's funny, I guess." "You had to be there." "Remember when he puts the weights on the stretcher?" "Oh, yeah, tell them." "That's a funny story." "Tell them that, gray." "Yeah, bringing him back from the hospital - the scene when they bring him home from the hospital - and they said, you know," ""let's get some of these grips " ""they're big, strong guys " ""and put them in the orderly jackets and let them carry the stretcher up the thing."" "So when they went off to dress the orderlies," "Brando had them put all these sandbags." "These guys lifted up this thing." "It must have weighed 500 pounds." "They were struggling." "Trying to get up the stairs." "He was always doing crazy, fun things like that." "It was a - surprised those guys, I'll tell you." "Their knees finally buckled about halfway up there." "Duvall: "Godfather" was a lot of fun, just a lot of fun - which is the way it should be - loose, fun, laughter, you know." "You can laugh, then go do an emotional scene, then go laugh." "You don't have to be in the character all day long." "You stop, you joke around, then you go do it some more." "What do you want from me?" "Tell me anything, but do what I beg you to do." "That I cannot do." "I'll give you anything you ask." "We've known each other many years, but this is the first time you ever came to me for counsel or for help." "I can't remember the last time that you invited me to your house for a cup of coffee." "Voight:" "Why was he cast?" "Why was this guy right for "the godfather," you know?" "For me, it's that aspect of the complete relaxation and power, sense of humor as well." "It's just interesting." "The things he did were so sensual." "To marlon, everything was very sensual, so, he had the cat, you know - the way he moved his hands, you know?" "Caan:" "Francis put that cat on his lap that morning, had no idea - it was just a last-minute thought." "Now, I know " "I'd be willing to bet that 99% of the actors, if you put a cat in their friggin' lap, okay, and they're sitting there for a long scene, it would be about this friggin' cat, do you know what I mean," "playing with the cat." "But if you look at that scene, that cat was like that cat was there for a hundred years." "Now you come to me and you say," ""don corleone, give me justice."" "But you don't ask with respect." "You don't offer friendship." "You don't even think to call me godfather." "He made no reference to the cat, none, none." "He stroked it." "But he never lost contact." "He was talking to me." "He was talking to luca, he was talking to Bobby, he was talking, you know, and the only thing he did is when he got up, he just brushed some of those hairs off, you know." "Just, I mean, it seemed so simple and harmless, and the story isn't that wonderful, but it really is to an actor." "Do you know what I mean?" "It was amazing just to watch him work because he was like all the stuff that we studied." "And you could see it." "It would manifest itself right in front of your eyes as opposed to some teacher talking to you about it." "I learned a good lesson watching him." "There never seemed to be a beginning or an end." "It was all one." "He'd be talking, talking, action, action, cut, talking, talking." "So there was no sense of a beginning " ""action, now we act."" "And I thought that was a good lesson to learn." "You look terrible." "I want you to eat." "I want you to rest well, and a month from now, this Hollywood big shot's gonna give you what you want." "Too late - they start shooting in a week." "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse." "When I told him that Sonny had died, that was a nice scene, i think." "I remember coppola said, "you want to do one more?"" "We did it in two takes." "The scene would have been fine, but that one more was, "wow."" "They shot Sonny on the causeway." "He's dead." "We just did it like you do." "And then it's over for the day." "It's like a game." "Talk, talk, I listen, you listen," "I talk, talk and listen, the beginning and the end." "I spent my life trying not to be careless." "Women and children can be careless, but not men." "Pacino:" "Robert towne wrote that scene." "I remember marlon reading it." "And I came in the dressing room, and he looked at me, and he said," ""pretty good, eh?" "It's pretty good."" "I said, "yeah, it seems good." "It seems good."" ""Good." And that's it." "And then we went out and did it." "We didn't rehearse it." "We didn't do anything." "We didn't talk about it." "We just did it." "And with marlon, all you got to do is just watch him or be with him, and he is the guy." "Just wasn't enough time, Michael, wasn't enough time." "We'll get there, pop." "We'll get there." "This wasn't an old guy." "This was a very vital young man." "It was kind of amazing, because I just looked at him, and he wasn't him." "He was, but he wasn't." "He was this - this dad of mine." "Great." "Scorsese:" "I think it's what we'd like our fathers to be, we'd like our grandfathers to be " "I mean, maybe not everybody, but maybe us mediterranean types because he had sense, he had wisdom, and he had love." "He had love for his family." "It was very beautiful." "It resonates through just being human and being part of a family, you know?" "That's what makes it so universal." "Turturro:" ""The godfather" - the impact of "the godfather" was huge." "It was a blockbuster film, and it was serious." "I mean, it got 11 Oscar nominations." "Yeah, it was a big thing." "People just went to see it again and again and again." "It was just mesmerizing." "Ruddy:" "That night hadn't gone that well, you know." "Francis didn't get the award." "Jimmy caan didn't get the award." "It didn't look like "godfather" was gonna get anything." "We didn't look like we're gonna do too well." "And I was definitely depressed." "And best actor, marlon Brando - and we knew he wasn't there." "We knew what was gonna happen because she was there." "And I was like, "oh, God, what else could happen this night?"" "Littlefeather:" "Howard koch - he's the producer of the show - had previously told me, he said, "if you read this speech," ""i will have you arrested." ""I will have you taken away in handcuffs." "I will embarrass you." "I will embarrass marlon Brando."" "But he had no real idea that I was going to refuse that academy award." "Hello." "I'm representing marlon Brando this evening." "And he has asked me to tell you in a very long speech, which I cannot share with you presently because of time;" "but I will be glad to share with the press afterwards, that he very regretfully cannot accept this very generous award." "And the reasons for this being are the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry - excuse me." "So, she got up and she made, you know," ""marlon Brando sent me here," and it was all very sweet." "But look, the academy wanted marlon Brando to get up there and get it 'cause out of just respect." "Meanwhile, backstage," "John Wayne had to be restrained by several big men from coming onto the stage and dragging me off." "Means:" "We were all in wounded knee watching." "In wounded knee, 1973, you know, we were surrounded in our own homeland on the pine Ridge sioux Indian reservation." "And the federal government had surrounded us with all its military might and was firing in on us, day and night." "Our morale was pretty well destroyed." "Just about that time, marlon told us to watch." "And it probably was the finest moment for us in the entire 20th century." "That moment brought us so much self-dignity and self-pride." "Well, it's the night to remember." "I have indicated in this statement that marlon Brando is on his way to wounded knee." "Right after marlon did that, the news media snuck through the lines and started really reporting what was going on from inside." "Outside, we were just a bunch of thugs, see, up until that time." "Because of the academy awards and marlon Brando and sacheen littlefeather, it turned it around." "You know, wounded knee, 1973, was the third-most photographed event of the decade of the '70s." "That's true." "Marlon made it happen." "Voight:" "He tried to do things for the native Americans." "And in that way, i think he was helpful and made an example for other people who came after him and myself included." "And, of course he got a lot of flak from it, you know." "Means:" "His life was threatened, you know." "He went to jail for us." "They vilified him in the national news media for presenting some prime Hollywood hills real estate to the American Indian." "I think I would like at this time to give you the deed and title..." "A letter that relinquishes my claims to the land forever." "Marlon Brando, he saw what we saw and he felt what we felt." "He was the only non-Indian that I can really say stepped out in front with us." "Johnstone:" "You made a film, "last tango in Paris,"." "Which wasn't big-budget but was commercially successful, and it said something about human relationships." "Wasn't that worth doing?" "I never could figure out what that movie was about." "Bertolucci:" "I walked into marlon's room, and there he is - the myth, the legend." "I don't faint, but almost." "And I told him with my English, which was, if it is possible, worse than today." "I talk to him about the story, and I saw that he never looked in my eyes, that he was looking like that, low, near the carpet." "And I said, "why don't you " ""i mean, my English is so bad that you can't even look in my eye."" "And marlon, with a little smile, said," ""no, I just wanted to see " ""you're obviously very nervous." ""I wanted to see when your left foot would have stopped to do like that."" "I told him, "marlon, please," ""try not to be the marlon Brando from the actors' studio" ""with all these kind of divine mannerisms." "I would like you as you are in 'last tango.'"" "he said, "but, you know, i can give you something" ""which is not what you have seen always in the movies" ""but which is not what I am and who I am, because, you know, I'm very strict about my privacy."" "So within myself, i thought for me, it was a kind of a mission impossible." "In the beginning, it was an effort." "Then I felt that he just let himself be in the film as I wanted." "I shall have to invent a name for you." "A name?" "Oh, Jesus Christ." "Oh, God, I've been called by a million names all my life." "I don't want a name." "I'm better off with a grunt or a groan for a name." "You want to hear my name?" "Schneider:" "I learned a lot of my work." "Watching him, you know - the way he was acting, the way he could be taking all the space." "And I was doing everything very, very quickly, you know, just to finish it." "And I learned watching him that - take your time." "You know in the top of the closet?" "Card board box - i found all your - found all your little goodies." "Bertolucci:" "The scene when marlon is having, like, a monologue in front of the corpse of his suicidal wife was, in part, written in the script and a great part reinvented by marlon." "Our marriage was nothing more than a foxhole for you." "And all it took for you to get out was a 35-cent razor and a tub full of water." "He made it so real." "He made it so urgent, so desperate." "Rosa I'm sorry." "I..." "Travolta:" "I felt he was moved to almost immobility." "About the loss of his wife." "You know, the depth of pain i felt was revealed on screen." "And that moved me." "Rosa, oh, God." "I'm sorry, rosa." "I don't know why you did it." "In that scene, i saw exactly his strategy." "So, he was, like, crying and on the dead wife's body, and then he was looking up." "And it looks like if he was just seeing through time and space." "In fact, he was reading a word in what was written in the dialogue in the wall in the blackboard." "Remember that day?" "The first day I was there " "I knew that I couldn't get into your pants unless I said - what did I say?" "Oh, yes." ""May I have my bill, please?" "I have to leave."" "If you don't know what the words are but you have a general idea of what they are, and you try to think of what they are and you can't think of what they are, then you look at the cue card." "Whether it's written here or whether it's written on your thigh here or whether it's written on the ceiling, the audience doesn't know the difference." "They can't see it." "But it gives you the feeling as the viewer, hopefully, that the person's really searching for what he's going to say." "He doesn't know what he's going to say." "He was doing a dialogue with Maria Schneider." "And Maria was off camera, next to the camera, and when he was looking at her, she would have his dialogue written on her forehead." "And it was all stuck on me." "And it was incredible because he was reading, but nobody can say he was reading, you see." "Norton:" "I think "last tango in Paris" - it's still for me some kind of a benchmark in film acting because it's just this lacerating self-exposure." "It's almost as though bertolucci just talked him into finally getting rid of character altogether and just exposing himself in all of his flaws, in all of his pain." "And it still shakes me up, that film, because of what he's doing in it." "I want you to put your fingers up my ass." "Quol?" "Put your fingers up my ass." "Are you deaf?" "I was 19." "It was shocking then." "Watch it now." "You'll be shocked." "You'll say, "whoa, I never seen anybody do that." "I never seen anybody do that." ""Last tango" was so extreme and so revolutionary that again, he broke the barrier the way he did in "on the waterfront."" "So in a sense, after "godfather" and "last tango,"" "it was the - he was back." "And I think "last tango" is sort of his last testament in a way." "After that, I don't see there was anything else he really wanted to say or had to say." "Bertolucci:" "At the end of the shoot, he told me," ""i don't think I will do another film like that" ""because it's devastating for me to give so much." ""For 50 years, I've been able to be hidden" ""behind the marlon Brando, and now, maybe, I gave too much of myself to you."" "Then when he saw the movie edited and cut, he was really a bit shocked." "I think that he didn't know, while he was acting, when we were doing the film, of how much of himself" "I was able to get from him." "Schneider:" "So we both felt." "Like we've been manipulated." "Even he felt manipulated, raped by bertolucci, you know." "And he rejected the movie afterwards for many, many years." "Bertolucci:" "He didn't want to talk to me, but then, I'd say in the last 15 years of his life, we met again in his house in Los Angeles." "It was fantastic." "I told him, "don't you think that I won the competition," ""that I was able to take off your mask and show in my film what you really are?"" "And he said," ""and you think that that guy on the screen is me?" "Ha ha ha."" "Fonda:" "He took pleasure in throwing people off balance." "There was a little - you could say cruel or you could say mischievous." "I prefer to say mischievous." "But he could throw people off balance." "Britt:" "Well, the first meeting with Brando wasn't very good." "For me it was a disaster." "We were about eight people around the table, and Brando's sitting next to me." "And he starts to talk to me." "And I can't understand a word he's saying." "And he said something else, and I said, "excuse me, Mr. Brando." "I don't understand."" "I was a nervous wreck, and I just wished a big hole would - and everybody was having such fun with it, and then afterwards i understood he was talking pidgin English to me." "And, oh, it was awful." "But that was his nature." "He loved to play with people." "Yeah, but why me?" "The first day?" "Me, too." "Jones:" "He is a character, and you know what?" "He knows what he's doing, too, you know?" "He orchestrates this stuff, you know, likes get all this stuff, that gumbo going, stir it up a little, get a little gumbo going there, get it going." "Fonda:" "I'll never forget." "I was married to the French director Roger vadim." "And I remember once he said, "why do you love vadim?"" "And people don't ask you those kind of questions." "Marlon would ask you those kind of questions." "And I guess that was when I realized that I didn't have any good answers." "And marlon knew it." "Fox:" "He liked to deflate, and he liked to - uh, wrong foot, because he liked to see what was behind the veneer." "He would always try to Pierce the phoniness and force you to confront the hypocrisies and the falsehoods and the denials and all of that, which is what he did as an actor, too." "Man:" "Barker." "A regulator - correct me now if I'm wrong." "Isn't a regulator one of these boys that shoots people and don't never get near 'em?" "Penn:" "During "Missouri breaks,"." "The biggest question was who was marlon's character, you know, the regulator?" "And he and I sat for hours going through that." "And he'd say, "how about he's an Indian?"" "And I'd say, "no, marlon."" ""How about Irish?"" "He came up with all of these prototypes." "And I said, "let's put them all together." ""Let's take away any discernable personality and have him constantly change."" "Once we got that, he was happy as a pig in mud." "Depp:" "There's been nothing like that since." "That is that insane and yet beautiful and poetic and emotional and hilarious and intense, and to combine all those things into one character - pretty amazing." "Ah, once in a while I carry this little - this little darling around." "She's almost like a poem, but it doesn't shoot worth a damn." "Some damn fool came along and filed off the - the top of the front sight there." "And you have to sort of play with it." "Not bad." "There's one left." "I doubt it." "Stanton:" "He was always improvising." "He used to be always unpredictable, on camera and off." "You never knew what he was gonna do next." "Forrest:" "Every take would be different - never saw an actor do that." "That's why we went to the rushes." "Everything was different, each take." "He might eat the carrot." "He might give it to the horse." "He might throw it over his shoulder." "One time the horse took a pee, and he said, "my exact sentiments."" "Penn:" "You could see a kind." "Of what I like to call anarchy, 'cause that's what I keep asking from the actors, which is I want your anarchy." "I want you to be an anarchist." "don't conform to the expectations that you think I hold or the material holds." "Go your own way." "Voight:" "When you looked at a marlon Brando performance - at least when I looked at it, i laughed all the time, because the daringness of it or the truth of it or the whatever it was, you know, it was startling." "Englund:" "In "mutiny on the bounty,"." "There was a scene where marlon looks like your grandmother." "He's got on a long gown." "And he's not Fletcher Christian at all." "I thought I heard your voice, sir." "Good night." "Marlon will fit something like that in that has nothing to do with anything." "Schell:" "He was just taking everything from everywhere." "And digested it and used it." "And of course it will be unusual, but that's what he wanted to be." "He wanted to be unusual." "Englund:" "Most actors you see." "Tend to play one-finger melodies." "He played chords." "There were always a simultaneity of things going on." "That's why you didn't know what he was gonna do next." "Caan:" "Every story has been told." "And you pretty much know what the ending is when you go into the beginning, but there's something that keeps your ass in the seat." "And that something are the few like Brando, which had what I believe is an unpredictability about them." "Turturro:" "Marlon you watch because you never knowwhat he's going to do." ""Reflections in a golden eye" is a great performance." "Norton:" "It's just such a strange performance, you know, and he's dancing on the edge of, like, closeted homosexuality." "Depp:" "There's a whole lot going on." "There's a lot bubbling underneath the surface." "Fonda:" "It was coming from some very deep, mysterious place, and consequently because it was fresh and real, it was always surprising." "It was never what you expected." "Scorsese:" "Particularly his mirror scene " "I don't think I've ever seen anybody do anything like that, the way he talked to himself in the mirror." "Having that in mind, on "taxi driver,"" "last two days of shooting, there was a scene in which de niro is trying on his guns, so to speak, in front of the mirror." "But I asked him, kind of having that scene in mind, to see what Bob would do in front of the mirror and what he would say to himself." "And so the scene "are you talking to me?"" "Came out of that." "You talking to me?" "Well, I'm the only one here." "But that's because I was so shocked by what Brando does in that moment - you know, the total desperation of this man." "Hopper:" "Whatever anybody's ever told you." "That was wild about "apocalypse now"" "couldn't be possibly even close to how wild it was." "It was way beyond any kind of sensibilities." "It was unbelievable." "It was like people then were fighting a war." "I mean, they had been." "They'd been making the movie for over a year, I think, by the time I got there." "They'd been beaten up." "Everybody sort of started out in clean uniforms, then they started painting their faces, and then they started getting " "I mean, it just got crazier and crazier." "I was there almost a month before marlon showed up." "And marlon was on a contract for $1 million a week." "And he was gonna do one week." "Frederickson:" "He was supposed to be thin and svelte." "And be this military guy." "And when he showed up on "apocalypse,"" "he weighed 300 pounds." "We had to dress him in black pajamas and hide him in the shadows." "People kept saying, "why is he so heavy?"" "And I said, "why not?"" "It looks to me like he could be as fat as he wanted or as skinny as he wanted to." "What does that got to do with it?" "Francis didn't feel he showed up properly prepared." "He had not read "heart of darkness,"" "on which the movie was based." "And he had questions about the character." "The one thing that marlon was not good at - he was real good at it, but it wasn't a good thing - he didn't really care about your money." "He would get as much of it as he could, and he would take his time, and he'd waste time, and he'd fool around and da da da." "Thomson:" "I think Brando literally would not do." "What coppola wanted him to do for it." "There he was, desperate just to shoot it, and Brando would only talk about it." "The film is set up for this extraordinary figure you're going to meet up the river." "And the trouble is that when you meet him, he's a forlorn wreck." "Are you an assassin?" "I'm a soldier." "You're neither." "You're an errand boy sent by grocery clerks to collect a bill." "Duvall:" "Maybe he wasn't right." "Maybe I would say that, too, in that kurtz was a military guy, he was trim, he was fit." "And that's what coppola was looking for, but still you can't negate what he did." "The work is pretty arresting." "And what a presence he had, what power." "I have these scenes where I'm with Martin sheen, and marlon is in the other room reading." "And marlon didn't want me on the set at all." "Probably because Dennis smelled so bad." "He didn't take a bath, for like - he wanted to get into the character." "Dennis smelled." "He never bathed, man." "We wouldn't let that sucker around." "That uniform was falling off." "Hopper:" "So, marlon would go in and do his scenes." "And then I would come in the next night and do mine." "And he would listen to what I did the night before, and he would improvise on that." "So, one night, I come in, and the guy, prop man, Tommy Shaw says - who is an ex-baseball player - says, "marlon threw bananas at you last night and called you a whimpering dog."" "I said, "oh, really?"" "He says, "yeah, so I'll be throwing bananas at you all night tonight."" "You either love somebody, or you hate them." "At the time, like, i was very hurt that like, you know, marlon didn't want me on the set when he was acting." "But, in point, he did me a great favor." "I would have been so intimidated because like, you know, i really, really admire marlon." "I never had any scenes with him." "He killed me twice." "In "Missouri breaks,"" "he shoots me out of the outhouse, and in "apocalypse now," he cuts my head off." "But I never got to have a scene with him." "I regret that." "God almighty, i wish I could have " "I wish had enough nerve to meet him, to know him." "I was too in awe." "Wow." "Frederickson:" "He'd finished on "apocalypse,"." "And he was leaving." "This is one of the great stories." "Francis called me, and he says," ""you got to go to marlon and tell him to please come in." ""I just need a close-up of his lips" ""saying, 'the horror, the horror.'"" "and he said, "it'll take five minutes."" "And I said, marlon, "you just need to do this little favor."" "He said, "first of all, it never is just an hour." ""You know it's gonna be a whole day." "And if you prorate my salary, it comes to $75,000."" "And he said, "I'm in the marlon Brando business." ""I sell marlon Brando." "That's what I do." "I don't sell products or cars."" "He said, "would you ask the president of general motors for a $75,000 favor?"" "So I told Francis." "He went crazy." "He said, "I'm bringing him, and he has to stay the whole day." "The horror." "The horror." "Johnstone:" "One reads in the papers." "That you're being paid a lot of money - more than $2 million for 12 days' work." "Do you feel at all guilty about this?" "Brando:" "I have no guilt at all." "Everything has a price in the marketplace." "So do cars." "So do hula hoops." "So do useless endeavors." "And I don't suppose that actors are any different than rock bands that inflate balloons from their ears." "And that happened to catch on." "But to devote my whole life to that" "I think would be unpleasant and not very interesting." "And he was sitting on my balcony one day." "And I said, "you know, marlon, you're such a fantastic actor." ""You should really be playing king lear." ""You should be giving some of the great performances in history."" "And he said to me, "you know, Michael, I hate acting." "I've always hated acting." "I hate it."" "Fonda:" "This was not a dedicated actor." "Who was going to really work his craft." "This was not a male meryl streep." "This was somebody who became unbelievably famous and successful and kind of hated every minute of it." "It's hard to believe." "It's so sad." "This man who brought so much joy to the rest of us, a consummate actor, never, never enjoyed it." "Duvall:" "No, I don't buy that." "I don't buy that." "I think that he did enjoy it." "He had to have at sometime." "When you have a breakthrough and something really happens, that's got to be a moment of joy, I would think." "Maybe when someone has as much of a natural gift for something as he does, it feels fraudulent at times to them because it doesn't feel like work." "He knew what he'd done, certainly, in terms of the work and the contribution." "I just don't think he really cared about it all that much." "I think he probably felt like, in the grand scheme of things, that that was small potatoes." "I said, "then, marlon, why did you go to drama school?"" "He says, "to get laid."" "Man:" "And action!" "God almighty." "Victor:" "I bet I know what you're thinking - the resemblance, right?" "He's the real thing, the original merchandise." "When they saw him, they based the movie." "Bergman:" "But I wanted someone ideally." "Who was connected with "the godfather"" "to be in the movie." "And the producer, Mike lobell, said," ""why don't we send it to Brando?"" "I didn't think he was working anymore." "We send him the script, and he called me the next day." "And he said, "i started reading this thing last night and just was laughing."" "And you hear that little lisp." "Then he said, "what do you think this person would wear?"" "When he said that, I said, "he's doing the movie."" "Lorenzo, per favore, due espressi." "Two espressos, he says." "Mm-hmm." "You know, that picture on the wall back there - that wouldn't by any chance be mussolini?" "It ain't Tony Bennett." "He was playing the "godfather" character and not playing the "godfather" character." "He's terrific in those scenes with Matthew, and they're so rich and so alive and so spontaneous, it almost feels unscripted." "The thing about comedy is you play it like drama, which he was able to do." "So, this is college." "I didn't miss nothing." "The timing thing with marlon was tricky, because he didn't speak fast, you know." "You know, faster and funnier is the basic direction that most people give in comedy - talk fast and no pauses." "And marlon was well known for his pauses." "So a lot of the timing was created in the editing room." "Give me your hand." "Do you know what this is?" "You mean taking my hand?" "We call this the hand of friendship." "We?" "I want you to take this opportunity - totally legitimate work - for $1,000 a week." "And I know that you're not gonna disappoint me." "I don't see how I could say no." "Miller:" "He loved to give us little lessons and tidbits." "And some of them were sort of comical." "He'd say, "this is what I do when I forget my lines."" ""When I go up, I start choking." ""And I cough, and I say," ""'i can't breathe." "I need some water.'" ""and then as they're going to fetch me the water," "I turn to my costar, and I go, 'what's my line?" "'"" "that was just one of them." "So, he says, "so you can do that."" "And, of course, he had his earpiece, where his assistant, who was in his trailer, would be reading his lines to him." "His belief was that everything should be spontaneous." "You shouldn't know what you're going to say until you're going to say it." "Bergman:" "One day, we start rehearsing, and he's getting the lines all wrong, and I hear him say, "no, no, Caroline," ""we did that scene two days ago." "You're reading me the wrong scene."" "Miller:" "He was very cute." "But his daughter had gotten in a car accident at the time." "And he actually had to fly to Tahiti during part of the film." "Bergman:" "She had wanted to come to Toronto." "Where we were shooting, and he didn't want her to come." "So she stayed back and wrecked up her car, so he felt responsible." "And as every director will tell you," "I thought two things - "this is horrible - this beautiful, wonderful girl who I'd met in Tahiti."" "But my second thought was," ""thank God I shot most of his stuff,"" "'cause I knew when he came back he wouldn't be the same, and he wasn't." "Englund:" "I don't think he was aware." "Of the wounds that he inflicted always." "I mean, he certainly had no role models for how you be a parent in his own." "Thomson:" "Eventually his private life, which had always been a complete mess, turns back upon him." "And he has this hideous situation where his son is found guilty of killing his daughter's boyfriend." "The son goes to jail, and then a few years later the daughter commits suicide." "You know, it turns into an American tragedy of really horrible proportions." "Kanter:" "I just couldn't contemplate how he felt." "I know" " I have children, and I - what he must have been going through" "I just can't imagine." "Voight:" "When one is going through real painful times." "And the world thinks you know everything and you're just feeling, "oh, I made a mistake," "I did this, I did that,"" "and then the world expects you to say something wise, and really all you want to say is, "I'm sorry."" "Englund:" "He had such total control, such total dominion over every aspect of his life, and I remember wondering," ""is this going to cost him later on?"" "'Cause none of us gets out of life without some point having to call on something inside." "When life comes after you with a meat cleaver and you don't know who you are, you've got to find that something inside yourself." "That was gone." "I actually asked him to do a piece toward the last years of his life, and he expressed that he didn't want to do difficult pieces." "He didn't want to hurt himself anymore." "That's a big one." "Probably his personal life was so overwhelmingly painful that anywhere he dipped would bring up reservoirs of pain that were real pain, and he didn't want to do that." "Fonda:" "When I later was married to Ted Turner, several times, marlon invited us over to dinner, and..." "I found it very sad." "It was..." "It was somebody who had lost his belief in the possibility to change and of life, and he kind of rambled." "And it was sad to see him like that." "And I kept wondering, "why?" "Why did this end up this way?"" "Englund:" "He was lost in the horse latitudes." "He did what felt good." "He ate what felt good." "He didn't have that juju anymore, that thing that was him, that magic." "He was getting older." "And the fight was gone, and there was no fiber, no morality to - none." ""This is who I am -" he couldn't say that." "Brando:" "The great bagel - how are you, my darling man?" "It's marlon." "Begley:" "One day I get a call from him." "Ed the bagel, it's bran flakes." "Give me a call." "I've got this project i want to do with you." "He's got a project he wants to do with me." "We have the financing in place." "We have distribution." "Get up here as quick as you can." "I've got to talk to you about this." "I raced up there, raced up to the house." ""Marlon, so, tell me." "Tell me about the project."" "Ed, do you know how many volts an electric eel puts out?" "How many volts an electric eel - no, I don't know the exact " "I imagine it'd be a couple hundred volts, marlon, but not a lot of current." "You see, you're good." "That's why I called you on this." "My friend was going to give me" " I have two of them." "He's going to give me hundreds, hundreds of electric eel, and I'm going to put them in the pool." "Is this to keep people out of your house?" "And you want to give this idea to people around the country to keep intruders at bay with electric eel?" "For God's sake, no." "This is going to power my house." "Marlon, I don't think that's going to work." "Why is everything no with you?" "Schulberg:" "He was sort of almost like a mad genius in that way." "He really was." "He would have these fantastic ideas." "Morrison:" "Marlon lived maybe the first 2/3 of his life." "Very much in his body and the last third very much in his brain." "Marlon's shelves, the bedside, the coffee table - piled with books." "Begley:" "He had all these inventions all the time." "He kept a patent attorney busy and on retainer." "Bailey:" "He was very proud of an invention that he had." "And patented, actually - a device for tightening drums." "He wanted to go into the water business." "He wanted to bottle marlon Brando's Tahiti rainwater." "Begely:" "His plan to very carefully develop Tahiti." "In an environmentally sensitive way, to have a place for people to visit, a kind of ecotourism destination - that's a good idea." "Bailey:" "One of the best ideas that he had." "Was one that we picked up on a new hotel in bora bora where we take seawater from the deep ocean, 900 meters down, and we use the temperature difference to air-condition the hotel." "And this represents an energy savings of fully 2/3 of all of our energy use." "First of all, I want you to try one of these cookies." "Are they fattening?" "It's not gonna make you fat." "It's not gonna do anything." "Just give me a reading on what it is." "It's a very tasty cookie." "Abyssal sugar." "What is the point of this?" "Is there something?" "It comes from this plant." "It comes from that plant?" "Yeah." "This plant is called salicornia." "It is irrigated in sea water." "Yeah, he did think he was going to change the world and had a plan for doing so and, you know, and would wake up every day with a new way to go about it." "I am don Juan DeMarco." "You are the don Juan?" "This is correct." "I enjoyed every moment that I had with marlon." ""don Juan DeMarco" being the first film that we did together." "Was such an amazing experience because he was just there for you." "They sprung a scene on us, and the majority of the scene is me kind of babbling." "I didn't know the words." "Your name is DeMarco." "That's Italian." "You were brought up in Mexico." "And when you speak English, you speak it with a castilian accent." "Marlon said, "don't worry, kid, I'll hook you up."" "So he took, he cut this sort of patch of dialogue out of the script, and he said, "here's what I'm gonna do."" "He asked where the cameras were gonna be, found out and everything." "So, he said, "i want a cup of coffee in the scene,"" "got a cup of coffee." "And he held the cup like this." "I was directly across from him." "And he put that piece of paper with the lines right there where his coffee cup was hiding from every angle." "And he sat there in the scene holding that cup of coffee, taking a sip, and letting me read my words." "Well, my accent has been colored by my many travels." "Very well, i will answer your question." "I was raised in Mexico." "My father was born in queens." "His name was Tony DeMarco." "He was Italian - the dance king of astoria." "Excuse me." "Your father was a dance king here in New York City in astoria?" "Si." "We had a similar sense of humor - sophomoric, like the sense of humor of a 5-year-old kid, you know - practical jokes, that kind of thing." "I called him and arranged to go up to his house for dinner." "I had this little - it's a sort of a..." "Well, fart machine, basically, isn't it?" "It's a little sort of rubber thing that you squeeze in your hand, and you make these very beautiful..." "You know, noises." "I'll never forget when I hit it the first time." "This perfect sound came out." "And marlon looked over, and he went, "very good, John."" "And so I proceeded to really start nailing it." "And he wasn't hip to it." "He didn't see the thing at all." "He started getting concerned, you know." "He was like, "my God." ""That's not normal, man." ""Something's very wrong here." "We got to get you to a doctor."" "And I was holding in my laughter." "Finally, at a certain point, he was literally, like, getting on the phone to get a doctor to see me because he was so worried that my guts were exploding." "So I let him in on it, and I showed him the thing, and he fell over." "He was crying, laughing." "We were howling with laughter." "And I'll never forget it." "And he took the thing, and he held it up, and he said, "I've found God."" "Travolta:" "Sean penn had called me from Mexico city." "And asked if I would fly down to meet marlon." "And I thought he was putting me on, and he put marlon on the phone." "And I thought it was Kevin spacey imitating marlon and fooling me." "So I got in my plane, and I flew down to Mexico city, and I arrived about 3:00 or 4:00 A.M." "And he was waiting up for me." "He gave me a big hug, and he lifted me up in the air and kissed me, and we were off and running." "I was always glad to be verified watching this man who was 75 at the time that was truly 15 or 20 years old in his mind and always game playing, whether it was card games or jokes on each other" "or improvisations." "Prudence:" "There was this one time." "When I was joking around with him, and I was like, "can I have your autograph?"" "So he wrote, "poop."" "He would be playful, constantly be playful." "You couldn't wait to have dinner, not so much to eat, but just spend time with him and see what he brought to the table, literally - humorous, a lot of jokes, a lot of games." "It was all about the kids, kids, kids, kids." "He had one particular game where he would take a napkin and crumple a little piece of the napkin." "And then you'd pass it around underneath the table, and then - everyone has to put their hands up on the table." "They'd have their hands like this." "And he would try to read your face and look at your eyes, look at everything, and say, "hmm, I don't know." "Rebecca, do you have it?" "He'd just be able to pick it out, right there, and they'd have it in their hand - it was amazing." "His famous line was," ""you can't bullshit a bullshitter."" "This is marlon." "Hello, Steve, this is marlon." "This is bran flakes here." "God has taken his foot off the accelerator for a moment, so I thought i would call you." "I'm here in the barnyard sitting on my eggs." "You're really a swell guy." "I wish we had more time to spend together." "I love you." "Bye-bye." "The telephone was, you know, his lifeline." "Stanton:" "We'd talk on the phone for hours." "He'd call me at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, taught me two shakespearean monologues." "I would recite them on the phone for him, and he would tell me to slow down." "He directed me." "He knew everything, by the way." "If you asked him a question, he had the answer." "He knew how everything worked." "He knew every philosophy." "He would just go on and on." "Stanton:" "We got heavy into the eastern concepts, too." "He asked me one time, he said, "what do you think of me?"" "I said, "i think you're nothing."" "And he goes he gave me a code - "if you want to reach me, never call me directly 'cause i never pick up the phone."" "He said, "what kind of sandwich do you like?"" "I said, "what kind of sandwich?"" "You had to say, like, you're roast beef on rye because he'd screen his calls, and then he would know who it was." "I said "tuna fish."" "He said, "okay." "Your code name will be 'tuna fish.'"" "he was always lying down." "And he'd call, and when he was lying down, the voice was very low." "It was a voice that I know I was always glad to hear, even if it was 3 o'clock in the morning." "Hey, Jimmy." "Marlo." "Who?" "Every time he calls you up, it's a different accent." ""This is Professor Von schtunckel,"" "and all these voices were going on, you see." ""Marlo?" "Who the?"" "It's marlon - marlon bran flakes." "We talked about everything - poetry and the way " "I sang "Danny boy" to him over the phone." "I was chatting on and on, and he didn't say anything, so I said, "so, marlon."" "But come ye back when summer's in -?" "No, don't help me." "If it's just you're leaving a message, you just say, "tuna fish one."" "Marlon?" "If you want me to call you back, it's "tuna fish two."" "Marlon?" "Marlon!" "If it's extremely urgent, extremely urgent - "tuna fish three."" "And if it's, you know, life-threatening," ""tuna fish four," but never use tuna fish four." "I said, "i hope I never get to tuna fish three."" "We woke up the next morning." "I picked up the phone." "Still on the line." "Adler:" "In the end, he really called me every day." "I used to say to him," ""marlon, you're breathing, and you're breathing, and you're coughing."" "Then he went to a special hospital, and they did all these tests, and they said he had pulmonary fibrosis." "I can't imagine, when he lost that control of his body, that freedom, what it must have been to him to be uncomfortable all the time." "I can't imagine that." "It must have been hell, but he did not complain." "He just went down, and he never, never, never talked about it, never complained, never complained." "Pacino:" "I remember the last phone call I had with him." "He said, "stay out of court, Al."" "I thought, "that's perfect." "That's perfect."" "He had that anarchic thing in him, you know?" "I love him." "We hadn't seen each other in a while." "And he called me." "And I thought, "jeez, I better go see him."" "So I was there in the evening." "And he said, "i just wanted to see you, you know, to make everything - know that we were okay again."" "That was maybe as real as any moment i can ever remember." "But he died the next day." "Miko:" "We went over to the hospital, talked to the doctor, saw him." "He was still alive, talking to him." "I talked to him, I kissed him." "And then the doctor walked me out, explained to me just what was going on." "And he passed away just then." "I'm glad I was there." "Travolta:" "It was the hardest death in Hollywood." "That I had certainly experienced." "I don't think people liked the idea that he passed away at all, meaning that there was no "oh, it was his time,"" "or, "you know, he had a good life, and whatever."" "Unh-unh." "I think everyone really wanted the marlon they knew, that changed their lives, and didn't really want to let go of it." "I know I didn't, and I still long for him." "Forrest:" "When you don't know someone personally." "But they were such an influence on your life, it's like, when they die, a part of your dream dies." "Kanter:" "I remember at his memorial..." "A lot of people spoke and spoke very well." "But I think his sister jocelyn put it very simply with very few words when she said..." "That he was a free spirit and we should all just let go." "Yeah." "Adler:" "Marlon shouldn't have been a person." "It was too much." "It was too, too extraordinary." "He was more than a person." "He could have been an element or something like that, a part of nature, something else." "He would make you feel like there was more to life than what you see and what you're experiencing." "Englund:" "I don't ever want to finish." "Without calling attention to the nobility of soul that was in him, too." "He was all that." "I mean, Arthur says about Merlin," ""i shall not see his like again."" "I don't know that there was much of a fuss made over his passing, or his world, his life, because he was radical and he wasn't of the mainstream and hard to identify." "But, you know, he'll be around forever." "He's the marker." "There's before Brando and after Brando." "And I think it's time, especially for younger people, to go back and understand that and to see those pictures in the order in which they were made, because I think they're too hip to feel these emotions" "that were exploding on the screen." "It's about being human." "Fonda:" "When I look at this gorgeous face, and that's the Brando that I prefer to remember - the Brando that influenced every single one of us who decided to go into this business, the Brando who just awed us with the depth of his mystery as an actor." "Turturro:" "I have my own imaginary relationship with him, which is very real." "He's my favorite actor." "And I'm probably on a long list of a lot of people." "Yes, he is." "He's my favorite." "Norton:" "To me, the greatest generation." "Of American film actors, like de niro and Dustin Hoffman and gene hackman and Robert duvall and Al Pacino and Morgan Freeman and meryl streep, they're like the product of Brando." "Jones:" "He changed the rules." "I always loved that." "So did Miles." "Miles we called the Picasso of jazz, you know - break all the rules." "Space, how to use space - and the three of them have that in common," "Picasso and Miles and Brando." "He's the God, you know." "And he would kill me for saying that." "He would absolutely - he'd just wipe up the floor with me for saying that, but yeah, no, marlon - it sort of begins and ends with marlon." "How would you describe yourself in, say, 30 seconds?" "30 seconds?" "I wouldn't." "I wouldn't do it on a bet."