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Post by mortsahlfan on Jun 21, 2020 11:44:14 GMT
PLAYBOY: This island you own is certainly a perfect place to talk – no phones, no unexpected visitors, no interruptions. ” BRANDO: It’s very elemental here. You have the sky, the sea, trees, the crabs, the fish, the sun … the basics. Once, I was…
PLAYBOY: This island you own is certainly a perfect place to talk – no phones, no unexpected visitors, no interruptions. BRANDO: It’s very elemental here. You have the sky, the sea, trees, the crabs, the fish, the sun … the basics. Once, I was the only person here, absolutely alone on this island. I really like being alone. I never run out of things to think about when I’m here. PLAYBOY: As a kid growing up in Nebraska, did you ever imagine you’d end up as the caretaker of a South Sea island? BRANDO: I knew that when I was 12. In school, I was flunking four out of five subjects and I’d be sent to study hall, where I’d read back issues of the National Geographic. I always felt an affinity toward these islands. Then, in 1960, I came down here and it just sort of confirmed what I’d always known. PLAYBOY: For most of your career, you’ve avoided doing any long interviews. Why? BRANDO: I’ve regretted most interviews, because they don’t write what you say or they’ll get you out of context or they’ll juxtapose it in such a way that it’s not reflective of what you’ve said. I’ve read so many interviews with people who are not qualified to give answers to questions asked–questions on economics, archaeological discoveries in Tuscany, the recent virulent form of gonorrhea…. I used to answer those questions and then I’d ask myself. What the fuck am I doing? It’s absolutely preposterous I should be asked those questions and, equally preposterous. I found myself answering [laughs]. I don’t know a fucking thing about economics, mathematics or anything else. And then you can say something in a certain spirit, with a smile, but when it appears in print, there’s no smile. PLAYBOY: We can always indicate that with brackets. But when you do make a rare public appearance, as you did with Dick Cavett a few years ago, you don’t do much smiling. With Cavett, you stubbornly insisted on spending 90 minutes on one topic, Indians, which seemed to make him very nervous. BRANDO: Yeah. He kept asking me questions, kept me uncomfortable. Dick was having trouble with his ratings at the time. He’s a good interviewer: bright, witty, intelligent, he buzzes things along. But he blew it in my case, because I was intransigent and intractable and would not answer what I thought were silly questions. Which made his show dull. I had another discouraging experience with the BBC. I went on a show that was something like Tonight. I was very nervous. All the host did was ask me questions about Superman–how much money I got and stuff like that. He said, “Were you able to get into your costume for Superman?” And I would say, “Well, in 1973, Wounded Knee took place.” I just didn’t want to hold still for any of the crap questions, but I wanted to be courteous at the same time. They edited the thing so I said nothing. I really looked like an idiot. Then I went downstairs to talk to seven reporters from the London Times, from all the papers. I talked for three hours with them about the American Indian. They all ran pictures of me in my Superman costume and that’s all they wrote about. Then, once in a while, on the back page, “And … blah blah blah blah blah the American Indian.” I was appalled. I didn’t believe the quality of journalism in England was such that they would have to go for the buck that way. It was revolting. PLAYBOY: But not very surprising. Getting you to talk about Indians isn’t much of a journalistic scoop, is it? Not to denigrate what you have to say about that subject, but the fact is, anyone who interviews you would like to get you to talk about other things as well – acting, for example. BRANDO: Yeah, but what a paltry ambition. I know if you want to schlock it up a little, the chances are the interview is going to be more successful, because people are going to read it; it’s going to be a little more provocative and down the line–get your finger under the real Marlon Brando, what he really thinks and all that. But I’m not going to lay myself at the feet of the American public and invite them into my soul. My soul is a private place. And I have some resentment of the fact that I live in a system where you have to do that. I find myself making concessions, because normally I wouldn’t talk about any of this, it’s just blabber. It’s not absorbing or meaningful or significant, it doesn’t have much to do with our lives. It’s dog-food conversation. I think the issue of the Indian is interesting enough so that we don’t have to talk about other things. But I have the vague feeling that you know where the essence of a commercial interview lies, and what would make a good commercial story wouldn’t necessarily be one that would mention the American Indian at all. To me, it’s the only part that matters. PLAYBOY: But you just mentioned celebrities who talk about things that aren’t relevant to their fields of endeavor. Your passion is with the Indians, but your expertise is as an actor. BRANDO: I guess I have a burning resentment of the fact that when people meet you, they’re meeting some asshole celebrity movie actor, instead of a person, someone who has another view, or another life, or is concerned about other things. This idiot part of life has to go in the forefront of things as if it’s of major importance. PLAYBOY: But an entire interview dealing with nothing but the problems of Indians would inevitably become boring. BRANDO: I’d like to be able to bore people with the subject of Indians … since I’m beginning to think it’s true, that everybody is bored by those issues. Nobody wants to think about social issues, social justice. And those are the main issues that confront us. That’s one of the dilemmas of my life. People don’t give a damn. Ask most kids about details about Auschwitz or about how the American Indians were assassinated as a people and they don’t know anything about it. They don’t want to know anything. Most people just want their beer or their soap opera or their lullaby. PLAYBOY: Be that as it may, you can be sure that people will be interested in what you’ll undoubtedly be saying about past and present social injustices. But why not also respond to topics that may not be serious but are just plain interesting–such as the fact that, to take a random example, Marilyn Monroe’s one ambition was to play Lady Macbeth to your Macbeth? BRANDO: Look, you’re going to be the arbiter of what is important and what you think the particular salade niçoise ingredients of this interview ought to be–it’s going to have a little shtick, a little charm, a little of Marlon’s eccentricities, we’re going to lift the lid here and pull the hem of the gown up there, then we’re going to talk about Indians. But there are things that you full well know are important. Food is one of them, UNICEF is another, human aggression is another, social injustice in our own back yard is another, human injustice anywhere in the world… . Those are issues that we have to constantly confront ourselves and others with and deal with. Maybe what I’m going to say about them is meaningless or doesn’t have any solutions, but the fact is, if we all start talking about them and look at them, instead of listening to my views on acting, which are totally irrelevant, maybe something can get done. When I say irrelevant, it’s certainly relevant to money. You have to have something as a sort of shill for the reader, so if he gets to page one and he reads about what I think about Marilyn Monroe’s thoughts about me, King Lear to her Cordelia or something as absurd as that, or did she have a nice figure and what do you think about women using dumbbells to develop their busts? – I’m exaggerating to make the point – then people are going to read that, and then they may go on a little further and read something about Indians that they didn’t know. PLAYBOY: Well, we’re finally coming to some agreement. You’re absolutely right. So how do you respond to that little item about Marilyn? BRANDO: I don’t know how to answer the question. [Mockingly] “Oh, well, that’s nice, my goodness, I didn’t know Marilyn cared for me in that respect… . Hey, well, she’s a remarkable actress, I certainly would have enjoyed—-” I can’t respond to that. It bores the shit out of me. |
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Post by mortsahlfan on Jun 21, 2020 11:44:40 GMT
PLAYBOY: Can you respond to what happened to her?
BRANDO: No, I don’t want to talk about that, that’s just prattle, gossip, shitty … it’s disemboweling a ghost… . Marlon Brando’s view of Marilyn Monroe’s death. That’s horrifying. What she said about me and what I’m to say about her can lead to the consequence of nothing.
PLAYBOY: Not necessarily. What if the point of this were to lead to the subject of suicide? You don’t know what directions these questions might take.
BRANDO: Now you’re giving me your yeshiva bocher, you know what that is? That’s two Jews under the Williamsburg Bridge. It’s the equivalent of the Christians’ arguing about how many angels dance on the head of a pin. I’m not casting aspersions on your efforts. All I’m saying is these are money-oriented questions. Those that have the best return are the most controversial, the most startling, the most arresting. The idea is to get a scintillating view that has not yet been seen by somebody, so that you have something unusual to offer, to sell. I just don’t believe in washing my dirty underwear for all to see, and I’m not interested in the confessions of movie stars. Mike Wallace had a program, it was an astounding program, some years ago. He got people to come on and talk about themselves. And in conversation, they’d throw up all over the camera and on him, the desk, in their own laps, and tell us about their problems with B.O. or drinking or their inability to have a proper sexual relation with their pet kangaroo. I was floored. I was fascinated with that program. He was wonderful. He’s a damn good investigative reporter. Anyway, what people are willing to do in front of a public is puzzling. I don’t understand why they do it. I guess it makes them feel a little less lonely. I always found it distasteful and not something I cared to do. Did you ever read any of Lillian Ross’s Hollywood profiles in The New Yorker? They were mostly quotes of what celebrities said. They just hung themselves by their own talk.
PLAYBOY: That’s what many critics said about you when Truman Capote profiled you in The New Yorker during the making of Sayonara, 22 years ago. Was that the piece that turned you away from doing interviews?
BRANDO: No. What I was very slow in realizing was that money was the principal motivation in any interview. Not necessarily directly but indirectly. We’re money-bound people and everything we do has to do with money, more or less. Our projects and activities have to do with the making of money and the movement of money. I am a commodity sitting here. Our union has to do with money. You’re making money, PLAYBOY’s making money and, I suppose, in some way, I’m making money. If money were not involved, you wouldn’t be sitting here asking me questions, because you wouldn’t be getting paid for it. I wouldn’t be answering the questions if there weren’t some monetary consideration involved. Not that I’m getting it directly, but I’m paying a debt, so to speak. When Hugh Hefner paid the bail for Russell Means [leader of the American Indian Movement] a couple of years ago, I was grateful. But people look for the money questions, the money answers, and they wait for a little flex of gelt in the conversation. You can tell when you’re talking, they get very attentive on certain subjects.
PLAYBOY: Why don’t we just proceed? You know people are interested in you for more complicated reasons than those.
BRANDO: No, they’re not. You know you wouldn’t interview out-of-work movie stars. I just happen to be lucky and have had a couple of hits and some controversial pictures lately, but I was down the tubes not long ago. I always made a living, but I wasn’t … I wasn’t … sought after. I suppose if I hadn’t been successful in a couple of movies that I would have been playing different kinds of parts for different kinds of money, and you wouldn’t be sitting here today.
PLAYBOY: No one wanted to interview you when your career took a dive?
BRANDO: You could see it on the faces of the air hostesses; you could see it when you rented a car; you could see it when you walked into a restaurant. If you’ve made a hit movie, then you get the full 32-teeth display in some places; and if you’ve sort of faded, they say, “Are you still making movies? I remember that picture, blah blah blah.” And so it goes. The point of all this is, people are interested in people who are successful.
PLAYBOY: And in people who will be remembered. Which is why we’re talking.
BRANDO: I don’t know. I think movie stars are … about a decade. Ask young kids now who Humphrey Bogart or Clark Gable was. “Didn’t he play for the Yankees?” “No, no, he was a tailback at Cincinnati.”
PLAYBOY: So you think the fascination with someone like yourself is fleeting?
BRANDO: There’s a tendency for people to mythologize everybody, evil or good. While history is happening, it’s being mythologized. There are people who believe that Nixon is innocent, that he’s a man of refinement, nobility, firmness of purpose, and he should be reinstated as President, he did no wrong. And there are people who can do no right. Bobby Seale, for some people, is a vicious, pernicious symbol of something that is destructive in our society that should be looked to with great caution and wariness, a man from whom no good can emanate. To other people, he’s a poet, an aristocratic spirit.
People believe what they will believe, to a large degree. People will like you who never met you, they think you’re absolutely wonderful; and then people also will hate you, for reasons that have nothing to do with any real experience with you. People don’t want to lose their enemies. We have favorite enemies, people we love to hate and we hate to love. If they do something good, we don’t like it. I found myself doing that with Ronald Reagan. He is anathema to me. If he does something that’s reasonable, I find my mind trying to find some way to interpret it so that it’s not reasonable, so that somewhere it’s jingoist extremism.
Most people want those fantasies of those who are worthy of our hate–we get rid of a lot of anger that way; and of those who are worthy of our idolatry. Whether it’s Farrah Fawcett or somebody else, it doesn’t make a difference. They’re easily replaceable units, pick ‘em out like a card file. Johnnie Ray enjoyed that kind of hysterical popularity, celebration, and then suddenly he wasn’t there anymore. The Beatles are now nobody in particular. Once they set screaming crowds running after them, they ran in fear of their lives, they had special tunnels for them. They can walk almost anyplace now. Because the fantasy is gone. Elvis Presley–bloated, over the hill, adolescent entertainer, suddenly drawing people into Las Vegas–had nothing to do with excellence, just myth. It’s convenient for people to believe that something is wonderful, therefore they’re wonderful.
Kafka and Kierkegaard are remarkable souls; they visited distant lands of the psyche that no other writers dared before–to some people, they were the heroes, not Elvis Presley.
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Post by mortsahlfan on Jun 21, 2020 11:45:09 GMT
PLAYBOY: Do you think all people have heroes?
BRANDO: They have to have. Even negative heroes. Richard the Third: “Can I do this and cannot get a crown? Were it further off, I’ll pluck it down!” In other words, the fact that life was denied to him, then he would do his best at being bad, he would make a career of being bad. The worst kind of bad you could be: memorably bad, frighteningly bad, powerfully bad. Had he had the opportunity, he might have been powerfully creative, powerfully loving, powerfully noble. He didn’t have the opportunity, because he was twisted and deformed and embittered by that experience. It’s wonderfully stated, Shakespeare: “Now is the winter of our discontent/Made glorious summer by this sun of York.” People’s energies–whether negative or positive–are there to be used and they will apply, somehow.
PLAYBOY: Bringing this back to you and your own energies, you once said that for most of your career, you were trying to figure out what you’d really like to do.
BRANDO: “You once said.” There ought to be a handbook for interviewers and one of the don'ts should be: Don’t say, “You once said,” because 98.4 percent of the time, what you were quoted as having said once isn’t true. The fact is, I did say that. For a long time. I had no idea really what it was that I wanted to do.
PLAYBOY: And you didn’t feel that acting was worth while or fulfilling enough?
BRANDO: There’s a big bugaboo about acting; it doesn’t make sense to me. Everybody is an actor; you spend your whole day acting. Everybody has suffered through moments where you’re thinking one thing and feeling one thing and not showing it. That’s acting. Shaw said that thinking was the greatest of all human endeavors, but I would say that feeling was. Allowing yourself to feel things, to feel love or wrath, hatred, rage… . It’s very difficult for people to have an extended confrontation with themselves. You’re hiding what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling, you don’t want to upset somebody or you do want to upset somebody; you don’t want to show that you hate them; your pride would be injured if they knew you’d been affected by what they said about you. Or you hide a picayune aspect of yourself, the prideful or envious or vulnerable, and you pretend that everything’s all right. “Hi, how are you?” People look at your face and it’s presentable: “And I shall prepare a face to meet the faces that I meet.”
So we all act. The only difference between an actor professionally and an actor in life is the professional knows a little bit more about it–some of them, anyway–and he gets paid for it. But actually, people in real life get paid for acting, too. You have a secretary who has a lot of sex appeal and a great deal of charm and she knows it, she’s going to get paid for that, whether she delivers sexual favors or not. A very personable, attractive young man, who reflects what the boss says, is smart enough to know what the boss feels and likes and wants and he knows how to curry favor … he’s acting. He goes in in the morning and he gives him a lot of chatter, tells him the right kind of jokes and it makes the boss feel good. One day the boss says, “Listen, Jim, why don’t you go to Duluth and take over the department there? I think you’d do a bang-up job.” And then Jim digs his toe under the rug and says, “Oh, gosh, I never thought, J. B… . Gee, I don’t know what to say… . Sure, I’ll go. When?” And he jumps into the plane and checks off what he’s been trying to do for four years–get J. B. to give him the Duluth office. Well, that guy’s acting for a living, singing for his supper, and he’s getting paid for it.
The same thing is true in governmental promotion or of a member of a Presidential advisory committee, if he’s playing the power game–'cause a lot of people don’t want to get paid in money, they want to get paid in something else, paid in affection or esteem. Or in hard currency.
PLAYBOY: But there does seem to be a difference between the professional actor, who does what he does consciously, and the subconscious behavior of the nonprofessional.
BRANDO: Well, the idiot tome on acting was written by Dale Carnegie, called How to Win Friends and Influence People. It’s a book on hustling. Acting is just hustling. Some people are hustling money, some power.
Those in Government during the Vietnam war were trying to hustle the President all the time so their opinion would be taken over that of others and their recommended course of action would be implemented. That play was running constantly. I can’t distinguish between one acting profession and another. They’re all acting professions.
PLAYBOY: What about acting as an art form?
BRANDO: In your heart of hearts, you know perfectly well that movie stars aren’t artists.
PLAYBOY: But there are times when you can capture moments in a film or a play that are memorable, that have meaning—-
BRANDO: A prostitute can capture a moment! A prostitute can give you all kinds of wonderful excitement and inspiration and make you think that nirvana has arrived on the two-o'clock plane, and it ain’t necessarily so.
PLAYBOY: Do you consider any people in your profession artists?
BRANDO: No.
PLAYBOY: None at all?
BRANDO: Not one.
PLAYBOY: Duse? Bernhardt? Olivier?
BRANDO: Shakespeare said… . Poor guy, he gets hauled out of the closet every few minutes, but since there’re so few people around, you always have to haul somebody out of the closet and say, “So-and-so said.” That’s like saying, “You once said.” [Laughs] But we know what he said. “There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face.” Which very plainly means that being able to discover the subtle qualities of the human mind by the expression of the face is an art, and there should be such an art. I don’t think he meant it seriously, that it should be established among the seven lively arts, to become the eighth: the reading of physiognomy. But you can call anything art. You can call a short-order cook an artist, because he really does that–back flips, over and under his legs, around his head, caroms 'em off the wall and catches them. I don’t know that you can exclude those things as art, except you know in your bones that they have nothing to do with art.
PLAYBOY: So you have never considered yourself an artist?
BRANDO: No, never, never. No. Kenneth Clark narrated a television program called Civilization. It was a remarkable series. It was erudite, communicative, polished, interesting to listen to. There was a man who knew who the artists of the world were. He didn’t talk about any paltry people that you and I might mention. He doesn’t know those people. He talked about great art. He certainly didn’t refer to the art of film.
PLAYBOY: But film is reflective of our art and culture. Clark’s Civilization covered a broad spectrum of history. Maybe in 50 or 100 years, the next Kenneth Clark will include the art of film.
BRANDO: Why don’t you do an interview with Kenneth Clark and tell him that I want to know [laughs] if he considers Marlon Brando an artist?
PLAYBOY: Assume he would say yes.
BRANDO: If Kenneth Clark said that I was an artist, I would immediately get him to a neurosurgeon.
PLAYBOY: Now you’re ignoring the authority you’ve cited. If actors can’t be artists, could films be works of art? Would you consider Citizen Kane a work of art?
BRANDO: I don’t think any movie is a work of art. I simply do not.
PLAYBOY: Would you go as far as saying that a collaborative effort can’t be a work of art?
BRANDO: Well, the cathedral in Rouens or Chartres was a collective work, brought about over perhaps 100 years, where each generation did something. But there was an original plan. Michelangelo’s Saint Peter was created by him, but thousands of people were involved in it. Bernini or Michelangelo would conceive a piece of sculpture and then have their students, artisans, knock the big chunks out.
PLAYBOY: Who is the artist in such cases?
BRANDO: The person who conceives it, and also executes it.
PLAYBOY: In A Streetcar Named Desire and Hamlet, Williams and Shakespeare are artists, right?
BRANDO: Yeah.
PLAYBOY: So couldn’t there be artists who interpreted those works?
BRANDO: Sure. Heifetz certainly is an artist, for God’s sake. He is a particular kind of artist; he’s not a creative artist, he’s an interpretive artist.
PLAYBOY: Can singers be artists?
BRANDO: [Long pause] No.
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Post by mortsahlfan on Jun 21, 2020 11:45:57 GMT
PLAYBOY: Lyricists? Cole Porter, Harold Arlen?
BRANDO: Shakespeare’s a lyricist, he wrote many songs. Yeah, I suppose any creative writing. But you get so far down on the scale. You’re not going to call The Rolling Stones artists. I heard somebody compare them–or The Beatles–to Bach. It was claimed they had created something as memorable and as important as Bach, Haydn, Mozart and Schubert. I hate rock 'n’ roll. It’s ugly. I liked it when the blacks had it in 1927.
PLAYBOY: When it was called jazz?
BRANDO: No, it was called rock 'n’ roll.
PLAYBOY: We thought Alan Freed coined the term in the Fifties.
BRANDO: That’s not a new phrase. Rock 'n’ roll is as old as the beard of Moses.
PLAYBOY: What about someone like Bob Dylan, who both writes and performs his own work?
BRANDO: There are people who aspire to being artists, but I don’t think they’re worthy of the calling. I don’t know of any movie actors, or any actors… . There are no people… . We can call them artists, give them the generic term if they’re comfortable with that, but in terms of great art–magnificent art, art that changes history, art that’s overwhelming–where are they? Where are the great artists today? Name one. When you look at Rembrandt or Baudelaire or listen to the Discourses of Epictetus, you know the quality of men is not the same. There are no giants today. Mao Tse-tung was the last giant.
PLAYBOY: If we limit the discussion to the world of film, there are plenty of actors today who bow to you as a giant. You may be repelled by that, but people such as Al Pacino, Barbra Streisand, Pauline Kael, Elia Kazan have given you that label.
BRANDO: I don’t understand what relevance that has. Chubby Checker was the giant among twisters. I don’t know what that illustrates. When you talked earlier about film being reflective of art and culture, the question went flaming through my mind: What culture? There’s no culture in this country. The last great artist died maybe 100 years ago. In any field. “And we petty men peep about between his legs to find ourselves dishonorable graves.”
PLAYBOY: Shakespeare?
BRANDO: Shakespeare. So we’ve somehow substituted craft for art and cleverness for craft. It’s revolting! It’s disgusting that people talk about art and they haven’t got the right to use the word. It doesn’t belong on anybody’s tongue in this century. There are no artists. We are businessmen. We’re merchants. There is no art. Picasso was the last one I would call an artist.
PLAYBOY: Picasso, you know, was also a very commercial property. If he signed a check for less than $75, it would be worth more if you sold the signature than if you cashed the check.
BRANDO: I think that’s a wonderful joke. It’s enormously clever. That he could draw the outlines of an outhouse and give it to somebody and it’s worth $20,000. 'Cause it’s making a commentary on the obscenity of our standards. He knew it was absolute trash, horseshit, but it’s just like a Gucci label. Yeah, it’s just a label, a Picasso label.
PLAYBOY: Well, the Brando label is also highly valued. Are you astounded by the money you get for a film?
BRANDO: I don’t know how we segued into that.
PLAYBOY: A lot of artists, like Picasso, who received large sums of money also considered themselves worthy.
BRANDO: Are you making an association of worthiness with money? These are hustling questions. It’s a disposition to get Brando to talk about these issues. You can always feel when something in the conversation is fertile and it’s got a dollar sign on it.
PLAYBOY: What we’re getting at is that the L.A. County Museum, for one, considers you enough of an artist to have recently sponsored a Marlon Brando Film Festival.
BRANDO: Oh, gee, I missed that. Shucks.
PLAYBOY: There aren’t many film festivals of contemporary actors in museums. Isn’t that at least … kind of nice?
BRANDO: Kind of nice, I guess that covers it. Better than a poke in the eye with a stick. How come you have to know about acting all the time? What else ya got?
PLAYBOY: All right. We’ll work politics into our next question: Didn’t the Italian-American Civil Rights Organization say that you defamed their community with your role as Don Corleone in The Godfather?
BRANDO: I don’t know. If they said that about me, then they must have felt that was true.
PLAYBOY: Is it true that you vetoed Burt Reynolds for James Caan’s part in The Godfather?
BRANDO: Francis would never hire Burt Reynolds.
PLAYBOY: But do you have that kind of control over who acts with you?
BRANDO: Well, you have to have rapport.
PLAYBOY: Have you been accused of ethnic slurs when you’ve played other nationalities in your films?
BRANDO: No. I played an Irishman who was a freak psychopath [ The Nightcomers] and I didn’t get any letters from any Irish-American organizations. It would have been difficult to make The Godfather with an eighth Chinese, a quarter Russian, a quarter Irish and an eighth Hispanic. Very difficult to take those people to Sicily and call them O'Houlihan.
PLAYBOY: Did you receive $100.000 from Paramount to talk to the press after making The Godfather?
BRANDO: I can’t remember. When I hear something like that, I always remind myself of the Congressman with his hand in the till.
PLAYBOY: Another lapse of memory associated with you is your inability or your refusal to memorize lines. Do you have a bad memory or is it that you feel remembering lines affects the spontaneity of your performance?
BRANDO: If you know what you’re going to say, if you watch people’s faces when they’re talking, they don’t know what kind of expressions they’re going to have. You can see people search for words, for ideas, reaching for a concept, a feeling, whatever. If the words are there in the actor’s mind… . Oh, you got me! [Laughing] You got me right in the bush. I’m talking about acting, aren’t I?
Actually, it saves you an awful lot of time, because not learning lines … it’s wonderful to do that.
PLAYBOY: Wonderful not to learn lines?
BRANDO: Yeah, you save all that time not learning the lines. You can’t tell the difference. And it improves the spontaneity, because you really don’t know. You have an idea of it and you’re saying it and you can’t remember what the hell it is you want to say. I think it’s an aid. Except, of course, Shakespeare. I can quote you two hours of speeches of Shakespeare. Some things you can ad-lib, some things you have to commit to memory, like Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams–where the language has value. You can’t ad-lib Tennessee Williams.
PLAYBOY: But how does it affect an actor who is working with you if he’s got your lines written out on his forehead or wherever?
BRANDO: It doesn’t make any difference. They’re not going to see the signs. [Names a book title.] I just saw a title on the bookshelf. You didn’t see me looking for it, you didn’t know that I was even doing that. I can do the same thing if I have… . Well, anyway, it’s more spontaneous.
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Post by mortsahlfan on Jun 21, 2020 11:46:17 GMT
PLAYBOY: So it is true that you no longer memorize lines when you act. But you did during the early stages of your career, when you were doing Williams and Shakespeare.
BRANDO: That’s quite a different thing, because you cannot… . Well, you’re getting me. [Laughs]
PLAYBOY: But not nearly enough. You can be very interesting when you talk about your profession, but you have an almost psychological reluctance to divulge experiential information that comes naturally to you. Why?
BRANDO: Some politicians will play full ball; that means they’d do anything to get their point across. Some people draw the line at various places.
PLAYBOY: It’s interesting that you so easily interchange the words politician and actor. You obviously won’t play full ball in an interview, but can’t you go at least a few innings? A lot of readers will feel cheated if you simply refuse to discuss the roles you’ve played as well as your personal background.
BRANDO: That’s an odd word to use.
PLAYBOY: Because we’re playing, circling. When you said before, “You got me!” we thought you were quoting a line. It’s like the minute you click on the word acting, you stop talking about it.
BRANDO: Because I know that your antenna’s up.
PLAYBOY: All right, let us ask you about Superman, which is opening the same month this interview appears.
BRANDO: I don’t want to talk about it.
PLAYBOY: Is there anything at all you can say about it?
BRANDO: I don’t want to talk about Superman. That’s not relevant.
PLAYBOY: For a man who likes to talk, it’s a pity that you brake yourself.
BRANDO: I’m fascinated with everything. I’ll talk for seven hours about splinters. What kind of splinters, how you get them out, what’s the best technique, why you can get an infection. I’m interested in any fucking thing.
PLAYBOY: But will you talk for seven hours about your career?
BRANDO: Of course not. Not two seconds about it.
PLAYBOY: But you have, on occasion, talked with reporters about acting.
BRANDO: I was in error. I made a lot of errors and I don’t want to repeat the errors. If we repeat our errors, then it makes this seem forlorn. There’s nothing sadder or more depressing than to see yourself in a series of similar errors.
PLAYBOY: Why do you insist on putting down acting?
BRANDO: I don’t put it down. But I resent people putting it up.
PLAYBOY: Where would you put acting, then?
BRANDO: It’s a way of making a living. A very good way.
PLAYBOY: Do you like acting?
BRANDO: Listen, where can you get paid enough money to buy an island and sit on your ass and talk to you the way I’m doing? You can’t do anything that’s going to pay you money to do that.
PLAYBOY: You do take acting seriously, then?
BRANDO: Yeah; if you aren’t good at what you do, you don’t eat, you don’t have the wherewithal to have liberties. I’m sitting down here on this island, enjoying my family, and I’m here primarily because I was able to make a living so I could afford it. I hate the idea of going nine to five. That would scare me.
PLAYBOY: Is that what bothered you about acting in the theater?
BRANDO: It’s hard. You have to show up every day. People who go to the theater will perceive the same thing a different way. You have to be able to give something back in order to get something from it. I can give you a perfect example. A movie that I was in, called On the Waterfront: there was a scene in a taxicab, where I turn to my brother, who’s come to turn me over to the gangsters, and I lament to him that he never looked after me, he never gave me a chance, that I could have been a contender, I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum… . “You should of looked out after me, Charley.” It was very moving. And people often spoke about that, “Oh, my God, what a wonderful scene, Marlon, blah blah blah blah blah.” It wasn’t wonderful at all. The situation was wonderful. Everybody feels like he could have been a contender, he could have been somebody, everybody feels as though he’s partly bum, some part of him. He is not fulfilled and he could have done better, he could have been better. Everybody feels a sense of loss about something. So that was what touched people. It wasn’t the scene itself. There are other scenes where you’ll find actors being expert, but since the audience can’t clearly identify with them, they just pass unnoticed. Wonderful scenes never get mentioned, only those scenes that affect people.
PLAYBOY: Can you give an example?
BRANDO: Judy Garland singing Over the Rainbow. “Somewhere over the rainbow bluebirds fly, birds fly over the rainbow, why, oh, why can’t I?” Insipid. But you have people just choking up when they hear her singing it. Everybody’s got an over-the-rainbow story, everybody wants to get out from under and wants … [laughing] … wants bluebirds flying around. And that’s why it’s so touching.
PLAYBOY: Had another person sung that song, it might not have had the same effect. Similarly, if someone else had played that particular Waterproof scene with Rod Steiger–a scene considered by some critics among the great moments in the history of film–it could have passed unnoticed.
BRANDO: Yeah, but there are some scenes, some parts that are actor-proof. If you don’t get in the way of a part, it plays by itself. And there are other parts you work like a Turk in to be effective.
TO BE Continued…..
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Post by ck100 on Jun 21, 2020 12:36:53 GMT
You ever seen his TV interview with Larry King?
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Post by mortsahlfan on Jun 21, 2020 15:20:19 GMT
You ever seen his TV interview with Larry King? Yeah, years ago.... ending in a kiss, lol. |
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Post by OldAussie on Jun 21, 2020 21:41:03 GMT
I've still got this Playboy.
Yeah, got it for the articles.
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Post by mortsahlfan on Jun 22, 2020 13:27:53 GMT
I've still got this Playboy. Yeah, got it for the articles. I got Playboy TV just for the articles  |
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