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It has been two decades since Marlon Brando’s death in July 2004, and 10 decades since his birth on April 3, 1924. What should we tell our own kids and grandkids about this iconic actor?
That they should watch his amazing film performances in A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, The Godfather, Last Tango in Paris and Apocalypse Now. That they should read the reviews of his incendiary stage work. And, perhaps, that they should google videos of his award-winning ecoresort — called The Brando — on the Tahitian atoll of Tetiaroa, which is also an enduring part of his legacy. That’s where I was called to meet him in 1978, long before the resort had been built.
“I’m sorry for giving you such a runaround,” he told me on the phone, after I had pursued him for nearly a year. “Why don’t we do this in Tahiti?”
It was an offer that no sane journalist could refuse, to paraphrase Don Vito Corleone, even if the date he offered was two days after my wedding. My bride understood the offer. The honeymoon could wait.
This was my chance to go head-to-head with America’s greatest actor. Brando’s early films — including The Men, Streetcar and The Wild One — had forever changed the way actors approached their craft. Paul Newman, Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman have all acknowledged their debt to Brando. It was a dream assignment, and it turned out to be one of the last in-depth interviews that Brando ever gave.
I landed by small plane on Tetiaroa, a group of 12 islets for which Brando had earlier negotiated a 99-year lease. He greeted me wearing a cotton hooded shirt and pants, his hair gray-white, his frame a bit paunchy in his 50s. With a wry smile, he quipped about his outfit, which he said he had designed himself because he was prone to sunstroke and had to keep himself covered. Was he kidding? He seemed to take few things seriously; he was full of random knowledge spouted at random times, prone to practical jokes and side wagers for the amusement of the handful of staff and family members who accompanied him on the islands. And he was a man full of baffling contradictions.
For two hours that day, he talked — about the Polynesian people, whom he loved, but also the Indian people then known as Untouchables (now called Dalit people) in India, African Americans, Haitians, Africans, Japanese, Pakistanis. He told me he wanted to build a school for the blind on his island. He wanted to invite oceanographers there for research. He’d had 40 scientists check the land and he’d had aerial photographs taken in advance of planning construction. But these projects hadn’t come to fruition, because progress tended to stall when he was away. “You can’t bring [your] culture here,” he offered in explanation. “You have to adapt to theirs.”
When we finally began the first of our taped interview sessions, Brando asked me why I wanted to talk about Native Americans. My head spun: It was the only topic that he had agreed to talk about, and my strategy preparing for this interview was to write so many questions about this subject (400 in all!) that when I would eventually talk about acting, he might feel relieved. But when he asked me point-blank why I wanted to talk about Native Americans, I answered simply, “I don’t.” His response took me by surprise. He cracked up. He couldn’t stop laughing.
After 10 days, I had about 20 hours on tape.
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