Marlon Brando: Forever In Transit, Part Three
Via Telephone/August 1990
You're
asking me now to look deeply into a mirror, because that is what takes
place when an actor speaks of acting: I cannot help but reveal a great
deal of myself in taking on my peers, in talking about what others did,
or try to do, or are still trying to do.
It's dangerous territory.
One of
the awful traps in the world of the actor is the tendency to remain an
acting student to such a degree that your work remains a laboratory of
your intentions and the ministrations of your particular teacher. When
you study the piano or the guitar, there comes a day when you cannot
believe that you are changing chords or sight-reading or composing your
own music: It seems only seconds ago that you were the plodding student,
searching for keys or strings, and now you are somewhat in control of
this instrument and the history that resides around and within it. This
is what must happen with acting as well. It happens with dance--dancers
make the moves, invest them, own them, interpret them: until they no
longer can. You find it impossible to believe that once those were
painfully studied steps, drawn on paper. The great dancer makes it seem a
wholly unique expression of his or her soul. This is what acting should
be. Must be.
Beware
of the actor who speaks persistently of his or her process. This is all
they have. Remember when you stood before your teacher and tried to
explain why the algebra homework was not forthcoming? You mentioned a
sick mother; a busted refrigerator; a high fever; power outages. The
fact remained that the homework was not done; you had failed. I feel
this is the same process at work when actors tell you about their
journals; their biographies; their sense-memory exercises that prevented
sleep; their investigations of neighbors and scholars to fully
understand the character they were playing. Inevitably, the most
studious of these actors will provide the heaviest lifting, the most
dutiful study, and the worst performances.
This
was true of Shelley Winters, whom I adore, but who is always,
persistently, consistently, and proudly Shelley. She does so much work,
she says, wears herself out, writes biographies, and it's all the same.
Her labor is her defense for not being a better actress.
James
Dean was one of the most fascinating young men I ever met. He was so
uncommonly beautiful. A mess, a cat's cradle of contradictions, if that
is not in itself a contradiction. James--and I always called him James,
because I wanted him to grow up--craved internship: He wanted to remain a
student--of anything; of everything. Whatever subject came
up--gardening, the occult, cooking, oral sex, Hinduism, Christian
Science, German art, Art Deco--he rushed off to learn the most and
embrace it. This is not a bad way to be, but there needs to be
discipline of the mind and the body.
I fail at this all the time, myself, so I'm not criticizing James lightly.
James
wanted to love and to be loved, and this shows in his acting. You see
the ministrations, the effort: He is never any character but James
trying to get your attention and your affection. He was so insanely
young when he died--you grieve for the actor he might have become; you
can see the seed of greatness in what he did.
You
want to love him and hold him in a way you don't with Marilyn, for
instance, because Marilyn's needs came with a freight no human could
maintain, but James only wanted the love, the touch, the challenge to
build himself up.
There was a reward in whatever you gave to James.
He had
an intellectual inferiority that was like Marilyn's--he read all the
time, wanted to know everything. This was sweet in him--it was a good
quality.
Monty
[Clift] seemed almost absent of any curiosity of anything unless it was a
cock or a drug or a part he might be up for. I loved Monty, even if I
found myself so depressed after any time I spent with him.
You
know, look at nature: the animal that appears to be weak and incapable
of self-sufficiency is abandoned by the mother and left to either die or
fend for itself. I think that James and Monty and Marilyn were like
those feeble animals, and it became clear to the earth, to the world, to
all of us, that they simply would not be capable of surviving, of
lasting, and so they died the early deaths we all secretly expected,
dreaded, scripted.
I think
a similar state was expected of me, but I'm tough and mean and poor and
abused, and I bought an island and tried, as much as possible, to be
away from too much sickness, other than my own. I went off and healed; I
took care of myself as best I could.
Of the
three James had the greatest chance, I think, of survival. Had he found
some sense of comfort with someone, he might have found a center and
held himself together. Too much came at him too soon. He was seduced by
every single lowest common denominator in Hollywood--the lowest of the
low, the utter dregs.
This
was true of Monty as well, but I think he knew that the dregs gave him
dick and drugs and some glitter and colored lights, but he had some
strong and smart women around him for balance. He was much like
Tennessee in knowing that all good things come from women.
Monty
was the most natural of the talents--you sometimes saw the process, but
at other times you saw the utter reality and sadness of the character he
was playing. He was the sweetest actor to work with--even when he was
so sick and frail, he was fully there for me, rose to the occasion,
wanted to get it right.
He loved the strongest all the the wrong things, and that is what killed him.
I think of Monty often. I wish he were here. Think of that--two fat, shattered men licking our wounds and trying to patch up.
I tried not long ago to watch The Misfits,
that abortion in process, that necropsy of talent and intention.
Absolutely no one works well in that film, a studious mess. It is an
audition for dishonesty, everyone pushing themselves, but not for truth
or art, but for effect, for air, for survival. I couldn't watch it. I've
been in abortions like that, and I have often been the man wielding the
murderous tools, but I don't have to watch it. I have to move on.
I also have to survive.
TO BE CONTINUED
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