Listen to Me Marlon

1

This is the beginning of the tape.

We're on mono and we're on microphone 1.

Okay.

Now listen,

let me tell you something that I did.

I've had my head digitized.

And they put this laser

and it goes around you like this...

and they digitized my face.

And I made a lot of faces

and smiled and...

and made a sad face and...

So they've got it all on digital.

And actors are not going to be real,

they're going to be inside a computer.

You watch, it's gonna happen.

So maybe this is the swan song

for all of us.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow...

creeps in this petty pace

from day to day,

to the last syllable of recorded time;

and all our yesterdays

have lighted fools the way

to dusty death.

Out, out, brief candle.

Life's but a walking shadow,

a poor player, that struts

and frets his hour upon the stage,

and then is heard no more.

It is a tale told by an idiot,

full of sound

and fury, signifying...

nothing.

Copy. All available

units responding to a shooting.

Police came to a call to 911,

but this was no ordinary address,

the caller no ordinary citizen.

Marlon Brando was on the line

to report a shooting at his home.

Misery...

has come to my house.

Brando won an Oscar

for his performance in the 1954 film

On the Waterfront.

He was already being acclaimed

as the greatest American

film actor ever.

You take the good goods away,

and the kickbacks

and the shakedown cabbage

and them pistoleros and you're nothin'.

Hey, Stella.

You can bet that Marlon Brando's impact

on the world of movie acting

will still be felt 500 years from now.

I'm gonna make him an offer

he can't refuse.

Marlon Brando was here

at his home at the time of the shooting,

but police who questioned the actor

say he did not witness it.

The shooting

put a spotlight on the private life

of one of Hollywood's

most reclusive stars.

And it's been a struggle

to try to preserve sanity

and sense of reality

that is taken away from you by success.

It will be

a highly personalized documentary

on the life activities of myself,

Marlon Brando.

We establish that he is a troubled man,

alone, beset with memories,

in a state of confusion and sadness,

isolation, disorder.

He's wounded beyond being able

to be social in an ordinary way,

he becomes like a mechanical doll.

Maybe he felt that he was treated badly.

And that he's angry about the treatment.

He's collecting bits

of information here, odd bits of film

to try to explain why are you this way?

Ten, nine, eight, seven, six,

five, four, three, two, one.

Now let your mind drift

back,

way back in time

to a time when you were very young,

when you used to wake up in the morning,

put on your clothes

while everyone was sleeping,

and walk down the sidewalk in Omaha

and sit underneath that big elm tree.

With the wind blowing the light,

the shadow of leaves.

It is like a wonderful, soft dream

and that soft wind calling.

That's a wind that you can trust.

You are the memories.

I've always in my life had

a strong sense that I had to be free.

Standing on that train, I was free.

I used to love to stand in the car

and listen to the rails.

You know?

It's an eccentric kind of rhythm.

I arrived in New York with holes

in my socks and holes in my mind.

I remember getting drunk,

lying down on the sidewalk

and going to sleep.

Nobody bothered me.

I was always somebody who had

an unquenchable curiosity about people.

I liked to walk down the street

and look at faces.

I used to go to the corner

of Broadway and 42nd Street

in an Optimo cigar store.

I would watch people for three seconds

as they went by

and try to analyze their personality

by just that flick.

The face can hide many things.

And people are always hiding things.

I was interested to guess

the things that people

did not know about themselves.

What they feel, what they think,

why they feel.

How is it that we behave the way we do?

What is the answer?

Is there any answer?

There is something

that you need very deeply.

Some kind of contact,

some experience

to give you a sense of fulfillment.

I had a great feeling of inadequacy,

that I didn't know enough,

that I didn't have enough education.

I felt dumb.

I became an actor

pretty much by accident.

I went to the New School

for Social Research,

which is an extraordinary institution

of learning.

My teachers were all Jewish,

because the New School

was a clearing house

for Jews that escaped from Hitler.

They were very respected people.

The cream of academia.

Control over your lives

begins with this class.

I studied with a woman

by the name of Stella Adler.

She was a fine actress,

a really wonderful actress.

The smell of the greasepaint

and lure of the theatrical experience

came out in her teaching technique.

The play has nothing to do with words.

You do not act words,

you act with your soul.

I was very shy when I was a kid.

Sensitive, very sensitive.

In the theater,

the actor is the boss.

It's against the nature of human life

to withdraw.

"Don't be afraid," she said.

"You have a right to be who you are,

where you are and how you are."

Be in a state of honesty up there.

Allowing yourself to feel things,

to feel love or to feel rage.

Speak out the thoughts

that are tormenting you.

Everybody's got a story to tell,

something they're hiding.

Do not bring anything

in the present

that doesn't have the past.

We develop the technique

of acting very, very early.

Even from the time we're a kid,

where we're throwing our oatmeal

on the floor

just to get attention from our mothers.

Acting is surviving.

Yeah, that's my mother.

That photograph there.

This is a portrait of my mom

when she was about forty.

And she was a marvellous person.

For instance, she dressed up a pet goose

we had for Santa Claus.

She made a Santa Claus out of it,

made a little red costume for it

and a beard and everything.

She was a very inventive

and artistic woman.

And I miss her very much.

I was given by my mother

a sense of the absurd.

She had false teeth.

Once in a while she'd laugh.

While she was laughing,

her teeth would come off her gums.

And the more I laughed,

the more she thought it was funny

and we both ended up laughing real hard.

My mother taught me a love for nature,

and a sense of closeness with animals.

You couldn't think of a tune

she couldn't play on the piano.

Not one.

I like remembering about her.

I used to love the smell of liquor

on her breath.

And her breath becomes very, very sweet.

It's a lovely fragrance.

My mother was an alcoholic.

We lived in a small town

and my mother was the town drunk.

She began to dissolve

and fray at the ends.

When my mother was missing.

Gone off someplace,

we didn't know where she was.

I used to have to go

and get her out of jail.

Memories even now

that fill me with shame and anger.

You have to constantly act.

It is not important

to defend your faults in the theater.

It's important to overcome them.

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