Listen to Me Marlon Page #2

Stella very kindly invited me

into her home.

I then became part of her family.

When I was really suffering

and disjointed, disoriented with life,

she was always very loving towards me.

I'd never done anything in life

that anybody ever said I was good at.

She put her hand on my shoulders

and said, "Don't worry, my boy."

"I have seen you,

and the world is going to hear from you."

From the T-shirt clad Stanley Kowalski

in Streetcar Named Desire,

the role which catapulted him

to international fame,

we're very pleased

to have with us this morning

as our guest Mr Marlon Brando.

Streetcar Named Desire

was very satisfying to be in,

because I thought

it was a wonderful play.

The story was superb

and the production was wonderful.

You must be Stanley.

Oh, hiya. Where's the little woman?

It was a very explosive part

and it electrified everybody.

You want a shot?

No, I rarely touch it.

Well, some people, they rarely touch it,

but it touches them often.

I was quite nutty

when I was young

and I would have a lot of energy.

Rain forever.

'Cause you couldn't come out flat,

you couldn't come out slow.

After the play was over,

I felt like a million bucks.

I was off into the night

with sparkles and zest

to see whatever I could find.

How wonderful it was to drive around

on a motorcycle with just a T-shirt on.

Two, three, four o'clock in the morning.

Some small club

in the black section of town.

And I was screaming

when they were playing those drums.

I'd hear that sh*t,

it just used to take me to another land.

This is my moment,

I want to take this moment

and that was wonderful.

And then your life changes.

Suddenly, there's a lot more girls

saying, "Hi, Mar."

When I was younger,

I was a fairly attractive kid.

I had a lot of derring-do and panache.

I was unpredictable and stimulating

for a lot of young girls.

I was young and destined

to spread my seed far and wide.

Girls and fun and good food

and sense of health and purpose...

It can't get better than this.

Nothing in life

could be better than this.

I was always making jokes and teasing,

playing practical jokes on everybody.

To be able to have money.

I never had any money.

My father was a traveling salesman.

I was making more in six months of work

than he made in ten years.

He measured everything by money.

He couldn't understand

how this ne'er-do-well son of his

could possibly do that.

If I have a scene to play

and I have to be angry,

there must be within you trigger

mechanisms that are spring-loaded,

that are filled with contempt

about something.

I remember my father hitting my mother.

I was fourteen.

Now that's how

I'm gonna clear the table.

Don't you ever talk that way to me.

My old man was tough.

He was a bar fighter.

He was a man with not much love in him.

Staying away from home,

drinking and whoring

all around the Midwest.

He used to slap me around,

and for no good reason.

And I was truly intimidated by him

at that time.

Now what kind of a queen

do you think you are?

You know that I've been onto you

from the start,

and not once did you pull the wool

over this boy's eyes.

When things

are extremely painful to you,

you don't want them

in your consciousness,

you want to forget about them.

And you are the Queen of the Nile,

sitting on your throne,

swilling down my liquor.

You know what I say? Ha-ha!

You can imagine

having to go someplace every night

and go through all that,

get yourself upset...

To have to cry or to scream

or to be ruined in some way,

that's work.

That's hard work.

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, you know, didn't run up

the street with my shoes off,

and so it's been a hard thing

sort of living that down.

There is nothing about me

that is like Stanley Kowalski.

I hate that kinda guy.

I absolutely hate that person

and I couldn't identify with it.

The brute, dark character that

represented the beasts and the animals.

They sent me to a psychiatrist.

They thought I was going nuts,

losing my mind.

Stella told me,

if you come to the theater

and you feel a hundred percent,

show eighty.

If you come and you feel sixty percent,

show forty.

If you come to the theater

and you only feel forty percent,

best to turn around and go home.

I was wondering if you have any plans

to return to the stage

in the near future.

No, I don't have any immediate

intentions of returning to the stage.

The shouts of freedom

are also the rattling of chains.

You seem to be such a restless man.

Eyes always darting.

I don't know,

I guess I've just got loose feet.

I infer from that that you

do not thoroughly enjoy your profession.

Or you don't enjoy it at all.

No, I think that people

do what they enjoy,

or else they don't do it.

People do what they want to do.

If there are adverse conditions

that surround my work,

they are not adverse enough

to make me change activities.

If I hadn't had the good luck

to be an actor,

I don't know what I would've been.

I'd have probably been a con man.

A good con man.

Tell smooth lies, give impressions

of things that he thinks,

or appears to think

that he doesn't think.

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.

Now will you turn your head for us?

Sure.

Now around the other way.

Now all the way around.

All right. Thank you and stay around.

Shakespeare said,

"There is no art to find

the mind's construction in the face."

And there should be such an art.

When the camera is close on you,

your face becomes the stage.

Your face is the proscenium arch

of the theater, thirty feet high.

And it sees all the little movements

of the face and the eye and the mouth.

You have the intensity to act.

I wanted very much

to be involved in motion pictures,

so I could change it

into something nearer the truth.

And I was convinced

that I could do that.

About my playing the tuba...

Seems like a lot of fuss

has been made about that.

In the '30s and '40s

you had a particular kind of acting.

You knew who you were gonna get

when you went to the movies.

Gary Cooper oats.

Shredded Wheat Bogart.

Clark Gable Crunchy Fruit Loops.

They were just like breakfast cereals.

The same in every role.

Gestures of anguish and despair,

and that kind of acting became absurd.

The astounding thing

most people don't realize.

All motion pictures today,

all acting today,

stems from Stella Adler.

Stella, so much

has been talked about Method acting.

What exactly is the Method?

All right, let's start at the beginning.

Stella went to Paris

and studied

with Konstantin Stanislavsky,

the great Russian teacher,

brought back

her experience and knowledge

of this particular form of acting.

Reality, realness, carried by an actor

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