Brando's Magnificent Failure

    In 1961 Paramount Pictures released One-Eyed Jacks, a western starring and directed by Marlon Brando. A film of great beauty, bitterness, and explosive violence, it received mixed notices from critics at the time. Budgeted at $1.8 million, it eventually cost around $6 million due to Brando's perfectionism. One story has it that while filming on location in Monterey, California, Brando insisted on holding up filming until the perfect wave could be captured from the Pacific Ocean. These are the things that will drive a producer and studio not only up a wall, but wonder why that wall was built in the first place.

    The production began life at Brando's own production company, Pennebaker, named for his late mother's maiden name. Originally a young upstart named Stanley Kubrick, fresh off his WWI anti-war flick Paths of Glory, was inked to direct, but conflicts over casting during script conferences at Brando's home high atop Mullholland Drive, drove Stanley away to accept another troubled picture, Spartacus which star and producer {do you see a trend?} Kirk Douglas was filming in the nearby hills at Universal. One of the conflicts was over who should play the character of Dad Longworth, partner and father-figure to Brando's Rio {nicknamed Kid} in the movie. Kubrick wanted Spencer Tracy {imagine that potential screen team !}, while Brando wanted his friend and former co-star Karl Malden. Well it was Marlon's company so Marlon won and Stanley walked.

    So without a director and time - which, as they say, is money - running out, Brando took over as director himself. Before this Brando had shown no signs of wanting to helm a film other than pretty much directing himself in his last several performances. Fact is, except for Elia Kazan and maybe Joe Mankiewicz, he pretty much held Hollywood directors in contempt as little more that traffic cops. He had trouble with either his director or co-star or both in almost every film he had made since 1954's On The Waterfront. In 1954's Desiree, he played a puffed up Napoleon - with Claude Rains' accent - and had conflicts with director Henry Koster, who was more at home in the far away land of Deanna Durbin musicals. On the set of Guys & Dolls, Brando famously clashed with another titanic "my way or the highway" guy, Frank Sinatra. On Sayonara he questioned director Joshua Logan until he was nearly sent back running to the asylum (Logan had spent some time in a home for mental health years earlier). 1958's Young Lions had Brando in pretty much open conflict with Montgomery {there is only one Christ on this film!} Clift while filming that World War 2 epic.

    It must have been the story of One-Eyed Jacks that intrigued Brando, as it deals with the conflict of Dad's character with the Kid's, who start out as outlaws together and end up as bitter rivals as a result of Malden leaving Brando on top a mountain ridge to face the music after they are chased by the law for robbing banks. Brando's Kid does time in a Mexican jail, escapes, and goes looking for the man who left him high and dry. When he gets to where Malden had been hiding for several years, he finds that Dad is sheriff of a small northern California town. He has married a Mexican woman with a young daughter by a previous marriage, but Brando's Kid not only wants his revenge on Malden's Dad, he wants the young step-daughter as well. It is no secret that Brando had little use for his own father, a bullying sort, when young Bud {as Brando was known to family and friends} was in his wonder years in the midwest. In Last Tango In Paris there is a moment when Maria Schnieder's Jeanne asks him why he doesn't go back to America, and Brando recalls bad family relations. Or as his character Paul says "I can't remember many good things." Neither could Bud Brando in real or reel life.

    One of One-Eyed Jacks' { the title deals with man's duplicity } virtues is it's expert casting of supporting parts. Ben Johnson, one of John Ford's stable of cowpokes, is excellent as Bob Amory, Slim Pickens is wonderfully slimy as Dad's deputy, Lon. And a nasty bit by Timothy Carey as a bad drunk tormenting a saloon girl. The movie is full of interesting set pieces: Brando waiting on that mountain for Malden with the sand storm blowing is an amazing bit of imagery; the scene where The Kid, being taken prisoner by Dad, spits in his face and Dad decides to make him an example by not only whipping him in front of the whole town, but by crushing his shooting hand with a rifle butt.

    When filming was finally finished 6 months late and some $4-5 million over budget, Brando's cut was four hours and forty two minutes. Unable to cut further, Brando walked away from the cutting and Paramount took over and released the film at two hours and twenty one minutes in March 1961. As producer Frank Rosenberg said "It wasn't a movie, it was a way of life." By that time Brando's The Fugitive Kind {filmed after, but released before One-Eyed Jacks} had flopped. It would be Brando's first. Jacks would be his second financial failure in a row with Mutiny on the Bounty looming next. In fact, Brando would go from flop to flop all through the '60s, and it was not until a little movie called The Godfather that Brando would bring him back from bankable oblivion and return him to Oscar glory. The photography by Charles Lang, Jr was Oscar nominated and is truly stunning. The bad thing about any print one see's of this film {it is in the public domain} is that it doesn't do the cinematography justice. It may be the most beautiful western this side of Shane. The music score by Hugo Friedhofer is first rate with nice motifs for individual characters and a touch of authenticity in it's flavor. And Bud the director was nominated for a Directors' Guild award. This I find may be the most remarkable thing about this damned, neglected western. That other directors would recognize the fine work this method actor, who at various times had driven their own to distraction, had accomplished. It didn't recover it's costs. Brando never attempted directing again.

Getting the Big Picture

First off let me say: THIS IS NOT A RELIGIOUS FILM BLOG! Sorry if I yelled, but sometimes I get caught up in the moment. What this is though is a movie/film blog about my passion: The cinema, movies, film - whatever you wanna call it. Like most Americans I grew up on the movies. As a boy I watched "The Wizard of Oz," and it was the first movie I fell in love with. Watched it every year on TV. Back then my family didn't have a color TV, so my first experience with it was all B&W - with commercials! I didn't care, I didn't know any better.

As I got older my movie interests grew. The "Planet of the Apes" movies, whiched I saw in theaters during their first runs, were a must-see every year. Staying up late on school nights to watch Marx Brothers movies [sometimes with all 4 brothers, but never Karl] on "Movies 'Til Dawn" off L.A.'s Channel Five while the folks thought I was asleep. And of course the first time I dated a girl I took her to the movies. Then on to the films of Scorsese, Cukor, Coppola, Peckinpah, Blake Edwards, George Stevens, Lean, Hitchcock, Kazan, Fellini, Hawks and on and on and on.

Yet somehow just watching movies weren't enough. I needed to know about the people who made them, in front and behind the camera. I needed to know how they were made. So I bought a couple of movie books at the local B. Dalton bookstore in the only shopping mall our city had to offer. One was on cinema history, and the other two were on actors Gary Cooper and Cary Grant. Why I picked out these two, I'm not sure. I know I had seen Cooper in "Pride of the Yankees," but I don't think I had seen a Grant film at that time. The books were part of a series called "The Pyramid Illustrated History of the Movies" - they were a whole series of books covering the careers of various classic movie stars. I devoured these books, just soaked them up - almost wore them out. That was 1973, and I still have them. And I bought more. And more. The Citadel "Films of..." series was another favorite: Books on Crawford, Astaire, Brando, Tracy, Hepburn, - I think you can tell where this is headed.

Francois Truffant said movie-lovers are sick people. I tend to agree with that. We huddle in the dark with a single stream of light projecting about our heads or glowing from our TV. When we get caught up, really caught up and surrenders to what we're watching, there is no going back. It's a disease that grows like a cancer: from watching movies in a theater, to buying books or memorabilia, to driving to Hollywood to see the sights, to the recording of movies on TV, to purchasing them on tape and, later, on DVD or Blu-Ray.

I love all types of films: from John Ford westerns and the Vincente Minnelli musicals, from last year's "Black Swan" to "War of the Worlds." Comedies and musicals, action movies and foreign films, chick-flicks and film noir and the latest popcorn-delights at the multiplex. I only see about 12 movies a year in a theater these days - time and finances play a big part, but so does content, and I think most movies today are pretty feeble. Especially the ones bally-hooed by the big studios every summer - all noise and green screen, with empty scripts and thoughtless dialogue. It's eye-candy with a hollow center. So if you plan to check in to see my thoughts on "Transformers 3," or "Thor," or "Pirates 4" or god knows what else - I am sorry, but you are better off looking elsewhere.

But don't get me wrong - I like some of them. "Borat" had me screaming with laughter, almost literally rolling on the floor [just ask my kids], JJ Abrams' recent reboot of "Star Trek" - a clever update on a franchise I had long given up for dead. And I am looking forward to "Super 8" on June 10 for some Abrams-meets-Spielberg fun. So I am not a complete snob. In the coming months [years ?] I will write up sketches, essays, reviews, and career profiles on actors, directors, and films; a smattering of takes on musicians, books, and television. But my main focus will be movies, as it's been much of my life.

Anyway, welcome aboard and if this sounds like your idea of fun, well, then you are my kind of person. Share your thoughts. Tell me what you like, and what you don't. Who knows - maybe we'll even learn a little something about life beyond the multiplex.