Listen to Me Marlon is a compelling documentary about Marlon Brando compiled entirely from private audio tapes the actor recorded at home, in business meetings, during hypnosis, in therapy, and during press interviews. And in the first 10 minutes of the Showtime-produced film, from director Stevan Riley (Fire in Babylon, Blue Bood), the enigmatic icon attempts to define himself.
“A troubled man alone beset with memories in a state of confusion, sadness, isolation, disorder,” the Oscar winner mused about himself in the third person. “He’s wanted beyond being able to be social in an ordinary way and he becomes like a mechanical doll,” he continued, on the dual responsibilities and resentments of fame. “Maybe he felt that he was treated badly and he is angry about the treatment.”
This is just one telling glimpse inside Brando’s mind in the 95-minute documentary, which bows at Sundance this week. Without relying on any “talking heads” or Brando experts the film is literally Brando on Brando—his memories of childhood, his confessions about his insecurities, his thoughts on acting, and the cynical lessons he gathered from being the world’s biggest movie star. A sampling of his wisdoms and witticisms:
The concept of “Brando on Brando” preceded the execution of the film, director Stevan Riley told us over the phone earlier this week. He had been contacted by producing partner John Battsek about a project that would mark the 10-year milestone since Brando’s 2004 death. And upon discovering a trove of personal audio tapes that were being collated by Brando’s estate, Riley suggested on a whim that they try telling Brando’s story “entirely in his own words.” Laughing, he adds, “That was without much consideration with whether it was possible or not.”
Aside from pouring over the tapes, Riley read every book about Brando and flew out to Los Angeles and New York City to talk to those who knew him, like Stella Adler’s daughter Ellen, Harry Dean Stanton, assorted friends, family members, ex-lovers, and production assistants (some of whom also doubled as ex-lovers).
“There was so much surrounding Marlon that is mythical and enigmatic,” Riley said. “People have been trying to pin him down for decades, to find out who he was. And he was just as responsible as anyone for casting these smoke screens and giving different versions of himself and casting different personas. At one point [in my research], I got quite confused because I would read one account of someone rubbishing him and then another lauding him as a genius. So all of that research was important but to iron out those inconsistencies, I went back to his own words, which made [the narrative] more single-minded. Who better than Marlon Brando to explain his true essence?”
Fortunately for Riley, there were hundreds of tapes to use as reference, including voicemail cassettes containing messages from his children; a painful black-and-white interview in which Brando’s father (while sitting next to Brando, at the height of his fame and beauty) is asked to comment on his son’s acting ability and can only muster a reluctant backhanded compliment; interviews in which Brando flirts shamelessly with the pretty female reporters trying to ask him acting questions; and other audio tapes provided by his official biographer Robert Lindsey.
“He was very closeted about his private life to press” but diligently documented his private musings and curiosities. “He was a real autodidact,” Riley explains. “He didn't have the best education. He was unbearably dyslexic. I think he would have been a bit shy and self-aware of that, but he was a sponge for learning. He would note his books and underline his books and correspondences. He’d record tapes of just vocabulary, little turns of phrase he liked, nice expressions or a sumptuous bit of language, and he would learn those diligently. He’d learn the vernacular. He was an obsessive analyzer of human behavior. He was just so preoccupied with what made people tick. He was a fantastic mimic. He described mimicry as a way he got attention as a kid because people liked to see reflections of themselves.”
While he decried fame, he meticulously “archived interviews from his early career and press clippings that he kept stored in a bunker outside of his home, possibly for posterity.” In addition to the press clippings were long tapes containing creative notes and research for his film characters, and family recordings on which he is heard saying things like, “Let's make these because it will be nice to remember in 30 years time.” Riley continues, “There was a great degree of nostalgia in those tapes, and a sense that he was recording for his children. He had [the tapes] neatly labeled and organized in drawers.”
Riley says that Brando’s estate did not put any limitations on what he could or could not use. And the filmmaker has spent a fair amount of time considering what Brando himself would think of the project. “I think he would be incredibly cautious,” Riley says. “He didn't trust editors. I felt great responsibility when I was editing.”
During his research, Riley felt himself wondering whether there was a moment before the fame scale tipped out of Brando’s favor, with the intrusion of the paparazzi who hunted him, when Brando enjoyed being a movie star. The closest he came to answering this question was when he talked to Stella Adler’s daughter.
“I asked if there was a time when he really embraced fame and she said there was, right at the time of A Streetcar Named Desire [which was released in 1951],” he told us. “But it all blew up. That was a great time when fame was good. But it turned worse. And the more he stayed away and secluded himself, the worse it got.” After a pause, Riley added, “He was the prototype for modern obsession with fame I think, which makes it quite topical.”
