Truth Be Told Read online

  Quinn couldn’t fathom the old-school guys. He was absolutely astonished by Laurence Olivier on the opening night of Becket. The rehearsals had gone well, but they were only rehearsals. Now it was opening night. Quinn was playing King Henry. He had totally become the King. He was the King onstage. He was the King offstage. He was the King at home. He was sitting on the throne for the opening performance. Olivier was standing next to him. The Queen was speaking. There was a tension throughout the house. Olivier leans over to him. Olivier is not supposed to say anything. But he whispers: “Where do you get a really good beer in New York?”

  Quinn watched the final scene from behind the curtain in disbelief. Olivier was giving the death speech. A spear was in him. The curtain came down. The audience was applauding. And Olivier says, “Move the blue light.”

  Olivier got as much respect as Brando, because he was able to bring powerful emotions to the stage without having to live them.

  Dustin Hoffman was at the other polar extreme from Olivier. I remember meeting Dustin while he was filming Midnight Cowboy. I was invited to the set in Florida see some of the scenes being shot where Ratso Rizzo dies on the bus. Dustin had me over for lunch at his hotel. He was seated, but then he said, “Let me lower the blinds.” He walked to the blinds with Ratso’s limp.

  “Why are you doing that?” I asked.

  “Oh, I’ve been doing this for two months,” he said. “I don’t want to forget the limp.”

  Olivier would say, Just limp!

  Yet they all figured out a way to get to the same place on-screen—that seamless place where the audience doesn’t get a sense of the actor’s effort.

  It must be doubly hard to get to that place when you’re very attractive. Elizabeth Taylor was a damn good actress who was so beautiful that people couldn’t fully appreciate her talents. You were mesmerized by those purple eyes, those magnificent breasts. Yeah, she won two Academy Awards. But when you watched her play Cleopatra, it was nearly impossible to forget who you were looking at. Meryl Streep doesn’t have that kind of beauty, and it’s a benefit. I just saw a picture of her in makeup dressed as Margaret Thatcher. It was unbelievable. She could be a double.

  Think of how hard it is for Brad Pitt and George Clooney to get your wife or girlfriend to suspend disbelief. I mean, if your wife ran off with George Clooney, how could you even be mad? One time I was hosting a charity event. George, Shawn and I were together, arms interlocked, when someone called me over. I started to walk off and Shawn said, “Don’t hurry back!”

  That was one of the things that made Brando so remarkable. He was handsome, dynamic. But his looks didn’t get in the way when he played a bastard in Streetcar Named Desire. As Sidney Poitier once told me, when you watched Brando on stage you didn’t think you were in a theater. Brando made you think you were peeking in on someone’s life. It’s hard to imagine what Brando must have meant to other actors at that time, to see a guy do what many of them didn’t know was possible.

  Pacino was mesmerized when he saw Brando in On the Waterfront. Al was about sixteen. He went into a movie house for a double feature. The first film was A Member of the Wedding . Great movie. Then On the Waterfront comes on, and Al is just locked in. He’s never seen anything like it. The movie ends and he doesn’t move. He stays in his seat and sits through A Member of the Wedding again just to see On the Waterfront a second time.

  I can still remember that scene where Marlon’s walking with Eva Marie Saint in the park. She drops her glove, and he picks it up, then puts it on his own hand. What a great moment. Here’s this tough longshoreman bonding with this young girl over this petite glove. Plus, the sexual innuendo. The dropped glove was not in the script. Marlon took an accident and turned it into a moment that you remember more than half a century later.

  There was another free-flowing moment that gets at the essence of Brando. It happened during The Godfather—right before the Don dies running around the tomato vines. Just before, he’s giving advice to his son Michael. Do this. Do that. A server comes by. Would you like some wine? They’re both supposed to wave him off. The server is interrupting an important conversation. But Marlon says, “I like to drink wine more than I used to.” Al had no idea it was coming. It wasn’t in the script. But the nuance said it all: The Don was at the end of the road.

  Maybe it came too easy to Brando. There were actors who felt that he wasn’t respectful. Rod Steiger, to his death, resented Marlon because of that famous scene in On the Waterfront—the scene Marlon made famous with the line: “I could’ve been a contender.” Steiger sat next to Marlon in the back of the car when Marlon did his lines. But Marlon wasn’t there for Steiger’s. Hey, I fed him his lines. Why didn’t he feed me mine?

  Elizabeth Taylor told me that she loved working with Marlon, but was put off by his lack of preparation. He’d forget his lines—Oops, sorry. Can we do another take? Oops, sorry, can we do another? He’d just play it that way until he was happy. In Last Tango in Paris, he had his lines written on a wall that he could see off camera while he was having sex with Maria Schneider. And he put on so much weight over time that he looked like he was four hundred pounds. You couldn’t help but wonder: How’d he let himself go?

  It got to the point where many believed that he’d turned on his profession. He’d say things like, “I don’t have to play Shakespeare. I can read him. Why do I have to stand onstage and emote it? Just read it. The guy was a great writer.” Actors were pissed at that. When Apocalypse Now came out, it was widely discussed on college campuses. Martin Sheen had a heart attack during the making of it. Brando was a crazy character—Colonel Kurtz. Pauline Kael analyzed the film in a big essay for The New Yorker. It wasn’t a commercial success, but everyone was talking about it. When an interviewer approached Brando and asked about Apocalypse Now, Marlon replied, “Is that the one where I was bald?”

  One moment, he could be a jester. The next, he could be making a heartfelt political stand. He couldn’t be intimidated. Yet he moved to Tahiti partly as an escape from fame. He knew he was being stared at. But he never seemed self-conscious about all the weight he carried around.

  So you had no idea what was coming when you interviewed Brando. He did things his way, and he did them instinctively, and in the moment—which is pretty well how my meeting with him came about.

  Brando wasn’t doing interviews in 1994. But he’d been paid $5 million to write his autobiography, and he found out that if he didn’t do a television interview to promote it he’d be in breach of contract. So he called up and said he was going to send a car over to bring me to his house. The next thing you know he’s pulling up to meet me in a white Chevrolet. The doorman at CNN couldn’t believe it. Soon, we were singing through the streets.

  The interview was set to take place at his home a couple of days later. My staffers arrived early to work on the lighting. There’s nothing in his home that gives any hint that he’s an actor. I don’t even think Marlon knew where his Academy Awards were. So the crew is setting up and he comes out of his bedroom in a T-shirt that doesn’t quite fit and his underwear. It’s become clear over time that my producer on set, Carrie Stevenson, will never forget that moment.

  But that was the essence of Marlon. His very entrance into the room created drama. During the interview Marlon said that unless we look inward we won’t ever be able to clearly see outward. I’ve never been one to get too psychological. But if the reverse applies, the interview is a glimpse at the inner Brando. Marlon came on the show in a jacket that a guy working in a service station might wear, and a tie, but no socks or shoes— a fact he quickly pointed out. He tried to turn the tables and interview me. When he didn’t like a question he diverted it by softly slapping my face in an affectionate way. He warned of global warming. He beckoned his 150-pound mastiff onto the set and then asked me to feed it a treat mouth-to-mouth. Never, in all my years of interviewing, has a guest caught me looking at my watch and asked me why I was doing so—only Marlon. He noticed everything around
him and used it for his own purposes. So many other guests would have refrained from commenting on the sweat that broke out on my face under the harsh lights. Not Marlon. “Get this guy a Kleenex!”

  It all came naturally to him. I think it explains why Brando didn’t elevate acting to some exalted terrain. He said that acting was older than humanity. The drunk in the bar who threatens to attack you—“What are you looking at?”—Brando compared to the silverback gorilla that doesn’t like it when you get too close. Marlon was just doing what we all do everyday—acting. Only he made it an art form. At the end of the hour, we sang a song and he kissed me on the lips.

  I’m often asked what it was like to be kissed on the lips by Marlon Brando. “I can’t stop thinking about it,” is the best I can do—because it’s the truth. I couldn’t stop looking at him when I was around him and I couldn’t stop remembering the experience afterward—I think he had that affect on everyone. And I can’t stop talking about it, because sixteen years later people are still asking. There is another memory from that day. I can picture Marlon walking around after the interview, serving the crew champagne. He didn’t want anybody to leave.

  We did another interview some years later. Afterward, I was with Marlon and several women when one of them asked if he could dance. In fact, his mother was a dancer, and he’d gone to New York as a young man in the hopes of becoming a dancer. There was tension as Marlon stepped forward and reached for this woman’s hand. You didn’t know how it was going to go because of his enormous weight. But he was so light on his feet. He just waltzed her around the room. You never saw the heaviness. Everything he did was infused with drama. Drama was like breathing to Marlon.

  If you went out to eat with him at a restaurant, he’d point around the room and reveal deep secrets.

  “See that couple over there? They don’t have another six months together. Look at the way he crosses his leg. Look at his eye, it’s going right over her left shoulder. No chance.”

  “Look at the way the maître d’ turns after he shows someone to the table. He’s unhappy.”

  Marlon didn’t order anything for himself. He ate off everybody else’s plate. He gave me a pass code to reach him on the phone. I’d dial his number. When he’d answer, I’d have to say, “The ship is in.” That was my code.

  Then he’d say, “Hello, Larry.”

  After that second interview, he called me in the middle of the night.

  “C’mon, we’re going to Mexico.”

  “Marlon, it’s two in the morning.”

  “I’ll meet you at Van Nuys.”

  I started to get dressed. He called me back. The trip was off. Sean Penn couldn’t find his passport.

  The more I got to know him, the wilder things got. He once proposed we do an interview in Tahiti, with a camera overlooking us as we both lay naked on a roof.

  Sometimes when you live your life doing something all the time, you end up being it. That was Marlon. He told me if twice a year people left $5 million on his doorstep he’d never act again. I don’t doubt it—because there was enough drama in his life.

  Now, Al, I don’t think he’d ever say that. Al comes out to California and shoots two weeks of a comedy and then flies back to New York in the morning and becomes Shylock on Broadway later that night. If you ask Al to respond to a film clip, he’ll study it carefully before he says a word. Marlon wouldn’t even look at the clip.

  No interview was quite like Brando’s. But that’s also what made it great to come into work whenever an actor was a guest. The interviews could be as different as their approaches. Plus, you never knew if they were acting. How could you? They’re trained as actors. But even if they were acting, they were revealing themselves in their own way.

  Sidney Poitier could be analytical about the craft. Paul Newman would rather talk about salad dressing.

  Tom Hanks would beam at a compliment. He lit up when I told him how highly Jackie Gleason thought of him in Nothing in Common. Bette Davis couldn’t care less if she hurt anybody’s feelings. “What’s it like to work with Faye Dunaway?” I once asked her. “I’d prefer,” she replied, “to work with professionals.”

  Lauren Bacall was honest enough to discuss how unhappy she was with Frank Sinatra, who swept her off her feet after Humphrey Bogart’s death, proposed, and then took off. But asking Angelina Jolie about her difficult relationship with her father was like running into a brick wall.

  Tom Cruise was game for a swordfight to kick off the release of The Last Samurai. Robert De Niro’s hesitations and short responses made you realize that his movies are his form of self-expression.

  James Caan is a cutup. Robert Duvall said that it was much more fun to make Godfather than Godfather II because Caan was in the first. Sean Penn is intense. Don’t ask him a question about acting if you have him on a show about aiding Haiti after the earthquake.

  Hilary Swank arrived more beautiful in person than she is on-screen. Charlton Heston complained that his looks were unfair. “I can’t be the guy down the street,” he said. “I’ve got to play Moses.” Then there was the advice Mel Brooks gave Frank Langella when they did The Twelve Chairs. “Frank, you could be a star but you’re too good looking. So my suggestion for your career is to run across the room, and I slam a door into your face. Then, don’t change a thing.”

  Daniel Day-Lewis had a reputation for being aloof, but he came in like an old friend. I so looked forward to interviewing Robert Mitchum—until he refused to answer my questions. For an entire hour he one-worded me. His son later told me that he was probably putting me on.

  Sylvester Stallone could inspire you with the story of how he refused to let go of Rocky even when the studios offered big money to take his script if the actor in him would step aside. Jack Lemmon could make you laugh as he smacked himself for turning down one of the lead roles in The Hustler. A movie about pool? Who’s gonna watch a movie about pool? When he attended the premiere, he jumped up and screamed: “I fucked up again!”

  Yul Brynner would happily explain why he would work only if his lodgings came with brown wallpaper and Hungarian goat milk. Albert Brooks would happily explain the difference between the old theater experience and the new. He did it like this, as only Albert Brooks could: “Forty years ago Mabel and Isabel are standing in line in Des Moines for the new John Wayne movie. Mabel says, ‘I hear it’s wonderful. The girl is terrific. There’s a lot of fighting and some tender scenes. It’s a real good movie. You get your free plate.’ The same two people now:

  Mabel says, ‘You know, it cost $80 million. I don’t know if they can recoup. Maybe if they sell it to HBO. If not, they’ve got to get a foreign deal . . . ’ ”

  So many Oscar winners talked about how much the award meant to them. George C. Scott straightaway explained why he didn’t accept his for Patton. The only way to judge performances, he said, is five men playing the same role directed by the same person. Made sense to me.

  I could go on all day. Gene Hackman. Audrey Hepburn. Jason Robards. Julia Roberts. Kirk Douglas. Michael Douglas. Diane Keaton. Jeff Bridges. Nicole Kidman. Peter O’Toole. Jodie Foster. Richard Dreyfuss. Shirley MacLaine. Denzel Washington. But there was no better closer than Al.

  Al, who doesn’t like to be interviewed because he’s basically shy. Al, who likes to be interviewed because he’s got a big personality underneath the shyness. Al, who is cerebral and loves to talk about the craft. Al, who through it all has never lost the freshness and spirit of a street kid.

  There’s a story I love that goes back to one of the first plays he was in. The production had a crowd scene. In this scene, a bomb went off. Al’s part called for him to yell, “That sounds like a bomb!”

  He rehearsed the line all week.

  “That sounds like a bomb!”

  “That sounds like a bomb!”

  “That sounds like a bomb!”

  They never set the bomb off during rehearsal. They just told him that the sound would come on opening night.

  On
opening night, the scene arrived, and the bomb went off. BOOM!

  And Al said, “What the fuck was that?”

  I found myself just as amused years later when Jerry Weintraub told me about getting Al ready for the filming of Ocean’s Thirteen. Al was playing a hotel manager and he had to look sharp. So Weintraub sent him to Las Vegas to spend a week with hotel managers to get the flavor. Then Jerry said, “You’ve got to get a manicure.”

  “Why?” Al wanted to know.

  “Because these hotel managers get manicures all the time.”

  Al went to get the manicure. The manicurist called Jerry and said, “This is not a manicure. This is surgery. This man hasn’t had a manicure in thirty years.”

  Jerry said, “I’ll tell you what. Give him a pedicure, too.”

  So now Al has to get a pedicure. Al calls up Jerry and says: “Are there scenes in this movie where I’m barefoot?”

  “No,” Jerry says. “But I just wanted to give you the feeling.”

  He comes in for the shoot and tells Jerry, “The girl scratched me under the cuticles, and I kicked her in the head.”

  I know exactly what he means. The woman who gives me my pedicures touches the soles of my feet at her peril.

  Now, Marlon wouldn’t allow you to ask where the essence of his character in The Godfather came from. But Al would. So it was fun to look back.

  I remember sitting in the balcony of a mobbed theater when The Godfather came out. I’d read the book, so I was somewhat prepared. But when I walked out of that theater, I knew this was something special. What I didn’t know was that Al had almost lost his role.