NEW 2-hour deep conversation with Marlon Brando (Interview)

in this impersonal world of ours pretense i think is put at a premium we expect pretense i think from all of our public figures it's par for the course for politicians to act off stage as well as on and certainly we expect it from our performers and when someone appears on the scene who does not quite conform there are difficulties i'm thinking of one who is perhaps the most celebrated actor in america marlon brando and through the years we have an image we who read the papers read the gossip columns i think everybody does he may deny it but he does who hear a commentator on the radio or see someone on tv talking about a public figure who is always fair game we think brandon was a man who's had difficulties or has been difficult to be with because somehow we have a feeling that he is not some of us suspect he is not pretending and pretense we value this so much so when someone comes along and as i noticed yesterday i was deeply moved it was an experience i rarely had listening to marlon brando being faced by 300 kids who were editors of high school papers and a few university kids and there was no pretense a man was talking to his peers uh marlon brando is in town in conjunction with a forthcoming production of his film adaptation of the letter of verdict novel ugly american that'll be opening in a week at the roosevelt theater and i was thinking marlon brando this comment of mine does this make sense to you well it's um it's very pleasing to the ear and uh to the feelings to have such nice things said about about you but i feel that in your naming of those agencies and people that are that do have attention i think you you left out one and that is ourselves i think that uh pretension is uh certainly a universal characteristic of man uh i don't mean to use speaking said broad philosophic terms but i uh within the realm of my own experience i see pretension in myself i think that anyone who who pauses for a moment and examines uh his motivations will find sometimes that they are not all what they seem that uh our motivations are complex and they are not as simple as we would like them and uh i think in a world where pretension exists so to such degree we can only conclude that uh that the whole is equal to the sum of its parts and that each of us in his uh his own small way uh contributes to the aggregate pretension the national potential perhaps by his own potentials we don't like at all to keep these things inside of us we don't like to admit these things we would much rather say we're right and conversely there are many people who would like to say i'm always wrong [ __ ] pimps criminals alcoholics unfortunates psychopaths people suffering nervous breakdowns tend to deride themselves in the same way that people who are who are oriented to a superior point of view as a result not of being so terrified of uh issues and conflicts that i think was so well stated in this uh in the poem by uh i can't remember his name it was dover beach who wrote it but anyhow he said uh for we are heroes on a darkling plane swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight where ignorant armies clash by night i think that perhaps uh poetically and accurately and and uh concisely describes a pervasive condition in uh man and uh so i think it's so we we tend to make heroes out of people as we tend to make enemies and we like to think of ourselves as pure as christian soldiers who are marching onward or aesthetic philosophers who are braving the rigors of of confusion and man's maternal despair and his sufferings at the hands of ignorance but it's not nearly as clean as that and even the most high bound intellectual people the most esoteric thinkers at least the ones i've met uh i think i have experienced uh uh something with them that perhaps lead me leads me to conclude that that those that communication with oneself is very very difficult thing to achieve and usually if you talk to someone long enough and [Music] delicately enough you eventually will find that there's an inconsistency with what they say and what they feel or on the other hand there is a consistency with what they feel perhaps they don't know and what they say and what they do and uh but that interaction that interrelationship between what we think of or what we do and how we act and what we believe and what we feel is very often passes and we we don't see it they're just ships that pass in the night uh and uh in that respect i feel that we must include ourselves and as pretenders yes as pretenders something you said just now marlon brando this we think so much of difficulty today in people communicating one with the other you were just making a point that i feel some significance difficulty in communicating with oneself that is we ourselves you spoke of people on two sides of the bar respectability the those respectable quote unquote and those beyond the pale and they're as pretty tense on both sides of the fence here so even the individual himself this you found to be the case i'm sure you speak for probably mankind each one finds us who is the guy who are you as james baldwin often asks who am i the difficulty of finding out who you are it's not i'm sure it isn't your problem alone or yours is perhaps more dramatic because you are so celebrated a figure uh i didn't quite understand why you is the seems to be your quest finding out who you are is isn't it isn't this basically the quest of all business yours specifically well i don't think it's the quest of all people generally no i think that is the uh uh it's the quest of a few people there was a book by gerald sykes that was written written recently called the hidden remnant and in this book he discusses issues that touch very pertinently on this this theme since time immemorial it has been the advice of those who are wise or pretend to be wise or the disciples that have written down what they consider to be wise observations about life and most of them i think can be summed up in the famous phrase that the unexamined life is not worth living and that the the beginning of all wisdom is in self-knowledge and that uh each man uh is a reflection uh or that the world is a reflection of oneself and uh uh certainly today uh it uh behooves us more than ever to examine these things so often uh people say well don't tell me i know you know i don't know my own mind i certainly do uh the infinite delicacy the gossamer the uh the ineffable smoke-like quality of the mind to rationalize to justify its own feelings if you hate someone well let's examine for instance the hatred of uh the negro by the southerner or the hatred of the white by the black muslims uh if you examine you talk to uh elijah muhammad yeah muhammad mohammed elijah elijah muhammad elijah muhammad the honorable life uh you will find contained in his uh in his dialectic hatred the absence of hatred you will find that he that there is no visible evidence or statement of hatred and yet the position certainly is one of that of someone who is uh reacting to uh suffering the uh the reasons that he just that he gives are perfectly true 100 percent true but the motivations are different the motivations uh are completely different and very often people can be 100 percent right for 100 wrong reasons and the when you asked the uh i was talking to a woman the other day uh an airline hostess and she said she came from georgia and southerner and i said do you believe in separate but equal facilities facilities and she said yes and she said no i believe in integration uh i think that they ought to be integrated but i wouldn't want to uh i don't think that the race is ought to mix i don't think that the races should be mongrelized and i said why not and uh in the course of the argument which i won't relate here which was uh too uh extensive it really wasn't an argument it was an exchange of views finally when she came down to the um the last analysis of her assumptions uh it was based on what she felt it was not based on anything of what she thought because as she reached out to find reasons and justifications uh uh it wasn't the cleverness of my uh uh my dialectic that defeated her it was just a simple observation a few obvious facts such as the uh the the perfectly wonderful example of integrated uh living that has taken place uh in hawaii which is uh the uh mixture of uh three perhaps three races three or four races and many many different nationalities and that is perhaps the most salient example of what can happen and it's perfectly delightful to be to behold that society because it's it's a a complete living documented contradiction to this mongrelization uh point of view that is so often expressed but nevertheless uh getting returned to what we were talking about it seems to me that uh that the average southerner has a very difficult time as does the average northerner in inspecting his real motivations because we don't really like to express uh to to uh admit that we are confused or admit that we are frightened or admit that we are uh full of doubt we don't like to we like to just blot it out and say no that condition doesn't exist i know my own mind don't tell me don't give me any of your 25 cent psychoanalysis well um i'm perhaps that's that's absolutely right thus we rationalize and this word use the word rationalize rationalization becomes so easy no matter who we are or where we are rationalize what has we have been conditioned perhaps to feel or think in one way i'd like to be a little more specific now this i think is is a perfect uh prelude what we're talking about you yourself are an actor or a performer and i think we've been we've been conditioned to look at celebrated figures a certain way people who you know the word the word i'm not verdi is adjusting adjustment you know the performer adjusts in that he is uh sweet before his audience he behaves according to a set pattern he is a glib in a particular way or if he isn't glib he has a public relations handout that he pirates and reads very well now you come along and apparently upset what might be called the apple car i remember a piece in variety a few weeks ago uh you were being quoted as speaking of the actor as being a product a thing a valuable thing i'm paraphrasing you know i think that was it and rather than being a human and uh some actors can accept this but you find it difficult to accept this being this valuable property is a word used you are a valuable property marlon brando yet the difficulty here is you are also a man do you remember that that quote of yours that appeared in variety a few weeks ago yes uh well in regards uh to that i think that uh that we must have uh in order to profit i think that it is one thing to blame and to criticize but as we do perhaps we do that we must realize that these observations that we have always apply to ourselves initially and because the tendency you know of most people seems to me and most nations oddly enough is to say well the enemy is out there the evil is out there the negative factors are outside myself uh they have nothing to do with me if now for instance most of the most of the negroes in this country are rightfully and justifiably concerned with the the uh the outrages that have been perpetrated against them ever since they came here as slaves and uh they have a perfectly decent justifiable econo ethical ground to stand on and to support their their their claims and their desires uh but uh and i don't mean to qualify that for uh at all but if we examine for instance the history of the oldest republic in the united in the uh the uh this the western hemisphere uh it is the republic of haiti which was formed many many many years ago i think was in the 15th century uh men like andre kristoff and tucson lover ii and dessela and all those great negro ex-slaves uh who threw off this colonial yoke and established their own democracy patterned after the french well today if you any cursory examination of haitian history will show that it doesn't matter whether you're black or white or whether you're oppressed or whether you are free or no matter what you are the fact is that they are there they have have yet to be able to establish a kind of government and a kind of uh a pattern of life that is wholesome because there is starvation there is terrible uh social in the uh inequities and uh uh uh the most distressing uh maldistribution of the prophets and uh wealth and advantages and in all those years they have never been able to do it so we can't assume that that just because these things are lifted that everything is going to be all right now here in america we have all the advantages that we could have everywhere in the world anywhere in the world we are a living dream we are just a perfect example of what can be achieved and what the benefits are of uh uh and then an integrated industrial society uh uh that uh that has all the all its wants satisfied but we're all nervous you and i are sitting here you were concerned about these things and all these articles that you uh you uh uh that you publish here in this magazine or the interviews that you have with the the interest that you have you were concerned about these issues and and the truth and what is going on with people what are people really saying and you are you are awash with doubts and concerns and you are not at rest you are not at peace your personality does not remind me that of uh some of the tahitians who i've seen who are peaceful people the eskimos or some other people i am not either and i think that we are representative in many respects of all americans who have all these advantages but do not have the essential ingredient which is a sense of well-being and a sense of peace we don't have it we certainly aren't raging neurotics we certainly aren't psychotic we're not we're not extreme despite what publicity might say of us but nevertheless we we still are missing something and it's that ineffable indescribable x quality that we really must have and it certainly is not in money it certainly is not in the attainment of material goods and manufactured things although we certainly we certainly uh pursue it through whiskey sex notoriety success money television sets boating kiwanis activities good doing playboy club playboy club perfect example status images we'll try to find it anywhere in the world that we can because we think it's outside but of course it never is you know marlon brando it's fascinating the way you're answering my questions because you're coming back to this theme of self-righteousness or false values in our very selves and values you spoke of the tahitians i know i know this from what you said yesterday to the high school kids and what i've read about you your feelings about tahiti and there must be a reason for this and we who are materially well said it seems that the values we pursue then something is wrong then with the goals the lack of goal you feel is that no i don't think that's wrong with a goal i don't think that we realize what the goal is i think that the goal that all of us want is is this word it's dangerous to generalize in this term because it's such a such a subtle issue and uh it's uh like a protoplasm or a rather ectoplasm uh in its uh nature but certainly we do not want strife we do not want it but but uh it's it that seems inconsistent with what we do because we seem to want strive we seem to chase after it and uh i think that perhaps uh at least partly is it that we want strife or chase after or conflict because perhaps you know our very lives may be a drabness or a dullness i think that it is much easier to find an external enemy to fight than it is an internal enemy hitler is a perfectly wonderful salient uh eternal example of a man who was a paranoid he was a man who felt attacked inwardly by his feelings he was a man who had a crushing sense of inadequacy and uh purposelessness uh he was a man who felt uh that it was necessary to conquer the world and of course what he what he really wanted to do was to conquer his own emotions his own dreadful his own feelings of dread and and fear and his own feelings that one part of him was attacking another part of him so he attacked the jews now uh uh as among all bigots they will find a reason to attack the jews or the chinese or whoever it is but he felt that it was necessary to attack these people and then after he he saw that the jews were going to be killed and exterminated which he did six million of them then it was the ukraines it was the russians the the slavs rather uh and he felt that they should open so they were being exterminated there were some millions of them i don't know how many then the poles but he had to exterminate all these people get them out because they were the enemies and if if he had conquered the world if he had gotten the heavy hydrogen from norway had he perfected the atomic bomb and the buzz bomb uh and uh assuming that he did conquer the world you can be assured that he would have killed the negro he would have killed the japanese he would have killed everybody except the pure aryans or done something done the most he could to destroy and then finally when he was left with the pure aryans then he would he would qualify what was purely aryan and eventually he would have been perhaps left with himself um because or he would have attacked the left-handed people of the world because their minds were diseased they were badly formed or something but this man had to attack externally now many germans will tell you that he made important contributions to germany because he came at a time when germany was certainly economically oppressed and suffering and it's it's certainly true he did build roads hospitals he couldn't believe he made the trains run on time that's right and but uh but um we always like to have things neat and of course they're never neat and uh uh when we attack something it uh i now i noticed something interesting uh in the freedom riders uh there was one man who went down there and was beaten up very badly and he put a sign on himself when he came back that said i am a victim of racial uh prejudice uh and he was a white man and he put the sign on himself and stood there with his head just listening slightly to the left with these great bulges and bruises and things but he put himself on display as a martyr now had there been no no justifiable and reasonable issue of freedom writing to devote himself to he might have found something else it's likely that he would have found some other cause so that he could have had himself beaten and uh into to a pulp so that he can hang a different sign on him and say i am a martyr and uh it's those things that attend almost all of our activities the labeling then the word labeling perhaps might be the one that disturbs well we we like to we're forever not only americans but people all over the world we're saying we like to think that the that the trouble that we have is going to be solved by one thing or another it's either getting all the blacks out of our way getting all the whites out of our way and allowing us to have a decent life getting all the rich people out of our way getting all the uh uh all the disease out of our way whatever it is whatever it is that disturbs uh the individual that is different from him let's say that seems different from him you said something earlier about we want things neat and compartmentalized there's several a lot of questions come to my mind as you talk but let's stick with this for a moment i want a neat and cop and compartmentalized i'm thinking of jacques tati you know the french humorist and his whole approach throughout has been seeking the naturalism imperfections accepting the imperfection that is in life and that he is the non-adjusted man who in a sense is close to the natural man that even though he upset the routine of people who wanted order many people found in him and his presence a certain kind of joy that would not have found otherwise because imperfection is a natural thing he says when the machine goes on the blink that's when the man most enjoys it tinkering with it more than the man who drives the perfect car and in a way this is related i think the i'm thinking of this word adjustment robert maynard hutchins spoke of adjustment courses in school how terrible they are to adjust to what see to adjust to what who sets the norm of adjustment a hitler wanted adjustment and i know that you like uh interested in summerhill the school in england a.s neil he spoke of tyrants coming to being or brutality comes from unhappiness unhappy people in a sense must find this out must find this scapegoat that you're referring to indirectly here is what i'm saying related to what you've been talking about i think that the the perhaps the key word in your remarks is scapegoat we all must find the scapegoat because we cannot live we cannot accuse ourselves it's too uncomfortable it gives us a feeling of hopelessness to accuse ourselves of our iniquities our inadequacies or or whatever it is so we must find the face of that evil outwardly uh as we were talking about yesterday joseph campbell articulated that theme so well in in the book the hero with a thousand faces because he traces the history of man's uh of man's eternal search for the face of evil for the face of uh good for the face of virtue and for the face of uh badness the idolatrous uh and relentless search for god and the devil now the face of god injures from culture the culture from age to age from person to person and we have our own personal gods and our own personal devils and we have our system of archangels and we have our system of art devils i might say and we worship them and if you ask everybody in the world what must we do to uh to have a decent world some of them will say you have to you have to take women's rights away because the women are really running the country and they're they're really out to get you they own 89 in the economy and the laws are all in favor of the women and that's what i think we ought to do somebody else will say well we ought to segregate all the peoples of the world and have no kind of mixture at all and put the mulattos and all the uh racial mixtures into one group south africa apartheid yes or everybody has a different idea as to how to solve the world what is useful and what is not useful what is good and what is not good uh and the pursuit not only the pursuit but the implementation of trying to achieve that leads us in the eternal circle now it seems so painfully clear that if the world were all a shining democracy at least shining in the concept that most american thinks that america is a shining example of democracy which i think it is not uh then it would be swell the communists think well if everybody was communized it would be a wonderful world well the minute that that happened the day that the sun the the the sun rose on those circumstances would be the day that you would have people saying uh fighting one another for some other reason because the world has never been without conflict and it i think it behooves us now uh well it's it's absolutely imperative that we do it because it is one world whether we like it or not it might not be one world but it's one planet and it behooves us now to scientifically apply all our technology and investigative capacities to the nature of hatred to the nature of man himself that produces uh the the chaos in south vietnam or the murder of the american indian in the sand creek massacre or the uh the communist blood purge in hungary we have to do that because we cannot i think we can no longer go along with a luxurious uh and comforting concept that there is an intrinsic different the difference between the russian and the american or the chinese and the indonesian there's a theme here that seems to haunt all you're saying that obviously a theme that is recurring i believe in your work too the saint and devil in all of us in a sense this is the theme of one eye jax was it not to some extent the film that you directed as well as played in yes it was an extent it was it wasn't uh fortunately articulated in the way i'd wanted it because is this the theme you were seeking to some extent i wanted to uh show that the spectrum of good and bad exists in all people and that we cannot dispense with us we have a duty to carol chesman as we have a duty to dr schweitzer we have to respect we have to respect one another's weaknesses all that lives is holy and one another's hatreds but we have to we have to respect the nature of hatred but we have to understand it in order to dissolve it we cannot dissolve it by attacking it with hatred and the age old uh the age-old rip that says uh uh that that we should return the love for hatred doesn't mean that we should stand there and allow ourselves to be pounded into a pulp by somebody who was it simply means at least to me that we should we that we should we should deal with it with intelligence and with perception and not return in kind what it is certainly we're not going to let carol chessman run loose and commit those crimes and be as socially uh destructive as he was but we must we he is one of he is a part of us he is he is someone society did something to him uh one thing that uh and uh what one thing that it's that's pleasing and encouraging is the fact that the old concept all concepts of sin and badness are being revised in the courts because unbeknownst to themselves the judiciary the people who pass judgment on uh criminals and things are coming to understand that there must be some this must be some reason that 15 or 5 uh young teenage people will stomp a crippled boy to death stomp him to death kick him mash him into the ground and expunge his life now we have to it's a mystery why we did that there's no rationalization there's no reason for that we can't say that they're insane because we test them and they're not we can't say that they are they're evil because they're they're not they're they're they're just we don't know what to call them eventually we start hovering around the possibility that something is not right with these people and maybe something's not right with our society now that is uh that's a good question because instead of being broken on the wheel as they did in england and uh punished and flailed which of course produced nothing we are now trying to apply some some of our knowledge gained in recent years to these extraordinary acts but whatever we've done it has resulted now in a in a swinging change that a slowly growing arc that is aiming towards an understanding of the dynamics of human feeling and behavior you feel this is happening you you appear optimistic in saying this you feel there is this slow growing understanding despite the execution of a chessman or the self-righteous voices becoming more loud than ever yes i think that it is not uh you see of all the wonders that science has uh yet produced uh they're and not produced but of all the wonders in this age of scientific investigation the greatest wonder of all is that science itself has not until very recently focused itself on the nature of man and what comprises him what are the component parts of him what makes him do this we do it most amazingly for in our motivational research laboratories in order to sell people cigarettes that give them cancer or uh underarm deodorant yes the deodorants that and we will do anything to exploit him we will do everything that we can to to to study his discomforts and his uh his hopes his fears his foibles his wants his needs uh move up the quality we must sell him quality we must sell him stature because he feels so inferior the whole this whole playboy phenomena is interesting because it it satisfies that urge of people feeling totally inadequate and totally without stature and individual reward so we give them a kind of an air that's uh eroticism perhaps not only eroticism but it's a combination of many things but among them is uh is a kind of uh male order uh sophistication and uh meaning because it is it has the word private it happens to have probably several several million members and it's hardly private but at least it's it's clever enough to sustain the illusion they belong to something yes but i think i think that a wholesale wholesale attacks on things are now being uh in many many uh arenas in many many areas and uh conferences and congregations is now being examined so that the quality of wholesale and frontal assault on any issue even on this issue that we're talking about is undergoing examination well i think everything you're saying is related to you strangely enough it seems not but it is related to you as an artist as a craftsman i think this you are obviously examining this the saint and devil and all of us the flaws within all of us the rationalization may be specific and approaches pick your role you did you've been told about this so many times and yet if you find a different vein when you did kowalski it was clorman it was kenneth tynan who spoke of your performance at being lyric in quality but something more than that your lively imagination at work transform what might have been and apparently williams accepted this change the emphasis of the play the audience here's a brutish outwardly a brutish young man yet the audience to criticize when you were doing the role saw it through your eyes and in a sense blanche they saw a blanche dubois for a fraud to some extent because the nature of your performance everything you've been saying i think is related to the way you interpret a certain role here here's this man will you go ahead i don't think that it's related to that uh if i'm i may disagree i think that uh those are just super amount of superficial manifestations of of what i have i have come to find as a result of the examination of myself i think that it's always in poor taste and and uh certainly questionable to use oneself as a reference point and uh and that uh in that regard in respect i i don't choose to use myself as a personal example but i think that perhaps on the other hand that's the only that's the only frame of reference it's the only index and the it's the only lexicon that we can refer to certainly i can't refer to your experiences about what the world is about i'm not can't refer to cp snow uh i'm not going to uh to uh to um investigate either sit well i must view the world from from what the world is and what the world is from the point of view of myself because i see the world through my not only my retina but to my psychological retina and i have to understand how i see the world because no matter where i look my psychological flaws whatever they are and we all have them each and every one of us we have very definite concepts of what is good what is bad what is usable what is not what is interesting what is boring what is peaceful what is uh threatening and i have to learn my special language about myself in order to be able to begin to communicate with somebody else because if i don't know if i don't know where those areas are i won't know when the information is fed back into me from somebody else it would that it is automatically being deflected and bouncing off the hard core of uh of ignorance and i must make constant constant adjustments for what the other person is saying in relation to the the perceptors that uh i that i must have knowledge of my own perceptors and how i receive language for instance you can tell me something it will irritate me and you can express a point of view that it might be unsettling to me but then i have to ask myself why is that point of view unsettling and the first thing that i'm going to do is say i'm going to reach into the bag full of rationalizations and i'm going to hurl a few generalizations which might be very smart might be very adroit might be very clever you know and then insidious in their in their their use but they might be completely wrong when the real reason lies in some other area that i just don't can't bear to look at and most practically seen you see this phenomenon in the south where people say well god jesus didn't forget the [ __ ] in here why why hell they'll just be running us all over they'll they'll ruin us i mean they'll ruin our race there they're monkeys there this and that and the other thing and these poor desperate people are so f filled with with uh a terror of what's going to happen uh if the negroes come into power they grab any reason under the sun under the sun and they completely ignore out in their fear and in their uh distress they completely ignore the possibility that as a result of suppressing these people for so long they feel enormously guilty feel they unconsciously anticipate a great wave of hostility part of which is real certainly because the black muslim movement is an indication that that all is not rosy with uh with the negro and uh that what at one time passed for a happy-go-lucky smiling stereotype yes stereotype uh the the the the lurking antagonism in that uh uh creature who had undergone humiliation and hopelessness and degradation to its you know to its fullest measure is now come to life but uh uh it seems that that they now the people in the south are undergoing very important uh challenges because each of them they sit at home in their homes and they say well what's going to happen the [ __ ] are going to our school well my god they're they're right in mississippi now they're in mississippi at oxford this what's going to happen to us what are we all going to turn into [ __ ] and they're asking themselves all kinds of strange questions and eventually as a result of this pressure the arrest of martin luther king these people going down and forcing these issues an answer is going to be forthcoming and sooner than we expect people are going to be living together in peace perhaps not entirely peace but they're going to be living together and enjoying some measure of reasonable social intercourse and all these dreams of what was going to happen isn't going to happen well marlon brando despite your disagreement with me i cannot dissociate what you're saying with your interpretation of certain of the roles you're playing i'm not saying great intuition isn't at work i don't mean it's all intelligence but somehow i feel your particular outlook i come back and by the way i have a hunch too i'm feeling that this may be unsettling you want to bring up kowalski because so often you've been associated with us and here's a stereotype made which is wrong and we can discuss that later on to the other roles i want to even i wonder if the audience is aware that you are a marvelous march banks you marvelously shaving figure to catherine cornell's candidate but somehow the way you talk of evil no you talk of the saint and the devil in all of us and rationalization the reason that role it seems to me and apparently to a great many respected critics is that your performance had so much vitality and intelligence and a lyric quality to it that it actually changed the author's intent but this probably could not happen if you did not think i'm not saying then you thought the way you do but that intelligence was there to some extent you disagree with this i'm sorry but i can't yeah i i don't find the the the issue i don't quite understand let me rephrase this marlon the throughout this theme and you agree the theme of the saint and devil and all of us and rationalization you know the saint devin all of us is is a key a key problem of our day or a key something to understand that there's a battle in all of us the battle of the good and the bad and it's easy to find a scapegoat uh because it pre it it negates the necessity of examining ourselves you're seeking self-examination all of us are in the role outwardly i'm watching a play by tennessee williams a streetcar named desire and there is a rather brutish crude rough young man on the stage stanley and there's a rather delicate sensitive sister-in-law and outwardly we might see a guy who's brutish who destroys the sanity that was on the uh a teetering edge anyway of a sister and yet because of your interpretation and this apparently was accepted by the playwright he's apparently added more dimension to what i had i've heard this set and apparently he did say it and some of the critics said your the power of your of your performance was such that the emphasis of the play was changed we saw stanley we understood what made stanley the man he is and we also saw the fraud in blanche dubois through his eyes what critics mcclurman said this yes but you used the plural a tynan did too was referring to claremont here is a good critic because he speaks from the standpoint of a director yes i think that that eric bentley didn't say that and there are many critics that didn't say that they said something entirely different and what i mean to point out is i'd like to use that as an illustration it's reminiscent of the old parable that the three blind men were walking along and they saw an elephant and one felt the side of it and says oh here's a wall we run into a wall someone else someone the other and grabbed the tail and says by no means this is this is a snake a snake with hair on the end of it and the other one felt the leg and said you're both wrong it's a trunk well returning to what we were saying before you saw uh what kenneth tynan saw you saw what perhaps harold kerman saw now someone else saw something different it all depends on a particular disposition that's always been a mystery to me because because shakespeare has lived through the ages because he has communicated something eternal that he has he has communicated something in a major way he has said something that has affected all of us so he has lived but uh there are others who in their day were considered great but who died off because they didn't have this universal uh touch uh these universal tentacles that just spread into the future because uh they they lack the universality of communication now people will view actors as individuals they'll view interviewers as individuals in a different way i'm sure that there are a lot of people listening uh to this program or who have listened to it one time and thought well what the hell is he talking about my god he gets so esoteric and so full of finesse and that he is a boy that's a lot of nonsense uh god god let's get the you know i that's ridiculous i don't want to hear that problem i mean jimmy baldwin who's a who the hell is he i mean you know he never went to school he's uh what kind of intellectual potential are they trying to afford you know now i've described this perhaps uh prejudicially it but there are other people who will sit also quietly and say well i've listened to uh i've listened to this fella and many of his programs are interesting of course uh uh he's wrong in this area or he's wrong in that area and uh i listened to that interview with marlon brando and uh i think that he was certainly right about this issue but of course he's completely wrong about the other and that's because he visualizes the world differently from my than than i do but uh and you you visualize the world differently from i do from the way i do so does kenneth tynen and so does eric bentley and so the carol clurman and tennessee williams but i i only use that as an illustration to say that we will never see things when we say eye to eye there is no eye to eye there are some similarities for instance i'm on this program because you have heard me speak you know my sister you know some of the things that i think about and perhaps some of the the man in which i tend to evaluate things which has a certain feeling you have a certain feeling about and i use the word feeling advisedly because it really is feeling now there are many intellectuals and many non-intellectuals or many pseudo-intellectuals or aspiring intellectuals all of which we might be a part of who uh will have something in common a cause in common but when they get right down to it they're great vast differences uh and uh but they find themselves touching on these tiny little uh uh pistols of uh using a tentacle yes and a little antenna yeah not really hitting it yes because there is something in you that feels that feels that it can communicate with something in me now there are something in in other people who was saying who have no communication with us at all they don't understand what we're talking about and they're just interested in what we're talking about they think that what we're saying has nothing to do with reality and it's just too it's just a lot of words a lot of follow and it might very well be uh uh you know where certainly can't be the judge of that there are others uh who will say my god that was really wonderful these fellows certainly know what they're talking about they're they're delving into issues that are dynamic that are really attached to the central core of of of things and uh these are these are the fruits of of introspective laborers that are going to produce some wonderful things in the world and you know i won't do that no no but there are some people who are saying that i know of course that's completely a suspect too i think what you said martin i'm really strangely straight touched as the wrong word but impress very much what you've just been saying because you're pointing out something very important a danger i think to me i know and obviously to you of what i'm i'm trying to reach you there's no doubt of that and i think we're making some contact because you are a man i think there are many facets to you this is clear to me this is not a public relations man's picture because you are able in a strange way to articulate what many people are feeling and thinking and not doing this matter of people seeing different things uh leaving streetcar named desire for them on people seeing different things yet a great work of art you're saying people will see an eternal truth say well suppose you were to do hamlet just for the moment an assumption would it not be a wholly different interpretation yet at the same time you're saying we would know hamlet's motivations very well even though your interpretation might be wholly different say from oliviers or gilgoods i think that yes i i suppose well anybody that would do hamlet uh would uh alter in some degree in some uh some poetic flavor the nature of the man his relationships and his aspirations his fears some would accentuate the confusion some would accentuate the the poignancy some would very clearly delineate the philosophical uh uh stalemate that hamlet finds himself in and according to the man they they would they would bring to life some part or illuminate some part of the mosaic that is that is the hamlet today and i use the word mosaic because i think that accurately describes what hamlet is because it is a mosaic of many many things many many points of view any and all of which can be successfully illuminated and accentuated and still without disturbing the main theme of the piece it holds itself intact uh but uh yes i suppose i would reflect a different aspect as uh but at the same time i think earlier just touching upon say williams and shakespeare this is not meant to to you know denigrate tennessee williams at all who's certainly one of america's foremost playwrights perhaps the most but they added there's an eternal truth as eternal power in the writing of hamlet that may not be in some other play so no matter how you interpret you you were discussing with the three different major interpretations of your of kowalski as seen by different people but hamlet is a certain kind of guy emphases are different on part of certain performers but that certain big truth is there that might not be in a playwright who is not of that stature you see and thus it was say your kowalski you you sort of objected to the way certain people saw your own not objective so that people see so many different ways yeah i think that that if a playwright if a playwright has a great great power uh well i'll give you an example i don't think that uh uh that uh john uh like what's his name he wrote house of the august moon patrick yeah of course john patrick is a great playwright i think that he is uh he's a fine craftsman and that he wrote a wonderful play delightful play an extraordinary uh technical virtuosity in many respects and uh i in for instance i feel that i did not play that role well at all i felt that i was miscast fought in the zucchini yes and then i didn't do uh very well in it certainly as well as davey wayne or uh eli wallach but uh nevertheless that play had such strength in construction that it carried it carried the bad performance of myself and i think a performance less valuable than some others by glenn ford and no matter i don't think that any man directed it very well either but whatever it was the strength of the play the framework carried us through because it was successful that is almost an active factor-proof director-proof uh vehicle and uh it it had the the the fiber to support the most incredible errors uh of interpretation and rendition and uh such is the play of uh tennessee williams uh reclining desire that's hard to uh it's hard to destroy that play something has occurred to me uh you were speaking of john patrick an excellent craftsman and not an artist yesterday and speaking to the high school students you said you are a a craftsman you know a craftsman well i would say consummate skill certainly but you are not an artist you would not call yourself an artist why not well i didn't say that i was a craftsman i really don't uh uh i say you are oh well i think that uh i don't know what an art of artist is i don't know really how to apply that uh there are some people who will say that uh yehudi menuhin is not an artist he is an interpretive creator and that an artist is someone who does makes an original contribution uh who performs the service of creating holy some uh some something that is separate from the work of other people and that uh william capel who unfortunately died in this airplane crash was not an artist and that leonard bernstein is not an artist he's an interpreter and uh in that respect uh i i don't know how to answer it it's um of course my remark was certainly partly tempered by the fact that i live in a in a world that deals with uh uh dollars and cents in a very crass fashion that uh that movie production is thought of as product it's it's the law of supply and demand now contained within that i think for instance as within the the world of journalism uh the manchester guardian certainly lives in a world of law that is controlled by the law of supply and demand and they have they have they have to supply the demand that is made on them for a certain quality of news certain quality of information and interpretation that will not be tolerated by let's say the likes of a time magazine brand of journalism but uh so it's uh with many respects i i don't feel that it's entirely appropriate that i should say call myself an artist when i have those associations i think that there's great potential about artistry and perhaps i uh it's out of my respect for uh what it means to be an artist that i don't choose to call myself one appropriate that i should say call myself an artist when i have those associations i think that there's great potential about artistry and uh perhaps i uh it's out of my respect for uh what it means to be an artist that i uh don't choose to call myself one because i think it's not something that's easily come by and uh in the theater just because uh you know you see the same kind of very practical uh monetary considerations governing theatrical enterprise here and it's uh it's i don't know i've seen i've seen artistry on television to my way of thinking uh i've seen the spirit of what i think is uh artistry dedication and beauty you just hate to see the word promiscuously used uh the word artist doesn't say big ads the word colossal you use the word interpret it's interesting an interpreter and in contrast to a creative figure yet something occurs to me you like jazz don't you i know that you you like good jazz yeah i really don't have a good enough you know what is there it's very difficult for uh for me to communicate with uh jazz in a really fine way i of course appreciate it but i am not musically educated nor am i attuned enough to be able to i was i was leading up to something you you like jazz it we know the nature of jazz involves a great deal of improvisation we know this when you uh see a bassy band and hear a bassy band at work or the or the modern jazz quartet whatever there's a great deal there's something written yet we know there are holes whereby the man who interprets also creates when the guy takes his solos so here's a question of improvisation yet your technique as an actor involves this too does it not when you directed one-eyed jacks you allowed your cast to improvise a great deal this is i assume an orthodox in the making of a film isn't there a relation between the two here here's a guy in other words your interpretation of acting involves creating as well as interpreting yes i suppose so i i don't mean to mince men's words about it i certainly certainly the actor is obliged to make a creative contribution uh i think that the that the actor has to borrow the form of the writer to bring his uh his contributions to life and uh i certainly think that he's a creator and i don't mean to imply that he is not or that he at least that he can be a creator some very often he's not no i was thinking the fact that you your liking of jazz again perhaps i reach this is one of my flaws by the way you you're very good let me interview you because you point out if you never reach you never fall in your face but the thing that i like is in this conversation is that you your insight into not only yourself but into me to a great extent too uh i have a tendency i know this this is a confession parenthetical of reaching sometimes to make a point of overreaching and i say i may be doing it now and say one of the i think your liking jazz is quite natural because your acting is jazz you may use this phrase as a jazz technique call it what you will but the similar technique is used and that the improvisation calling upon whatever source within you i don't think that's true i think that uh the technique that i use is primarily an intuitive one and can be seen many many places in the world in many many different circumstances for instance eleanor dusser as uh a woman who contrasted with sarah bernard used the technique of feeling and the participation of her emotions and her intuitions in uh her acting uh a man by the name of alfonso bedoya who played in the treasure of sierra madre he played the bandit gave a spectacular intuitive performance he played with the big hat the gold hat yes that was his uh wonderful performance never been he doesn't know stanislavski from uh from a hamburger or a hot tamale and uh but he gave a marvelous performance this fellow that played him bicycle thief certainly not an actor so uh it's uh i think readily uh discernible that people uh that it's a it's an ordinary technique and it's not limited to well i suppose you could i it it is if what sarah uh rather uh i don't know dusa did is jazz then i suppose what i did is jazz to and perhaps is an accurate phrase i want to ask you a question though you sit and you ask many questions and it's so often uh so often is the case we get no impression of you as a person we don't know what goes on in your mind and you are of uh enormous influence and a vital concern to many people and many listeners and uh i think that that it perhaps is not inappropriate that i ask you a few questions about yourself and and this might startle you but i think that you in in the spirit of communication you have also an obligation to to uh uh perhaps uh describe some of your feelings and your points of view and i was wondering what is it about this particular kind of work uh that interests you why do you why are you preoccupied with these these questions so what is the nature of your your search and your your furrowing out this information from people of all kinds and all uh all manner what what kind of contribution does it make to you as a person this is a reversal it's a good question marlon randall i don't know i suppose curiosity i don't know and there's a danger this is a danger that i have of being too glib i've got to watch this curiosity i suppose it's an easy way of saying it i think in a way in a way in indirect way i can find out a little about myself too and again this is also a dangerous way out i'm inquisitive and curious not a peeping tom this is interesting you might you might be interested in this i've never er i've never asked questions that would any sense invade the privacy of a per i don't think that's important a man's personal life uh an actress a painter's a musician's person is of no meaning to me that is personal uh peccadillos or strengths but his art is i think we find more about the guy the man the artist using this phrase again uh carefully through his work more about him through his work we can find out personally then than uh does he drink a lot or does he go out with women a lot that's of no significance to me just a little anecdote might be an order uh if i may just a little anecdote involving diana barrymore at the time she wasn't suddenly last summer and i remember the interview and i was much taken with a man in which you played this role i was really impressed with it very much so my long lunches aren't you gonna ask me about and i forgot what it was personal question i said no it's not my concern it's not in my business and it's not the business of my listeners but you as a as an actress are but that's about the only way i can i can i'm not answering your question marlon and yet perhaps i am in a way i i enjoy this work as much as one can within the framework which we live other things i'd like to do is form a confessional yeah i'd like to point out something uh you see when i ask you a simple question such as uh please describe what it is that you feel about uh and what the reasons are that you do it you find yourself uh i've noticed uh tense and uh uh concerned and perhaps a little confused and a little uh unsettled by the question and i i mean to point out i think this this bears very very importantly on what we were talking about before of how difficult it is really to ascertain uh the nature of what we do it's it's very difficult when you ask me a question about something i really have to uh you know i can give you a glib answer and i just suddenly start talking and spieling but if i want to answer the question honestly i have to really search in my mind and the questions that i you could ask me a question uh most of the questions you've asked me i have uh asked myself before are the subjects i've approached i've asked myself before so i've come up with an answer and whether it's right or wrong you know history will bear out or further inspection will uh corroborate or uh not but you could uh yesterday when these children ask me a question in this downstairs i was stymied i a couple of times they said did what do you uh i had to say well i i never thought of that before i uh i uh uh i don't know i'd say i don't know but uh but i'm sure uh in this illustration we find that that when someone that you're interviewing suddenly turns around and asks you a question it's you have to do a great deal of communication with yourself suddenly you ha a whole uh system of of uh of uh finding and uh inspection and search begins and um i think that it's useful uh to uh perhaps to observe that it is not easy for any of us when we are asked the simplest question to give a simple answer i think we can give a simple answer if we're pretending so now the answer the glib answer is curiosity i find people exciting and use a phrase i'm no longer going to use as often as i have in the past interesting human beings again cliches this is easy yeah but you did i think i've happily fallen to your pattern here i think this is i think i have and i think it's good for me that i have because i noticed you yesterday again this is what impressed me very much just this point you could have been glib in answering the students yesterday the high school editors but you actually were taken one for instance the question about a theme of success this has talked about a great deal material success and yet you you spoke of the classic case the tragic case of marilyn monroe whom you knew this is a classic case and of a sense there's a great deal of meaninglessness to it yet the kid said to you remember there was a tall negro kid got up and said would you change places with us if you feel this way about it and you were stymied for a moment remember that i remember today thank you about today uh there's another interesting um um area that seems to come up in in this discussion and i've noticed that recently read that the members of the military forces who are directly instrumental in the setting off of atomic warheads have to be people who are have to pass very strong and stringent and exhaustive psychological tests to realize and to to makes it makes absolutely sure that it will not fall uh to the decision or the decision will not fall to a man who is emotionally unstable now what does that mean yeah what does it mean emotionally unstable by their their own standards by the standards of the army not by the standards of of anyone else what they employ uh psychiatrists and psychologists to uh to investigate these people now i think with that we begin to see the encroachment of scientific investigation as it is properly applied and perhaps should be properly applied to our governmental figures now we examine the life of bobby kennedy and let us say uh that mr he is out to get mr hoffa now let us say that he is not out to get mr hoffa or he is he is out to get the the the what i call the uh uh the mafia not the mafia the uh the cinderella he wants to get the syndicate now how much of a personal challenge how much of his personal feelings is involved in that and how much is uh is it um just a reasonable cold heart intellectual task that uh confronts him uh it's something that only he can he can ask but we can ask it make ass we can ascertain to a certain extent there must be something personal about it jimmy hoffa's defense of himself certainly is not completely the defense of his union uh it's not his defense of dave beck or the principles of labor certainly there are uh he's defending other issues lateral issues hidden issues that we don't see mr khrushchev and mr uh mr de gaulle mr mcmillan president kennedy are all people who are very human perhaps all too human in face of the most incredible responsibilities and the most awesome decisions that they have to make in this world and uh uh it doesn't seem it doesn't seem outside the realm of possibility or usefulness that a man like uh senator talmadge or senator ellender are notable who are people notable for their uh segregation they're well yes their beliefs and their politics uh tempered by uh their uh their political locations in this country or people like senator mccarthy that it would be valuable to examine them it would be valuable to see what an examination of senator mccarthy might produce or mr john burcher chambers or paul robson or elijah muhammad what is in the nature of these people that makes them leaders now we are not so naive in america now is to believe we intuitively know it but we are not so naive to believe that richard nixon is devoid of feeling when he went to before the press he made an enormous political error and uh he showed himself a weakness that perhaps might have been dangerous had he been the president of the united states and been faced with the challenge of cuba he showed that he was a man of uh emotional viewers and a kind of an emotional quality that he adhered to for denied uh but we saw it we saw it in his face uh we uh some people are more controlled than others uh we don't know what extent mr kennedy makes an emotional decision we don't know if he ever says for god's sake what's the matter with you out there well why can't you do it we don't know what he said to the governor when uh of mississippi over the telephone we don't know what emotions went surging and coursing through him but what we do know is that the world is filled with atomic bombs today and that the unexamined life uh of a politician is a dangerous life and that irresponsible and uh a people unprepared people who are unprepared uh to handle situations cannot afford uh we cannot afford the luxury of their indulgence in positions that they do not rightfully belong in and i think in that respect that science is slowly coming now to point the arrow home uh there are two points you've made here marlon that to me are at the moment they seem unrelated yet to me they're almost muteledged tight he spoke of the unexamined life earlier you spoke of the unexamined life not being worth living and today the unexamined life of the politician the man in power being a perilous thing to all of us what with the world being filled with atom bombs that's one point and earlier you spoke of emotional instability tests being made by the army to see that emotionally unstable men do not handle warheads and i'm thinking of a case you may not have heard of this man his name is claude etherly he was a major who was the navigator of the anola grey that he gave the order for the bomb to be dropped on hiroshima since that day something has happened to major ether lee he he was so disturbed his conscience in fact the name of his book is burning conscience was such that he he could not sleep he felt guilty he went around the country speaking against nuclear armaments and it was decided he is emotionally unstable he was institutionalized may still be in waco texas now i'm wondering by whose standards is he whose conscience is so sharp on this matter why is he emotionally unstable those who say poor man why are they emotionally stable and if their conscience is not affected by this so i'm wondering whose life remains to be examined shouldn't we the men on the street ourselves examine our own lives isn't it equally as perilous for our lives being examined today too was the politicians well i don't suppose it's any more important for us now than it ever was or i don't suppose proportionately more people are examining their lives now than they ever were before uh there are some people who stand head and shoulders above the others and above the rest of us because they for one reason or another are obliged to uh find these insights at whatever cost it is to themselves and the world around them but i certainly think it believes everyone to uh to do that but not all of us are disposed that way but in times such as this uh in relation to uh mr what was it eaterly yes i was a i was uh i read several articles about him uh i don't think actually that his uh that that uh crisis that he came to was a result of his having dropped the bomb i felt that certainly that was a part of it but that was probably just the form that his anxiety took it certainly helped but i think that that whatever difficulty he had and whatever complexes developed came from a much much earlier time but certainly we uh we'll have to uh examine our politicians they will have to examine themselves and we will have to examine them much more closely because the responsibility of the politician is much greater today than it ever was and i think that these influences slowly will make their concentric influences all felt all over the world and i think that they eventually will come when men like christie christian maute uh zacano sigmundry chiang kai-shek de gaulle all of these men in whatever time we find them will be men of men chosen more carefully through examination of themselves and examination of the peoples because of responsibility because the enormous responsibility that they hold marlon remember the remember what you said earlier i agree with what you say remember you said something earlier about seeking the enemy without how much easier to seek the enemy without you know and i'm coming now to us you me everybody we of the free world what about us you see we must examine our lives and our i know i sound self-righteous but self-righteousness is our danger as well as the other sides too well yes but i think that uh that that kind of knowledge and depth is uh reserved only for a few special people who are willing to go through to make the journey through the night sea as someone's once said it to find one centers and whether it is uh found through the investigations of the applications of the mystique of zen buddhism or psychoanalysis or [Music] some other active vital inspecting technique or philosophy they will find it but i think it's too optimistic to suppose i don't think that history ever indicates that people on mass are uh willing to make that enormous sacrifice but i'm coming back again to this matter the life having a meaning really for all of us even even the most dultish of men well life is always given meaning by people whether it's having a lot of money or uh being sexually virulent or uh i don't mean virulent i mean viral well maryland variable intent can at times be in our day you know which we dramatize it so we'll glamorize it or having power a status symbol or a lot of uh property or influence or whatever it is that whatever it is that symbolizes success and meaning for people people go on pursuing it i think that that it is now clear there are certain techniques that have been uh been developed and are being developed uh applied to the human being perhaps offers a a fair explanation and um uh a more useful one as to what he is and how he works and why he works we constantly are are reminded that uh criminals and uh people of misfortune of that kind are being examined from the point of view of being ill not from the point of view of being sick and gradually those experiments and their findings come down to the everyday level of course which is always dangerous too i think this uh that this sort of preoccupation with the psyche and this this i thought i follow what you're saying see the reason there's a tangential reason i'd raised this yesterday and speaking to the high school students we spoke of uh you you they asked you about one of whom who are your favorite directors and you mentioned the japanese director kurosawa and i was delighted when you you mentioned the film akiru here's a perfect case of a director and the central figure is seeking the meaning of life he wants what's the man is dying of cancer he is a civil servant he has a job of not much meaning and suddenly six months to live and what the hell is life all about and such a beautiful magnificent thing and you were moved as i was i'm sure a great many were who saw it that that's what he's saying in a way what the hell is the meaning of life what does it mean and this i think is a picture that's so universal in its impact it applies to dave more than ever because time will be very short unless we all of us i feel this is my own personal view it's connected with this great work of art to me and you pointed it out yesterday that's why in a way in my mind these indirect questions are all part of one bundle really why were you moved by that film i was moved by the uh the display of character that this man had that by his bravery and his his refinements as a person uh how little how little it was for him to want to make a municipal recreation area for children but that was in his last moments of life his glory and there was something very touching about that the man was purified and he became whole and dedicated and i think wherever we see that kind of dedication it's moving to us it gave his life a meaning too though didn't it a man who was a cipher till then seemingly a cipher to well let us not say he gave his life as meaning but it gave his life more meaning uh all our lives have meaning your life uh as uh as an interviewer as someone who was curious about the common point of view and the esoteric point of view uh the secretary who sits across the room talking on the telephone has a meaning to her life i have a meaning to my life diversified as it might be but how much that meaning is valuable to us i think varies from person to person how real our meanings are to ourselves i think varies from person to person and there's no way to to judge that i can't judge the realness or the usefulness that your meaning has for you and it's difficult for you to judge that for me it's something that because we're different organisms uh it's something we must judge for ourselves on the subject of meaning this is just a free association a word meaning meaningful yesterday and speaking to the students he said there are certain roles you seek you you receive many offers of course roles that are meaningful to you and i know you're uh you're very much involved i believe i i suspect emotionally as well as artistically with the film the ugly american that will be opening in chicago soon the you you chose this film a role in this film rather than i'm sure you you rejected a great many offers why well i felt that it was um there were many comments that uh uh and many um many things that i felt convinced about that i would like to articulate many sentiments and observations that i felt a kinship with uh that were contained in this drama certainly not all many of i disagree with and some i wish had been more and some i wish i had been less but nevertheless the uh the total impression of the film does uh share to a great extent my personal feelings as well as george's and uh mel tucker's and uh stuart stern this was a picture made in concert should point out george's george england the producer director of the film yes and uh stewart was the stuart stern was the writer mel tucker was the producer and uh that was why i i chose this film actually it wasn't the uh the uh the part so much as it was the uh the film itself here again meaning see well again you are i know you you may disagree and i it's very interesting i sense this you don't mind my saying it's a personal comment whenever i speak of your art you say you're not an artist or your skill or your craft you shy from it so i won't ask this because you you are obviously i sense this and you're clear you're a man who probes continuously but i'm i know our time is short you have to catch a plane soon to go elsewhere but i cannot help but still be moved by you and the high school students you yourself you you're aware that your life your your work on screen had tremendous impact on young people through the years and as far as i'm concerned very much for the better well they be rebellious of what i think they question in their own way each does in his own way but something that happened toward the end when yourself you you you were uh quite surprised by the questions asked by the students you had expected as you said you know the squealing kids and the questions to great extent were pertinent we're thoughtful and then you said that somewhere along the line you had lost connection with this generation as indeed i have there's a new generation coming up i feel what can you remember your reactions to yesterday as well as this reflect your feelings about the young 17 18 year old kids today and how they would differ i'm older than you but whether you are when you were 17 18 and i know how they differ is something i don't know and that uh that's a result of the ineffable distance between one age and another uh if it were easy to communicate with another age then we'd never have any trouble with learning because all that was ever written uh all that was ever useful has been written rather and there's a is certainly uh accessible in literature and art and philosophy but we read it and we might as well be reading hieroglyphics because you can't learn how to live except through living and you can't communicate things that you've learned [Music] in any way everybody has to learn it from themselves and it's just hopeless to try and cram down the cram into the brains of others first of all we don't have any right uh to do that i don't think to invade the uh the minds of others i think everyone has certainly a right and a duty to come to their own conclusions but i was impressed by the fact that that at one time i was in some respect the hero of the young and now i am not someone else has taken my place because i've gone beyond i'm no longer a teenage symbol and someone else has done it but they're again they have their own their own gods their own worshipers their own heroes i've come to realize that a hero the hero with a thousand faces is the hero of a thousand different people and that i've outworn my usefulness as a hero to the teenager they want someone else in the spirit of rebellion stated in a different way and i was impressed with that and also with the strangeness of the strangeness of looking down the funnel of the years into a time when i was 18 19 and 20. and that it might as well be a 100 years away it's not just 20 or whatever it is have these again this is a cursory observation on your part and mine we perhaps neither of us isn't too close to touch with kids do you sense the more cool this is known as the cool era you know the cool you think the kids you saw the students the other day were more cool than your contemporaries when they were 18. yes i think they're they tend to be more cynical more questioning well they're they're assaulted by so many lies every day the false lies on television the attitude of the announcers the uh the way the products are pushed uh the sort of heisting and uh psychological second or second story uh men that that handle and push around everybody knows it's a lie and that's so much that we live as a liar but and it's taken for granted that we live in terms of lies but the question is isn't so much how whether it's true or not but how much of a lie there is in it and uh i think that they are um they're so loaded with false values uh on every hand that they that they become a little cynical and i think it's a healthy reaction i think it's perfectly it's something done in self-defense and they don't believe it the kind of the kind of world the kind of christian world that has taught them in the churches and the kind of christian world that they meet on madison avenue is vastly different and there's a large schism in our society as a result of this endless relentless push for uh the mother money i must ask you this martin it's a personal question of you what you said oh you're the father of two children what do you tell them i mean in view of the framework which we live surrounded as we are by the lie the big lie the little lie perhaps not hitler's big lie but lies that are large enough certainly what uh what do you tell them tell them about what about the world we live in today or when that's a general question what kind of people how what kind of people do you want them to be i think i don't tell them anything i tell them something when they ask me they say what is this or why is this and i give them uh i try to explain it to them as simply as i can for instance people have come up to me much to my discomfort while my son was there and gone through this rather embarrassing ritual of asking for my autograph and the the magical touch rubbing the the touchstone the lucky stone of the uh the hero and uh looking adoringly and worshipfully at this symbol strange peculiar manifestation of our funny life here in america so i was signing this autograph i couldn't do otherwise i always signed for children because they really don't know any better but it's so distressing when you when you see adults indulging in this this sad [Music] talisman seeking kind of thing but sometimes you just have to do it because you don't want to be offensive but anyhow he was there uh i happened to be with my older boy and he said daddy why does he want your name well i had to scrape the inside of my brain to give him a decent answer i said well i don't know why they want my name some people do that some people just think it's lucky if they have things they have rabbit's feet and they have little charms and talismans yeah talisman and some people like me and they want to they want a momento from having been near me and so they want me to scribble something but it was quite difficult to answer i think that the task set out for them is enormous i think to be the sons of a famous man is a awful burden and uh it's awfully tough because i'll have to live up and be constantly known as my sons i will not be known as their father i will they'll be known as my sons and that's uh that's an ugly ugly burden and i i hope to find some way to protect them uh if i can to bring them up in some place where they are protected from this thing in other places in the world it doesn't matter who i am and i'm just another two-legged person walking around but when they go to school then they very quickly become aware of the fact that their father is somebody who was somehow an important commodity in everyone's home and everyone's life and i think he's seen you can't keep the kids away from the television you can't be there all the time and they see it uh it's an enormous problem and i wish i could spare them that but they'll just have to bullet through as best they can and with all the help i can give them you know the phrase you just use then you are an important commodity is what you said an important commodity so you might know sense this is the commodity they they worship really isn't it the symbol of you you're aware of this yes i think that that we're all bought and sold in one way or another a few of us aren't but there's there's a price tag on all of us if uh you see ideas on television sold you see political ideals uh ideas that are bought i mean the mere expression of the word i don't buy that comes from a kind of mercantile invasion of the uh american mind the values of buying and selling and uh you can even buy stature as uh we just think we discussed before the by being in the playboy club or move up to quality by drinking a certain beer and uh it's it's perfectly absurd and uh and sad but nevertheless that's uh that's the world we live in i'm wanting you you're obviously a thoughtful man so i'm and you are in a certain position that is as you sense not too enviable many envy you indeed and yet i know you do not feel this way about it you've explained why graphically vividly enough yet how do we keep the kids this is the question obviously they're cynical because the lies about but isn't there some way and this is again this is the pollyanna in me that life there is a better way of living in other words if the child becomes the cynic he's a half man isn't he the cynic he's the half man isn't he how then can he be the full man in our time i don't know whether you can answer it and who can but again i come back to your kids to your children you see i can't answer and i've done the best i can with my age in my life i don't think that i'm a raging success uh in my life i don't think that i've achieved certain things that i would perhaps like to have achieved within the realm of my own soul but then we do what we can we can't do any better than we can and we use the the techniques and the reserve fuel tanks that are afforded us and maybe his life will be less pressured in some way maybe so hard to tell when nations and empires rise and fall within a period of 25 years and there are fantastic revelations by science it'll be difficult to predict how difficult the world will be but or how good perhaps yes or how good perhaps but as i get older i uh i've become more convinced that a simple way of life a life that that is directly related to living the the getting of food and the making of it the preparing of it the work that is direct directly related to living such as the kind of work that you find in almost any primitive community i think is fundamentally more wholesome i think that richness and success has just so poorly distorts life it hasn't really meant anything i think that it tends to mean something because people think well they'll have security but they don't we don't have economic security here we're little islands separated one from another you know if you starve you have to go to the state but you're a social reject if you're poor and you haven't if you're not successful there's something uh something sick about you something malignant and unusable people don't like to be around failure at least failure on the common sense and uh they can't understand people can't understand uh uh other people turning their back on uh material goods and not taking full advantage of it when you can other people i think again speaking to the students you mentioned tahiti this was the place that apparently which you grew most fund there then material success is not what it is here well they have no sense of of what it is to have or have not they uh they have bananas they have uh coconuts they have bread fruit they have fish in the lagoon they want a house they stick some palm fronds together and a few hunks of wood and and for a few pennies they can get a pareo and they live perfectly happy that the tahitians don't work except when they want something specific but uh that would of course change when the marketing psychologists invade that area when the uh the world communication system is uh complete then the japan if the japanese sin flood the south pacific with a lot of television sets then the marketeers will invade the realm of the tahitian also enforce a market force him to want things tease him into it cajoling him to shame him into it humiliate him into it saying you're poor you're backward you're uh you're no good you're not civilized you have no teeth uh you're this whatever it is however they all they always shame us right as flaherty's moana of the south seas way back the documentary was of that theme but recently when it's very point tahiti the point you make the australian broadcasting company recently had a documentary quite powerful of civilized quote unquote invasion of tahiti and what was beginning to happen the very thing you're describing perhaps then there will be no no place that melville saw it anymore this leads to this crazy question of the technological age we live in it is a value is it not the machine the machine is not evil per se but it's the way certainly is being used yes i think that uh america is uh not finished with its pioneering in this world oddly enough we are pioneering a great many things certainly we were pioneering through an age of the indonesian of uh our lives with material things the inundation of our minds with material considerations and uh so often we're criticized as a tinkertoy society and a gadget-oriented civilization and uh with a butt of so many uh jokes as a result of that but i think when you go to paris now or germany and you go to italy you find the same kind of merchandising psychology the same kind of mercantile thinking the forced markets uh it has also often remind me of a forced feeding geese when they stuff a metal pipe down a goose's throat and pour corn in that to swell his liver that's what they've done to us they've swollen our liver we've done that to ourselves and it'll take time for us to understand what we're doing to ourselves that it really doesn't mean anything that the rat way the rat race the uh you know the conniving and [Music] the uh the uh racing uh lust that we have for success uh is uh finds us counterfeit this brings us back doesn't it marlon to the examining the self-examined life you know it brings it back to that again so again to each i'm thinking about you in that plane and this has been very rewarding certainly for me and i know for the audience conversation with you you uh turned the tables on me earlier in the interview and asking me a question why i'm doing what i'm doing you know i never really asked you this but i will now marlon why why why are you an actor why'd you become an actor i don't know i the reasons for the reasons that we do things are lost i think in the very subtle nature of our being [Music] i suppose i once thought that that if you took a handful of sand and threw it up into the air in the wind you could predict if you knew all the factors the weight of each grain of sand its location in the mass its uh shape its specific density the uh the application of the pressure the force of the wind uh theoretically you could predict what would happen if you knew all the factors and where eats each sand grain was located exactly what was happening in its relation its weight its collision force uh in relation to the the mass but uh i'm trying to look out the word no okay okay but uh i don't think that uh that's possible and in the same way it's not possible to understand what we what we do and you know i i can't i don't know why i can make guesses at it i can make guesses at it and probes at it but uh i don't suppose i could really tell you why it's lost in the tangle of uh all the things that make up what i am as a person which is uh infinitely uh complex and intricate and perhaps beyond our perception at least beyond mine but i think that something very useful has come out of this discussion and many of the discussions i've had recently i think that exchanges of this kind uh with people there there is a uh there's a growth in communication and a hunger for it on television you see so many shows going uh discussion shows and you wonder when they first came out what the hell are they doing they're just sitting there talking and gradually you came to realize that there was a hunger for conversation for exchange of ideas and i think this is a really a remarkable thing because uh whereas it took 1500 years for buddhism i think to come from india to japan it takes the twist 37 hours to get to uh australia maybe less whatever it is weak and so when new worthwhile dynamic ideas conceptions come we can uh there there can be a very quick exchange of them and application of that knowledge and i think that's uh that's wonderful it's also dangerous too because uh it's uh with the um the television and the radio and uh whatnot it's so easy to uh would train poison and discipline people's minds as they do in red china they have loudspeakers that blast from morning till night uh make announcements from morning till night rubbing and scrubbing this uh this uh propaganda into their the souls and the bones and the minds of these children uh the nazis did that and it was very difficult there was a an article that i read which dealt with the denatification of emotionally disturbed children in germany after the war because these children were brought up as nazis they were told to tell on their parents and they became very neurotic and full of problems about that and it's very hard to eradicate that uh even now there are people walking around who still are diseased from that malignant influence using your cue marlon of looking within ourselves too we too have it they have it and we have it in our way as you explained earlier with the magic box continuously with that particular kind of brainwashing too whether it be the good cigarette that is better than the other or whether it be this particular deodorant but it's better than the other it's a different way a lesser extent and yet i think it's i think what's come out of this is our own sense of the need to be more aware two of our early you spoke the very first question asked about pretense and you spoke with the pretender and all of us be aware of this one last question marlon and i release you anything that you'd care to say we haven't talked about this is always a this is the catch-all is anything during this past hour and a half or so that's on your mind or around it that you'd care to say no uh except that i might point out that i've had so many microphones stuck in my face in the past three weeks since i've been on this uh 35 000 mile tour uh i've often asked myself the question they find myself talking what are you talking about why is the microphone stuck in your face i know that if i was a dentist from duluth that it might not be my uh face that the microphone was stuck in and i find myself giving my opinions and but always at the same time wondering why why are my opinions asked and i wonder sometimes if not this very moment is not a manifestation of the kind of thing we were talking about why me and not you why me and not my secretary sitting across the room with a waiter uh but i suppose you do you do interview all kinds of people don't you again lee that phrase quote unquote the artist because i think he to me is an attractive guy he may be neurotic in his own way as all of us however there's something about this man who explores and he not everybody i'd say generally someone in the field of what you might call the the fine and lively arts it's a general phrase somebody who is exploring one way or another but uh in uh gray's eulogy in a country church chart he says full many of flowers left the blush unseen and you never can't tell i i recommend that book again that the general psycho called the the hidden the hidden remnant which deals with this because we never know where we'll find that person certainly we won't find him categorically i don't believe as you do that the artist is a man who necessarily is the articulator of wisdom or knowledge i think you'll find it in the mason or the uh the shoemaker or the farmer or in the in in maybe a tahitian who who can't even articulate it i didn't mean it that way martin just to uh correct it to give you since you've asked uh perhaps the most powerful guest i've ever had too was big bill brunsi holy unlettered blues singer perhaps the wisest man i've known and a cockney waitress in london these may be my two most exciting guests so i'm i meant in the general in the general sense it's someone who in one way or another explores and often it's because of the nature of his work the quote-unquote artist but that's the idea you know would be interesting i would think some time to uh to get criminal and ask him you did marvelous jimmy blake jimmy blake has spent 25 years in the pokey uh he's again he's he's an artist though he's close to me to the american janae jimmy blake is an articulate convict and he well this last thing pepsicon in on subject pretense he said he found life in prison less as he as he left it today uh less the prison on the world outside that's wonderful listen at that moment at that point i think that's a that's a fitting close i i do want to say that that a lot of uh strife and storm and wrong come my way because uh i am a sailable commodity and a commodity and and i get bought and sold all the time and it's rare that i can really sit down and give my point of view unedited and uh not invented and to be judged for what i've said as a result of saying it completely and anyhow i'm very grateful to you for that opportunity because uh so often it is unpleasant to see yourself so rudely misrepresented and i thanks very much starts and goodbye thank you so much thank you marlon brando thank you very much and i know i speak for the listeners that we're delighted that marlon brando has come out and set his peace i think now we're closer to the man than we've been the image one thing the man something else marlon brando thank you very much

Channel: el perro reggae

Views: 44,721

Keywords: Marlon Brando, Marlon, Brando, Marlon Brando interview, conversation, interview

Id: r5IczPLMB7g

Length: 118min 32sec (7112 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 23 2021