brannondo

An hour of the week is usually spent mulling over the state of cinema.
The effect that cinema has on society has morphed somewhat, into a means to an end. A way to entertain ourselves above the potentiality of enjoying an art form. It's reverted back to Brando's key time in the 50's, when movies we're still a young affair and they were seen to be seen.

Brando just passed, by the way:

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Twice I snuck onto soundstages to watch Marlon Brando at work -- verboten, according to Brando's self-imposed rules -- and both were striking experiences not easy to forget.
The first time, in 1958, was when Brando was filming "The Young Lions" at 20th Century Fox, a time when he was Hollywood's undisputed king, even though that title supposedly belonged to Clark Gable (since 1938, nicknamed "The King") and Elvis Presley, who at 23 was already being called "the king of rock 'n' roll." But Brando was the real sovereign -- everyone was in awe of him, afraid of him, determined not to displease him. When he walked, the California earth trembled.
At this point, all his work had been golden; he was trim, 34 and it was no secret that every script in town had first been routed across his agent's desk. Whenever he agreed to be in a film, that project automatically became a bona fide event; "Lions" was more so because it marked Brando's first (and as it turned out, his only) teaming with Montgomery Clift, the only other actor in the business at the time who stirred up as much interest. (Unfortunately, when "Lions" opened and audiences discovered the two icons had no scenes together, enthusiasm wilted considerably.)
But Brando was a marvel to watch at work: insightful, instinctive, amazingly graceful and meticulous in his working with props, never giving the same line reading twice but equally as truthful each time through. (All this viewed, by the way, while I was hiding behind some off-the-set scenery; it was strictly a no-visitors-allowed situation when Brando worked.)
One thing I particularly remember is Brando's kindness to Maximilian Schell, with whom he was sharing the scenes. At that point, Schell was brand new to America and not yet comfortable speaking English. Brando treated him like a cherished kid brother, protecting Max from an irritated director when Schell's English failed him, encouraging him and protecting him through the mine fields of moviemaking; it seemed especially striking considering Brando's reputation for being a tough combatant with most of those in his wake.
The next time I watched Brando work was 21 years later when he was playing George Lincoln Rockwell in the 1979 TV miniseries "Roots II: The Next Generation." This time I didn't have to hide, only to be quiet and inconspicuous; John Erman, a friend of mine for years, was the director and had invited me to come and watch even though visitors were still not, to put it mildly, being welcomed by The Man. By this time, Brando's weight had ballooned considerably and he played his scenes sitting at a desk and, no longer willing to memorize lines, he read his dialogue from nearby cue cards. Yet when the cameras turned, the effect was still mesmerizing, the magic intact.
It is, however, my last image of Brando that's the most difficult of all to erase. It was in 2001, when Brando participated in the much-discussed Michael Jackson 30th anniversary gala produced by David Gest at Madison Square Garden. Sitting onstage, alone, he talked slowly and quite incoherently about starving babies and other world ills, which confused, then frustrated, then ultimately irritated an arena packed with people who were in a party mood, having paid to see a rock 'n' roll concert.
First the booing began, which he didn't seem to notice, and he continued on; finally, to bring an end to the debacle, the stage lights were turned off, leaving him sitting in the dark. (The entire episode, wisely, was clipped from the show's TV version.) It was his first stage appearance in New York since he'd electrified the town 54 years earlier in "A Streetcar Named Desire" and a heartbreaking finish for one of the genuine giants of both the stage and screen. It's sad that none of his fame, power or esteem ever seemed to bring him either peace or pleasure, satisfaction or happiness."

Coming back from lunch, in the humidor-brightness, Brannon and I talked about his deterioration in brief. I heard the words coming out of my mouth, overdramatized, puffy. "He just became a crumb of a man in front of millions of people" *sigh*

The response from Brannon was, that essentially happens to everyone when they get to that age, and if it happens within the family, it's sad, but it's commonplace, there's no room to expound on it.

It seems like the role of actors, seen widespread, under the public eye in their false forms ask for a dramatic exit to their lives, seen as a true human tragedy as opposed to our grandad who dried up one day and isn't with us anymore. Anticlimactic? Hardly.

In the end, maybe our role as human beings is so incomprehensibly, naturally dramatic, that we can do nothing but live. God has made us that way and we won't see how important it is until our senses are heightened.

Just a thought.