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The bookshelf in his bedroom is filled with scientific journals on aqua-farming, solar energy and the like. Brando's experiments in these areas are momentarily dormant because of a grandiose commercial enterprise that flopped, at a cost to him of $500,000. Two years ago Actor Brando became an innkeeper on Tetiaroa. On his tight little island, he constructed 21 thatch-roofed huts, including three bars and a dining room, and hired a staff of about 40.
From the outset, the scheme was doomed. Storms and high tides washed through the huts, causing constant and costly repairs. Although the cottages were filled in the summer months, the resort never came close to breaking even. Brando was driven to distraction by "middle-aged ladies from Peoria telling me, 'Mr. Brando, we loved you as Napoleon'—Napoleon, for Christ's sake —and asking for my autograph, while their husbands shove me against the wall to pose with the little lady." Admits Brando: "It was a bad idea, and it was badly managed. Why did I do it? Because I love having projects, even bad ones. I don't want to sit on an island like a meditative Buddha."
Brando a Buddha? Unlikely. Not the pugnacious, trigger-tempered, tempestuous Marlon Brando who broke a photographer's jaw three years ago, seduced and abandoned nearly as many women as Don Juan, insulted and scorned more than a few of the world's notables. Not long ago, while snorkeling in his lagoon, he punched a marauding whitetip shark in the snout. The shark fled.
Yet he is a gentle and considerate man to those he likes. He detests obsequiousness. "I notice," he says, "that the width of a Hollywood smile in my direction is commensurate with how my last picture grossed." No one relishes candor like Marlon Brando. "I suppose you think I'm just another asshole actor?" he asks rhetorically. "No," comes the reply, "an asshole actor with heavy pretensions." Brando roars with glee. Tell him you think he is the acting genius of his generation and he will snort with anger and walk away.
"Acting," he says, "is an empty and useless profession. I do it for the money because for me there is no pleasure. The fact is, there are no contemporary writers of importance. Not one. O'Neill and Tennessee Williams had moments, but I don't regard them as great classical writers. Movies? Forget it. I'm convinced that the larger the gross, the worse the picture. Bergman and Buñuel are visionaries, wonderful artists and craftsmen. How many people in the world have ever seen one of their films or ever heard of them? How can you take movies seriously? You go on the set with the script in your back pocket. You take it out and read: 'Let's see ... in this one Brando plays an Indian who attacks the stagecoach.' O.K., let's roll 'em. Commercialized glop, not worth thinking about."
Potato Latke. But Brando does think. When he arrived in Montana for The Missouri Breaks, he had definite ideas for changing his character which he says "was as heavy as potato latke." (Brando's speech is loaded with Yiddishisms, from his days in New York with Stella Adler, the famous acting teacher, and her family. "I'm all Jew," boasts the Protestant-born Brando.)