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He changed the entire flavor of his character—a bounty hunter called Robert E. Lee Clayton—inventing a deadly hand weapon resembling both a harpoon and a mace that he uses to kill. "I always wondered why in the history of lethal weapons no one invented that particular one. It appealed to me because I used to be very expert at knife throwing."
He acknowledges the theft of the movie: "For the first 20 pages of script, I'm the character everyone is talking about—'He's coming, he's coming.' On page 21 I arrive. I can do anything ... move like an eel dipped in Vaseline. I'm the guy they keep promising will arrive. Poor Jack Nicholson. He's right at the center, cranking the whole thing out while I'm zipping around like a firefly. I wanted the character to be different, a serious study of the American Indian. But Arthur Perm said, 'Gee, Marlon, not at these prices [$1.5 million for Brando].' So I countered, 'Arthur, at least let me have some fun.' "
Brando was disappointed by his most notorious film, Last Tango in Paris. "Bertolucci was a very sensitive director, but I didn't like the movie. It was too calculated, designed to make an impact rather than a statement. Bernardo wanted me to screw Maria Schneider on the screen. I told him, 'That's impossible. If that happens, our sex organs become the centerpiece of the film.' He never did agree with me. The Godfather"? What the hell did I know about a 65-year-old Italian who smokes twisted goat-shit cigars?" The young actor he admires most is Robert De Niro, who played the young Godfather. "I doubt he really knows how good he is," says Brando.
Nowadays Brando serves notice on producers and directors that he will work no longer than three weeks on a film. In July he will put in three weeks for Francis Ford Coppola in Manila, playing the commander of a group of renegade Green Berets in the Viet Nam film Apocalypse. His pay: $2 million. Says Brando: "I'm nearing the end of the line. I figure I've got about two shells left in the chamber. One of them is going to be a picture I want to do about the American Indian."
He sees himself as being little more than a tenuous survivor in the deadly game of life. He credits 15 years on a psychiatrist's couch with keeping him in the ranks of the walking wounded. "I was shot full of holes," he says. "But I was given a big bowl of chicken soup and told, 'Drink this. You are going to need it because you are going down into a very cold, scary mine!' Lots of love and chicken soup helped me through the trip." But among his heaviest losses was the death two years ago of his closest friend, Comedian Wally Cox, a childhood friend from back in Evanston, Ill. "He was my brother. I can't tell you how much I miss and love that man," Brando says. "I have Wally's ashes in my house. I talk to him all the time."
Now Brando's life revolves around his four children. "Four kids by three different women," he muses. "I had a real Ford assembly line going throughout much of my life. If you're rich and famous, getting laid a lot isn't that difficult. I knew what I was doing, but I didn't know why I was doing it. I still don't have all the answers."