He Coulda Been Somebody

(Note: A little foul language in there)

I think Marlon Brando is better than you do.

It’s because I didn’t pay attention to the last thirty years or so of his life. More or less, The Godfather is the last movie I saw him in, and I didn’t see that when it came out; too young. So no, Jor-El didn’t affect my opinion much. Neither did Apocalypse Now, which isn’t really a movie, and he’s not really in it– it’s just a big self-indulgent mess of misplaced anger and sentiment, with Marlon doing the only sensible thing in it: cashing a check and going home.

All those bad movies were Marlon’s version of an old ballplayer sitting at a card table signing autographs for a few bucks apiece. But in Brando’s case, the little kids waiting to touch the hem of his shabby muu-muu were film directors clutching a few hundred grand, and the card table was a film set.  He got too big for the milieu he was in, which is very big indeed, and became Elvis or Santa Claus or something. That’s not his fault. Hell, whoever made this mashup pasted it over a Beatles song that tested the outer limits of the public’s appetite to adore anything, and there’s Brando on the album’s cover.

People should be aware of things that happened before they were born. They should pay some attention to things that matter to those younger than themselves, too. How else will you raise children properly? People should put things in context.

You can see it, if you look closely. There’s this dotted line between standing on wooden floorboards yelling whispers to a house, and having a lens an inch from your nose in an artificial world with only a theoretical audience to pitch your wares to. Marlon Brando erased this line.