Hollywood Hellraisers (49 page)

Another close friend in these last years was Michael Jackson. Marlon enjoyed staying at his Neverland ranch and even guested in the singer’s pop video for ‘You Rock My World’. But his appearance at Jackson’s thirtieth anniversary concert in New York’s Madison Square Garden left jaws on the floor. Brando came onto the stage and took a seat, introducing himself by saying, ‘You may be thinking, who is that old fat fart sitting there?’ Instead of a glowing tribute about Jackson, Marlon enlightened the packed crowd by removing his watch and informing them, ‘In the last minute, 100,000 children have been hacked to death with a machete.’

Such wacko behaviour probably appealed to Jackson, and Marlon’s son Miko revealed that the last time his father left Mulholland Drive to spend any significant time away was at Jackson’s Neverland. ‘He loved it. He had a twenty-four-hour chef, twenty-four-hour security, twenty-four-hour help, twenty-four-hour kitchen, twenty-four-hour maid service.’

As the end drew ever nearer Marlon’s eccentricities took on sinister tones. According to his long-time make-up man Philip Rhodes, Marlon installed a monitoring system in his home enabling him to record all telephone calls and eavesdrop on conversations in every room. When someone called, Marlon might ask, ‘How’s your sex life? You getting any on the side?’ So he had all these people talking about their sex life and every word was being recorded.

Marlon Brando once said, ‘I’m going to live to be a hundred and then I plan to clone myself, with all of my talent and none of my neurosis.’ It was a nice thought, but when death came it was inevitable and messy. In October 2003 it was reported that Marlon had told family and friends he was preparing for death after learning that he was suffering from congestive heart failure, along with advanced diabetes and pulmonary fibrosis, damage to the tissue inside the lungs resulting from a recent bout of pneumonia. Those closest to him feared Marlon had simply lost the will to live. When doctors suggested they insert tubes carrying oxygen into his lungs, thus prolonging his life, Marlon refused. He spent his last months in a reclusive state, reflecting on a lifetime that had brought him enormous acclaim and wealth but also failed marriages and troubled children.

He even made his housekeeper pregnant three times. Chatting with Michael Winner on the phone one evening he explained how it happened. ‘You know my bedroom, I’ve got all that electrical equipment in it. I dropped a tiny screw on the floor and she bent down on all fours to look for it under the bed and that’s when the relationship changed.’ Like all his relationships, it ended in tears. ‘You know I’ve given up sex, Michael,’ Marlon told Winner years later. ‘I just watch the porno channel and jerk off. It’s much simpler.’

On 1 July 2004 Marlon Brando passed away, the cause of death revealed as lung failure. He was eighty. Contrary to press reports at the time suggesting he’d died penniless, Marlon left a fortune of $21m.

He’d wanted no public tributes, no funeral service, ‘no weeping widow’, no cluster of mourners all sobbing at his passing; the very thought was enough to make him vomit. Even worse was the notion of being buried in a Hollywood celebrity cemetery and becoming a tourist attraction. Instead his ashes were scattered partly on his beloved Tahitian island and partly in Death Valley, California, where those of Wally Cox had been; back together at last.

Marlon’s home lay empty for several months. Jack admitted he couldn’t go up to the old place. ‘I just had this weird juju.’ Fearing it might be bought by developers and thus impinge greatly upon his privacy, Jack bought it in May 2005 for $5.5 million. Advised that it would be too expensive to renovate the derelict building, plagued as it was by mould, Jack demolished it, planting a garden where it once stood.

It’s been said by many that Marlon was an enigmatic misery, his whole life a sham because he was ashamed of what he did professionally. Michael Winner disagrees. ‘He was the most playful man in the world. Jokes all the time. But complex. I think he was the greatest actor. A couple of years before his death I said to him, “Marlon, you should be playing King Lear at the Old Vic.” He said, “I hate acting. I’ve always hated acting. I never wanted to be an actor.” I asked, “Why did you go to drama school then, Marlon?” He replied, “To get laid.” Well, it’s a good answer, isn’t it?’

Maybe he detested the profession so much because it was no effort for him; it came so damned easy. Paul Newman used to confess seething anger towards Marlon, ‘Because he does everything so easily and I have to break my ass to do what he can do with his eyes closed.’ Perhaps there was a certain amount of guilt about his talent because it was nothing he earned. Like a woman being complimented on her beauty, it wears thin after a while because it’s not an accomplishment.

Yet his legacy is huge. Jack used to say that other actors never went round discussing who the best actor in the world was, because it was obvious, it was Marlon Brando. Warren used to say that when Marlon goes, everyone moves up a place. ‘There was a young actress who came into my office once,’ says
Godfather
producer Albert Ruddy. ‘I said, “You look like Natalie Wood.” She said, “Who?” I said, “Have you heard of Marlon Brando?” She said, “Actor, right?” If you want to be in this fucking business you better learn the legacy of the art form. The greatest gift in the world is to sit there and run
On the Waterfront
,
Streetcar
, any movie Marlon Brando ever did. I say you will learn more running one of his movies than you learn in an acting class.’

Put simply, Brando is now beyond legend. ‘There’s a temptation to compare Brando to King Lear or some hero of a Grecian tragedy,’ says Richard Stanley. ‘But it’s futile, he’s actually beyond that. He’s Brando. He’s not King Lear. He’s too much of a myth himself for any analogy to make sense.’

Dennis Hopper is the first to admit that his story is one of enormous potential that was largely squandered, undermined by a rebellious nature and self-destructive hedonism which as good as derailed his career for well over a decade and nearly killed him. ‘When I look at my career and I look at Jack’s there is a vast difference, isn’t there?’ There have been high points, of course:
Easy Rider
,
Apocalypse Now
,
Blue Velvet.
Those are the ones he’s most proud of and yet they’re so minimal in a vast body of, well, crap, ‘This river of shit that I’ve tried to make gold out of.’ But when he enters a museum with an exhibition of his paintings, is he disappointed? No way. ‘I think that is a fucking miracle.’

Life is pretty good now he’s part of the establishment, even mocking his old image in a TV ad for a car that had him appearing snappily suited driving alongside a superimposed image of himself as the wild-haired biker of
Easy Rider
. He’s almost Hollywood royalty, revered, iconic, not necessarily because he has at last been accepted by the system he once so detested, ‘But because I survived it.’ In the words of his old friend Tom Mankiewicz. ‘Dennis took a lot of drugs. I’m so happy that he’s alive because he has no right to be alive. He has absolutely no right to be still alive.’

Henry Jaglom voices similar sentiments. ‘I am beyond amazed, relieved and gratified that he survived. And every time I see him I am impressed by the fight he made to overcome his difficulties and survive and continue to produce a stream of thoroughly creative and singular work.’

For George Hickenlooper Dennis sums up what Hollywood is all about, a place that epitomises the ultimate American dream. ‘Unlike Europe, where you’re born into status or not, in America you can create yourself from nothing and then if you rise to the top and then plummet in a fiery crash you can be reborn and rise again; you have unlimited chances and Dennis just epitomises that more than any other actor. That’s what makes him iconic too, he’s risen from the ashes so many times and just doesn’t give a shit what people think and that’s the sign of a true artist.’

It’s an amazing life story that would make for a pretty good film. The only problem is no one would believe it! Someone really should make the Dennis Hopper story one day. ‘But I’m not playing that,’ he said. ‘I already did it. It’s a bitch.’

Warren Beatty is simply a unique figure in Hollywood, one of the smartest cookies ever to grace the place, someone who has managed to stay at the very top of his game for decades. He’s been in a fair number of flops, but whenever his career seemed a tad shaky he’d just go off and star in and direct a wonderful movie and be safe for another half decade.

After
Town and Country
he didn’t appear to have the appetite for another comeback. Maybe because Warren’s greatest successes have come when he’s running the whole show, acting, directing, writing and producing. Now in his seventies, one wonders if he’s got the energy for all that. He was almost tempted out of retirement by Quentin Tarantino’s offer to play the role of Bill in
Kill Bill: Vol. 2
(2004). He finally passed and, ever the acute filmmaker, told Tarantino to cast David Carradine.

I guess the longer he stays away from the cinema, the more his mythical status as a playboy will begin to eclipse his genuine cinematic achievements. As Robert Downey Jr once said, ‘Warren Beatty is really knowledgeable in a lot of areas, especially fucking.’ But his achievements as a filmmaker must not be overlooked: few were better in Hollywood at persuading, cajoling and charming the pants off studio bosses into financing movies nobody else wanted to make, radical films like
Reds
and
Bonnie and Clyde
. ‘He’s one of those people where when you run into them and you see them, you start grinning, because you just know you’re going to have a good time,’ says Tom Mankiewicz. ‘I’ve always liked Warren; liked him enormously, there’s a spirit in him.’

And as for Jack Nicholson, in spite of his colourful, sometimes freak show of a life, he just might possibly be the finest screen actor America has ever produced. ‘You learn a tremendous amount from the people with whom you work,’ says director George Miller. ‘But I doubt whether I’ve learned as much from anybody, both professionally and personally, as I have from Jack.’

Even though his roistering days are over, Jack’s basic philosophy hasn’t changed – ‘More good times’ – though, how he might go about implementing it understandably has. He might say to a date, ‘Look, I just can’t do the dance any more. If I do, you’ve got to be a really good dancer.’ Neither is he the social gadabout he once was, holding magnificent court in the nightspots and clubs of London, LA or Monte Carlo. Meryl Streep, much to Jack’s amusement, has called him ‘That lovable old wreck’. And far from being, as one scribe prophesied, on course to be a ninety-year-old who is a danger to the nursing profession, Jack has settled into a kind of humdrum domesticity. You could also say that he’s the last bad boy standing. After Marlon passed on, Dennis sobered up and Warren swapped bed-hopping for family bliss, Nicholson is king of Mulholland Drive, the old devil still capable of raising hell. Backstage at the Oscars in 2006 Jack propositioned Nicole Kidman, not realising she was engaged or that she was standing with her fiancée. He teasingly refused to divulge the comment, though seemed to relish the gasp it drew from Kidman. That’s maybe the secret as to why we love Jack, it’s because he’s lived his life so openly and unapologetically.

Maybe the best thing you can say about Jack is that despite all the fame, the adulation, the money, he’s not changed all that much from the aspiring actor of the sixties, desperately searching for his big break. ‘Jack is Jack,’ says Henry Jaglom, ‘was always Jack, will always be Jack. There is something unchangeably American and buoyant about his cynicism, a contradiction that he embodies as did some of the great movie stars of earlier eras – Bogart, Cagney, Tracy, Gable. He’s one for the ages. I knew it from the moment I met him and told him then, as he likes to quote me, “Just smile, Jack. That’s all you have to do. Just smile your biggest smile.” And boy does he.’