From Roger Ebert's Marlon Brando memorial in the Chicago Sun-Times:
Martin Scorsese told me that he and De Niro flew to Tahiti to consult with Brando about a project and spent days talking about—well, they weren't sure what, and when they returned home, they couldn't say quite what had been decided.
I had a long telephone conversation with Brando within the last year, and it happened like this. Nancy de los Santos, onetime producer of "Siskel & Ebert," was producing a documentary called "The Bronze Screen," about a century of Latino actors in Hollywood. She wanted to talk to Brando because of his role in "Viva Zapata!" and because of his support for Latinos in general.
He agreed. But when she arrived at his house for the shoot, he insisted that she join him in the shot—so that he could interview her. "I didn't get anything I could use," she said, "but I felt like I made a friend."
He asked her for my number, but it was more than a year later before the phone rang one night, and it was Marlon Brando. I was astonished. We talked for about 45 minutes, but it wasn't an interview and I didn't ask him about any of his movies. He set the agenda. He had a project he wanted us to work on together. I would like to tell you what it was, but I have no idea.
It wasn't that he was rambling or confused. He made perfect sense, but in a way that had no paraphrasable meaning. It was a performance in which he was playing a man who wanted to pitch a project; the man and the pitch were the content, not the project.
When I got off the phone, my wife couldn't wait to find out what Brando had wanted. "I don't have the slightest idea," I told her, "but he made it sound fascinating."
Mr. Brando, this komodo dragon steak's for you.
