Marlon Brando always followed his own rhythm. The iconic star had a reputation for being eccentric and difficult due to the many oddities he exhibited over the years, which often ruined the film productions he was involved in and made his colleagues' lives hell.
On the other hand, even those who hated Brando's behavior on set never wavered in their belief that he was the greatest actor in Hollywood history. That's why he could get away with things other stars would never have dared to do, such as demanding $70,000 to say one line, according to Far Out.
In the 1970s, Francis Ford Coppola directed The Godfather, The Conversation, and The Godfather: Part II during one of the most successful periods in his career, which few directors have ever experienced. However, when he began work on Apocalypse Now in 1976, he probably had no idea that he was subjecting himself, the actors, and his crew to an experience that would almost destroy them all.
The five-month shoot in the Philippines turned into a year-long grueling war, during which the production had to contend with severe weather conditions, lead actor Martin Sheen suffered a heart attack, and an inexperienced director struggled with the complex pyrotechnic effects required to create a war film.
To make matters worse, Brando further complicates Coppola's life from day one. He has signed on to play the mysterious and enigmatic Colonel Walter E. Curz in the film, inspired by Joseph Conrad's classic novella Heart of Darkness. However, to Coppola's disappointment, he arrived in the Philippines 30 kilograms overweight, without even having opened the book, and spent the first four days refusing to shoot and rejecting all of Coppola's suggestions for his role.
Some observers suggest that Brando's motives were cynical, as he had signed a lucrative contract that guaranteed him $3 million for just four weeks of work. The contract stipulated that he would only work on weekdays and finish at 5:30 p.m., leading critics to comment that he was simply content to collect his huge fee for the first four days without doing any real work. Whatever the case, he eventually started working and agreed to shave his head for the role, like the character Kurtz in the novel, even though he had initially refused Coppola.
Once he got into the role, however, Brando became the "genius in his class" that Coppola knew he could be from their time on The Godfather. Interestingly, although there has been debate over the years about how much Brando contributed to Kurtz's dialogue in the film, his letters and audio files from that period suggest that the actor should probably have been credited as a co-writer. Screenwriter Michael Her even claims that Brando "wrote a series of brilliant lines for his character," while biographer Peter Cowie notes that Brando's contribution gave the film its thematic foundation, as "the Kurtz scenes flawlessly illuminate the reasons for America's predicament in Vietnam."
Naturally, however, Brando's genius did not come cheap, and when Coppola tried to persuade the star to shoot one last line out of the goodness of his heart, he was bitterly disappointed. On his last day, Brando retired to his hotel in Manila to prepare for his flight home. However, when he received a message from Coppola asking him to return to the set for an hour to shoot a close-up of Kurtz's classic line "The horror! The horror!" from the novella, Brando refused.
"First, it's never just for an hour, you know that," Brando replied to Coppola. "And second, you'll have to pay me for the day — $70,000." Brilliantly, Brando ended this sharp reply with the words: "I'm in the Marlon Brando business. I sell Marlon Brando. Would you go to the president of General Motors and ask him for a favor worth $70,000?" | BGNES