No one enjoyed working with Marlon Brando on the set of 1978’s Superman. Director Richard Donner was “really upset” by how much the Jor-El actor earned for only 13 days of work (he was paid $3.7 million and 11.75 percent of the picture’s backend, totaling $19 million), while star Christopher Reeves admitted, “I don’t say this to be vicious, but I don’t worship at the altar of Marlon Brando. Because I feel he’s copped out in a certain way.” He added, “I had a wonderful time but the man didn’t care, I’m sorry.”
The only thing Brando did care about was getting paid — and fed.
In an interview with the Telegraph, actor Cary Elwes revealed that he had a pre-The Princess Bride gig on the superhero film. “My job was to get Marlon out of his trailer,” he said. “Marlon had no incentive to be on time, because his agent had struck the most amazing deal for him. Every day that the picture went over, he got another million dollars. So he drove poor [Richard] Donner up the wall, because he just strolled in whenever he felt like it. Sometimes before lunch, sometimes… not before lunch.”
Elwes said that once Brando was fed, “he was in a much better mood. So I tried to find delicacies that appealed to him… He mainly wanted desserts,” which, same.
Brando would become even more insufferable on 1996’s The Island of Dr. Moreau, where he would only open his trailer door “when the pizza man came,” according to screenwriter Ron Hutchinson. “This was the best news that the pizza-makers of Cairns, this small town, had ever had because Brando was consuming industrial quantities of pizza while ruminating on what the hell he was going to do when he had to face the cameras. I think there might have been an existential terror there.”
Elwes and Dr. Moreau star Val Kilmer should exchange numbers and share Brando stories. That would be more entertaining than any Godfather film.
(Via the Telegraph)
