The role Oliver Stone is glad he didn’t cast Marlon Brando in: “I am grateful that he turned it down”
Most filmmakers would have eagerly cast Marlon Brando in any role simply because of his legendary status, but Oliver Stone, despite never getting the chance to work with him, is glad he didn’t have that opportunity.
The longer Brando’s career wore on, the more unpredictable he became, to the point it was an inherent risk simply having him on board. While there were odd flashes of the old brilliance that have made him such a deified figure in the acting community, there were no guarantees he would play ball.
It wasn’t even a gradual shift, either, with the transformative method man spending decades causing all sorts of chaos on a number of productions, but the strength of his name and his status in the annals of Hollywood history ensured that he was always a risk somebody was willing to take.
Stone may have been one of his generation’s most prominent auteurs who went on a ridiculous hot streak at the peak of his powers to win four Oscars in three categories in the space of little more than a decade, but even he was left breathing a sigh of relief when Brando turned him down.
Having helmed Salvador, Talk Radio, Born on the Fourth of July and The Doors within a six-year span, there weren’t many names in the business who’d reject Stone’s overtures when he came calling in the early 1990s. Being the type of guy that he was, though, Brando was one of the select few.
When he was putting the pieces together for conspiratorial political thriller JFK, the outspoken maverick envisioned the small-but-pivotal part of Mr. X being filled by the Godfather legend. It’s an exposition-heavy scene that requires an immaculate performance to keep the audience engaged from start to finish, and it’s one Brando could have pulled off easily were he firing on all cylinders.
Of course, that was about as far away from a guarantee as it got, with Stone lucking out when the part was ultimately played by Donald Sutherland. As he admitted to The Independent, Brando’s wayward nature could have derailed the integral exchange between Mr. X and Kevin Costner’s Jim Garrison entirely.
“I realise now I am grateful that he turned it down,” Stone conceded. “Because he knew better than I that he would make 20 minutes out of that 14-minute monologue, and it wouldn’t have worked.” It might be a lengthy scene, but every word spoken by Mr. X counts, meaning that every single syllable had to count for something.
Had Brando accepted the offer then who knows what could have happened, and it worked in Stone’s favour that he never had to contend with that predicament. It would have been fascinating to see what he could have done with it, but as it stands, Mr. X stands among Sutherland’s finest work so it’s hard to call Brando JFK‘s one who got away.
