The 1996 role Marlon Brando was desperate to play as a dolphin: “Don’t worry about it”
Marlon Brando might have the single most fascinating career of any Hollywood actor because of the inherent contradictions within his body of work.
Utilising legitimate, grounded emotion from his work on the stage for the big screen, Brando inspiring many of the great actors of the next generation; for instance, his performance in On the Waterfront unquestionably changed acting forever, even if his personal life and politics threatened to derail it, and he even managed to get a comeback with The Godfather, which re-established him as one of the greatest actors in the world.
The reality is that Brando’s concern about political issues, personal frustrations with his family life, and animosity towards the excesses of the Hollywood system meant that he grew increasingly difficult in the aftermath of starring in Last Tango in Paris, which was his last truly ‘great’ performance. Although his star power still meant that he was a desirable name for studios to cast, he often clashed with everyone on set, getting into many feuds.
If Apocalypse Now was an infamously chaotic production that somehow ended up turning into a masterpiece, then 1996’s The Island of Dr Moreau is its inverse. The ambitious adaptation of HG Wells’ classic novel was a passion project for director Richard Stanley, who Brando had supported during the pre-production process. However, the studio had severe doubts about Stanley’s abilities and decided to fire him, and since Brando was dealing with the tragic death of his daughter at the same time, he was unable to speak up for him.
Stanley was replaced by the notoriously gruff filmmaker John Frankenheimer, and he didn’t get along with either Brando or Val Kilmer. Out of boredom or spite, Brando attempted to sabotage the production by making a number of bizarre requests that he thought would make the film more interesting, including the revelation that his character was secretly a dolphin. According to Fairuza Balk, his co-star, he didn’t have any expectations that the film would perform well.
“Darling, no one is going to watch the movie, so just relax and have a good time,” Brando reportedly said, “Don’t worry about it”.
While many accounts of the disastrous making of The Island of Dr Moreau have tried to paint Brando as the villain, Falk’s anecdote suggests he might not have been entirely to blame; for better or worse, he had ideas and had tried to bring some sort of creativity to set after Stanley was fired. While Frankenheimer is obviously a brilliant director, he was best known for crime films, and may not have been the best choice to make a supernatural horror mystery.
Brando’s reputation of being ‘difficult’ might also be a matter of perspective. Falk’s impression was that he was trying to make her feel more comfortable and not stress about the way that her performance would be perceived; it’s also likely that Brando could tell the film wasn’t working before he started causing problems, and not the other way around.
The result was one of the most notoriously stressful productions of all time, and the film bombed so hard that it didn’t even linger as a subject of ridicule. While there is no guarantee that the version that Stanley and Brando had in their heads would have been better, it almost certainly would have been more interesting.
