The actor who refused to share a set with Dennis Hopper before trying to punch him
Ask anyone with a modicum of deep cinematic knowledge, and they will tell you just how powerful a performer Dennis Hopper was. He wasn’t just an intense actor, but a character about whom entire sagas could be made.
As famous for his off-screen escapades as his on-screen triumphs like Easy Rider and Blue Velvet, Hopper’s iconic figure is perfumed with decadence and punctuated by a vibrant talent that seemed intent on rattling an entire movie set whenever he set foot on the lot. For the most part, he was an unmatchable performer.
But if there was one man who seemed capable of matching, if not trumping, Hopper when it came to both on-screen presence and off-screen wildness, then it was Marlon Brando. One of the most gifted actors of his generation, Brando is often seen as a watermark in acting history. Simply put, if you look at the movies of the 20th century, you can see Brando’s before and after effects reaching a mainstream audience.
That’s largely because, beneath his brutish exterior, Brando was a true artist. Famously employing a method acting technique, Brando’s behaviour on set would certainly leave plenty of feathers ruffled. The actor was famous for running on his own schedule, with On the Waterfront cohort Karl Malden left frustrated during rehearsals for Brando’s legendary movie. “Who the hell can get anything done around here?” he reportedly said of Brando’s style. “There’s no rhythm to the scene. One day you’re too early, the next you don’t come in at all!”
This feeling seemed to follow Brando around and came to a crescendo during the filming of Apocalypse Now, a movie that saw one of Brando’s most legendary performances coupled with strange on-set behaviour that included refusing to memorise lines, gaining weight for a role that was supposed to be of a man left stranded in the jungle, and almost punching fellow actor Dennis Hopper.
“We had a lot of problems together”
Dennis Hopper
However, perhaps Brando knew what was coming, as he seemingly avoided touching down on the set for weeks, as Hopper explained to The Hollywood Reporter: “We had a lot of problems together,” he said.
“He refused to be on the set at the same time I was. I like to think he was doing me a favour, honestly,” confessed Hopper, who was happy to push professional behaviour boundaries.
Seeing the need for some kind of settlement of egos, Francis Ford Coppola, the movie’s director, attempted a group dinner to break the tension; however, a furious argument erupted as Hopper asked about a book the Green Berets had handed to the cast and crew about jungle survival.
“I say to Brando, ‘I bet you haven’t read the book’. And he thinks I am talking about Heart of Darkness, but I don’t know this at the time. He gets up and says, ‘I don’t have to listen to this! I don’t have to take this!’ And he is screaming and yelling, ‘Why do I have to hear it from him? I have to hear it from this punk!’ And he storms out of the house.”
Eventually, Coppola took Brando on a two-week writing retreat as they laid down the lines for the esteemed actor’s charcater, with him finally conceding, as Hopper remembered: “Brando said, ‘I’ll work with him, but you come in and do your scenes first and then I’ll come in and listen to you, but we’ll never be on the set together’.”
Chances are, that suited him just fine.
