I Blame Dennis Hopper (28 page)

That was the emotional baggage I was carrying when I met Marlon Brando the next day. I put on a lumpy brown sweater over a thrift-store plaid schoolgirl skirt and thick woolen tights and Doc Martens. It was too late to change. Even though he was always supportive, Marty took one look at me and said, “Is that what you're going to wear to meet Marlon Brando?” There was a knock at the door, and Marty and I exchanged nervous glances.

He repeated his mantra: “You'll be fine. Be yourself.”

I nodded. Right now “myself” was busy feeling sorry for myself, so I knew that I couldn't
be
myself; I would have to “act” something. I had once heard Orson Welles say that we no longer place a value on listening. So I thought, That's what I'll act. That's the part I'll play. I will listen with great intensity. I will be Marty's wonderfully listening girlfriend. I will be still and quiet and respectful …

Oh, my God! The door is opening! Why am I wearing this ugly brown sweater? There he was, Marlon Brando, and everything I was going to act went completely out the window. First of all, his presence, both physical and spiritual, was enormous. His eyes were a deep sapphire blue—a color I had never seen before—which was arresting enough, but astonishingly, they matched exactly the color of the blue velour sweat suit he was wearing!

I thought, Marlon Brando is wearing a blue velour sweat suit. Who made that for him? Who owns that much velour? Does Marlon Brando know he's going to have to go through the door sideways?

He said very quietly to Marty, “How do I look?”

Marty said, “You look fantastic, Marlon!” He was always a better actor than I.

“Thanks,” he said, “I've lost thirty pounds.”

Jesus, I thought. From what? Three hundred? I am not going to make it!

“I'm a little embarrassed by my weight,” he said. “Do you mind if we order lunch up here? Away from prying eyes? Would that be all right?”

Marty had a suit and tie on—of course, he wore a suit and tie to the beach, but still.

We had clearly been ready to walk out the door, but without missing a beat, Marty immediately agreed that yes, of course, we would order up room service and have lunch in the room; that would be much better, much more intimate.

Marty gave me a slightly panicked look, and I knew to discreetly call down to cancel our reservation. I left the room, and when I returned, Marlon Brando had made himself comfortable on the couch. What I mean by that was that he had taken
all
of the cushions
off
the couch and tossed them onto the floor. Then he had taken one of the square seat cushions and propped it sideways so that it was like a pillow and was lying against it. There was nowhere to sit. He was basically sitting on the
entire
couch. With Brando already seated I had a problem. I could not look at him, and Marty was eyeballing me like, Sit down already.

Opposite the couch were two French provincial chairs. I took the one farther to the left of him, so I wouldn't have to make eye contact, because I was pretty sure that if I did I would burst out laughing or crying, or ask him about acting, or be a phony, or any of the other things that Marty had warned me not to do! I wanted to position myself slightly away from them so I could do my listening thoughtfully act but not intrude upon the conversation. I instantly became a distraction. They were discussing the project, which was a biopic of John Mitchell, the attorney general for Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal, and his wife, Martha. Marty tried to bring me into the conversation, because my grandmother was the congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas, who had run against and lost to Richard Nixon for a seat in the U.S. Senate, and Marty thought that Brando, a longtime liberal, would be interested in that. Marty signaled for me to join in the conversation, and I tried to say something interesting, but it just sailed off into the air, and I thought, yeah. Go back to fake-listening, Illeana. They started talking again, and I felt really stupid and out of my depth. I was thinking, Why did you make me talk, Marty? I can't say words when I'm nervous. You know that! Why am I even here? Marlon Brando doesn't want me here. I should try to excuse myself and go into the other room and leave them alone so they can talk about their project.

That's when I heard Marlon Brando say to Marty, “So this is your lady friend?” and I could feel the gaze of Marlon Brando upon me. Time stopped. People say that's a cliché—until it happens to you. Marlon Brando stopped time, that's how good an actor he was. I could feel the gaze of Marlon Brando boring into my psyche. The gaze of the world's greatest actor—known for his keen observation of human beings—was turned on me.

“Stop everything,” he said. “Look at your feet.”

Everything stopped while we all looked at my feet—which were inverted toward each other and pigeon-toed.

“That's a sign of insecurity,” he said. “Why should you be insecure?”

Was this one of those tests that Marty had talked about? Was Marlon Brando testing me to see if I was a phony? Well, I'm no phony, I thought.

Suddenly a wave of emotion went through me, to him, and back to me, and my eyes filled with tears, and things got very real, very quickly. I was trying to hold back tears and wasn't succeeding.

“My dear girl,” he said. “What is it?”

There was a rumbling inside my core. And suddenly this voice inside me just started talking and I couldn't stop it. I said, “I am so sorry, but this is really emotional for me—I mean you're Marlon Brando, and everything I do, or want to do, or be, is because of you, and I am insecure.”

And Marty started to laugh really nervously and explain, “She's very emotional, Marlon,” and he kind of put his arm around me, as if to suggest, you know, “be good,” pull yourself together, kid, but it was too late. All of my insecurity, all of my fears of not being good enough rose to the surface. I decided in an instant not to deny it, but just to live—as my acting teacher Sanford Meisner had taught me—truthfully in the moment under the given circumstances. So I looked at Marlon Brando, and I just started to cry.

Marlon Brando's eyes were now locked with mine in what felt like a mystical connection, and he said, “My God, you're a tuning fork. Now I'm crying!”

We were both crying. Marty ran to get a box of Kleenex, which he handed to Marlon Brando. Then Marlon Brando handed me tissues. Marty started to tell Marlon Brando about how I had lost my autograph book, and how upset Marty was because it was all his fault—that he had hustled me out of there, how they're always rushing him out of places, and that he was planning to surprise me by getting Marlon Brando's autograph for me, and now Marty is crying too!

All this truth rained down on us in a suite at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Eventually the tears turned to laughter. I mean the whole thing was absurdly embarrassing and wonderful. What can I say? You simply could not be inauthentic in front of Marlon Brando. He made me “be myself.” Any notion that this was going to be a normal meeting was scattered like the Kleenex at our feet. At the feet of Marlon Brando. I was exhausted and starving.

We ordered lunch—Marty and I from the regular menu, Marlon Brando from the Henry VIII–portion size: three orders of shrimp cocktail, two plates of pasta, a couple of steaks, three bottles of wine, some salad. I am not kidding. They wheeled in two enormous tables of food. Is there a wedding? No, we're having lunch with Marlon Brando. Lunch! The thing I had feared was not only happening; it was an
actual
happening! There was plenty of wine, and the conversation never stopped. It floated between funny and profound. We talked about his island in Tahiti, and how he liked to collect rocks and shells there, and about his attempts to harness electricity by keeping electric eels in the swimming pool at his house on Mulholland Drive. We discussed the many abandoned movie projects—Brando and Michael Jackson with Jackson as God, and a project with the Native American activist Russell Means that Marty was to direct. We even talked about acting! Yes, we talked about acting, from studying with Stella Adler, to getting advice for
Julius Caesar
from John Gielgud, to his biggest disappointment, more than any other movie he had done:
The Island of Dr. Moreau.
The behind-the-scenes of that film could make a movie itself, and eventually one version was told in the documentary
Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau
.

As we kept talking, the day turned to night, and Marlon suggested we order dinner! We never left the room. We ordered from room service again, with a whole new round of food. This time, hamburgers, French fries, grilled-cheese sandwiches, chocolate cake, ice cream sundaes, more wine, of course.

Marlon wanted us to take our shoes off and move the cushions to the floor and have our dinner that way, so that's what we did. After dinner, the conversation continued, only now it started to become even more intimate. He asked me a lot of probing questions, all very personal, all very intriguing and insightful, of course. He directed a lot of questions to Marty about past girlfriends, our relationship, noting how strong it appeared to be. He was also brutally honest about his own personal life and his frailties. He talked about his weight, his relationships with women, and his deep distrust of men, starting with his own father. I never forgot that he was Marlon Brando, because that was impossible, but we got to a place of trust where I felt I could ask him something he wrote about in his book.

It was late at night, and by that time we had had many bottles of wine. I asked him, because I knew I had to, about his relationship with Marilyn Monroe, and he said, “They most certainly murdered her.”

I said, “Do you really believe that?”

“Oh, yes,” he said.

The way he said it gave me the chills.

It was past midnight, and we finally said good night to Marlon Brando. We closed the door and were so frightened we didn't even speak. We half-expected him to come back and ask us if he could spend the night and have breakfast with us. We waited a few minutes and opened the door to be sure he was gone. The hall was empty. Marty and I collapsed onto the sofa and just started laughing. We were exhilarated. We were exhausted. We had been in a Marlon Brando movie for twelve hours. And … we had pictures!

I want to state for the record that it was Martin Scorsese who said, “Let's take pictures of the room!” The suite post–Marlon Brando was a bacchanalian spectacle filled with plates of food, room service tables, strewn-about couch cushions, and empty bottles of wine. We took turns taking pictures of ourselves in the wake of Marlon Brando. It was like a crime scene. A fun crime scene.

The next day, Marty left for New York, and I was moving back into my modest hotel digs. Then something surprising happened. I got a call from Marty's assistant. She told me that Marlon Brando's secretary had called and wanted my address.

“That must be a mistake,” I said. “They must mean Marty's address.”

“No,” she said. “She specifically said that Marlon Brando wants to send you something; she asked for your address and the correct spelling of your name.”

I was in shock. What on earth was Marlon Brando going to send me? And why was Marty not a part of this?

I got back to my hotel, and the largest basket of roses I have ever seen
in my life
arrived. It was like a bushel! A bushel of roses! Even the florist was impressed as he helped me carry it inside. And there was a letter. A handwritten letter on light-blue stationery from Marlon Brando. I read the letter. I read it again. And again. And again. And again.

Now, I'm not going to say what was
in
the letter, because it's personal, but he wrote some very kind words.

Marty's assistant called, and now she was really curious. “His secretary called,” she said, “and they want to know if you got the flowers. Jesus! Illeana! He sent you flowers.”

“Yes,” I said, “it's flowers … and a letter.”

Dead silence on the phone. “What kind of flowers?”

“It's a huge basket of … roses,” I said.

“Are they red?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, “and pink and lavender and yellow.” Like I said, a bushel.

“Oh, my God!” she said. “Are you going to tell Marty?”

Marty … Now, Marty made movies about being the jealous type. Still, nothing had even happened—except that I had received 8 million roses and a very nice letter.

Then another call. Marty's assistant was freaking out as she conveyed another message.

“Mr. Brando would like to invite Illeana to lunch at his house on Mulholland Drive. He will send a car. Any day this week.”

I said, “Absolutely, yes, please tell him yes. I accept.”

Marty's assistant was aghast: “Illeana, you're not going to do it!”

I said, “It's Marlon Brando!”

She sputtered, “He probably wants to have sex with you!”

I said, “Yes, I will probably have to have sex with him. It's Marlon Brando!”

She then launched into the many reasons why this could not happen under any circumstances. I will spare you some of the reasons—especially those having to do with imagined sexual positions with a man of his girth and how that could either smother or suffocate me. But mainly it was that I had a boyfriend, that his name was Marty, and that if he ever found I was even
thinking
of going, he would cook my goose and personally serve it to Mr. Brando!

We stayed on the phone arguing the pros and cons, but eventually I was convinced that it would be a very bad idea.
She
called Marlon Brando's secretary and declined on my behalf. The little excitement was over.

I was alone in my hotel room with my roses and my letter, and I could actually feel Marlon Brando's disappointment with me when he got the news from his secretary. Hadn't I learned anything? I was a tuning fork! We were on the same frequency! He had just given me the greatest Method master class on being yourself, and now I was being the one thing Marty said he hated—a phony. A phony because I really wanted to go.