O: I don't want you to give your act away, but one item on the menu that intrigued me was "A Chilling Brando Story." Can you tell me what that is?RF: It's a story about respect. You want the story?
O: Sure.
RF: This is my closer, by the way. It's four or five minutes long, so relax. In the same week in which John Huston gave me my very first acting advice, and it is a great piece of advice—that's the top of that list, the John Huston story—but in the same week in which Huston gave me that piece of acting advice, I met Marlon Brando. We were shooting starting at noon and finishing at midnight. I was playing a private, we were out on the drilling field, and there were lots of other guys dressed like me; we were drilling and doing army stuff. Late in the afternoon of the fourth or fifth day of shooting, preceded by a whisper, [voice drops to a whisper] "Marlon's here. Here comes Marlon. Marlon's on the set." Everybody looks. Yep, there he is, Marlon Brando. John Huston breaks the set up, he starts walking over there, and he turns back to me and says, [imitating Huston] "Come on over here, Bobby, I want to introduce you to Marl." I walk over, I'm introduced to Marlon, they blah blah for a minute. Marlon says to me, [imitating Brando] "When do you break for dinner?" I say, "In an hour or so." He says, "Well, come on over to my Winnebago and we'll have a little conversation." We break for dinner and I go over to his Winnebago. We're sitting there in the Winnebago, and you know how they're set up: There's a couple of bench seats and a little table, and there's a picture window. The picture window looks out over everybody out there on the set. We're talking and Marlon's looking out the window a little bit. We're talking, and he's still looking out the window once in a while. He turns to me and says, "Where's your dressing room?" I said, "Well, you know, I'm over there. I'm fine." I came from the theater, and I was used to dressing in the bathroom if necessary. They'd given me a little corner with a drape on it where all the guys were dressing up as privates, and I knew it was a little bit of a loaded question, so in response to, "Where's your dressing room?" I say, "I'm over there. I'm fine." He's looking out the window a little bit more. He spots somebody. He gets up. He walks to the front door. He opens up the door. He points to the first assistant [director], a big tall guy, and the guy comes running over. "What do you need, Marlon?" Marlon looks at him and he points at me. He says, "This actor hasn't got a dressing room. He's dressing with the extras." That's something I hadn't told him, something he determined on his own. I'm thinking, "Why is this guy putting the heat on me? I didn't ask him to." The first assistant is, "Oh, but…" as he's wringing his hands, and he's saying, "Marlon, I'm sorry, but there weren't enough Winnebagos because of the tennis tournament," or because it's Long Island or because of this or because of that. Marlon says, "But, by the way, when we go to Italy he'll have a great dressing room." And when we got to Italy I had a great dressing room. He dismisses the first assistant, but by now everybody on the set, though they couldn't hear what Marlon was talking about in front of his dressing room, they saw the body language of the first assistant and knew something was going on. Something was wrong, and now he's got everybody's attention. Now he points to the biggest guy on the set, one of the producers. I forget who it was; let's call him Phil. "Phil," he yells to Phil. He points, and Phil comes over. "Yeah, Marlon, what is it? What is it, Marlon?" "Phil," and he looks Phil straight in the eyes. I'm inches away from all of this. He says, "Phil, I'm very, very upset." And he eyeballs Phil for a long time, 12 or 15 seconds, enough time for sweat to start forming on Phil's upper lip. I'm thinking, "Oh, please, please, please don't let it be my dressing room he's so upset about." Finally, in answer to the question Phil and I are both asking ourselves—what's he so upset about?—Marlon says, "Phil, there's too many folks around here. They're making me nervous." "What do you need, Marlon?" "I need some tranquilizers, Phil." "Right away, Marlon. What kind do you need?" He tells him what kind he needs. He says, "I'll be right back." He starts to leave. Marlon says, "Phil. Phil." Phil comes back. "What is it, Marlon?" "Phil, there's no music in this Winnebago. I'd like to hear some music. A little classical music to make me feel better." "Right away, Marlon. Right away." He starts to leave. "Phil. Phil." Phil comes back. "Something with a couple of speakers, Phil." Phil leaves. Thirty minutes later, he's got a big guy with him carrying a big record player, two speakers, and a stack of classical records. The guy brings it in, he installs it in seconds, and he's out the door. Phil gives the tranquilizers to Marlon. "Anything else I can do for you?" "No, Phil, you did great. I appreciate it very much." "Anything you need, you just let us know, Marlon." "Phil, you did great, I appreciate it very much." He shoos Phil out the door, closes the door, sits back down, and watches Phil walk back to the other producers. We're waiting to find out whether we're going to work tomorrow or not. He watches them for a while, and then he turns to me and he says this: "You see, if you don't scare them, they will never respect you, all right?" I learned three important things. Number one, I learned that the word "respect" has polar opposite meanings. At one end of the meaning of the word, respect is the thing that people give you if you've got a hammer over their head. At the extreme opposite end of the meaning of the same word is the thing that people give you if they love you, if they're not afraid of you, and if they want you to succeed. Number two, I realized what passed for respect in Hollywood, and that's who's got the hammer. And number three, I realized that if I ever got any of this respect, I wanted it to come from the other meaning of the word, where you don't have to worry about getting stabbed in the back. I tell my children—and part of this program, by the way, is about parenting—that life is short. It's an arc: First you're born and you can't take care of yourself, then you can take care of yourself, and then for most of your life you have to take care of others until the very end, when you can't take care of yourself anymore. You've got to rely on the ones you've parented. "You'd better do a good job, Bob," I say to myself. I realized that life is a series of moments along this arc, moments at which you can deliver excellence, or less, if you desire. But if you do deliver excellence, you get that reward, and I've built up a metaphor during this program of what you get when you deliver excellence to any job of any kind: You get the reward of self-respect and respect from others and satisfaction. And this is the real McCoy. This is untransferrable wealth. You stick this in your pocket and it's like a little nugget; it'll always be there. If you're ever wondering what to do right now, and if you're ever asking yourself, "What shall I do with this job that I've got right now?"… If I apply the simple formula that I'm going to do this job as good as I can, that and a little practice gives me excellence almost every time. And when you're delivering excellence every time, you get that reward I keep mentioning. And if you happen to be getting that reward on a frequent enough basis, you know… Those in both religious traditions, the Eastern and the Western, talk about a path: the path of righteousness. If you're getting these rewards on a frequent basis, you're on that path. And if you're one of the ones who believe in a heaven, this is the path right to it. But if you're one of the ones who believe that inner peace is the best life has to offer, you know precisely what you're doing when you wake up in the morning. You're using your life and your life experiences to understand with, and with every action you create, you deliver that understanding. You're doing what an artist does: using his life to understand and deliver that understanding with every act you create. And if you're doing that, and you're getting those rewards on a frequent enough basis, you're making the best that you can out of the life you've got to live. End of program.