Andrew Bergman's The Freshman (1990), in which Brando pokes fun at his iconic performance as Vito Corleone in The Godfather (1972), is a perfect example of the kind of havoc he could wreak when the mood struck him. Although the picture signaled something of a return to form for the actor, Brando managed - while it was being filmed - to needlessly antagonize a dear friend, two of his own children, and almost every person connected with the project.
In The Freshman's deliberately twisted screwball plot, Matthew Broderick plays Clark Kellogg, an NYU film student who's robbed by Victor (Bruno Kirby), a Little Italy thug, the moment he hits town to begin classes, leaving him broke. Clark tracks Victor down, and Victor, who no longer has the money, offers to introduce him to his Uncle Carmine (Brando), an "importer-exporter" who can give Clark a legitimate job. When Clark, a movie fanatic, meets Carmine, he's immediately stunned by his eerie resemblance to...Marlon Brando in The Godfather. The first meeting between Broderick and Brando is arguably the best scene in the film, as Carmine alternately seduces and terrifies Clark with equal aplomb.
Clark will accept the job, which consists of importing endangered animals to the US for exotic dining purposes (don't ask). He will also fall in love with Carmine's beautiful daughter, Tina (Penelope Ann Miller, who looks about as Italian as Diane Keaton does.) Clark will wind up involved in a scam that's way over his head, and you'll get to see and hear Bert Parks croon a freakish version of Bob Dylan's quasi-humorous protest anthem, "Maggie's Farm."
Oddly, it was Brando who originally made contact with Bergman, rather than the other way around. Bergman remembers that Brando called him "out of the blue" to tell him how much he laughed at a video of the director's outrageous comedy The In-Laws (1979). About a year after that, Bergman sent Brando an early draft of his script for The Freshman. Brando liked what he saw, and soon had a contract that promised him $3.3 million and 11 percent of the picture's gross. Not bad for a glorified supporting role.
The New York portion of the shoot went smoothly and was uneventful. But when Brando re-joined the cast and crew for further work in Toronto, things began to unravel. In fact, Brando's long-time friend, Philip Rhodes, a makeup man who also worked on The Freshman, felt that Brando was having a nervous breakdown. Just a few days into the Toronto shoot, Brando screamed wildly at Rhodes, accusing him of having leaked some of his personal information to the press. Rhodes had argued with Brando before, but never anything like this.
"It was frightening, and then he refused to talk to me throughout the rest of the picture," Rhodes later told Brando biographer Peter Manso. "He froze me out, just ignored me." Rhodes, however, felt that he finally recognized what made Brando turn on people who were close to him. "I came to understand that he had decided that people like me, who knew about his life, are dangerous, and then he stops thinking and has these irrational blowups. So after The Freshman we didn't speak for at least a year and a half."
So that was how Brando treated a "friend." Next came Brando's family. His first sleight was when his troubled son, Christian, attempted to get a small role in the movie. Brando simply waved the request away, apparently never recognizing how badly he hurt Christian's feelings. Then, Brando's equally troubled teenage daughter, Cheyenne, tried to come visit him in Toronto. But he refused to let her.
According to Cheyenne, her father had initially said she could come watch him act before the cameras, something she had never done, and she was very much looking forward to spending time with him. Viewing this latest, wholly unexpected rejection as a betrayal, Cheyenne hung up the phone after quarreling with Brando, sped off in her jeep, and promptly turned it over. She suffered severe injuries, and would have to endure multiple operations to reconstruct her face and skull.
And then there was the cast and crew, most of whom Brando managed to offend in a single self-serving gesture that was completely unexpected. Near the end of filming, Brando threw a lavish party, where he warmly handed out gifts to his assembled co-workers. Shortly after that, he went out to dinner with several members of the cast and crew, and seemed to be having a fine time. Little did these people know, however, that, he had recently given an interview to the Toronto Globe and Mail wherein he derided many of them.
"It's horrible," he said of the movie. "It's going to be a flop, but after this I'm retiring. I'm so fed up. This picture, except for the Canadian crew, was an extremely unpleasant experience. I wish I hadn't finished with a stinker." Brando, it should be noted, called the paper himself to volunteer this information. It's not like some crafty reporter goaded him into saying it.
It was quickly determined that Brando tried to sabotage the picture due to a quarrel he was having with its production company, Tristar. He was trying to extract $50,000 in overtime from them, so - why not nail everyone he was working with in the process?
Soon enough, though, Brando realized that his comments, if they managed to taint the box office, would also limit how much money he'd make. So he called his castmates and offered apologies (Broderick, for one, was unmoved), then issued a public request for forgiveness that praised Bergman's "screamingly funny script." He even went so far as to say that "the movie contains moments of high comedy that will be remembered for decades to come."
Regardless of Brando's flip-flopping on the merits or deficiencies of The Freshman, most critics acknowledged the film's oddball comic charm with Roger Ebert stating, "There have been a lot of movies where stars have repeated the triumphs of their parts - but has any star ever done it more triumphantly than Marlon Brando does in "The Freshmen"? He is doing a reprise here of his most popular character, Don Vito Corleone of "The Godfather," and he does it with such wit, discipline and seriousness that it's not a ripoff and it's not a cheap shot, it's a brilliant comic masterstroke."
Producer: Mike Lobell
Director: Andrew Bergman
Screenplay: Andrew Bergman
Cinematography: William A. Fraker
Editing: Barry Malkin
Music: David Newman
Production Design: Ken Adam
Art Design: Alicia Keywan
Set Design: Gordon Sim
Costume Design: Julie Weiss
Makeup: Patricia Green
Technical Adviser: Rocco Musacchia
Cast: Marlon Brando (Carmine Sabatini), Matthew Broderick (Clark Kellogg), Bruno Kirby (Victor Ray), Penelope Ann Miller (Tina Sabatini), Frank Whaley (Steve Bushak), Jon Polito (Chuck Greenwald), Paul Benedict (Arthur Fleeber), Richard Grant (Lloyd Simpson), Kenneth Welsh (Dwight Armstrong), Pamela Payton-Wright (Liz Armstrong), B.D. Wong (Edward), Maximilian Schell (Larry London), Bert Parks (Himself).
C-102m. Letterboxed.
by Paul Tatara
