Movie 666

By Scott Svatos

In 1958, Marlon Brando announced that he would direct One-Eyed Jacks, a Western originally slated to be directed by Stanley Kubrick.

Several news articles from the time comment on the extremes Brando went to in order to extract proper performances from his cast. The most difficult seemed to be getting convincing performances from the extras during the scene in which Brando (as “The Kid”) is flogged. First, Brando set up cameras and had Karl Malden fake a heart attack. After this proved unsuccessful, Brando created an award for the best performance by an extra. Brando also used things such as mood music, improvisation, and “psychological tricks” such as blacking his teeth in order to make an actor smile.

Brando’s unique directing techniques were not fully appreciated by his crew. A production consultant states in a memo that her “time can be better used than correcting the many anachronistic words and phrases which keep turning up in Mr. Brando’s improvisations.” These included “itsy-bitsy” and “teensy-weensy” — words which “Mr. Brando obviously has no intention of correcting.”

Ultimately, One-Eyed Jacks was greeted with fairly strong reviews, although one reviewer commented that Marlon Brando employed method-acting direction and an extravagant budget in order to make not a work of art, but a perfectly ordinary western (L.A. Mirror, Feb. 7, 1961). Almost all, however, praised the visual quality of the film (which went on to win an Oscar for Cinematography), and the outstanding performances of Brando and Malden.

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3. Uwe Boll Goes Postal
4. Horror Genre Takes the Midnight Meat Train to Its Final Demise
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