STUDIO MAGAZINE, March 1997, Paris

text and photos Christophe d'Yvoire

(translated, haltingly, from the French by Mog Decarnin)

Johnny Depp, Director! We were already excited to be the only ones (in the world!) able to go onto the very closed set of The Brave, the first film directed by one of today's most exciting actors. But we didn't know till the end of our trip that we'd also realize our most impossible dream: to see a legend at work and interview him. Here, on the set, is Marlon Brando.

Thursday, September 26

Ridgecrest, it's called. A little town lost in the California desert, halfway between Los Angeles and Death Valley. It's already night when we arrive but the air is still scorching. The passersby seen on the streets are all, strangely, looking at the sky: in a few moments, the moon will disappear in the shadow of the earth and the stars will shine with all their brilliance. An eclipse all the more exceptional as it's the last of the century.

Late at night, in Paris, a telephone call from London offered me the chance to jump on a plane to Los Angeles to be present at the end of shooting of The Brave, the first film directed and acted by Johnny Depp. The kind of offer you don't refuse. First, because, of all the young American actors, Johnny Depp is, without doubt, the most singular and the most daring. Next, because on reading the script, The Brave reveals a story both disturbing and magnificent: that of a young American Indian, Rafael, who, to save his family from their poverty, is ready to sacrifice his own life by agreeing to be the hero of a snuff film. A term that designates those clandestine films whose monstrous specialty is to show on the screen people actually dying, and if possible in the most atrocious manner.

Ridgecrest, its eclipse, its stars and its dark mirages. At this hour, Johnny Depp and his crew watch the last few days' rushes. We meet tomorrow morning, at 6:30 a.m. on the set.

Friday, September 27

You have to drive a good three-quarters of an hour toward the dawn, along Route 395, to get to Red Mountain. On the site of an old gold mine where the carcass of a rusted drill shaft still stands, the scenery crew has reconstructed a whole shantytown backed up against a gigantic public dump. In the film, it is here that Rafael and his family live. From the start, it's clear: The Brave plunges us into the other America, that of the excluded and the superfluous.

Long hair, dark glasses, open shirt and torn jeans, Johnny Depp radiates that little something extra that attracts your attention immediately. "Is it cold in Paris?" It's the first thing he asks when he sees me. For, he explains, he dreams of nothing else but cold after having lived here for the hottest seven weeks of his life. "I never imagined how exhausting shooting would be," he admits, before going to glance through the viewfinder of the camera. Depp is tired but visibly happy.

As his first step as a director, the actor recruited the best young technicians he'd run across on his previous films: the script supervisor (?) from Dead Man, the cook from Don Juan DeMarco, as well as Vilko Filac and Kreka, respectively director of photography and set designer of Arizona Dream, whose imprint you recognize here immediately. Choices that reflect the influence of the directors with whom Johnny Depp has worked and who are now his friends: John Waters, Tim Burton, Emir Kusturica and Jim Jarmusch. "They really encouraged me when I told them I was going to go behind the camera," Depp emphasizes. The first day of shooting, Jarmusch sent him a fax and Kusturica called him on the phone. "Emir told me not to hesitate to call him if I had the slightest problem. He especially gave me one last piece of advice:" (he takes on a deep voice and a heavy accent) "`Don't forget, Johnny, fuck them all.'" A very Kusturican way of exhorting him to make the film he had in his head, without giving in to compromise. Seeing the wicked smile that lights up his face at that moment, one can be sure Depp followed the advice.

The Brave will surely be far from a pure Hollywood product, even if, strangely, every producer in town already knows of its existence. For years, in fact, The Brave was labeled a jinxed project. Adapted from a novel by Gregory McDonald (Rafael, Final Days, Black River Press), the first screenplay was written in 1993 by Aziz Ghazal, a young employee of U.S.C., the celebrated film school in Los Angeles. But just as Jodie Foster and Oliver Stone were ready to produce his project, Ghazal, faced with grave personal problems, committed suicide in 1994 after having murdered his wife and daughter. The drama made the headlines and threw Hollywood into a state of shock. The project remained frozen until, a year later, a friend of Johnny Depp recommended that he read the screenplay. "I hated it immediately," he remembers. "It was full of cliches, a sort of Christlike allegory that was like a long funeral march without the slightest humor.... But, in spite of everything, I found the central idea very interesting. Could you sacrifice your life for love?" Depp met with the two young producers who held the rights, Robert Evans, Jr. and Karoll Kemp, agreed to act in it on condition that he rewrite the screenplay (with his brother) and direct it himself (having the final cut). The final deal was closed at the Cannes Film Festival in 1995 where, thanks to the support of Jeremy Thomas (Bertolucci's English producer), the film found its financing.

After seven weeks of shooting in the middle of the desert, the scenes that remain to be shot are those of the destruction of the shantytown by bulldozers. Scenes technically pretty heavy and spectacular, but without real involvement. Waiting for the special effects crew to make their fine adjustments, Johnny Depp jokes around with the technicians, plays an old guitar found on the set, smokes Kools. On the horizon, the mountains still reflect the glow of the setting sun. Red Mountain.

It's at nightfall that he finally appears in character as Rafael, the young hero of the film. A bandana in his hair, an old shirt, old jeans, a pair of boots, and, on his arms, his chest, and even his neck, tattoos of all sorts: Depp is metamorphosed into an Indian. His expression and even his gaze look different. The director is effaced in favor of his hero. At once, the atmosphere becomes quieter, more concentrated. Before the camera, Rafael kisses his wife and two sleeping children one last time, before going to offer himself up as a sacrifice. On his face a profound melancholy shows.

pIt is almost eleven o'clock at night when an assistant announces the end of the day. On Route 395, which we take back to the hotel, a coyote with gold-lit fur crosses majestically in front of us.

Saturday, September 28

Almost all the principal actors of the film are present today on the set. None of them are very well known, except Frederic Forrest, ex-pet actor of Coppola and Wenders, but each incarnates a well-defined role: a priest, a mechanic, an old Indian, a barkeeper, a young Mexican mother.... Timeless characters who form a microsociety in themselves.

Johnny Depp, who doesn't act in this scene, concentrates on directing, forming with his director of photography Vilko Filac a solid team. Depp is everywhere, touches everything, shows special attention to everyone. You're as likely to see him helping the stagehands install a rail as murmuring, by the ear of an actor, his last instructions before the take. You don't see, here, any of those little normal hierarchies that often poison sets (seat reserved for the director, favored treatment at the canteen, etc.) In his naturalness, in his contact with others, in his way of pitching in with the crew, Depp is very reminiscent of Jarmusch and Kusturica. "The first day of shooting," he recalls, "I was feeling overwhelmed. Everyone was asking me a lot of questions at the same time and I had a lot of trouble explaining clearly what I wanted. It was as if I found myself faced with a colossal mathematical problem. But I didn't panic. Deep inside, I had total confidence in the film."

Before The Brave, Johnny Depp had already shot, for his own pleasure, several short films, in 16 mm. But he never envisaged directing a feature. "What really decided me was the story itself, this idea of sacrificing yourself for those you love, but also the fact that the film is about the outcasts of our society." No need to be a keen observer to find also, in the young hero of The Brave, profound similarities to most of those Depp has already played, whether in Cry Baby, Arizona Dream, Edward Scissorhands, Don Juan DeMarco, Ed Wood or Dead Man. All possess in common that inflexible will to follow their desires to the end. Even at the risk of walking with the angels (?).

At the end of the day's shooting, Johnny Depp stays a long moment in the trailer that serves as a command post for working out, with his principal collaborators, the plan for the coming week. The meeting over, vodka and Corona appear on the table and the Beatles' Abbey Road is heard. The glasses empty, the sluice gates burst. An indispensable moment of decompression. Depp tells of his horror at having to see the rushes: "I hate seeing myself on the screen: I get the feeling of seeing by turns my father and my mother." He evokes his last trip to Cannes, the cloud of paparazzi, the atmosphere of frenzy that, viewed from here, seems to belong to another world.

Monday, September 30

After reading the screenplay, one question obsessed me: who is the actor who will play the role of McCarthy, that mysterious person, as cruel as he is seductive, who hires Rafael to play in a snuff film? The scene of their meeting, that makes up a short dozen pages of the screenplay, is of an incredible richness and the call from London before I left had specified that it involved a very prestigious actor. Since then, I'd had the intuition that the role could fall to Marlon Brando. Not only that the character possessed a scope worthy of him, but, after the filming of Don Juan DeMarco in which they co-starred, it was said that Depp and Brando had remained very close. The problem was that no one on the set wanted to tell me the name of the one who would play McCarthy. It was as if the subject were taboo, at least as if an order of silence had been imposed on all the members of the crew. After my arrival, I was reduced to inventing slightly ridiculous stratagems to try to discover the truth. The only thing I learned was that the scene in question was shooting, next week in Los Angeles, in a disused warehouse.

Away from the set, there stands an old water tank dating from the time when the gold mine was in operation. Johnny Depp is getting dressed for a scene between Rafael and his young son. Again, the instant Depp appears in the costume of his character, the atmosphere becomes much more concentrated. "I never imagined how difficult it would be to act and direct at the same time," he confides. "It requires two opposite attitudes: when you direct, you have to be able to control everything down to the last detail. When you act, on the other hand, you have to forget everything, even lose control of yourself. It's hard to go from one to the other." But seeing him in front of the camera, you don't sense any effort. Depp slips into the skin of Rafael with a disarming naturalness and restraint. He brings out of him a mixture of strength and fragility, sweetness and determination, that belong only to him.

At the end of the afternoon the first AD announces the end of shooting at Red Mountain. The crew applauds, congratulates itself, cheers the locals for whom the adventure of filming stops here. Before leaving the area for good, everyone is invited to come to the desert to attend an authentic Indian ceremony. So the spirits of Red Mountain will protect The Brave.

Before heading back to Los Angeles, Johnny Depp agrees to see me again over the next few days to finish our interview. In the crowd, I ask him if he'll authorize me to be present at the filming of the famous scene with McCarthy. A somewhat embarrassed silence. Depp at first pretends not to understand, but ends up blurting this answer: "I'll see what I can do." The name Marlon Brando has never been mentioned.

Thursday, October 5

Back in Los Angeles. The crew is set up in a downtown bar, only a few blocks from East L.A. An immense, (crade)(?) bar, with a wooden counter and an old billiard table that dominates the center. In his film costume, Depp rehearses a scene where Rafael gets drunk to try to "forget" the contract he's just made with McCarthy. The scene could seem tragic but Depp seems to want to turn it resolutely toward comedy. Therefore the bar is peopled by customers whose roles he has given to his pals: Bruce, his assistant, plays an exhibitionistic drunk, Butch, his chauffeur, is disguised as a (blown-out Boy Scout?) (scout dejante)(?), and Peter Mountain, the set photographer, plays a transvestite bartender... "The screenplay is only the skeleton of the film," stresses Depp. "Then you have to give it flesh on the set, depending on the setting, the atmosphere, and its own mood. I would say that 70% of what we've shot wasn't written like that in the script."

As the day advances, the atmosphere becomes more and more delirious. If Depp sometimes displays an inalterable seriousness, he also possesses a youthful energy capable of inciting him to every excess. And so he reveals today an unmatched talent for stirring up a joyful bawdy-house around him, feeling out, provoking, pushing the scene till sparks fly. Drowned in wild laughter, music and artificial smoke, the set takes on a Felliniesque look.

It's past midnight when the workday ends. In this madness, Depp obviously hasn't had any time to devote to me. He suggests we get together the next day when the crew isn't shooting. As they do every evening, the assistants distribute the call sheet. On the list of actors assembled for Monday's work appears a name in front of the character McCarthy. That of Marlon Brando.

Friday, October 4

"You turn to your left and there you'll come to a big green gate. I'll be waiting for you in 45 minutes." Johnny Depp's house merits a book in its own right. The Castle is an incredible manor built in the 20s, situated on the side of a hill just above Sunset Boulevard. The gate open, you enter right into a huge terrace where, with an enchanting plashing, a basin catches the falling waters of an artificial cascade. All around, eucalyptus, palms, bamboos and cacti protect the area both from the sun and from prying eyes. It's a black and gray house, full of corners, curves, and rocks, that was once inhabited by Bela Lugosi (the famous "Dracula" of whom Depp was a great admirer in Ed Wood). In short, it's a movie home that also recalls the castle in Edward Scissorhands: at once so far from and so near to other dwellings. As if apart from the world.

Bought last year but needing major renovation work, Johnny Depp has only lived in this house for a few days. After having opened a bottle of wine in the kitchen he's had repainted in his theme colors (green and black), he invites me to come into the living room, whose windows offer a panoramic view over the whole city. A nearly empty room, with alcoves and different levels. A parquet floor, wood paneling, an old bar, two leather armchairs from the 40s, a round table on which sits a superb bronze elephant, and the music of Django Reinhardt. "I only like old things," he says, "ones that have a history."

This incredible house located two steps from the Strip (which is sort of the Saint-Germain of Los Angeles) reflects well Johnny Depp's situation in Hollywood. Both at the heart of things and determinedly outside. Depp doesn't seek to integrate himself into the system but to construct his own world, his own alternative. Thus, The Viper Room, which he bought three years ago with a friend and which has become, today, the best club in Los Angeles. When he is in town, Depp spends almost all his nights there, including during filming. A sort of second home. "The place is really small, but I feel good there," he says. "And apparently, I'm not the only one. I don't know any club that's had such different personalities as Johnny Cash, Hunter S. Thompson, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, Oasis, Pearl Jam, Bob Dylan...." Depp has a rock and roll soul and doesn't hide it. When he still lived in Florida, before coming to live in Los Angeles and becoming an actor, he belonged to a band that did fairly well. Notably, he opened for Iggy Pop, become, since, his friend, and to whom he entrusted the music of The Brave. Today, Depp still doesn't miss any chance to play a guitar. He even put out an album two years ago on Capitol, forming the group P with some friends from Red Hot Chili Peppers or the Heartbreakers. "In my life, I never had ambition," he asserts. "The only good quality I see in myself is never having compromised myself. I never agreed to do things for bad reasons."

One thinks of The Brave, certainly, where he once again incarnates a hero who's a bit off-center. "I don't know why I'm attracted by that kind of character. I've always had a weakness for losers." A few days from the end of filming, he declares himself on the whole happy with his experience as a director: "Sure there'll be people who won't like it or who won't understand the humor I've put into it, but at least it will be a film that's like me." A little later, Depp will show me several minutes of the rough cut of the film. A while ago, in fact, a small crew, staying at the house of friends, started to work on the editing: these first images, drenched in the crushing heat of the desert, are completely faithful to the impression felt on location, at once modern and weathered, of a real profundity.

Also for the first time, Johnny Depp talks to me about Marlon Brando, who will be present Monday on the set. "If I was lucky to work with Marlon on Don Juan DeMarco, I'm even more immensely privileged to have kept a real friendship with him. Marlon is an extraordinary being and when I had problems, he was always there. From the start, I wrote the character of McCarthy with him in mind, but I really didn't want to give the impression of taking advantage of his friendship by his agreeing to be in my film. At first, I didn't dare talk to him about it." Yet, the first day of filming, Johnny Depp got a surprise call from Brando. "It was like he just happened to call me. When I told him I was doing my first directing, he said a lot of very nice things like how proud he was of me and so on." A week later, another call from Brando: "This time, he asked me for details about the story, the characters, the actors I'd chosen. And then, he ended by telling me he would gladly play the role of McCarthy.... Marlon is like that, he's an angel."

Did Depp want me to find out for myself or maybe look like an angel himself in my eyes? For whatever reason, at the end of the conversation, and without my mentioning it to him, he offered me the most wonderful gift a film journalist could hope for: that of being able to observe Marlon Brando at work, in front of the camera. "Don't come on Monday because that will be Marlon's first day, but I'll call you Tuesday or Wednesday. You'll see, Marlon is an exceptional being."

Tuesday, October 8

No word from anyone. I ask myself if I was dreaming or, at least, if I hadn't gotten excited a little too soon. I don't dare leave my hotel room in the expectation that the phone will ring. In the afternoon I end up calling Bruce, Depp's personal assistant on the set: "Yesterday, Marlon and Johnny just rehearsed. Today's the first day of shooting. Maybe you'll be able to come tomorrow." Maybe?

Wednesday, October 9

Still nothing. I stay in my room, torn between the fear of ruining everything by being too insistent and that of missing a unique opportunity by not being pushy enough. At 5:00 p.m., I call the set again: "You can come right now." It's an old unused warehouse downtown, right by the bar from the other day. You enter a big room closed by a heavy sliding door and it takes several minutes to adjust to the gloom. Most of the crew is here, their eyes glued to two video screens that take up the middle of the room: in order to preserve the intimacy of the scenes filmed with Brando, they explain to me, only the indispensable technicians are allowed to be present on the set itself, in the next room. All the others are asked to stay in this sort of dark airlock with brick walls, connected to the set by video monitors and earphones.

"Does death frighten you, young man?" The slightly nasal timbre, the drawling intonation tinted with nonchalance: that voice is recognizable among all others. On the video screen, Marlon Brando moves the wheelchair he is seated on directly in front of Johnny Depp. It's the end of a wide shot in which only the silhouettes of the two actors are seen. The take hardly over, Johnny Depp and Vilko Filac, the director of photography, come to view the recorded images on the monitors. Satisfied, Depp announces that the day is over. A few moments later, Brando appears in turn in the airlock on his way back to his trailer parked just opposite. Dressed in a suit, his long white hair (coiffee en catogan) (in fact he uses a wig for the role), what strikes you, before anything else, is his corpulence. The belly so protuberant it affects his gait. Marlon Brando is huge. But with an exceptional hugeness, splendid, that contrasts with the purity and delicacy of his face so perfectly drawn. Brando looks like the work of a genial sculptor who has dared every audacity. There is something monumental about him. A sort of conspicuousness that expresses both power and wisdom. Marlon Brando wasn't in front of me more than two minutes, but it was enough to confirm the legend: he attracted literally every eye to him. Unique.

Thursday, October 10

Though the crew is assembled on the set about 7:30 a.m., Brando is never there before 10:00. This morning, like all the mornings that will follow, his arrival has an air of ceremony: the black Lincoln with tinted windows parks at an idle before the trailer. Seated beside the driver, Brando extracts himself from his seat with a wave of his hand to the technicians there. From the back descend the two women who assist him during filming: Mary, one of those closest to him for fifty years, and Carolyn, a Eurasian, always smiling, who has been his personal assistant for more than ten years.

Brando's presence has turned the atmosphere of the shoot much more serious than it had been. Even among the technicians, though they are used to being around stars, Brando remains a case apart. More than respect, you sense that they feel for him a genuine admiration. As if, for their part, they are sure of living a page in the history of cinema. With his career, with his talent, with the dramas he has known in his personal life, with his physique, Brando impresses. The feeling that he carries some of the weight of the world on his shoulders. Each feels all the more privileged to be there because his presence wasn't foreseen from the beginning. Not even by the producers of the film (hence the fact that no one felt authorized to talk to me about it on my arrival). If Brando is here, it is solely thanks to the personal bond that Johnny Depp maintains with him. A sort of surprise present. The information, furthermore, hasn't even had time to spread to the media. There is no pressure, no paparazzi, not even a contract to honor. Total freedom.

It isn't until the very last moment, once the setting up with the stand-in is finished, that Marlon Brando comes onto the set. To avoid useless fatigue but also no doubt to preserve his concentration as much as possible. From the moment he appears, silence imposes itself and the crewmembers don't express themselves except in whispers.

In the film, Brando plays the mysterious producer of snuff films, to whom Rafael is going to give his life in exchange for a few thousand dollars. A relatively short scene (a dozen minutes) but of an extreme intensity. Each time, it is filmed in its entirety but from different angles and with different focus. After yesterday's wide angles, Depp today films tighter shots.

On the video screen, Brando has taken his place in the wheelchair in which his character is accoutred. While the makeup artist does some retouching on his cheekbones, he murmurs some incomprehensible words, not replying except in monosyllables to the assistants who ask him to adjust his position. So that he appears in frame (a very close shot of his face), his chin forward, his lips parted, his gaze slightly downcast. Brando makes the memory of all his past films rise up abruptly. As if portraits of all his characters appeared at once, complete and side by side.

It could seem frustrating not to be on the set and not to be able to observe the scene except through a screen. But it also has advantages: that which is seen on the screen corresponds exactly to what the camera sees. One is thus placed in the heart of the film. One can also appreciate the way Marlon Brando's face literally lights up when the clapper sounds. Till then closed, tight, wincing, even expressing a feeling of irritation, Brando suddenly shakes himself free like a lion springing from his cage. For more than ten minutes, he evokes all at the same time the fear of death, the sense of sacrifice, the value of money, the spiritual quest, literally hypnotizing his young interlocutor like a serpent dancing before its prey. Beyond the spoken words, Brando expresses an emotional richness of a dumbfounding intensity. Laughing and crying, embodying equally compassion and contempt, comfort and cruelty, desire and disgust.... Face to face with him, Johnny Depp seems like one bewitched. The end clapper. Two other takes of the same quality are shot without stopping. The whole thing doesn't last more than 40 minutes. Brando retires to his trailer. Johnny Depp, surrounded by the whole crew, watches the video recording. Everyone is flabbergasted.

Observing Marlon Brando in front of a camera you learn more about his acting than from all the books that have been written about him. It's a little like finding yourself in Picasso's studio at the moment when he paints one of his canvases. The feeling of touching on a unique, incontestable truth. Being a witness also permits you to confirm certain facets of the myth. Like his way of taking possession of his character, devouring it, digesting it, subjecting it to his measure. Like his unparalleled faculty for never repeating himself. With him, each take is completely different from the last. Not better, not less good, different. He changes the rhythm, skips one sentence, expands another, changes the meaning of a third by giving it, with just a single intonation in his voice or a knitting of his brows, a new, unsuspected significance. Brando seems to improvise every second, open doors, continually disclose new perspectives, completely unforeseeable. With the suppleness, dexterity and assurance of an acrobat.

Incidentally, the observer on the set also is able to confirm the rumor about his lines being whispered to him through an earphone. Set up off in a third room also equipped with a monitor, Mary and Carolyn, his two assistants, do whisper the lines to Brando as they come up (Brando even bawls them out in the middle of a rehearsal for not articulating clearly enough!) Any other actor having recourse to such a crude trick would be laughed at. Not Marlon Brando. Quite the contrary. For him, memory seems to be nothing more than a tool that he despises haughtily. What is a brush without the painter's hand that holds it?

>After the lunch break, the crew sets up in an adjacent street to film a simple connecting shot. It's then that Carolyn comes to see me. "Get ready, Marlon will see you now for your interview." I couldn't believe my ears. Shock. Why had Brando, who hadn't granted more than three interviews in twenty years, decided to give me one without my even asking? Out of friendship for Johnny Depp who had recommended me to him? To show to what an extent he wanted to associate himself with this film? Precisely because he didn't feel he had to do it? Whatever it might be, the interview didn't take place as quickly as expected. A few minutes later, in fact, Carolyn told me that before meeting with me, Brando first wanted me to sign a fax drawn up by his lawyers and that that would no doubt put the interview off till tomorrow. Fax? Lawyers? I preferred to acquiesce without asking any questions.

About ten o'clock, the purr of the Lincoln is heard. The same little ceremony as this morning, but in reverse. Brando, whose work is done, disappears into the night.

Friday, October 11

In the beginning, it wasn't planned that the character of McCarthy would reappear at the end of the film. It is Brando who insists on making him return, even if it means filming not two days but six.... Brando seems to be made like that: he occupies space, he monopolizes things, he inhabits them with such intensity that it is impossible to resist him. From already having worked with him, Depp must surely have learned that. For when I had asked him, at his house, if he was nervous at the idea of directing Brando, his response had been immediate: "You don't direct Marlon Brando." Then he had added: "With him, I feel like a student facing a great teacher. I have everything to learn and I have total confidence in him."

In fact, on the set, Johnny Depp is extremely attentive to Brando, exerting himself to make his stay as comfortable as possible. Seeing them together, Depp and Brando seem to maintain with one another a great complicity, indeed, even a certain tenderness.

However that may be, it must be admitted that after Brando's arrival, the rhythm of filming has slackened off. If, till then, Depp had scrupulously respected the schedule, after a few days, the delay builds up. It is six o'clock in the evening and no scene has been shot today. Depp and Brando have spent the day in the trailer, rewriting the final scene. To be sure, by his presence and his involvement, Brando has pulled the film into depths it no doubt would not have reached without him, but the recuperation time has disrupted it.

At the end of the afternoon, Carolyn gives me the fax from the lawyers that I have to sign before the interview, a very formal fax that forbids me to publish the interview anywhere but in Studio or to modify the words exchanged on pain of paying the sum of $100,000. Obviously, I sign, even if these unusual proceedings seem to me a bit out of proportion. Does Brando want to thus underline the exceptional nature of this interview or are they really this worried that his words might be distorted? Both probably, for Brando evinces an exacerbated sensitivity where his image is concerned. Thus he has had all photographic equipment banned during the shoot, including rehearsals. And though the set photographer, by dint of insistence, finally succeeds, this afternoon, in getting a three-minute photo session, Brando immediately takes possession of the film to get it developed himself.

It is already night when Brando enters the set for the first time that day. In this final scene -- of which I won't reveal the contents -- Depp and Brando have a long dialogue together filmed by two cameras in reverse field. Their faces appear in close-up on the two video monitors. Brando, once more, gives an incredible performance.
He invents at every moment, never fixed, always unstable. No one can predict what he will do the next second, a fortiori his partner can't. It is perhaps what makes his presence so special: he absorbs attention, continually raises the level of play and obliges his partners to follow him, forgetting themselves. This time, two takes suffice. It is 9:30 when the black Lincoln leaves the shoot. "Don't worry. Marlon will see you Monday," Carolyn whispers to me before leaving.

Monday, October 14

I came for three or four days and it's now three weeks I've been here. Since that eclipse of the moon on my arrival in the desert, not a single cloud has crossed the California sky. The sun is imperial, paradisiacal.

This morning, Marlon Brando wears a cap, tennis shoes (?)(baskets) and a windbreaker. He has a relaxed air. Rather than bury himself immediately in his trailer on getting out of the Lincoln, he takes the time to exchange a few words with the technicians. Johnny Depp comes to greet him a l'americaine, with a long hug, and the two men talk a moment in the sun. That famous final scene, which had posed such difficulties in the writing, now seems resolved, and the two days that remain before the end of filming ought to be more than sufficient to shoot it. Johnny Depp, to whom I have hardly spoken these past few days, comes to see me. Though he of course knows that Brando has offered me an interview, he seems to have been as surprised as I. He swears he never asked him for anything like it. "I told you, Marlon is an extraordinary being." Recalling these last days spent with Brando, his eyes light up and he has no words to say what he feels. "I saw the rushes of what was shot and what he's done is incredible. Marlon is an angel. My guardian angel."

It is 3:30 when Marlon Brando has me join him in the trailer.