Brando Is Finally Back--or So MGM Hopes

ABC’s Barbara Walters is dying to interview him.

CBS’ “West 57th” is dangling a 1-hour, prime-time special if only he will talk.

Meanwhile, executives at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures will be relieved if he just manages to deliver an uninterrupted week’s work on “A Dry White Season,” a film that has been waiting for him since it started shooting in April.

Yes, Marlon Brando is back--almost.

After 8 years away from the screen, the 64-year-old actor/legend is finally scheduled to begin shooting next week on a tightly closed set at London’s Pinewood Studios. When that wraps, moreover, he has a second picture in the works for as early as November.

According to one account, Brando has already arrived in London from his island home in Tahiti, and is rehearsing his brief role as a South African lawyer who helps to expose the horrors of apartheid following the brutal slaying of a young black boy in police custody.

According to others, MGM production president Jay Kanter is also on the scene, together with producer Paula Weinstein and Martinique-born director Euzhan Palcy. They are supposedly grappling with rewrites and generally trying to wrap up the film--most of which was shot in Zimbabwe, and was completed, except for the Brando sequence, weeks ago.

The studio’s biggest job, however, may be keeping the press at bay. “We’re not allowed to talk,” said MGM publicist Claudia Gray. “The production people are afraid that everybody on earth will be on top of them next week.”

According to Gray, “every, single (celebrity-oriented) TV show, none left out”--and dozens of publications--have been dogging MGM for interviews with Brando ever since the studio announced his return to the screen last year.

“I’ve been after Brando for nine months,” said one CBS News producer, who confirmed that the network might devote up to an hour of its prime-time schedule to the actor if he chose to speak.

But hasn’t rival Walters been chasing him too?

“Not as hard as I have. She won’t get him,” snapped the producer, who declined to be identified. Walters’ publicist refused to comment.

So Brando remains big news, even if he doesn’t guarantee big box office in the 1980s.

Indeed, the actor’s last film, “The Formula,” released by MGM in 1980, was a disappointment, and his two previous performances in “Superman” (1978) and “Apocalypse Now” (1979) are best remembered for their brevity and expense.

For his “Superman” role, Brando received $3 million for a precious few minutes on screen. Of his slightly longer appearance as Kurtz in “Apocalypse,” one critic wrote: “Wide gaps in the story line (are) merely filled in with Brando’s incomprehensibility.”

Despite the recent record, however, producers have continued to stalk Brando like so many Ahabs in pursuit of the white whale.

“I know he sees a lot of projects,” said producer David Puttnam, who has spent time at the actor’s home on the Tahitian atoll of Tetiaroa, and who has tried, without success, to lure him 1650549611He generally seems to read what you send him, and then says: “No, thanks, I’m not ready to go back to work yet.”

Apparently, Brando agreed to work on “A Dry White Season,” based on a novel by South African writer Andre Brink, largely because he agreed with its political message. But it probably also helped that MGM’s Kanter, a former MCA talent agent who represented the actor during his heyday, remains one of Brando’s closest friends, and a principal conduit in his on-again, off-again dealings with the film community.

Reached in London, producer Weinstein would only say that she, Palcy, and Kanter “jointly” persuaded Brando to take the role. (As it happened, David Puttnam had originally planned to produce “A Dry White Season” for Warner Bros., but never talked with Brando about it, and stepped aside in favor of MGM after he signed on for his abortive stint as Columbia Pictures chairman in 1986.)

The studio declined to say how much it was paying Brando. Terry Christensen, the actor’s attorney, declined to discuss salary but said that Brando plans to donate his fee to an anti-apartheid group.

Christensen further confirmed that his client is going ahead with plans to play the lead as a CIA agent who comes out of retirement for some tricky free-lance work in “Jericho,” a thriller based on a screenplay written by the actor, and co-produced by Brando and longtime associate Elliot Kastner.

Details about “Jericho” remain sketchy, and Kastner--who has produced at least four Brando films, including “Missouri Breaks”--didn’t return repeated calls.

According to one Kastner associate, however, the movie will begin shooting at a Mexican location in November, and Brando will be guaranteed at least $4 million for his work. The movie will be directed by Donald Cammell (“Performance,” “White of the Eye”), who once wrote a still-unproduced screenplay based on a Brando-invented story called “Fan Tan,” about a Chinese gambling game.

Despite the actor’s stature, the movie doesn’t have a distribution agreement with any major studio--because Brando, according to the Kastner associate, insisted that it be finished before it was shopped. “He wants to deal from a position of strength,” said the associate.

Says Christensen: “Marlon gets inspired periodically to do movies. Fortunately for the industry, he’s now in that mode.”