An Offer They Couldn’t Refuse: Remembering Marlon Brando and a Film Called The Freshman

The half-light shines softly on the old Don’s face, this mountain of a man seated behind a small, unassuming desk in a corner of the “Members Only” Italian social club. He wears a tailored black suit over his giant shoulders and a slight smile across his massive cheeks, a telephone and bowl of walnuts easily within reach, as a haunting sonata’s refrain plays softly through the shadows. And though his demeanor is kind, almost welcoming, from just a brief movement of his hand or a fleeting flinch of a facial muscle, it’s abundantly clear: This person before us is the very picture of power.

He looks like someone we’ve seen before. We’re sure of it.

The camera pans now, lingering on a worn portrait of Mussolini and an ancient cameriere polishing bottles at the bar. The shot comes slowly into focus on a young man, fresh-faced and curious…it must be Michael Corleone, home at last from Sici—Matthew Broderick?

Wait a second. Where are we? That’s Marlon Brando at the desk, alright, but this ain’t Don Vito; it’s some hack named Jimmy the Toucan. And that is Bruno Kirby, who was in Part II, right? This ain’t The Godfather, no… But I didn’t know until this day, that it was…Andrew Bergman, all along? It’s The Freshman!

In 1990, Bergman, co-writer of Blazing Saddles and writer/director of classic caper comedy The In-Laws, knocked the film world for a loop when he unleashed a flick starring a previously unseen-for-10-years Marlon Brando in a razor-sharp, outlandishly hilarious self-parodying role as a New York “importer” named Carmine Sabatini. He looked like Don Corleone, he talked like Don Corleone—the only thing missing was that whole horse-head-in-the-bed thing. Granted, Don Sabatini—aka Jimmy the Toucan—ruled his roost with a little bit more humor than Vito, but goddamnit if the resemblance wasn’t remarkable. The audience wasn’t the only one meant to pick up on this, as N.Y.U. film school newbie—yes, a freshman—Clark Kellogg, played by a post-Bueller Broderick, stares slack-jawed in awe of the mighty Brando. You can’t help but wonder: Is Broderick even acting?

We knew Marlon Brando was a lot of things—Oscar-winner, island-hopper, Native American rights advocate, greatest actor of his generation—but until this role, no one really knew his hilarity. Joined by a dream-team ensemble cast—Broderick, Kirby, Penelope Ann Miller, Frank Whaley, Jon Polito, B.D. Wong, and fellow Oscar-winner Maximillian Schell—Brando positively radiates. And he wasn’t alone.

The story is as such: Clark Kellogg moves to the Big Apple from Vermont to attend film school. Mere minutes into city life, Kellogg is “victimized in a moment of weakness” by a Sicilian scammer, Vic (Kirby). A stunned Clark is greeted on campus by his pretentious roommate, Steve Bushak (Whaley), and self-righteous Godfather--buff professor, Fleeber, only to re-encounter Vic and demand his stolen possessions back. Vic, having misappropriated the goods, gets Clark a job with Vic’s Uncle Carmine, an offer that Kellogg simply cannot refuse. Encountering a disobedient, mall-terrorizing, would-be-supper komodo dragon; marriage proposals from Carmine’s lovely daughter Tina (Miller); Sabatini’s endangered species-zookeeper associates-slash-gourmet chefs; crooked Fish & Wildlife feds (Polito) and a “Maggie’s Farm”-crooning Bert Parks, Clark is the lone straight-man in this mad, mad world. His only way out is to surrender.
Of course, a film as zany as this couldn’t come without its share of off-screen madness, too. Inestimable fanfare, unexplainable behavior and tragedy seemed to follow Brando everywhere he went. But the strangest event came the day after shooting wrapped, when Brando gave an interview to a Toronto newspaper declaring The Freshman “the biggest turkey of [his] career,” devastating those actors with whom he had shared so much. He would later apologize, but the damage had been done. The film opened slowly and eventually faded from memory. As Don Vito himself said, “Look how they massacred my boy.”

But as Brando’s other Don says, “I don’t like it when they go down,” so here FILTER speaks to Bergman, Broderick, Miller, Whaley and Polito to revisit this special landmark of comedy, pay tribute to a legend, and leave the swirling rumors to finally sleep with the fishes.

A Conversation with Writer/Director Andrew Bergman

People seem to have a hard time figuring out why The Freshman didn’t become a huge success.

Andrew Bergman: It has a pretty good following. It’s not Blazing Saddles, but it opened up originally in about six or eight theaters and did great. I think it fell between the stools at Tri-Star. They opened it wide in the second week, against Presumed Innocent and Problem Child, so we lost the adults and we lost the kids. We were somewhere in between. But you know, the beauty of cable and DVDs, they have their own life. The movie was profitable; but when it all comes out in the wash, if it affects people, it affects people.

Where did the idea for the story come from?

There was a clipping in a newspaper about a mafia guy in Seattle who’d been arrested for importing endangered species into the country. Not to eat them, obviously, but to sell them. And then I got the idea of this father-son thing, and the kid’s going to film school and studying The Godfather and runs into a guy that is in fact importing endangered species. So, the two things crossed, and I had a movie. It was still a very odd movie to write. I could paint myself into one corner after another.

What was the toughest part?

How to get out of it. It always is. You pile insanity on top of insanity but someone’s got to wrap it up. We hadn’t thought of Brando originally because we didn’t even know if he was still in the business. He had known who I was and had called me a few years before about some other project, so we decided, “What the hell? Let’s send it to him and see what happens.” It really wasn’t written for someone who would look like Don Corleone; I was hoping maybe Pacino or Joe Mantegna would do it and we’d fill out the Godfather cross-pollination. But Brando read it and said yes immediately. From there, casting the rest of the movie was very simple.

You get your wish list.

You get whoever you want. Everyone wants to work with him. The guy was just a god to every actor on the face of the earth. Laurence Olivier wanted to do it, too. If he hadn’t been ill, he wanted to play Larry London.

So you had to settle for Maximillian Schell. Bummer. So now you’ve got Brando; do you rewrite anything?

We rewrote all the resemblance stuff, and to rewrite a script knowing he’s doing it was some kind of fun. That was truly a wonderful experience.

Were you able to calmly say, “OK, I’m writing a part in my movie for Marlon Brando,” or was it still a huge, nerve-wracking thrill?

What made you nervous was that you’d fuck it up, but that’s with every movie you do. It would be funny, and having him as a resource was sort of like having a nuclear weapon at your disposal. He was really great. Until about two-thirds into the movie, when his daughter was in a car wreck and that really messed him up. He wasn’t the same after that. But, until that point he worked his butt off and was a delight to one and all.

Did he lend any of his experience to the younger guys?

It’s just playing off him, just watching him. You can’t be him anymore than if you listen to Mozart and say, “Boy, I’d like to write opera like that.” It’s just a whole different thing. He was incredibly generous to the other actors. He really gave everything he had.

How was working with Matthew Broderick?

He was more of a name than Marlon at the time, in terms of box office and credibility to studios, and he did wonderfully. He really got it. He said yes to the picture just on the basis that I showed him pictures of me and Marlon eating together. He couldn’t believe that Brando was actually doing the movie. I said, “Here, look at these. Believe me now?”

Your movie is also such a satire of film school; are you a product of such a place?

I’m not a product of film school. I’m a product of Academia. I have a Ph.D. in American History, so I did my dues in graduate school. No, it was just delicious to me to have this guy studying The Godfather and have the reality and the illusion bumping up against each other. The shot where Marlon walks out of the social club and dissolves into the actual clip of Godfather II… That’s my favorite cut in the whole movie. “What’s wrong with this picture? What’s real and what’s the movie?” And Paul Benedict was so hilarious as Fleeber. We’ve all had Fleebers, whether in film school or some other cause—the guy who makes you read his hideous articles. I couldn’t resist.

Do you know if Coppola ever got to see The Freshman?

I’m sure he did. We have the same editor. I never spoke to him about it, but I’m sure he saw it. I certainly did see The Godfather quite a bit.

Most of the cast of The Freshman have also starred in dramatic roles. Do you think that is a trait necessary to play good comedy?

Comedy’s about acting. It has to be played like it’s drama. If the people onscreen are laughing, the people in the audience are not. I worked with George Burns years ago, who said, “I never used comedians on my series because they’re not funny.” Exactly. You can’t put a hat on a hat. You have to act as if what’s happening is the most reasonable thing in the world.

Do you think Brando had a funnier role in his career?

He didn’t do much comedy. I don’t think he was funnier in anything. He did things that were witty, but he didn’t see himself as a comedic actor. And it was never that he was doing anything funny; he just was funny.

How did you react to his initial, very negative comments about The Freshman?

I called him and said, “What in the fuck are you doing?” He said, “Oh, it’d be great for publicity.” He had no clue. He had an enormous self-destructive streak, and I think he had such a remarkable time making the movie that he had to foul his nest a little bit. If you look at the movie, that’s not a person having a bad time. You can always tell.

So did he renege on his own accord, or was he encouraged?

No, we told him and they issued a statement, which ran in like one out of the 10 newspapers that had carried the original story. Nobody wants to hear good news. So that was the stupidest goddamn thing, but I don’t think it ultimately hurt the business of the movie. Matthew was really outraged. I just chalked it up to the meshuga’s madness.

When you look back now, where does this film fit in your career?

If anybody cares about my career they can figure that out. I think about the wonderful experience of making it. You try to make a few movies in your life that stick to the wall and I think that was one of them. The difference between the ones that work and the ones that don’t is razor thin, so you just gotta do your work and hope for the best.

And cast Marlon Brando…

And cast Marlon. That’s the thing; if you have a good script and the right cast, you’re two-thirds of the way there. Then you gotta get lucky.

A Conversation with Matthew Broderick

So did Andrew Bergman just call you and say, “Wanna be in this movie with Marlon Brando?”

Matthew Broderick: I think it came very traditionally to my agent and Brando was the big hook. Everyone came running. At that point, I didn’t know much about Andy’s work, but I thought the script was hilarious and went to his office to chat. I had to embarrassingly say, “Well, doesn’t Brando always get cast then pull out? Is he really doing it?” I almost needed some kind of proof. It seemed like it wasn’t real, but it was.

Would you have done the film if Brando hadn’t been cast?

I don’t know that I would’ve been smart enough to do it. But I do think it would’ve been worth doing. To do anything with Andy is a really good opportunity.

Was there any difficulty in giving a convincing performance as a college freshman, considering you were 27 or 28 at the time?

That was my only hesitation, to tell you the truth, because I felt old. I felt like I was backtracking, playing a student. I was trying to move out of that role.

What about the script struck you from your initial reading?

There were some very off-kilter jokes in it. It was very original. The assistant who collects the dragon from us says, “Did this bad boy eat candy?” They changed it to “Did this bad boy go swimming?” because they couldn’t get the lizard to eat candy. And then my character says, “It’s a good joke; very unusual.” It’s a great line.

Tell me about meeting Brando.

It was at a reading in Toronto in Andy’s apartment, and Marlon showed up in a velour sweatsuit, a cowboy hat and big sunglasses. And because he was late, when we opened the door, he crawled in to apologize. He was immediately friendly and talkative. Nobody had any idea what was going to come through that door. The night that we knew Marlon was coming, Bruno Kirby waited in the lobby of the hotel with a newspaper over his face, like a detective, so he could see Marlon arrive. At first it was all about meeting Marlon, but when I look back on the movie, a lot of it was about the script. And also Bruno, who became a very dear friend, and Penny, who I had worked with twice before. Frank was so freakin’ funny, too. It really was quite a cast.

Did you identify with your character?

Clark is a subtle character. It’s a bit of a blank slate, a character for stuff to happen to. However, there are lovely little moments in there, like the scene at the dorm room with Marlon, about Clark’s father. But it was something that read as the person that all these funny people come and go through and you’re just there. I did a lot of those parts and am always a little scared of that, but in retrospect, it’s a pretty well thought-out character.

How was working with the “komodo dragon,” which was actually a monitor lizard, right?

Right. There were four or five lizards, all for different things. One would run; one would just sit there; one you could pick up. The lizards we handled were very docile, but they had a little one that was insane and it would run like a lunatic in the mall. It was supposed to run down a hall, but it just ran straight into a Sharper Image window, smacking its head over and over again trying to go through the glass with pretty insane fury. You could tell they had a lot of power in them, but the ones we handled did nothing. They were totally gentle.

Although I heard there was a minor incident with one.

Yeah, the lizard kept going under a car seat and nobody could get it out, and one of the handlers came out with a wicked gash on his thumb. He was dribbling blood everywhere, and he said, “I cut my hand on his mouth.” He didn’t want to tell us that it bit him.

Are the dragon scenes the most memorable for you? Or, perhaps the scenes with Brando in the club?

Those club scenes were an incredible pleasure to do. In one of those scenes with me, Bruno and Marlon, something happened where Marlon was late. We had hours hanging around waiting for him, and they moved the picture of Mussolini for lighting reasons. I remember Bruno having a nervous breakdown, because it was not where he had it in his head. He almost went into a rage about it. But I think it was the nervousness of knowing you were going to shoot a scene with Marlon Brando. Beyond the event and the stunt-ness of Brando spoofing himself, there was also a really good movie there. Sometimes I think it just gets thought of for the fact that it’s Brando making fun of The Godfather. I don’t think it’s just that.

During your scenes with him, did you get a sense of, “This man really is the greatest actor of his generation”?

Whether it was in my head or not, yes, I did. I was gobsmacked by him. I thought he was the most interesting person to watch, ever. He was fantastically good, and he gave me a good tip once while doing the scene in the skating rink. I said, “I think I might just stand this time. Do you mind?” And he said, “No, of course not. Stay standing if you want.” And I said, “I’m gonna tell the director,” and he said, “Don’t tell Andy, tell the camera operator. You’re just making trouble. If Andy doesn’t like it, he’ll say so. Don’t ask permission; you’re just going to make it more complicated for everybody.” It was a very good piece of advice.

Did he often spout wisdom like that?

Sometimes, but then sometimes the wisdom was crazy stuff about how fruit flies multiply faster.

What do you think is the main reason this film is so special?

It has a brilliant idea of a performance within a performance. There’s just something strange about Marlon doing that part in another movie that’s very interesting. But then, beyond that, it has a million very original, weird things in it, from the lizard to Maximillian Schell singing, “My heart swims in blood” to eating endangered species to Bert Parks. Bert was extremely happy to be there, to be making fun of himself with another person making fun of himself. It was very unique. I don’t know how Andy came up with it.

Bergman said he didn’t write the part for Marlon; he was thinking of Joe Mantegna or somebody like that.

I forgot that. That’s absolutely right, and in fact, I think my memory went wrong. I didn’t think it was Marlon when I first read it. Carmine was originally a sleazier guy, and Marlon made it much more elegant. He would make Andy take out lines like, “You sit in traffic with your dick in your hands.” That line was given to Bruno, because Brando wanted to make Carmine an old-school, elegant, Godfather Don.

Had you seen the finished film before Marlon’s unfortunate article came out?

No, that was right before we finished shooting. I remember waking up and seeing the newspaper with a huge picture of Marlon Brando with a brace around his neck, saying, “It’s too bad I’m retiring with a stinker.” It was quite painful, but I was aware, as were some of us, that it was a money dispute. He felt he hadn’t been paid some overage or something, I don’t remember the details, but he threatened them, “I’ll badmouth the film unless…” It was kind of blackmail. I don’t know who was right; I’m not taking sides, but he was in some epic battle with the studio, as he often was. And he made truth of his threat, and then he got paid, and then he did the article that said the movie was great. It was nothing to do with the movie. But when somebody says something like that, it’s very hard to change it.

Nobody reads the retraction. Did he apologize?

He left me a very long message, and then I spoke to him. He told me he didn’t mean a word of it and he hoped I knew that… Which was nice, but I couldn’t very well broadcast that. I was so aware that it was just a money fight that I never took it personally.

Well, it certainly seems like the film has lived on, regardless.

I’m glad people still appreciate the film, because I do. I just loved doing it. I’m glad I did it.