I am currently reading a fascinating book by Peter Bart called “Infamous Players”. I reproduce an extract:
“[To surreptitiously test Marlon Brando,] Coppola tried a shrewd … ploy. He went
to Brando’s house on Mulholland Drive, atop Hollywood, with a skeleton crew, telling
the actor that he wanted to shoot some trial footage in an effort to get a ‘take’
on the character of the Godfather. He emphasized that this would not be a screen
test: he was testing some equipment and also some character points.
“Brando, attired in a kimono to conceal his girth, welcomed the young director.
He had read the book again and felt that, whoever played the part, the actor should
speak in a slurred manner — he had been shot in the throat at one time and his
soft gravelly voice would carry more authority.
To Coppola’s delight, Brando had started to get into the part. He stuffed Kleenex
into his mouth, causing his jaw to jut out. He blackened his hair with shoe polish
and put on a jacket with a rolled-back collar. When he started speaking his lines,
Marlon Brando had become the Godfather.”
After having posted my LBC blog post Nicknames, I opened my mail box and found an email from Murugesan. This is the first ever mail to me from him from his Blackberry and apparently he has registered me there as God father Ramana Rajgopaul in the address book!
Now I have got another nickname! I wonder what I will look like if I too stuffed some kleenex in my mouth! Okay, here is a challenge to Mayo who features in my earlier post and/or to Cheerful Monk. Photoshop that possibility and let me have the result and I shall write another post featuring that.