Six Degrees of Separation: from Marlon Brando to…

Marlon Brando 6°

… Diablo Cody  
Marlon Brando played one of the most famously/notoriously loved fictional underworld mafia heads of the big screen, Don Vito Corleone, in The Godfather (1972), where Al Pacino (1) played his youngest son who carries on the family legacy, in the latter two sequels of the Godfather films, and Pacino later played a cocky blind man in Scent of a Woman (1992), where Chris O’Donnell (2) played a paid companion to Pacino, and O’Donnell appeared in School Ties (1992), which saw Matt Damon (3) in a villainous mode, who along with best friend Ben Affleck (4) created Good Will Hunting (1997), by working on the screenplay together, for which they won an Oscar in the ‘Best Original Screenplay’ category; and Affleck is married to actress Jennifer Garner (5), whom we saw in a sophisticated motherly mould, keen on adopting a child, in Juno (2007), which was a farcical entertainment with a fresh take on teen-pregnancy, written by a stripper Diablo Cody (6), who just wrote a brilliant script/screenplay after she completed her memoir on being a stripper, the result being a great movie and well deserved Oscar win for Cody.

… James Dean
Marlon Brando starred opposite Vivien Leigh (1), in a movie based on a Tennessee Williams’ (2) play, A Streetcar named Desire (1951), as did the violet eyed Hollywood starlet, Elizabeth Taylor (3), in another film based on another Williams’ play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), and Taylor, alongside Rock Hudson (4) starred in Giant (1956), which was loosely based on the real-life Texan oil-giant, Glenn McCarthy (5), who struck oil 38 times, between 1931 & 1942, and it was young actor James Dean (6) who portrayed this oil-tycoon, in this movie; and Dean died soon after he completed this film from a car crash, aged 23.

… Halle Berry
Marlon Brando played famed Roman General, Mark Antony (1), in the movie Julius Caesar (1953), and Antony was the lover of Queen Cleopatra (2), who was portrayed by Claudette Colbert (3), in Cleopatra (1934), and Colbert appeared alongside Clark Gable (4), in the light hearted romantic comedy, It Happened One Night (1934), and Gable starred in the one of the greatest Hollywood epics ever, Gone With the Wind (1939), for which Hattie McDaniel (5), won an Oscar for ‘Best Supporting Actress’ in 1940, for her portrayal of the likable, strong willed house servant/slave ‘Mammy’, being the first black/Afro-American actress to win a trophy, and the first (and only till date) Afro-American actress to bag the ‘Best Actress’ trophy, at the Oscars, was Halle Berry (6), in 2002, for Monsters Ball (2001).

MB 6°

… Oscar Wilde
Marlon Brando acted in one of the most controversial films to come out in the 70’s, Bernardo Bertolucci’s (1) Ultimo tango a Parigi – Last Tango in Paris (1972), which brought about a fifteen year rift between Brando and Bertolucci, and three decades later Bertolucci, directed The Dreamers (2003), one of best films made about film buffs, where one of the film buffs was played by French actor Louis Garrel (2), who appeared in the controversial, Ma Mère (2004), about incestuous relationship between a mother and a son, and the mother was played by Isabelle Huppert (3), who starred in the existentialist comedy, I Heart Huckabees (2004), which also starred British actor Jude Law (4), and Law played Sir Alfred ‘Bosie’ Douglas (5), in the Bio-pic Wilde (1997), and Bosie was the lover of playwright/novelist/poet Oscar Wilde (6), on whose love story and subsequent trial, this movie is based on.

… Michelle Monaghan
Marlon Brando appeared in the Charles Chaplin (1) directed comedy A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), an entire film set in the confines of a cruise ship, which co-starred Sophia Loren (2), who appeared in Get Rita (1975), a story about an Italian mafia leader obsessed with Hollywood starlet Rita Hayworth (3), and Hayworth was featured in, and was relevant to the plot of, The Shawshank Redemption (1994), which starred Tim Robbins (4), who appeared in Mystic River (2003), which was based on a novel by Dennis Lehane (5), as was Gone Baby Gone (2007), in which the female lead was played by Michelle Monaghan (6).

… Imran Khan
Marlon Brando starred in the first instalment of the epic Godfather trilogy, The Godfather (1972), directed by the renowned film director, Francis Ford Coppola (1), who directed actress Bridget Fonda (2), in a miniscule role as a newspaper reporter, in the last instalment of the series of films based on this fictional mafia family, The Godfather III (1990), and Fonda starred in Camilla (1994), which was directed by Deepa Mehta (3), who also directed the ‘elemental’ trilogy, of whose the second instalment, 1947-Earth (1998), was based on a novel by Bapsi Sidhwa (4), entitled The Ice Candy Man, and the ‘Ice Candy Man’ was portrayed by Aamir Khan (5) in the film, whose nephew happens to be Bollywoods young blood, Imran Khan (6), whose not much of an actor yet, and whose popularity is solely for his good looks; but considering the fact that he’s been in the film Industry for only six years or so, there’s still scope for improvement.

The Godfather NSFS  Nuwan Sen’s Film Sense ()

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