An offer you can't refuse ... Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront
Marlon Brando has been in spirit on the Croisette. Earlier this week, there was a Cannes screening of TCM's new documentary about the legendary actor. The film features contributions from Brando's friends and relatives as well as from such actors as Al Pacino and Johnny Depp.
One question piquing festival-goers' curiosity is just where Brando's possessions - including papers, scripts, signed contracts, 16mm home movies and other archival material - are going to be lodged. Producer Mike Medavoy, co-executor of the actor's estate, has raised the possibility that most of this material may be lodged with the American Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences.
"There is a locker full of things that he left that still needs to be gone through," Medavoy says. No final decision will be made until it has been established what exactly is there. "Until we sort it all out, it is hard for me to tell."
In the meantime, Medavoy will be trying to keep the snoopers and leeches - "those people who live off of writing about Marlon Brando", as he puts it - at bay.
CMG Worldwide, which was appointed in January this year to represent the licensing and merchandising for the Marlon Brando Living Trust, is still negotiating what revenues are due to the estate from such Brando films as The Island of Doctor Moreau, on which the actor had a percentage of the profits.
"It has been a really long haul," Medavoy sighs as he contemplates the Herculean task of tidying up the late actor's affairs following his death in July 2004. "Our objective is to maximise the estate. My dream would be to set up the children (of Brando) in a way in which they would be comfortable."
The producer acknowledged that it is impossible to calculate what the value of Brando's estate will eventually be. "We have got to do the best we can to make sure that they (the children and heirs) are satisfied we have done the best we could."
Medavoy, who produced David Fincher's Zodiac, became close to Brando in the latter part of the actor's life. "I was on a flight to Capri when he died. His doctor told me his last words were 'I want to talk to Mike,'" Medavoy recalls.
The Hollywood producer acknowledges that he felt "trepidation" before taking on the task of unpicking the actor's tangled affairs. "I am doing it because I promised to do it. I want to think of myself as a person whose word is worth something."
"I knew Marlon well over the last 10 years of his life," Medavoy continues. "I didn't need to be his executor. I didn't ask to be his executor. After he felt comfortable that I would do the right things - or try to do the right things - that is the way he decided to go."
