An Offing He Couldn't Refuse

Or
Apocalypse Cow

Or
Heart of Darkness

Or
Last Taco in Paris

Or
Streetcar Named Death
(Props to Tammy and Jennifer)
Marlon Brando, believed by many to be the greatest actor ever born in Omaha, Nebraska, died Thursday at the age of 80, choking on an orange after being chased by a small child with a leaf sprayer. A proponent of the Method style, wherein actors fully embody their performance, Brando had spent the last 10 years of his life preparing for a role as a crazy recluse who eats anything that can’t outrun him. Sadly, Orson Welles: The Transformers Years may never be completed. His best known early performances were sensitive brutes in A Streetcar Named Desire, The Wild Ones and On the Waterfront, and his Don Vito Corleone from The Godfather was one of cinema’s most memorable characters. Known as a problem child on the set, he objected to the studios’ choice of actor to play Sonny Corleone: Burt Reynolds, for which film-goers owe him a deep debt. In his later years his acting was overshadowed by his eccentricities, such as an inability or refusal to learn his lines, instead having lines written left on the set or printed on a baby’s diaper, or having them read to him through an earpiece, and his habit of swallowing anything that would fit into his mouth. Still, only Brando could play Superman’s father, earning him a cool $4 million for about 15 minutes’ work, and no one could parody Brando better than Brando, as he did in 1990’s The Freshman.

And as an aside to my fellow grim peepers, he was 80 years old and was one hamhock away from a home visit by Dick Gregory, but no one had him listed. We suck.