My 9/11 Story: Apocalypse Then

20 years ago, when the world was traumatized by events of 9/11, I was working at a Borders Books & Music (remember that chain?). But I want to start my story by going back a few days before the tragedy hit. My birthday is September 9th, which was a Sunday in 2001. The only thing I had planned was to go see the then newly released APOCALYPSE NOW REDUX, an extended version of Francis Ford Copolla’s Vietnam classic.

I love the original, and was anxious to see the new material, but the problem was that nobody wanted to go with me. I even had a friend say, “You’re going to see APOCALYPSE NOW on your Birthday?!!?” I called a woman I had dated a few times, but she sounded hungover and wasn’t up to going to see the film. I didn’t tell her it was my Birthday as I thought it might come off as a manipulative way to guilt her into joining me so I said something like “Okay, see you soon,” and accepted that I was going alone to the bloody picture show. (Years later she told me that I should’ve told her it was my Birthday, but que será, será)

 

I went to see the movie at the Carolina Theatre in downtown Chapel Hill, with a small audience of 20 people or so. It was my first time seeing APOCALYPSE NOW on the big screen, and I enjoyed the hypnotic spell it conjured, the swirling sound mix, and the intense performances by Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Dennis Hopper, Robert Duvall, and Larry Fishburne (that’s right, Lawrence went by Larry back then).

Driving home after the film, I saw an unfamiliar vehicle ahead of me. It was a truck with a green helicopter on its flatbed. I sped up to see it better and was astonished to see lettering on the side of the helicopter, “N.C. Vietnam Association.” You’ve got to kidding me! I just came from a film that opens with army helicopters swooshing from one side of the screen to the other accompanied by the Doors’ “The End.” Was this a promotional gimmick to promote the film? I tried to get home so I could get my camera and get a picture  or two of the truck and its cargo, but I couldn’t pull that off. You see, phones with cameras weren’t a thing yet.

Now, this Vietnam helicopter encounter doesn’t have anything to do with 9/11, but I still wanted to begin with it as it was what kicked off my week. That experience alone would’ve been pretty memorable, especially as it happened on my Birthday, but it was obviously overshadowed a couple of days later.

 

The next day, September 10th, I was working at Borders in the evening. Many of the kids (20somethings mostly) I worked with would often watch The Simpsons in the break room during their dinner breaks. The episode (The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson, S9E1) that night featured Homer dealing with his car being illegally parked at the bottom of the World Trade Center. That’s right. One of the jokes in this scenario was that Homer needed to go to the bathroom, but the tower he went to had a “Out of order – please use next tower” (I know, as if there aren’t a zillion restrooms at the WTC).

Less than a day later, this episode of The Simpsons was yanked out of syndication, and didn’t air for years after. It joined a lot of TV shows, movies, and songs that were temporarily banned for obvious reasons.

 

But let’s get to the tragic day itself. I was scheduled to work at 10am on the 11^th, and I didn’t watch any news, or listen to any radio on my way to work. September 11 was only supposed to be the release date of Bob Dylan’s Love and Theft (Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was originally scheduled to come out that day too but that’s another story). So I listened to Dylan’s latest (I had an advance copy) right up to my parking in the Borders lot.

 

When I walked in to the store, one of my co-workers asked if I had heard the news. After nodding no, the guy (I think whose name is Chris) told me what happened. I didn’t believe him. I thought he had been watching an action movie like TRUE LIES on a monitor in the video section. But it wasn’t long before I realized he was serious. I was now one of millions that was shocked by this attack and couldn’t wrap our minds around.

 

A good deal of the morning dealt with finding out if all the people who worked at a Borders at the bottom of one of the towers were safe. Before this, I didn’t even know there was a Borders there. Happily, all of the staff had gotten out in time. I don’t remember much about the rest of the day except that the store closed early, and I went to my brother’s house, which wasn’t far away in Raleigh.

The rest of the week felt incredibly surreal. It’s a cliché, but it really did feel like time had stopped. Like many, I was scared of another attack. I kept worrying that we wouldn’t get out of 2001 alive. I listened to the Dylan album a lot, which was oddly one of his most comical works, but it did have the line “Sky full of fire, pain pourin’ down.” I also played the hell out of a bootleg copy of Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,” which had a number of lines that felt like they had been written for the occasion, particularly “Tall buildings shake, voices escape singing sad, sad songs.” Of course, neither of these albums were based on 9/11 as they had been conceived way before the date.

 

So these are things I think of every year at this time. It’s very difficult to believe it was 20 years ago as I bet most can relate. But no matter how long ago it is, when looking back at those tragic times, it will never not seem surreal.

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Film Babble Blog’s Top 5 Oscar Best Picture Beefs

Just like every year, in anticipation for the latest Academy Awards ceremony (this year's, the 88th, airing tonight on ABC), film buffs/blowhards like me can't help bitching about the great movies that didn't win Best Picture in previous years while some incredibly undeserving film took home the gold. 

I've had these conversations many times, especially when I worked at a video store (remember those?), about how a favorite movie, like, say PULP FICTION, got passed over for some forgettable piece of fluff, like, say, FORREST GUMP, that was nowhere as influential and hasn't held up in the long run.

So these Top 5 picks are pretty f-in' obvious, and predictable if you know me (2 Scorsese films are on the list), but they stand as the five instances where I most thought the Oscars got it dead wrong.

Counting down:

5. Robert Benton's (who?) KRAMER VS. KRAMER winning over Francis Ford Coppola's APOCALYPSE NOW. (1979) 

That's right, this:

won over this:

Crazy, huh?

4. THE ENGLISH PATIENT winning instead of the Coen brothers' crime comedy drama masterpiece FARGO! (1996) Yeah, I mean who even mentions Anthony Minghella's weepy war rom drama THE ENGLISH PATIENT now? It's probably better remembered as a reference point on a episode of Seinfeld than as an actual film that people saw and liked. At least Frances McDormand won Best Actress for her peppy portrayal of police woman Marge Gunderson, one of the greatest movie characters of all time.

3. Robert Redford's ORDINARY PEOPLE winning instead of Martin Scorsese's RAGING BULL. (1980) This is just silly. However, I did appreciate ORDINARY PEOPLE, but just thought it came nowhere near the majesty that was Scorsese's fourth film with Robert De Niro.

2. John Ford's HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY won over Orson Welles' CITIZEN KANE! (1941)

Now I obviously wasn't around when this happened, but I can sure feel the 7 decades plus ripple effect from what many consider the greatest film of all time losing out to a movie that has been pretty much left in the dust bin of history. Actually, HGWMV isn't a bad film - I watched it a few years back and found it be a well made drama. And it's much better than the next film for sure:

1. Kevin f-in' Costner's DANCES WITH WOLVES winning over Martin Scorsese's mangum opus mob epic GOODFELLAS. (1990). This one still kills me. Scorsese makes two of his greatest movies and they both lose to pretty boy actor's directorial debuts. I'd like to think that Marty and co.'s reaction to the announcement looked like the picture above. At least Joe Pesci won the Best Supporting Actor award, and Scorsese went on to grab the gold with 2005's THE DEPARTED. That one was one of the biggest example's of payback in the entire history of Oscar.

#5 on this list also has to do with my biggest Best Actor beef ever, that Peter Sellers' brilliant work in Hal Ashby's BEING THERE, one of my all time favorite films, was passed over.

Sellers could walk on water, but he still lost to Dustin Hoffman in that damn divorce drama.

Anyway, let's see what beefs tonight's Oscars show will give me. You'll know immediately as I'll be live tweeting the event (follow @filmbabble).

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Filmmaker Biodoc MILIUS Now Streaming On Netflix Instant

MILIUS (Dirs. Joey Figueroa & Zak Knutson, 2013)

When I was a kid in the ‘70s I first became aware of writer/director John Milius when I read that he was the inspiration for the character of John Milner, the drag racing greaser played by Paul Le Mat, in George Lucas’ 1973 classic AMERICAN GRAFFITI. The fact that that piece of trivia isn’t even mentioned in Joey Figueroa and Zak Knutson’s 2013 biodoc MILIUS, currently streaming on Netflix Instant, just attests to what a richly layered life the mythical maverick filmmaker has led.

From coming up with Dirty Harry’s best known dialogue (the “‘Do do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk?” speech) to crafting the Oscar nominated screenplay for APOCALYPSE NOW to upsetting liberal Hollywood with his cold war opus RED DAWN - just to name a few highlights - the ultra manly Milius's contributions to modern cinema form a colossal career, in which as THE GODFATHER producer Al Ruddy tells us in the intro, the man “had more movies made than any other writer in the history of Hollywood.”

It all began in the ‘60s shortly after Milius was crushed by being rejected by the Marine Corps because of his asthma (“I missed, you know, going to my war”), he wandered into a theater showing a week of the films of Akira Kurosawa. The Japanese filmmaker’s work made Milius realize that being a director was the “next best thing” to a military career.

Then he was off to USC (University of Southern California) where his classmates included George Lucas, Caleb Deschanel (father of Zoey Deschanel), Donald F. Glut, and Randall Kleiser (GREASE) - most of whom appear to provide interview soundbites throughout the film.

Milius was the first of these film-minded folk to achieve success when he was hired by AIP (American International Pictures), a studio that specialized in cheapie “teensploitation” productions. His first screenplay credit was on a rip-off of THE DIRTY DOZEN called THE DEVIL'S 8 (“they didn’t have enough money for a full dozen”).

Following that, Milius worked on the scripts of EVIL KNIEVEL (1971), DIRTY HARRY (1971), JEREMIAH JOHNSON (1972), THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JUDGE ROY BEAN (1972), and his feature length directorial debut DILLINGER (1973).

Milius’ second movie, the 1975 adventure epic THE WIND AND THE LION, starring Sean Connery and Candice Bergen, garnered a few Academy Award nominations, but his third film, the 1978 coming-of-age surfing picture, BIG WEDNESDAY, flopped big-time (of course, it became a cult classic later).

Much more notable during that time were his iconic contributions to Steven Spielberg’s 1975 shark attack classic JAWS (Robert Shaw’s USS Indianapolis monologue), and Coppola’s massive 1979 mash-up of Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” and the Vietnam war, APOCALYPSE NOW. Can you get any more quotable than “I love the smell of Napalm in the morning,” or “Charlie don’t Surf”? I don’t think so. 

“Everything memorable in APOCALYPSE NOW was invented by John Milius,” Coppola stresses.

Milius’ fourth film as director, the 1982 Arnold Schwarzenegger fantasy epic CONAN THE BARBARIAN (co-written by Oliver Stone) was a hit, but it was with his next film that things got pretty hairy. 1984’s RED DAWN, about a Russian invasion on American soil, polarized critics and got Milius ostracized from Hollywood for its pro-war stance. “Right-wing jingoism,” more than one critic called it.

There’s no getting around that the big beefy bearded gun nut - there are more photos here of Milius with machine guns, rifles, whatever firearm than you can count - rubbed a lot of people wrong. His following projects, FAREWELL TO THE KING, FLIGHT OF THE INTRUDER, and the TV movie ROUGH RIDERS, were barely blips on the pop culture radar.

Figueroa and Knutson’s film gets a bit muddled around this point of the narrative, but regroups with the revelation that Milius suffered a stroke that left him unable to talk or write. A condition that Spielberg says was “the worst thing to happen to any of my friends.”

This obviously explains why there’s so much footage of Milius doing interviews from the ‘80s and ‘90s – a 1984 sit down is the most prominently featured. MILIUS left me feeling like every larger than life tough guy character of the modern film era was based on his powerful persona. Especially when his son Ethan and daughter Amanda talk about how much John Goodman’s Walter Sobchak in THE BIG LEBOWSKI reminded them of their father.

Hell, the man’s influence even stretched as far as inspiring the military code name of the U.S. Army’s capture of Sadam Hussein in 2003: “Operation Red Dawn.”

MILIUS is for the most part a fascinating and thoughtful look at the life of a macho force that can still be felt in the fantasy realm from Game of Thrones to THOR, and the amped-up egos of the overblown action movie genre. As his encouraging rehabilitation continues, I sure hope the man can finish his long gestating GENGHIS KHAN project. That would give his legend the satisfying epilogue that this biodoc only hints at.

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R.I.P. Dennis Hopper (1936-2010)

"Somewhere in my strange career, someone has liked something." - Dennis Hopper 


Sadly, iconic actor/director Dennis Hopper lost his battle with prostate cancer Saturday morning. Every obituary will understandably point to his breakthrough milestone EASY RIDER (1969), but I'm sure most people who would read this blog know he had a ginormous crazy career spanning almost 6 decades. 


 Impressively IMDb lists over 200 film and television appearances in nearly every genre. In 1986 alone he appeared in HOOSIERS, BLUE VELVET, RIVER'S EDGE, and THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2, and from the looks of it that was a typical year for the man as he worked constantly until his illness got the best of him - 6 movies in 2008, 26 episodes of Crash 2008-09, and a couple of upcoming projects (THE LAST FILM FESTIVAL, ALPHA AND OMEGA) set for later this year. A career so vast is difficult to cherry pick from, especially since he had so many bit parts in major movies - his roles in friend James Dean's movies REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955) and GIANT (1956) for example - and also because a few films he directed are unavailable on DVD these days - THE LAST MOVIE (1971) and OUT OF THE BLUE (1980). That said these are my picks for:


10 Essential (And Available) Dennis Hopper Performances


1. EASY RIDER (Dir. Dennis Hopper, 1969)



When I said every obit would highlight this as Hopper's most acclaimed achievement I wasn't saying I wouldn't also. It's inescapable as a classic counterculture event of a movie that helped kick off the "New Hollywood" movement of the late '60s/early '70s. It also solidified the long-haired mustached hippie wiseacre persona that Hopper would return to a number of times throughout his acting career. 


 Concerning a couple of drug dealers (Hopper and Peter Fonda) who make a huge score and set out on their motorcycles to go, in the words of the film's tagline, "looking for America", EASY RIDER is very dated with clumsy artistic cuts, redneck stereotypes, and a cringe-inducing psychedelic trip sequence, but Hopper's glee while riding through Monument Valley out over the sunset on his chopper is infectious. In those moments, which were innovative in their use of rock song scoring, the film's theme of freedom lets its freak flag fly the highest. 


2. BLUE VELVET (Dir. David Lynch, 1986)



Frank Booth, a Nitrous Oxide inhaling sexual deviant, was considered a comeback role for Hopper who had gone through more than one wilderness period in the years since EASY RIDER and the failure of its follow-up THE LAST MOVIE. Booth was scary and a bit funny at the same time; the manner in which he menaces nice boy Kyle MacLachlan being a twisted yet beautiful example: "Heineken? Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!" The part won Hopper a few Critics' Association awards and in 2008 was voted #54 in Premiere Magazine's list of "The 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time."


3. APOCALYPSE NOW (Dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 1979) Credited as "Photojournalist" and only given a small amount of screen-time in the final reel, Hopper is one of the most memorable elements of Coppola's seminal sprawling Vietnam epic. His cryptic speeches like this one still resonate 30 years later: "This is dialectics. It's very simple dialectics. One through nine, no maybes, no supposes, no fractions. You can't travel in space, you can't go out in space without, like, you know, with fractions - what are you gonna land on, one quarter, three eighths - what are you gonna do when you go from here to Venus or something? That's dialectic physics, okay? Dialectic logic is there's only love or hate, you either love somebody or you hate them." Marlon Brando as Colonel Kurtz then angrily hurls a book at Hopper in a moment that doesn't feel scripted.



4. HOOSIERS (Dir. David Anspaugh, 1986) As I mentioned earlier, 1986 was a banner year for Hopper. His roles in BLUE VELVET, RIVER'S EDGE, and this Oscar nominated turn as the basketball supporting town drunk had him unstoppably on the comeback trail. It's a folksy formulaic sports film about underdogs triumphing against all odds, but Hopper's gutsy edge is no small part of the film's abundant charms.

10 Movie Soundtracks That Think Outside Of The Box Office

Welcome to Soundtrack September! All month long, with the help of some special guest bloggers and readers, I’m going to be celebrating the world of original motion picture soundtrack recordings. There will still be the usual array of reviews of current movies and other whatnot but they will be surrounded by soundtrack centered posts.

I’m kicking off Soundtrack September with this list of soundtracks that weren't content to just be simple collections of score selections or pop song tracks. They featured dialogue excerpts as tracks - sometimes full chucks of audio from the composite track of the film instead of the standard isolated music track.

Often these albums contain material that's not in the movie they represent - different versions of songs, cut lines from post production, and new voice-overs. In their reshaping of the movie material they became works of art in their own right. Here are my 10 favorites from the many soundtracks out there that think outside the box office:

1. THE MONKEES: HEAD (Colgems Records 1968/Rhino 1994) The Monkees only theatrical release was a critical and commercial flop on original release but it’s picked up a well deserved cult following over the years in no small thanks to its psychedelic soundtrack (pictured at the top of this post). 

It's a merry mishmash in which seven songs (including “The Porpoise Song,” “As We Go Along,” and “Can You Dig It”) emerge out of the chaos of sound effects, repeated out-of-context lines (as if there's a context in the film) and assorted trippy effects reportedly under the influence of Frank Zappa (who has a cameo in the movie and the album). The original album did not feature Mike Nesmith's “Circle Sky” performed live in the film - it substituted an inferior studio take of the song. Happily, a ‘90s Rhino re-release restored the ferocious live version as well as a nice handful of bonus tracks (including a cool radio spot).

The icing on the cake? The Original Album Coordinator who did the bulk of the vigorous editing on this project: Jack Nicholson (co-screenwriter and producer of HEAD seen above with the Monkees).

2. RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK: THE MOVIE ON RECORD (Columbia Records, 1981)

In the late ‘70s and early ‘80s a lot of “story of” albums were produced of the STAR WARS films, Disney features, Muppet movies, etc. that feature audio excerpts with a ‘40s style narrator guiding listeners through. For the first Indiana Jones adventure a soundtrack was released separate from the one of the score by composer John Williams. 

Billed "The Movie On Record,” it was an album described as containing “Actual Dialogue, Music, and Sound Effects” but most importantly - no narration. Four time Academy Award winner Sound Designer Ben Burtt (creator of the voice of WALL-E among other iconic work) admitted in an interview that much of this album was made from little of the original soundtrack; he recorded new effects and recreated the dialogue with the film's cast as voice actors much like old radio shows. The album won a Grammy for Best Spoken Word LP in 1983.

3. THE ALBUM OF THE SOUNDTRACK OF THE TRAILER OF THE FILM OF MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL (Arista, 1975) This is only a soundtrack in the loosest sense - approximately 40% of it is movie material; the other 60% has the Pythons bogusly broadcasting from a fictional theater (The Classic Silbury Hill) for the “premiere” of the film. John Cleese plays a reporter who talks over the opening scene with patrons telling him to shut up, the production is halted while the projectionist fights a grizzly bear for the next reel, an announcer (Graham Chapman) repeatedly tells us that this is the “Executive Version” of the record, and so on.

The records of the Monty Python films that followed - LIFE OF BRIAN and THE MEANING OF LIFE had a bit of this embellishing but not with the whole team and to the extreme of this supremely silly yet essential soundtrack.

4. APOCALYPSE NOW (Warner Brothers, 1979) This soundtrack is pretty much the full composite track of the motion picture spread over two records. It’s a trippy absorbing listen that's worth seeking out. The soundtrack for the REDUX version (2001) removes the dialogue bits and presents composer Carmine Coppola's score, along with The Doors “The End” and Flash Cadillac's “Suzy Q,” but I prefer the original recording. It reminds me of the days before home video when a soundtrack was all one had to invoke the mood of one's favorite movie.

Removed from the imagery, Martin Sheen’s voice over narration works just as well on record as it does in the film, the jungle sounds surround the listener, and Marlon Brando's haunting “the horror...the horror" evocation echo in the psyche. Or maybe that's the Thai sticks talking...

5. NATURAL BORN KILLERS: A SOUNDTRACK FOR AN OLIVER STONE FILM (Interscope Records 1994)

“I suggested to Oliver (Stone) to try to turn the soundtrack into a collage-of-sound, kind of the way the movie used music: make edits, add dialogue, and make it something interesting, rather than a bunch of previously released music.” - Nine Inch Nails founder Trent Reznor in an interview with MTV.

As producer/compiler Reznor provides another absorbing listen and one that introduced many to Leonard Cohen via two stellar songs off of his 1992 album “The Future.” My only complaint is Reznor mixing a bit of Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis dialogue on top of Bob Dylan's cover of the '50s standard “You Belong To Me.” Such a thing just should not be done.

6. THE ADVENTURES OF BOB & DOUG McKENZIE IN STRANGE BREW (Polygram Records, 1983) The album cover denotes “Excerpts From The Original Sountrack” so much like the MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL album this functions as a comedy record in its own right. The success of Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas's “Great White North” record paved the way for the SCTV characters of Canadian descent to enter the world of movies, so it’s kind of funny to have Moranis stress more than once that this that this is not their second album - it's the soundtrack album.

Funny because they never made another album and with all the additional material here they might as well consider it their second album. As a comedy record it's a good one - some bits from the movie work better disembodied from the visuals and the track “Shakespeare Horked Our Script” amusingly calls attention to the fact they stole the basic narrative from “Hamlet.” It's never been released officially on CD but like much on this list it can be found on the internets or in used record bins.

7. PULP FICTION (MCA Records, 1994)

From RESERVOIR DOGS to DEATH PROOF, Tarantino's soundtracks have featured dialogue tracks (INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS is the first that doesn't) but PULP FICTION is by far the most popular - it seems everyone I knew had this in their CD collection in the ‘90s. It's a hip movie mix; tracks by Urge Overkill, Dusty Springfield, and Kool & The Gang rub shoulders with John Travolta's “Royale with cheese” bit, Bruce Willis’s immortal "Zed's dead, baby", and Samuel L. Jackson's “Ezekiel 25:17.” 15 years after the movie, these tracks are still effective - program them into an iPod shuffle and see for yourself.

8. GOOD MORNING, VIETNAM (A & M Records, 1988) Sure, the comedy of Robin Williams is far from hip these days but back in the day (the late ‘80s) his routines were quoted ad nauseum. The rapid fire lines from his starring turn in Barry Levinson’s Vietnam-set dramedy were no exception. The dominance of James Brown’s “I Feel Good (I Got You)” in family feel-good comedies (or at least their trailers) can be traced to this film but don't hold that against it. Era songs by Louis Armstrong, The Marvelettes, and the Beach Boys make up the playlist of Williams as Armed Forces Radio Services DJ Adrian Cronauer. Incidentally the weekly NPR program Sound Opinions uses the sound bite of Williams’ “This is not a test, this is rock 'n roll!” in their opening to this day.

9. UHF: ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE SOUNDTRACK AND OTHER STUFF (Warner Brothers, 1989) Nobody would expect a soundtrack from a Weird Al Yankovic movie (his only movie) to play by soundtrack rules and this hodgepodge sure doesn’t. It makes this list because of tracks directly from the film like the commercial parody “Spatula City” and the phony trailer for “Gandhi II” which make great compilation fillers or fodder for college DJs. However the non movie related tracks like a spoof of R.E.M.'s “Stand” called “Spam” and “Generic Blues” are just throw-away Weird Al but they still don’t disqualify it.

10. BONNIE AND CLYDE (Collector's Choice, 2009) Though it’s not the first soundtrack album to feature dialogue - that would be THE GREAT ESCAPE - BONNIE AND CLYDE provides the template for the composite movie mix that Reznor and Tarantino would run with. The dialogue tracks offer cushioning and punctuation for the musical score - as spare as they are. Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway’s exchanges are enhanced by the then very innovative presentation on vinyl. It’s a hard to come by record nowadays, but again, one worth seeking out.

Okay! There are many more soundtracks that feature dialogue in an inventive mix (PATTON, ANIMAL HOUSE, BLADE RUNNER, etc.) so if you have a favorite - please send it on. 

Also if you have soundtrack favorites of any kind (classical scores, pop songs, musicals, etc.) please email me (filmbabbleblog@gmail.com) your favorites (instead of leaving them as comments on this post please) and I may include them this month during Soundtrack September! 

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10 Major Marlon Brando Movie Moments

At the end of last week, the legendary Marlon Brando died of pulmonary fibrosis in a Los Angeles hospital. In tribute here are 10 major moments that feature the method acting icon at his most memorable in the movies:

1. “You don't understand. I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let's face it. It was you, Charley.” - Terry Malloy as written by Elia Kazan. ON THE WATERFRONT (1954)

2. “I never wanted this for you. I work my whole life - I don't apologize - to take care of my family, and I refused to be a fool, dancing on the string held by all those big shots. I don't apologize, that's my life, but I thought that, that when it was your time, that you would be the one to hold the string. Senator Corleone; Governor Corleone. Well, it wasn't enough time, Michael.” - Don Vito Corleone, written by Mario Puzo, in THE GODFATHER (1972).

3. "What're you rebelling against, Johnny?” - Girl “Whaddya got?” - Johnny Strabler, written by John Paxton, in THE WILD ONE (1953).

4. “I have seen the devil in my microscope, and I have chained him.” - Dr. Moreau, written by Richard Stanley (based on H.G.Wells' novel), in THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU (1996).

5. “It is forbidden for you to interfere in human destiny” - Jor El written by Mario Puz. SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE (1979).

6. “Hey STELLA!!!! STELLA !!!!” - Stanley Kowalski written by Tennessee Williams in A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (1951).

7. “I believe I did what honour dictated and that belief sustains me, except for a slight desire to be dead which I'm sure will pass.” - 1st Lt. Fletcher Christian (Brando) in MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY (1962).

8. “You're an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill.” - Colonel Walter E. Kurtz written by John Milius and Francis Ford Coppola - APOCALYPSE NOW (1979).

9. “Even if a husband lives 200 hundred fucking years, he'll never discover his wife's true nature. I may be able to understand the secrets of the universe, but... I'll never understand the truth about you. Never.” - Paul in LAST TANGO IN PARIS (1972).

10. “My God! Let me get a look at you. You know, you look like shit. What's your secret?” - Max in THE SCORE (2001).

R.I.P. Marlon Brando (1924-2004)

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