The cynical reply to that would be that Brando long ago stopped being a vital force in American acting; that (as he admitted) his movie appearances of recent years were made mostly for money; and that, with the exception of "The Freshman," a sweet, screwball burlesque of his role in "The Godfather," the movies themselves were a forgettable lot. They were: "A Dry White Season," "The Island of Dr. Moreau," "The Score." In the last one, Brando reportedly clashed with the director, Frank Oz, who would not allow Brando to be as flamboyant as he wished in the role of a foppish gay crook. That might be a summation of the mediocrity that has stymied every original who has ever worked in American movies. For where, in the natural order of things, can you imagine Marlon Brando being impeded by a pisher like Frank Oz?

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"... the summer was spent on the beach and attending parties, at one of which I met Marlon Brando. At eighteen he was indescribably attractive, but shy and tense. Two years later we met again at a party of Tennessee's [Williams] in a ballroom on Irving Place in New York, just before Marlon got the role of Stanley Kowalski in 'A Streetcar Named Desire.' Hundreds of people milled about or danced to the all-black jazz band. I was standing alone when Marlon approached. 'Don't I know you from somewhere?' he drawled, sizing me up with intense interest.

"'Yeah,' I said with a grin. 'Provincetown. We met once.'" (1942)

[from "Memoirs of a Bastard Angel: A Fifty-Year Literary and Erotic Odyssey," by Harold Norse (William Morrow, 1989)]

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Maureen Stapleton, actor
"Wallowing in women"

"Janice Mars and I rented an apartment at 37 West 52nd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues ...

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To understand that story, you have to get a grasp on the relationship that existed between the playwright, Tennessee Williams, and his director, Elia Kazan -- before either of them was anywhere near as famous as "Streetcar" would make them. Williams was shy, stricken, poetic, not terribly ambitious, not a very effective career-maker, who had fashioned a play that explored American sexuality more deeply than he perhaps understood. He was also as openly gay as the 1940s permitted. In so many ways, Kazan was his exact opposite: brutally candid, murderously ambitious, aggressive and manipulative, and very heterosexual. And Kazan was a new kind of director in that he felt a passionate need to express himself in his productions -- the plays he directed had to be ones in which he found himself.

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Halberstam was in good company. The former Vietnam correspondent had spent two years there himself, early on in 1962 and 1963 and again for a stint in 1967, covering the war for the New York Times. Later, he wrote his classic book "The Best and the Brightest," an explication of events leading to Vietnam as well as an indictment of McNamara, McGeorge Bundy and the other elite decision makers who led America into the war. He would follow that book with several others, some of which touched on Vietnam, including "The Making of a Quagmire."

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Brando, who eventually relinquished his priest role to the equally mature for his age James Woods, was so sick with walking pneumonia the day he showed up on the set, everyone feared he might plotz on the spot.

"We all went to [director] Keenen Ivory Wayans and told him no movie should kill Brando -- least of all 'Scary Movie 2,'" Andy Richter, who was to star alongside Brando, told the Calgary Sun. "It was really surreal. I kept shaking my head and thinking that this coughing, hacking priest was really the great Marlon Brando. Between takes he'd shuffle back to a nurse who was guarding his oxygen bottle and strap on a mask."

Natasha Lyonne, meanwhile, was a little scared on her own behalf as well. "At one point, he was supposed to leap on me," she told the paper. "I can tell you that prospect had me just a little worried. He's kind of large to say the least."

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Robert De Niro plays Nick, a Montreal jazz club owner who has long been a professional thief on the side. One of his steadfast rules has been to never pull a job in his hometown. But his fence, Max (Marlon Brando), tells him of a priceless gold scepter inadvertently confiscated in a smuggling attempt and now sitting in the secure confines of the Montreal Customs House. Max has inside information from Jack (Edward Norton), an ambitious young thief who's working at the customs house in the guise of a retarded night janitor. The money Nick stands to make would let him quit stealing once and for all and settle down to his good life with his girlfriend Diane (Angela Bassett), who sees his willingness to take on this job as proof that he'll never change.

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According to the Detroit Free Press, Mathers and a female friend were arrested in Harrison Township, Mich., over the weekend on outstanding warrants after police initially questioned them about a possible jet ski accident.

The two women, both of whom police said "appeared to have been drinking" -- the officers couldn't legally try to prove it -- were hauled into the clink once the warrants were discovered. Both were later released, but it seems that after searching the back seat of the patrol car they rode in, police found a baggie containing a "white powdery substance of suspected cocaine." Lab results are expected within a few days.

I suppose there's a slim, shady chance it's powdered sugar.

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Mr. Piggy speaks

"I bet you wish I was a puppet so you could stick your hand up my ass and make me do what you want."

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This week Marlon Brando toots a fart machine on the set. Plus: Woody Harrelson, John Travolta, Meg Ryan and more.

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Heather Graham is apparently not alone in her love of a good bodily function joke. Add to the list of celebrity cheese-cutting humor cognoscenti Marlon Brando and Robert Di Niro.

The ailing Brando reportedly wreaked havoc on the set of the film "The Score" by toting in a remote-controlled fart machine. At least that's what their costar Edward Norton tells the Scottish Daily Record.

"Marlon would wait until De Niro was getting all serious for a tense scene, then he would let off this machine," Norton says. "I guess that is what it takes to break De Niro's focus -- flatulence."

But while De Niro was moved to opine that Brando "has quite a sense of humor," Angela Bassett, who plays De Niro's love interest in the film, isn't laughing. She's a little steamed that she never even met the legendary Method man.

The two never had any scenes together, but Bassett tells the New York Daily News that she "stood around waiting for him for four days when I wasn't even working."

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Yes, you heard me right: "Celebrity Survivor." CBS honcho Les Moonves has told "Access Hollywood" that the network is considering putting together a special celebrity edition of the show that has heretofore made instant celebrities out of regular folks who just happen to look like they could be on "Baywatch."

You may recall that Kate Hudson and her husband, Chris Robinson, stood in line for an hour at an open audition for "Survivor 3" a few weeks back. The "Almost Famous" actress and her Black Crowe husband claim they are "obsessed" with the show, but the producers reportedly talked them out of auditioning. Celebrity participants, the suits said, would complicate things too much logistically -- and legally.

Well, the network seems to have had a change of heart.

"We're thinking about a celebrity version," Moonves told "Access Hollywood" in an interview last week. And it's not just Hudson who's expressed an interest either. Moonves says Kobe Bryant and Ray Romano are desperate to get on the show, too.

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But even Moby, it turns out, has his limits.

The electronic musician, who has been keeping an online diary in which he records all the exciting things that happen to him on tour, replied that he would be delighted to team up with Martin under one condition: "That he publicly apologize for performing at George W. Bush's Inauguration, and if he confirms that when he danced next to George W. Bush at the Inauguration, he could smell brimstone and that George W. Bush is in fact the spawn of Satan," Moby wrote. "Otherwise, no deal."

Is it something Martin did?

Well, yes.

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Followers of the diminutive rapper and her musical rival Capone, of the rap duo Capone-n-Noreaga, were apparently involved in a confrontation that resulted in the shooting of a man described as a "hanger on" outside the downtown New York studio of the radio station Hot 97 on Sunday.

Whether or not the rappers were directly involved is unclear. In fact, it's not even certain they were still at the scene at the time the gunplay began. But, according to the New York Post, Lil' Kim (aka Kimberly Jones) and her crew left the studio around 3 p.m., after guesting on a radio show, and ran into Kiam "Capone" Holley and his entourage, who were headed inside.

Words were exchanged, more than 20 shots were fired and one man, a follower of one of the rappers, was reportedly injured.

Sounds more than a lil' unpleasant.

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Do you suppose Liberace was gay, too?

"Of course I'd heard of Elton John, but I didn't know he was gay. I didn't know anything about his personal life. I didn't really care, but being that he was gay and he had my back, I think it made a statement in itself saying that he understood where I was coming from."

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Here goes ...

Marlon Brando, naked from the waist down.

Liz Smith reports that His Corpulence has been waltzing bottomless around the set of his latest film, "The Score," possibly in order to make absolutely sure that the camera captures him only from the shoulders up. His godfather of bellies, he apparently believes, might be just a tad too great for public consumption.

Not surprisingly, his exposed nether region has caused quite a stir on the Canadian set, particularly among his fellow stars, Angela Bassett, Ed Norton and Robert De Niro, according to Smith.

Imagine that!

Now try to stop ...

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You know you wouldn't want it any other way

"I'm a bitch, I'm a lover, I'm a child and I'm a mother."

-- Yasmine Bleeth, describing her character on NBC's upcoming Aaron Spelling series, "Titans."

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The movie opens in a soft blue haze: a junglescape enveloped in a smoky aura that bathes the scenery in a golden pseudo-dawn. Helicopters swoop through the images, seemingly close enough to touch, but insubstantial, like shadows. Palms burn abruptly with napalm, not with a dramatic burst but as naturally as sunflowers opening up to daylight, while the Doors' dirge "The End" plays out against the blaze. Suddenly, the choppers' propellers become the blades of a Saigon hotel-room fan -- and we enter the mind of Willard (Martin Sheen), who will soon trek through a Southeast Asian heart of darkness in search of the military madman Kurtz (Marlon Brando).

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It was clear by the friendly, ticklish vibrations in the front seat that I was
his latest blond daytime dalliance (I, in the decade-less logic of dreams, was
not from the 1950s, but was staring out the window tripping on the vintage
sidewalk scene in my 19-year-old post-punk persona -- platinum blond, tight black
jeans, pointy black boots, CRASS T-shirt.)

Dr. King and I pulled into a lot behind a one-story motel in a glade of drooping
green trees. "Is this gonna be all right?" I asked. (Translation: Is it safe for
you to check in here with a white chick?) "Oh yeah, baby, we're all right. We're
on the wrong side of the tracks, now," he said jovially, meaning: I can do
whatever I want here; we're in the black neighborhood.

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You could pack on the pounds and disappear, ` la Marlon Brando. You could avoid bathing, tussle with the law, be charged with domestic violence and wind up a walking punch line, like Mickey Rourke.

Or, you could simply win an Oscar.

In theory, at least, the Academy Award is Mount Everest rising above the foothills of fame. It's the supreme pat on the back from your peers, an irrefutable sign that you have arrived. Every director wants to work with you. The best parts are yours for the taking.

But for every best actor like Tom Hanks -- who currently reigns as America's favorite cinematic son -- there's also an F. Murray Abraham, who, well, doesn't. For every Susan Sarandon, there's a Louise Fletcher. And for every supporting winner like Kevin Spacey there lurks on the sidelines a Marisa Tomei.

Oscar winners, say those in the know, believe that a statuette 13.5 inches tall and weighing 8.5 pounds will lead them to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. And that sense of confidence (or perhaps arrogance) can backfire.

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