What happens when “the world’s greatest actor” directs a cowboy movie?
More than three years from contracts to premiere. Six months of shooting. A thousand takes. Almost 200 miles of Technicolor film exposed. A revolving door of personnel, including Rod Serling, Sam Peckinpah and Stanley Kubrick — who’d all be gone before the first frame was shot. And a budget that ballooned from $1.8 million to $6 million.
“If you wrote a book about what’s been happening on this movie
you could make $1,000,000.” — Marlon Brando
A Million Feet Of Film is the story of One-Eyed Jacks (1961), Marlon Brando’s first, and only, time as a director and a picture that may be better known for its troubled production than its merits as a film.
“If we’d made it the way Marlon wanted it made…
it could have been a breakthrough Western.” — Karl Malden
It’s also the story of the picture’s influence on the Westerns and filmmakers that came after it.
“One-Eyed Jacks is one of my favorite films of all time.” — Terry Gilliam
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This is my favorite cowboy movie of all time. Does anyone know if a “director’s cut” of this movie has ever been released. Like Karl Malden’s comment I would love to see the movie Brando was trying to make!
The story goes that Brando’s rough cuts and all the unused footage were recycled for their silver content. With over 200 miles of film exposed, that’s a lot of silver.
It was common at that time for rushes/dailies to be printed on b&w stock for editing as it was cheaper than colour print stock so that may well have gone for silver recovery. It would have been unusual to recycle the negative colour film for its silver content as relative to b&w stocks it yields little value. Storage would have been an issue so it’s quite likely it was just dumped. As the original sound recordings and transfers would have been.
If a longer cut was ever finished there may have been intermediary elements prepared which could have survived as with “Touch of Evil”. Given that the title appears to be public domain I would have thought these would have surfaced as a way of reclaiming the title via a “Directors Cut” if they existed.
One Eyed Jacks … 1961 … great Western.
May very well make it onto MyFavoriteWesterns.
The Appolossa (1966) is also a worthy Western with Brando and John Saxon.
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I’m interested in improving my education about Westerns from the 30′s, 40′s and 50′s. I know very little about them. And with each year these films seem to fall farther into obscurity. That is a terrible shame. Thanks to a fistful of dedicated fans – like this site – this lore, information and artform can be kept alive. Thanks.
Yours truly,
MyFavoriteWesterns.com
Sounds like a book I would love to read!
If I could only get it finished!
Unfortunalely it was not often the habit to save cut footage from older movies – like they do today. Who could envision Director’s Cuts or Extended Versions, etc? It’s a shame because I believe there would have been much added enjoyment for us.
As wonderful as it would be to see the film as Brando saw it, it’s been a lot of fun researching how it was deconstructed by Paramount.
WOW ! that is a great cast. gotta give that another watch.
deconstructed … that was done quite a bit sadly. the money brokers have one thing in mind … and it aint art.
Wwhen this came out, I was a total Brando fan and I loved the movie. I was surprised that other people didn’t like it as much as I did … but maybe they weren’t in love with Marlon. I still like it. No matter what anyone says!
First saw it on TV (the afternoon movie two days in a row) and was fascinated by it.
Writing the book on it has actually made me appreciate it more.
Should’ve passed this along a while back. Here’s the Facebook page for my book. I’ve put some cool stuff from my research on there.
http://tinyurl.com/cqoah4a
I like One-Eyed Jacks too. I saw it not long ago and the film quality is so poor (unfortunately). I was impressed by it because, to me, it is an atypical western. I hope someone will petition to the distributor to restore and reprint the original films. Such a good film, it deserves to be seen as it should be seen. Also, since Brando is an influential actor, I really feel all his work should be maintained and preserved for not only the film history but the future generation.