From the start it sounded ridiculous: Go to Tahiti and find Marlon Brando.
I was sitting in the hot seat across the desk from the new editor of the Washington Post Magazine. It was a typical cubicle of a size befitting a section head, located in the far reaches of the newsroom, a one-acre expanse of gray industrial carpeting, spread across three different buildings, on the southwest corner of 15th and L Streets NW, only a few blocks from the White House in Washington, D.C.
This part of the territory was the domain of the Style section and other features departments of the paper. It was known as The Sandbox, a place where movies, food, culture, and fashion prevailed, and writers were left alone to ponder their existential questions and diddle words into melodious prose. Up the several steps into the main building, the more important business of the daily news held sway, presided over by historic figures like Bob Woodward and Ben Bradlee, two living legends who’d together engineered the fall of a crooked presidency, for starters.
The magazine’s editor was Jay Lovinger. He was new to the place, a big-time New York guy hired away from the world of glossy magazines I aspired to reach. Everyone said Lovinger was a genius—a sardonic Big Apple native with the distinctive accent common to the region. He wore a silk tie printed with the image of the Mona Lisa, a wry middle finger to the dress code at this august (and always self-important) newsgathering organization, where one was expected to be prepared at all times to be to be dispatched forthwith to interview the president of the United States or other dignitary.
The scene unfolding before me was fairly standard to magazine writers: I was smiling over-large and trying not to seem desperate as I pitched ideas for my next story, mostly gritty stuff that was becoming something of a specialty—a deep look at daily life in a heroin shooting gallery . . . in a run-down housing project . . . at a local gay club, situated just across the street from the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, featuring female impersonators and lip-syncing contests every Saturday night.
Lovinger, meanwhile, was staring up at the ceiling. There were no windows in the room. There was nothing on his walls. The harsh fluorescent light glinted off the thick lenses of his glasses in a way that prevented me from seeing the expression in his eyes. He appeared to be counting the little holes in the tiles. Three years earlier, I’d left my full-time job, as a staff writer with the Post’s Metro Section, to try my hand at freelancing magazine stories. It was a grandiose plan. Everyone thought I was crazy. Leave the newspaper reporters everywhere aspire to join? Give up the golden handcuffs?
But I was only 27 at the time. The Post had been my first real job. I’d started at 21 as a copy boy, fresh off an abortive, three-week stint at Georgetown Law. Six years later, I’d upped and quit another prime opportunity, leaving my parents apoplectic and my colleagues shaking their heads in disbelief.
Thus far in my freelance career, I’d written some decent stories for a number of local and national magazines. I had a regular local column. I was making an adequate living. I was moving slowly toward my goal. Then the Post announced it was starting a glossy magazine of its own. When one of the sub-editors invited me to pitch, it felt like validation. I knew I was on the right path.
There was only one problem: When you’re freelance, nobody gives anything away. In order to get an assignment, I had to come up with a killer idea and sell them on it.
So now here I was, at my big meeting at the new Post magazine.
And this famous new editor, imported from New York, about whom everyone raved . . . was staring up at the ceiling. The Mona Lisa on his tie seemed to mock me with that smile of hers, as if to say: Is this all you've got, Sager?
I stopped talking and waited for a response. After a few beats, Lovinger sighed and took off his glasses, placed them on the desk between us. He sighed, rubbed his eyes, made some grunting noises, replaced his glasses.
At last he spoke. “Why don’t you go to Tahiti and find Marlon Brando?” The tone of his voice was so matter of fact; he could have been asking me to go to the cafeteria to fetch him a cup of coffee.
“F-Find Marlon Brando?” I stuttered. Is he shitting me?
“You know, on that island or whatever he has in the South Pacific. I’m pretty sure it’s near Tahiti.”
“Is Marlon Brando lost?” I asked.
Shrug. Palms up. What do I know?
“And what am I supposed to do when I find him?”
“You’ll know,” he said dismissively.
“I’ll know?”
His face darkened. He made this Jewish kind of gesture, something my grandmother might have done. A fey wave of the hand, dismissal.
“Get out of here before I change my mind.”
I’m hacking through the jungle on the far side of motu Onetahi, the capital islet, as it were, of Teti’aroa.
In lieu of a machete, I’m beating back the brush with a strong length of driftwood. It’s sharp at one end like a sword. I figure if I run into feral pigs or other unexpected trouble, I’ll be able to use it to defend myself.
I have a backpack stocked with water, snacks, and the tools of my trade—two microcassette recorders, extra tapes, a 4 x 8 note pad, two pens. I’m slathered in bug spray and wrapped tight, head on a swivel, walking on the balls of my feet, stepping carefully, trying not to make too much noise. He’s close, real close. I can feel him sucking me in even as I feel him repelling me.
Before I’d come, of course, I’d read about Teti’aroa. I knew he owned the private atoll. I knew there were 13 different islands within the placid blue waters surrounded by a coral reef rising out of the sea like a security fence around a ritzy community. I had figured I would end up searching for him here. I’d even brainstormed scenarios for my penetration of the atoll and the defenses it was sure to have.
In one version, I hired a speedboat, swam ashore. I had my camera, tape recorder and extra tapes and batteries secured in the waterproof scuba bag I’d bought for this purpose at Hudson Trail Outfitters in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Upon making shore, I figured, I’d sit cross-legged on his beach in a saffron robe (also stored in the pouch), making him curious enough to come out to meet me.
Another plan looked more like a commando raid under a canopy of darkness—same speedboat, black clothes, a systematic search of the islands until I came upon him. When I bought the waterproof bag, I’d also considered buying one of those bad-ass survival knives they had for sale. (In those days you could put anything in your luggage.) For all I knew, when I found Marlon, he’d be living in a cave up a river with an army of stoned Polynesians guarding the landing with blowguns, like his character in Apocalypse Now.
In the movie, before sending Martin Sheen on his mission up the river to find Marlon/Kurtz, the commanding general tells him: “You see, Captain Willard, things get confused out there. Power, ideals, morality . . . there’s conflict in every human heart between the rational and the irrational, between good and evil. Every man has got a breaking point. You and I do. Walter Kurtz has reached his. Very obviously he has gone insane.”
Now it is I who feel as if I’ve gone insane.
The jungle is all weirdness and sounds—a thick, primitive, evil-feeling place, everything lewdly fertile and engorged. Plants with eight-foot leaves, vines the thickness of arms, roots like legs. Birds and insects chirp and sing, a disharmonic symphony of percussive sound with the volume jacked. A pungent blend of mold, pollen, and plant rot makes my nose run. Sweat streams down my face. I spot a thick snake coiled on a limb of a tree and move past quickly, keeping my eyes glued to the serpent, like an armed robber easing his way out of a backroom poker game. Then something nearby hits the ground with a thud; my heart does a flip-flop. I drop to one knee, sweep the perimeter with my eyes. What the fuck was that?
I check the area in the direction of the sound, find a grove of coconut palms, the ground littered with fallen nuts in various states of decay. For a brief moment, in the dappled sunlight, the brown, hairy oblong spheres look like so many severed heads.
I was too young for Vietnam, but this is what it must have been like—chaotic, flarelit, and surreal, like Apocalypse Now—a mission through the steaming jungle, a quarry I cannot see, a reason that has become too confused to unravel or understand. Like war, like love, the desire within me is strong; it burns like the midday sun. There are no odds anymore. I’m on point, I’m close, I’m walking a path that leads through the days and weeks of my mission like a main circuit cable plugged straight into Marlon. I want him. I need him. It is my mission to locate him and I will.
This is my vow to myself: If he is here, I will find him.
And if he’s not here . . . I will find out where he is and go there . . . as soon as my two weeks on Teti’aroa are done. I mean, no sense wasting a good trip, right? I already pre-paid. Plus I’ll need time to figure out my next steps.
In any case, failure is not an option. The rest of my life, my career, everything I’ve worked for . . . is balanced on the fulcrum of Marlon.
I pull into Marlon’s driveway and stop in front of the ten-foot iron gate. Cyclone fencing continues into the treeline on either side. The sky is very blue today, washed clean by the seasonal winds. The razors on the concertina glint in the bright winter sunlight. A security camera on the fence informs me I’m under surveillance. There’s also a red sign that promises “Armed Response.”
I press both buttons on the intercom. There seems to be a camera inside there, too.
After a few moments, the box squawks: “Yes?”
“Package for Mr. Brando.” I wave toward the cameras, hello.
The gate begins to creak open.
“Drive slowly and take the left fork.”
The asphalt road reminds me a bit of the airstrip on Teti’aroa; weathered and patched. The road climbs upward through a densely wooded area. When I reach the fork, I follow directions. I figure the right fork leads to Nicholson’s place. I don’t know it now, but one day, decades hence, Nicholson will invite me to his house to conduct an interview for a cover story for Esquire. I’ll drive through this very gate and take the right fork. By then, Marlon will no longer be around.
The road peters out in front of a dense green hedgerow, at least twenty feet tall. I figure the plants are fake. They’re just too green and perfect to be real?
I sit a moment with my foot on the brake, trying to be patient, remembering to breathe. I look around and try to see what I can see, which is not much, hemmed in as I am on all sides by the forest. As I’m sitting there, a fault line appears in the hedgerow. The gap grows larger as the shrubs retreat to either side . . .
Revealing a gravel and asphalt parking area. I drive forward and kill the engine.
The compound is not at all grand, reminiscent of the one I found in Teti’aroa, a gathering of bungalows with a common area in between. Instead of coconut wood and woven fronds, the buildings have more conventional windows and are constructed of stucco.
A sign advises: “Stay in Car. Attack Dogs on Premises.”
From the start it sounds ridiculous: Go to Tahiti and find Marlon Brando.
But the worldwide search for the legendary Method actor, the star of such classic movies as The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, On the Waterfront, and Mutiny on the Bounty, soon becomes an obsession. The story of one man’s coming of age.
When we first meet him, Sager is 30 years old, divorce pending, no longer the youngest in the room. Winter is coming. His prospects are dim. After ten years as a journalist, he knows it’s time to raise his game. He needs to write something big and important and lasting. Something epic. Something meaningful. Something to seal his reputation.
As it is, the new editor of the Washington Post Magazine suggests an all-expenses-paid search for the most elusive actor of the times—starting at his south seas hideaway, a private atoll off the coast of Tahiti.
Even though Brando famously hates the press and has refused for years to grant any interviews, Sager takes the job.
Wouldn’t you?
Brando’s work as an actor paved the way for generations to follow, as did his commitment to social activism. And he is credited with breaking the stereotype of the stoic, inch-deep, flawless American hero in favor of a distinct new template for American manhood—flawed, mercurial, quixotic, tough but tender.
Sager’s story of his worldwide hunt for the iconic actor is a totally true tale of far-flung travel, grandiose schemes, tropical adventure, Hollywood superstardom . . . and a beautiful Tahitian translator, who puts Sager’s mission in jeopardy when she suddenly disappears. A classic piece first published in 1987, Hunting Marlon Brando is completely re-written and updated with over 40,000 words of new material. As it turned out, it’s a story that altered the entire course of Sager’s life.
With an afterword by Walt Harrington
“You have to dare to be bad in this world of ours, you have to try stuff, you might have to fail. One thing is certain: If you do what you always do, it’s guaranteed to turn out the same.” —from Hunting Marlon Brando
Now available as an audio book. Click here to buy or visit the usual platforms.
Mike Sager is a bestselling author and award-winning reporter. For more than forty years he has worked as a writer for the Washington Post, Rolling Stone, GQ, and Esquire. Sager is the author of more than a dozen books and eBooks. Many of his stories have inspired documentaries and films, including the classic Boogie Nights. He is the founder and publisher of The Sager Group, a content brand. For more information, please see Mike Sager.
Sager plays Virgil in the modern American Inferno . . . Compelling and stylish magazine journalism, rich in novelistic detail.
Like his journalistic precursors Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson, Sager writes frenetic, off-kilter pop-sociological profiles of Americans in all their vulgarity and vitality . . . He writes with flair, but only in the service of an omnivorous curiosity and defies expectations in pieces that lesser writers would play for satire or sensationalism . . . A Whitmanesque ode to teeming humanity’s mystical unity.
Sager’s writing is strikingly perceptive. He writes like a novelist, stocking his stories with the details and observations other journalists might toss away.
Mike Sager writes about places and events we seldom get a look at—and people from whom we avert our eyes. But with Sager in command of all the telling details, he shows us history, humanity, humor, sometimes even honor. He makes us glad to live with our eyes wide open.
