Michael Caine in Get Carter (1971, dir. Mike Hodges)
“I was in a club somewhere in the West End just after Get Carter was released and the gangster I’d based Jack Carter on - not that he ever knew it - came up to me and said, “I saw that Get Carter, Michael.” Uh-oh, I thought, but I kept a dead straight face and I said, “Did you?” and he went on, “Biggest load of crap I’ve ever seen.” “Really?” I said, looking for the exit. “What makes you think that?” And he said, “Michael, you weren’t married, you didn’t have any kids and you had no responsibilities. You don’t understand why we do things. Me, with no special skills, I had to hold on to a wife and kids.”
And I thought - no special skills? He’d only killed about five people - not that he’d ever been charged with anything, but everyone knew…and I said, “Oh blimey, you’re right. That was a terrible mistake.” I completely agreed with everything he said. You don’t want to argue with someone like that.
Violence has consequences and you don’t often see that in movies. It’s a sort of pornography: people are struck time and time again and the next time they appear they just sport a small Band-aid, not even a black eye or missing teeth. If you were a real victim of the violence you see in films, you would be in hospital or dead. In Get Carter you see the effect of one whack, although we never cut to the gore.”
-Michael Caine, The Elephant to Hollywood
![oldhollywood:
Marlon Brando applying his make-up on the set of On the Waterfront (1954, dir. Elia Kazan)
“[In On the Waterfront] there was a scene in a taxicab, where I turn to my brother, who’s come to turn me over to the gangsters, and I lament to him that he never looked after me, he never gave me a chance, that I could have been a contender, I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum…It was very moving. And people often spoke about that, ‘Oh, my God, what a wonderful scene, Marlon, blah blah blah blah blah.’
It wasn’t wonderful at all. The situation was wonderful. Everybody feels like he could have been a contender, he could have been somebody, everybody feels as though he’s partly bum, some part of him. He is not fulfilled and he could have done better, he could have been better. Everybody feels a sense of loss about something. So that was what touched people. It wasn’t the scene itself. There are other scenes where you’ll find actors being expert, but since the audience can’t clearly identify with them, they just pass unnoticed. Wonderful scenes never get mentioned, only those scenes that affect people.”
-Brando, quoted in Lawrence Grobel’s Conversations with Brando (1993)](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lhtty1HZ971qzdvhio1_r4_1280.jpg)
