The Missouri Breaks

The Missouri Breaks (1976)

5 quotes

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Directed by: Arthur Penn

Starring: Jack Nicholson, Randy Quaid, Marlon Brando

Genres: Drama, Western

Movie Quote Quiz

Tittle Tod: Damn, I don't know why they had to put Canada all the way up here.

Jane Braxton: We had a famous painter out here last year... did last scenes. That man must have painted ten squares miles of canvas... and not one human face! And I wish he could have been here to paint that boy, Sandy, hanging up there so decoratively against the mountains. Because his pink tongue and his white face would have just set off the green of Montana splendidly. I mean, it would have made the damnedest bank calendar you ever saw.

Tom Logan: I couldn't get no credit at the whorehouse, so I picked up this chubby little girl off some sodbuster's outfit.
Tittle Tod: How was she?
Tom Logan: About like a Swiss clock - same exact movement over and over again.

Hellsgate rancher: They call this country Hell's Gate. When my dad came in here, it was nothing but a bunch of savage Indians. And Jesuits. Old Thomas Jefferson said that he was a warrior so his son could be a farmer, so his son could be a poet. And I raise cattle so my son can be a merchant, so his son can move to Newport, Rhode Island and buy a sailboat and never see one of these bastard-ass sons of bitching mountains again.
Si: Who was Thomas Jefferson?
Hellsgate rancher: A guy back east.

Jane Braxton: Why don't we just take a walk and we'll just talk about the Wild West and how to get the hell out of it.

Question: The Missouri Breaks starred Jack Nicholson (as Tom Logan, a rustler) and Marlon Brando (as Robert E Lee Clayton, a "regulator" tasked with eliminating him). Yet they never appear together. Brando is absent from over half the scenes featuring Nicholson, and vice-versa. When they do meet, there is a close up of Nicholson speaking to Brando, followed by a close up of Brando replying to Nicholson, and so on. Why do Nicholson and Brando never appear on screen together?

Rob Halliday

Answer: At this point, Brando used cue cards for his dialogue and liked to improvise lines. Nicholson found this difficult and distracting because Brando continually shifted his gaze to the cue card behind the cameraman and went off script. Although Nicholson said Brando was exceedingly cooperative and "gentle as a lamb" on the set, the two actors took an instant dislike to one another. Each actor was filmed separately while reciting their lines.

raywest

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