Breaking Baz @ Cannes: First Look At Billy Zane Channeling Marlon Brando In ‘Waltzing With Brando’

EXCLUSIVE: Billy Zane portrays Marlon Brando in the upcoming film Waltzing With Brando on set in the late 1960s and early ’70s when Brando purchased the private atoll Tetiaroa in the South Pacific.

It was a time when Brando needed to keep working to fund the environmental projects that he and architect Bernard Judge were undertaking on the island.

“When they called him about the gangster movie, he did it to fund what they were trying to create on Tetiaroa,” said Zane, referring to what would become The Godfather directed by Frances Ford Coppola.

Waltzing With Brando, directed by Bill Fishman, re-creates moments from two of Brando’s landmark pictures: The Godfather and Last Tango In Paris. 

The film’s based on the memoir Judge penned called Waltzing with Brando: Planning a Paradise in Tahiti. 

The images featuring Zane as Brando in those pictures show an uncanny resemblance to the real Brando, so much so that for an instance I thought they were stills from the original films.

The costume, hair and makeup designers on Waltzing With Brando used many of the moulds and equipment that were used on those Brando movies.

Zane believes Brando was a trailblazer as far as activism was concerned. ”Back then no one would touch causes. He championed civil rights, he marched with Dr. Martin Luther King. He walked the walk for civil rights; he did it for Indigenous rights. What no one knows about is what he did for the environment as an activist and the foresight he had on what in fact would [become] a climate crisis.”

He said that back in the day Brando wasn’t thanked for speaking his mind and forward thinking. ”It’s like no good deed goes un-stoned,” Zane told me.

Zane’s in Cannes; he and Fishman are completing the final mix of the film, which is up for sale at the Cannes Market.

Much of the movie was shot on Tetiaroa, where Brando and Judge tried to introduce sustainable architecture and practices.

Brando, as is well known, fell in love with the region after shooting Mutiny on the Bounty in the South Pacific region.

“It’s a love letter to Tahiti, and him and his passion,“ said Zane.

Producers Fishman, Zane and Dean Bloxom have pledged 5 percent of proceeds from the movie to be sent to those residing on Tetiaroa.