Listen to Me Marlon (opens in Cleveland August 28th at the Cedar Lee Theatre)

[LISTEN TO ME MARLON opens in Cleveland on Friday August 28th exclusively at the Cedar Lee Theatre.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Hearing the premise of the new documentary LISTEN TO ME MARLON, thrilling though it was, still brought to my jaded mind the sideshow come-ons when someone announces they've got exclusive cine footage of a crashed-UFO retrieval at Roswell in 1947, or long-lost Bigfoot celluloid.

The pitch: it turns out that the legendary Marlon Brando, before his 2004 death, had squirreled away hundreds of hours of secret audio narration. Everything from psychotherapy sessions to phone-answering machine messages to what I might imagine were dry runs to the autobiography he published in 1994 (that critics found somewhat unilluminating, if my memory serves). There was even some attempt at DIY sleep-hypnosis - poignantly urging him to shed the obesity that had made him a distorted caricature of himself.

Marlon Brando documentary to screen at 8/1 Cinematheque gala

[Press release from the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

LISTEN TO ME MARLON, an acclaimed new documentary about Marlon Brando derived from hours of private audio tapes recorded by the actor during his lifetime, will be the movie shown at the grand opening of the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque’s new auditorium, the Peter B. Lewis Theater, on Saturday, August 1, at 7:00 pm. The film will be the centerpiece of an opening night gala, entitled “Lumière,” that also includes food, drink, and desserts, and will offer moviegoers their first look at the state-of-the-art, 300-seat auditorium boasting both digital and film projection and 7.1 digital sound. Tickets to the gala cost $100 ($500 at the patron level) and can be purchased at lumiere.bpt.me. The Peter B. Lewis Theater, named for the Cleveland philanthropist, is located inside the Cleveland Institute of Art’s brand-new George Gund Building at 11610 Euclid Avenue in the growing Uptown district. This will be the movie’s Midwest premiere.