Screening:
Sunday, April 30, 9:30 AM, Charles 5

The only film directed by Marlon Brando, One-Eyed Jacks tells the tale of a gang of men, led by Rio (Brando) who seek out an old partner, Dad Longworth (Karl Malden) now the sheriff of Monterrey, and seek revenge for his early acts of betrayal. Brando took over the directing duties from Stanley Kubrick who had already been through some tough studio fights in the year before with Spartacus (also screening at the Maryland Film Festival 2000). After extending the shooting schedule from 60 days to 6 months, Brando turned in a director's cut over 4 hours long. The studio cut it back to 141 minutes. This movie was distributed in 1961 to wildly mixed reviews.

One-Eyed Jacks was nominated for an Oscar for Charles Lang's Cinematography Brando and his cast-most notably Karl Malden-have been celebrated for their performances. The movie has a great cast of Western movie favorites including Ben Johnson (The Last Picture Show, The Wild Bunch) and Slim Pickens (Dr. Strangelove). One-Eyed Jacks became a cult classic in the mid-60s, with thousands of college students quoting lines from the movie.

Bio:
Taylor Branch is a Pulitzer Prize winning historian best known for his work on the Civil Rights Movement, Parting the Waters, and its successor, Pillar of Fire. Taylor is a graduate of UNC-CH where he was a Morehead Scholar, and he holds a degree from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton. Among many awards he is the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant. He is also Executive Producing (with Harry Belafonte and Jon Avnet) an 8-hour mini series about the Civil Rights Movement adapted from his books. Yes, Taylor went to college in the '60s.