Marlon Brando: Abuse as Art

Interview with Marlon Brando

Conducted by James Grissom 

1990

From Come Up A Man

Who hasn't been abused in some way? It then becomes abuse by degree, and the sounds you hear are of people pulling back curtains, showing scabs, comparing scars. We seek to top the abuses. This has become our literary biting off of bird heads in the tent of alleged art. You make the abuse into art--a poem, a story, a song. You cast it off; you send it away; you throw it upward. You do not wear it for eternity--a vest of pain. Abuse becomes artful vengeance and release.‬

©  2016  James Grissom