Old: The Marlon Brando & Jack Nicholson Movie Obsession Explained
In M. Night Shyamalan's new thriller Old, one of the doomed resort guests becomes obsessed with remembering the name of a Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando movie. The film he's trying to remember is the 1976 Western The Missouri Breaks, and Shyamalan has a very personal story behind Old's fixation on it. Here's the story behind why Charles won't stop talking about The Missouri Breaks in Old.
After arriving at a secluded beach near their luxury resort, the characters inOld realize that something is causing their bodies to age extremely rapidly, with a couple of years passing for every hour they spend on the beach. Some of the characters have chronic illnesses that are affected by this accelerated aging process. Rufus Sewell's character, a doctor called Charles who has mild paranoid schizophrenia when he arrives, begins to lose his mind and experiences an escalating blend of psychosis and dementia. One effect of this is that he repeatedly becomes distracted by trying to remember the title of the Jack Nicolson and Marlon Brando movie.
Related: How M. Night Shyamalan's Old Compares To The Original Graphic Novel
As strange as the obsession with the Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando movie is, it's actually based on a real anecdote from M. Night Shyamalan's life. In an interview with FOX 5 Washington DC, the director revealed that Charles's dialogue is lifted almost verbatim from conversations he had with his father, Dr. Nelliyattu C. Shyamalan:
«I've never seen it… It's from my dad, who actually has some dementia, and he would not stop talking about Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando, this movie that they were in. And I was like, 'Dad, I have never seen it.' And he goes, 'Jack Nicholson! Marlon Brando!' And he kept going on and on
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