Brando Ends Silence, Defends Son : Court: Christian Brando’s bail in murder case is reduced to $2 million. Marlon Brando criticizes prosecutor, press.

Actor Marlon Brando, who has remained in seclusion for weeks at his hilltop estate while his son awaits trial on a murder charge, broke his silence Thursday after a Santa Monica judge lowered bail for Christian Brando to $2 million.

“My son is no mad-dog killer,” the elder Brando said angrily, surrounded by dozens of reporters and cameramen on the Santa Monica courthouse lawn.

In a rambling half-hour monologue, Brando defended his son and blasted the prosecutor and “the carrion press” for creating a false image of the Brando family.

“There is another view,” the 66-year-old actor said. “There is another Christian. And I hope to have the opportunity to present it in court.”

Brando’s son is accused of murdering his half-sister’s Tahitian lover, Dag Drollet, last May. Christian Brando has admitted shooting Drollet during a heated argument, but insists it was accidental.

The elder Brando, who has sat stone-faced in courtroom proceedings, spoke publicly about the case only once, briefly, after his son’s arrest. Wearing a navy blazer and gray slacks, he appeared relieved Thursday as he left the tiny seaside courtroom where Superior Court Judge David Perez had declared that the $10-million bail initially set by a Municipal Court judge was excessive.

Perez reduced the bail to $2 million. Robert Shapiro, Christian Brando’s defense attorney, said that the elder Brando plans to post a $200,000 bond, secured by his $4-million Mulholland Drive home. His son could be released today from county jail, where he has been held since the May 16 shooting.

Trial is set for Oct. 9, although Christian Brando’s defense attorney said that he was willing to plea bargain.

Prosecutors had argued for no bail, saying that the 32-year-old self-employed welder is a flight risk and that his family orchestrated his half-sister Cheyenne’s sudden departure for Tahiti soon after the shooting so that she could not testify at his trial.

During Thursday’s hearing, Deputy Dist. Atty. Steven Barshop noted that Christian Brando’s first impulse after the shooting was to run. On the night of the killing, Los Angeles Police Detective Andrew Monsue testified, Marlon Brando told him that “initially he (Christian) wanted to leave, to run, but that he had advised Christian that that would be the wrong thing to do and used his parental influence (to persuade his son to wait for the police).”

Replied Shapiro: “But he didn’t leave. He wasn’t restrained; he was sitting waiting for the police. He listened to his father.”

The defense proposed a “house arrest” that would have placed Brando under 24-hour guard in a remote and heavily secured house and would have required him to wear an electronic monitoring device around his ankle.

In the end, Perez said that the defendant would be released without conditions other than the surrender of his passport.

The passport became an issue after the family said recently that it couldn’t be found.

But in a dramatic gesture at Thursday’s hearing, Marlon Brando rose from his front-row seat, smiled and handed over the document.

“I am pleased,” the elder Brando said afterward, as a throng of paparazzi clicked away and reporters jockeyed for position around him. “We’ve moved from the area of it being the Marlon Brando-Godfather-movie star trial to the Christian Brando trial, and I’m happy about that. Christian has been depressed. He should not be punished simply because he has a father who happens to be well-known.”

Asked what advice he has given his son, Brando--who said he is very close to the nine children he has fathered with four women--said: “I don’t think I’ve said anything that would not be said by any father. I just kept telling him, ‘Sometimes in life, you have to duke it out.’ That’s what he’s going to have to do. He’s in the added position of being punished because he’s my son.

“He’s tough. I’m proud of him.”

Recalling his own hard times as a young man and his son’s struggle with alcohol and drugs, Brando said, “Every time you get up off the canvas, you’re stronger and better for it.”

He said he believes his son is telling the truth in insisting that he did not mean to shoot Drollet. “I know in my heart . . . Christian never lied to me once,” Brando said. “He knows he’s an alcoholic and on occasion has taken drugs, and thereby broken the law. But he’s never lied to me.”

Then, apologizing for “blathering on,” Brando explained that “I’ve been pent up a long time.”

The notoriously reclusive actor said he usually avoids the spotlight because “I don’t respond properly or conventionally to questions. I don’t read stories about me and I don’t even see my own movies.

“This is a false world,” he added. “It’s been a struggle to try to preserve my sanity and sense of reality taken away by success. I have to fight hard to preserve that sense of reality so as to bring up my children.”

Beyond the glare of publicity, he said, he is still simply “Buddy Brando.”

The Academy Award-winning actor decided to break his silence, he said, because he cannot tolerate the maligning of his children.

“I’ve got a hide about that thick,” he said, holding two fingers wide apart. “But when it comes to my son and my children, you’re speaking to someone with a different impulse.”

He said that his daughter Cheyenne suffers “deep emotional problems” that predate her lover’s death and the subsequent birth of their child.

Asked whether the May 16 tragedy could have been averted, Brando concluded: “Where is a feather dropped by a sea gull on the heads of 2,000 persons going to land? There are too many unknowns . . . ,” he said.

He paused.

” . . . I don’t know.”