PAGE SIX By PAULA FROELICH with CHRIS WILSON and IAN SPIEGELMAN

December 1, 2002 --

HOLLYWOOD legend Marlon Brando has been making death threats to "American History X" director Tony Kaye and calling himself "the Devil."

According to the January issue of Vanity Fair, which chronicles the feud between the two "crazy geniuses," Brando became so enraged at Kaye he fumed into the director’s answering machine: "I’m in your house and I’m going to kill you!"

Kaye claims the voice had "gone through a decoder machine," but "I knew immediately I could hear his voice."

Brando’s hatred stems from the fallout the two had over Kaye’s as-yet-unreleased documentary, "Lying for a Living," which covered an acting class Brando taught in Los Angeles last year.

From the start of the "Lying for a Living" class - attended by Sean Penn, Leonardo DiCaprio, Nick Nolte and Michael Jackson - Brando and Kaye were in competition, the magazine reports. Brando came to "class" dressed in full drag. Kaye showed up dressed as Osama bin Laden.

The battle for one-upsmanship ended when Kaye attacked two of the participants, calling their skit "boring." A sympathetic Brando chided Kaye, who then walked away from his filming duties. The two haven’t spoken since.

But as described in Vanity Fair, Brando and Kaye are both so bizarre that for all their differences, they are more alike than they will admit.

Kaye tells of Brando’s fascination with his "bowel movements" and "bran muffins." Brando has also been known to have instructed McDonald’s deliverymen to throw burgers over the walls of his L.A. compound and has been spotted driving down Hollywood Boulevard wearing a prop arrow through his head.

Among Kaye’s own eccentricities, during a breakfast meeting at the Beverly Wilshire, he once ordered a 30-egg omelet and "exactly 2.7 ounces of dried oats." He later weighed the oats in the restaurant kitchen. Before Brando became his buddy, the director’s "permanent companion" was "an inflatable E.T. doll . . . I couldn’t leave the house without the bloody thing," he says.

On the set of Frank Oz’s "The Score," Brando refused to take direction, referring to Oz as "Miss Piggy." After a dispute with New Line over the final cut of his skinhead flick, "American History X," Kaye filed a $275 million suit against the production company over its refusal to let him take his name off the picture, replacing it with "Humpty Dumpty."

According to Kaye, Brando’s lawyers are threatening to sue him if he attempts to use any of the footage from the "Lying" class. Says Kaye, "That’s not going to stop me from taking this stuff and exploiting him to hell."

-- Anonymous, December 01, 2002