Tag: Al Pacino

Serpico

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But then I met Frank Serpico in Bregman’s office. Bregman had set it up. I took one look at Frank and I knew. I said, I can play him. I’ve got to play him. I saw it in his eyes, and I thought, I want to be that. I’m often offered real people, and I turn them down. I didn’t want to be them. Not because they’re bad or good. Just because I didn’t feel any connection to them. I spent more time with Frank that summer before we made the film. He came to visit me at a house I was renting in Montauk. We were sitting on my deck, looking at the waves coming in. Finally I said something to him that he’d probably heard a thousand times before. “Frank, why didn’t you take those payoffs?” I asked him. “Just take that money and give your share away if you didn’t want to keep it?” He said to me, “Al, if I did that”—long pause—“who would I be when I listen to Beethoven?” There was something about that statement that just made me want to play him.”

― Al Pacino, Sonny Boy: A Memoir (Penguin, October 15, 2024)

Notes:

Hoo-ah!

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Al Pacino has been one of the world’s greatest, most influential actors for more than 50 years. He’s audacious. He’s outrageous. He’s Al Pacino, and I’m pretty sure you know what that entails…Though he can go small and internal, Pacino’s ability to really emote is one of his singular gifts… Has he always been perfect? No. He strives for something riskier and more alive than perfection. Is he always perceptive, free, unmissable? God, yes.

— David Marchese, from “Interview: Al Pacino Is Still Going Big.” (NY Times, October 5, 2024)

Notes:

  • Al Pacino’s Memoir “Sonny Boy” is released on October 15, 2024.
  • Don’t miss one my favorite collection of clips from “Scent of a Woman” here: “Hoo-ah!”
  • Photo Credit: Philip Montgomery for The New York Times

De Niro + Pacino + Joe Pesci = Must See TV

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We get together and talk, compare notes,” De Niro explained. “Not quite miss each other. We might miss each other.”

Perhaps most surprising of all is that at a moment when they could easily rest on their laurels — and have sometimes been accused of doing just that — Pacino, 79, and De Niro, 76, continue to care immensely about their craft…

But the actors found it a delicate task to explain why this facet of the film appealed to them and for obvious reasons: Who wants to admit that he is nearer to the end of things than to the beginning? As Mann put it, “Does one walk around thinking, oh, I’m an elder statesman now? Or do you still secretly think, who am I going to be when I grow up?”

With some hesitation, De Niro said that he and Pacino had to reckon with the existential questions that “The Irishman” raises.

“We’re at a point where we’re getting closer to seeing” — he made an oscillating, over-the-hill hand gesture as he sought the right words — “I don’t want to say the end, but the horizon,” De Niro said. “The beginning of the tip around and to the other side.”

~ Dave Itzkoff, from “De Niro and Pacino Have Always Connected. Just Rarely Onscreen. The Irishman is officially only the third time they’ve collaborated, but over the years they often turned to one another. Who else could understand?” (New York Times, October 25, 2019)

Love Lifted Me (130 sec)

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Al Pacino, Holly Hunter and the stars of this scene in the movie Manglehorn: Tim Curry and Lamonica Lewis.  (Source: Your Eyes Blaze Out)

The Humbling

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al-pacino-barry-levinson

Al Pacino and Barry Levinson on Age, Accomplishments and ‘The Humbling’:

Mr. Pacino, 74, is playing Simon Axler in The Humbling. Axler is an aging actor whose memory and stamina are failing him. He fears his opportunities are drying up and audiences no longer recognize him.

Q: “The Humbling” deals with a character who is despairing because he’s growing older and believes he’s no longer proficient at the things that defined him. Are these feelings you’ve experienced yourselves?

Al Pacino: Oh, yeah. What film is this again? [Laughter] There are professions where there are certain tools you depend on. With the actor it’s the memory, and also it’s the stamina. You can’t coast in some of these Shakespearean roles. They’re uncoastable. You can imagine the kind of panic that sets in when you realize you can’t get through this.

Q: Is a crisis of confidence like the one your character experiences unimaginable to you?

Al Pacino It’s got to be really confounding when you no longer have that appetite, I would imagine. I know about Philip Roth saying that he doesn’t write anymore and he feels good about it. There’s a kind of relief in that. But to be an actor that doesn’t want to do it anymore?