Al Pacino Breaks Down 4 of His Most Iconic Characters | GQ

why we don't have to cut are they throwing us out are the police here those move on hi I'm al pacino and you didn't notice having to talk about a few of my films Marty Bergman was my manager for a while when I was very young and he was interested in producing films tarragon he was a great producer I made five films him and that was the first of five movies and he read this article this book Peter Maass book about this corruption in the police department and it was Frank I didn't know you didn't know me you find what I'm looking you fire without a warning without a brain in your head I read the treatment of it you know not the script didn't have a script yet they had a treatment and it was interesting but I couldn't tell from a treatment it's always the script but I'll tell you I met Frank Serpico they introduced me to him when I met the person that I was supposed to do I didn't want to play him it was an odd thing not because he was negative or positive but I just felt that couldn't be him well I met Frank I knew there was something I could paint there there was something that would I could sort of serve I just felt it he had an earring long hair and strange-looking but he had a look in his eye that I thought there it is I got to know him very well hang with him then Waldo's solved and Norman Wexler of this Waldo solvers know right now you know Midnight Cowboy and so he was a great writer and so I I did it with him and and sitting lament of course is my first meeting was Sydney it was an interesting meeting that was very interesting I grew to love him naturally but the first impression of him was he said a couple of things that seemed a bit they were bit off-putting about me so I felt that all who is this guy thing is something then I start seeing some of his films I thought he's a great director that's who he is and then we went on to the Dog Day Afternoon later so then Serpico was made and it was the first film Marty and I did together and it was a good thing to have done our own laundry around here now you could be brought up on charges for they always thought so but the reality is they are in trouble I don't care if I'm in trouble I don't care who gets it anymore including myself because if I have to go to outside am I gonna go stay where am I gonna go you just wait took a hit for me I've been waiting for you here Frank I think the script is first you all know the truth the text it's very hard to you know he's gonna say well I'd love to play Picasso Picasso is Picasso but he's got to be fictionalized and Frank Serpico was Frank so a real person but in the theatre and in drama you have to fictionalize it so you take certain liberties with bath so it really comes down to the script being first and that's why I think so anybody see a good Picasso script let me know I'm ready to play him at age 90 kill me so bad he can taste it [Applause] I love the random crazy wild thing it became out there I love what lament did to it and and and this kind of person in this this is lament that is most I mean it's like a happening and sitting that I came up to be doing the filming of this and he said it's out of our hands but he it's out of our hands and that's the feeling that I had with it it was just took it's all on its own life and he knew it but it also had versal in it which is what I loved about Sydney it's very important to me especially because I just need time I I'm not the kind of actor that gets it right away I got up I got a go through it and I mean three weeks is fine but I would prefer three months and I think it's part of coming up out of the theater theater is proven to me to be a great teacher yeah you can understand something if we leave the country there's no coming back here you know what I mean there's no coming back so that if there is anybody now that you want to talk to you want to say goodbye to do it now is there any special country you want to go to humming Oh John I love John I first met John that the we were working for Standard Oil we were messages I was a teenager he was little older and I knew from the moment I met this diaper everybody liked John I mean you just would drawn to him because he was such an interesting person was so open and you just kind of guy he wanted to know because there was something in him and yeah and so I saw him I went up hadn't seen him in years three or four or five years and I went up to promise town to do this thing called the Indian wants the Bronx Israel harlots room and that was the first really big thing I have so I knew this was a role that you know I was doing children's theater and the director of the children's dear sent me this script I thought it he wanted me for another part but he wanted me for the part that I eventually played and we went to Provincetown there's this big house who all live gonna live in it little rooms attics I forget the name of the director his thesis oh yeah we got the guy who's gonna play the Indian oh I said you know who and he opens the door to his room I was living in the big house it was job I said John you're playing the Indian this is years so I got to know him damn I think that wasn't 65 66 and it was great it was it was wonderful in the India once the Bronx was the son of catalyst my whole life really because that's how I met Marty Bregman eating Faye Dunaway came to see it when they feed them with without know her but she was huge star and she called Monty Bregman I didn't I didn't know it David Begelman head of CIA and they came down to see to play this little off-broadway play and that was the role that I always felt that I had found something I have arrived there Your Honor that was it that they kept me body pregnant and kept me see ma was the and next thing you know I was doing roles that's the way it is you know that you can't tell me that that you know that it's a combination of sort of application and luck you know you get lucky if you sometimes you hang around long enough you get lucky later in life but I was lucky that that's what I see it was lucky I'd met my friend Charlie Lawton my great mentor it goes right back on the same Bob luck you know you start thinking that way as you get older you start thinking about those pivotal moments in your life those that literally save your life especially if you come from a background I came from I was from the South Bronx my father and mother divorced and I remember back then living with my grandma my grandfather and my mother but I realized only only lately how much my grandfather meant to me as a father substitute as a person he was such a great person it's so and I loved him so much and I'd my mother and my grandmother and that world and my mother was difficult but she was also great you know but it doesn't come to you till later and not in therapy or anything else he's the owner sudden something happens and you say oh my yes because you identify or something happens in you to say cheese yeah I was going through life not realizing it now my father wasn't around much but to me I think that I'd look at it some you know some people just have it a little bit more centered that their their lives are a little bit more supportive early on that was walking down Sunset Boulevard I happened to be in LA which I was rarely in LA but I was there I don't know why usually it's because I was I knew somebody that was with and I saw the marquee it's it's Scarface Paul Muni and I thought you know I heard a lot about that film my whole life and I knew that a bertolt brecht loved that the gangster movies of the 30s the American Gangster looks and he wrote this great play that I had been doing a to Louie and growing up had heard about George Raft and Paul Muni in Scarface I went to see it with several friends in the Tiffany movie house I sawed up there and this guy Paul Muni was inspiring to watch I just wanted to imitate that's the only thing I thought of was imitating Paul Muni you never know where you're gonna get inspired you never know where it's gonna come when it comes from and you sort of don't even know when it'll happen but you only hope for it to happen it's you know sometimes you're somewhere seeing the play and something comes to you very much like I guess anybody who does this stuff whether it's writing directing whatever painting something gets you there but you have a technique you have a craft and you go through your life doing that as learning that as as much as you can but the problem is you you really relieved and the sense need the craft when you get inspired as soon as Lynette got involved and talked about making it Cuban and all that and all of a sudden that came in and the characters started to come to me through a lot of things Phyllis I modeled them after a few things one was Roberto durán I was inspired by Roberto Duran the fight Earth there was something about his fire and his is they that was caught me but it was a combination of him the actual Paul Muni and my own so I don't mean to express something in it I really felt as though that was expressing the sense of the underbelly about our world in a certain way in a more flamboyant way what the most difficult guy father was once Francis wanted me in the film nobody else did Parham I didn't want me so that was a very difficult time more for Francis I remember which is it wasn't I didn't know what I was getting into and I knew that I knew Francis from before he saw me on Broadway in a play and he he always sort of took an interest in me and asked me to come to San Francisco because he had a film and he was living in San Francisco's otro with Spielberg and Lucas and all these guys I'd met when they were young you know so I knew he was they were doing something together and it was a real group there the Warner Brothers didn't want me in the party and they didn't want the film or anything so I never heard from them and a year later I got a call and he said I'm doing the Godfather which was the biggest book around the way I'd read the book and I thought you know is he awake he was talking from some dream how's he gonna do the Godfather but I did think when I heard it I thought you know Paramount's pretty smart if they use him if he's telling the truth that's a good that's a smart move because I knew how great he was I could I could tell you that I could feel it and then he wanted me and they didn't want me and a serious attest that then we want him finally got to shoot they accepted because Jerry Schatzberg my great friend and direct they gave him eight minutes from panic and needle Park I was the Babe Ruth of West 81st that's right I hit that ball I hit the ball on the roof one time right I wanted to get it there was this crap game going on right I want $79 before my next turn of bat and when they saw the footage they hired me and then when I got on them then they were gonna fire me about two weeks into it then it didn't care for what they were seeing Francis said listen you know I believe in you and all this but you gotta take a look at the footage so I went to the Paramount Building and looked at the footage because I knew this is it my job is over now and I watched the footage which I didn't think was good great or anything but it wasn't really bad because it was what I was thinking about in this role they had given a lot of thought to this part because she'd had to it's a certain kind of role and I thought the power of the role was in the transition from this kid you don't quite know who he is where he's going and then before you know it he becomes this leader and without without tracking it so I like that that I would help create a kind of enigmatic person where does it say that you can't kill a cop come on Mike Tom wait a minute I'm talking about a cop that's mixed up in drugs I'm talking about a dishonest cop now crooked cop who got mixed up in the rackets and got what was coming that's a terrific story we have newspaper people on a payroll don't be Tom it might like a story like that they're mine did just mind it's not personal Sonny it's strictly business what was more of a struggle was living afterward with the aura of that it had it's that toll in it and then there was even a strong one with the Godfather - I thought that was where that care being that character for you know these are three our films and those days eating law year-long shoots so I sort of have a effect on me my life for a while

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Keywords: al pacino, celebrity, iconic, iconic characters, al pacino 2019, al pacino interview, al pacino gq, al pacino iconic characters, al pacino iconic character, pacino, al pacino character, al pacino characters, al pacino movie, al pacino movies, iconic characters al pacino, al pacino iconic, al pacino scarface, al pacino the godfather, al pacino serpico, al pacino dog day afternoon, al pacino role, al pacino funny, men of the year, al pacino godfather, gq, gq magazine

Id: QqPUd0eI5yw

Length: 18min 15sec (1095 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 21 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Gene_Hax]

After watching that I googled Irishman playing near me. I felt like Arnold in Jingle All the Way.