How Al Pacino Became Tony Montana in SCARFACE (1983)

I heard about Scarface for a long time because I I was working on our play by Bertolt Brecht collateral we which was very influenced by Mia American gangster picture and I think even as a kid I remember my my relatives talking about the Scarface and how George Raft flips to half a dollar and so I had heard a lot about it and never saw the picture so I was one day walking along Sunset Boulevard the four places and there was the I believe it statistic theater now and it was playing in a double bill with something else I forget was Scarface and it was a few of us so I said well why don't we just go and take a look at it and we went in and it was you know an astounding movie astounding and the performance of communities was it was astounding and inspiring and I thought after that that I just wanted to I wanted to imitate him I wanted to do something I was inspired by that one and I call Marty Burton who then put together some people and they started working on developing this as a film and totally one kind of a political prisoner funk over and I wore my [ __ ] human right now I felt that this Scarface was a piece of so many different kinds of gangsters we've seen he was representative of of a collective person he wasn't them organized so much he seemed almost like a renegade in all of this even though he would comply you knew eventually that he couldn't stick to any format and he controlled environment he was out of control which was an attractive thing in his character to play the group that we surrounded Pacino with in the film were all Cuban basically or Cuba anytime that there was a problem in the accent and Al's accent they had the right to interfere and suggest that this he was offered you're calling us oh I do like they taught you all the time what to do what to think what to feel Robert Easton is a tremendous out to me with the dialect and also the Cuban people who I met in school who gave me a lot of insights into some of their mannerisms and all of which I tried to put into a capsule and swallow and see what would come out and I was trying more not to be as authentic because I don't believe you can really be authentic unless you can mimic very well but if I could take the accent and the mannerisms and and sort of just tighten them away for this for this approach to this movie because I think Brian De Palma was going to take a larger-than-life approach to this film to conceptually deal with the movie in a more operatic style just slightly larger than life and so I think that was incorporated into my interpretation now did a lot of interesting things when I first met him we were doing some screen tests were testing Michelle Pfeiffer another lady's and then after we finished that day said Johnny can ask a big favor again it only speaks Spanish to me once we start to move it I see really why I want to hear Spanish maybe I don't understand just talk to me in Spanish so I did for the entire picture al pacino and John also spoke Spanish he was a Spanish himself so when I was off with an accent I asked John if he would help me and I'm nobody spoken to me in Spanish that's part of his preparation and I think that's part of what makes him one of America's finest actors we had a month of rehearsal time is unheard of you know but Bregman insisted on it and Bryan says and I mean we rehearse that things we could have taken out on the road like a play seeing seeing seeing seeing seeing bang-bang-bang we had a great cast you know he create actors but I was great his creation his generosity and it's in the wisdom really that it took to allow what he allowed allow for exploration and spontaneity when there was room for it there's a call on formal pieces and a lot of playing scenes back and forth Al and the other actors are fine you know they would improvise things and find things to build into the scenes and dollar would come back and write them there was a lot of it where'd you get the beauty Scott Jeff guy even [ __ ] I'm not going to get a scar like that even I was very worried that look phony it was too big it was too small so we did many makeup tests until he came up something we all sorta like I felt this character was good with a knife and had thought with a knife and the sky really came from one of those fights and I thought it would be interesting if it got to the eyebrow and in the action pulled my hand away and it went Dalida further into this part of the face so there's one up here and here I like the different places because I think it was evocative of a chaotic wildness in this guy he was all over the place I'm one here one there you know Manny look at it that I could play come on Pelican the humor was a part of what I thought like the most arc would be necessary in order to get this guy so that you could laugh at him also because if not it was on my street playtime is over okay Oh sir Cutler it looks like somebody's nightmare you needed to find those odd things those twists those ironies to give the character some intelligence too you know so that there was a there was something else going on also otherwise it'd be too blunt them too hard to take epic Steven and I became very close friends and we spent much much time together and just going over our relationship and what it was in the past and we enjoyed it we had fun doing that making a kind of a scenario making up a story and that was a lot of the work we did together I always told me about only follow me on Allison Foundation didn't go for so nice yeah I told you a fellow Lewis in a sanitary not sanitation very Elizabeth I remember the rehearsal afar and going over some I can even remember talking about what was going on in this relationship because it was a strange thing that does take place and I don't think he thought them consistently but he felt a love for her and he felt appearing for her that obviously represented something to him he he endowed her with this kind of innocence and saintliness it was an odd thing and an interesting thing to have in a movie and a certain tragic element to it only gets the American dream but it's hollow because there's nothing going on spiritually you can't love you can't love Michelle Pfeiffer you can you can't reach a chrome you can't connect I have the pink as a friend what kind of life is that but all I can love is his sister his blood but his ability to imagine a form of love outside himself is gone by the materialism that surrounds him is destroyed by [Music] I thought that aller might be always at Humphrey Bogart with that kind of narrow face and those kind of nervous eyes of his and I thought that would be a great finale for him to be buried in a mound of gold dust or cocaine like just crash into it the cocaine that al started was real no I don't know what Alison wanting to take the truth I do remember we tried out baby milk which is dried milk but there was nothing easy to snort because it would get in your nose and we'd be blowing up those all the time but I never started so I can't really attest to what it was I don't like to give away that secret because it takes away from somebody's belief you have to have a secret I mean that's part of what we do the only memory I have of that is putting myself in a kind of trance trance like state because I was in a coked-up state as the character so I found myself every day going into this room with all these guns and all the smoke and all this hell actually and I would put myself in some kind of them give myself a kind of mantra just go in bite the bullet and you know spend the 12 14 hours there every day day in day out just shilling that sequence and she's fine that you get into a rhythm and if you're relaxed when you're doing it you can take anything you get Zen about it because if you for once take a look around you it's it's just unendurable it is one of my my favorite films I felt that what I started out trying to do with that character make that character in a way and it sounds strange I know but I picked the two dimensions not three dimensions counting this side in that side and and I won't try to go the globe and say this is it is what you see and and I didn't I didn't try to go into another area with him and so I felt in terms of that I might have succeeded and I know every actor I know that does Tony nothing this country you've got to make him money first then we're getting money you get its power and we get a power then you get the woman you know whether it's Bruce Willis who does incredible Tony Montana or Tom Cruise who does a credible Tony Montana or Alec Baldwin I mean you know they all do it I mean it's like what we used to do more on Brando and on the waterfront you know it's such a bodacious character with such wonderful line you know and how did such an incredible performance that you know every actor in the world loves to play that part

Channel: FilMagicians

Views: 3,097,012

Keywords: Al Pacino, SCARFACE, Interview, documentary, Brian De Palma, Oliver Stone

Id: Ei-my4rrW_g

Length: 11min 9sec (669 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 17 2017