Al Pacino: The Movies Behind The Man

The early years of Al Pacino

My mom was a great influence on my life, Al Pacino recalled to TV host James Lipton during the legendary actor’s appearance on the programme: Inside the Actors Studio.

The actor was born in East Harlem, New York on 25 April 1940 to Sicilian-American parents Salvatore and Rose Pacino. Alfredo James Pacino was an only child and was nicknamed Sonny Boy by his family after the 1928 Al Jolson song: Sonny Boy. Pacino demonstrated an urge to perform early on in his life. Rose played Jolson records on their gramophone and young Pacino danced along while mimicking the words. At the age of two however, the actor’s life was set to change forever. His father was drafted into the army during World War II and upon his return Salvatore decided he’d had enough of married life. He promptly left Rose and Alfredo for sunny California.

Faced with the prospect of being a single, working parent Rose moved in with her parents: James and Kate Gerardi. Consequently, she and her infant son came to live in the South Bronx area of New York City. Pacino’s maternal grandparents had been born in Sicily, (specifically the town of Corleone) and immigrated to the United States of America in the early 1900s.

James and Kate became as influential in young Alfredo’s life as his mother was. The relationship between Alfredo and James blossomed, as each day the grandfather regaled his grandson with tales of life in Corleone and also the adventures of immigrating to America. James was filling the void in Pacino’s life, acting as a father. His mother, while not present during the day, would ensure she was always home in the evenings with little Alfredo. On many occasions, she took him to the movies after finishing work as an usherette at the Dover Theatre. There, they watched the latest offerings from Hollywood together. They were both fans of James Dean.

My mother loved him, I loved him, Pacino has said.

At the tender age of five his mother took him to see The Lost Weekend starring Ray Milland. Too young to understand the harrowing storyline of a man trying to hide his alcoholism from those around him, Pacino latched on to Milland’s stumbling and desperate performance and re-enacted it in front of his family and their friends. Rose, a big reader and lover of the arts, encouraged her son to act out scenes from the films they had been to see. It became a vehicle through which Pacino could express himself, as he had always been a quiet and shy child. When friends of the family came round to the Gerardi household they would often hear little Alfredo in another room mumbling to himself. Kate said to the visitors: Al likes to talk to himself. He’s doing OK. In an interview with Guy Flatley of The Los Angeles Times during 1973, Pacino said: I was really all alone those first seven years of my life. In fact, I used to go steady with a broom, or maybe it was a mop.

To strangers, he was Rose’s shy boy who wouldn’t say a solitary word. To those who got to know him, he was a joker and an exhibitionist. One time he told his mother that he would like to join the circus and become a clown. Instead, Rose sent him to Herman Ridder Junior School in the Bronx. This was a daunting change for this somewhat introverted child and meant that he was allowed out of the house without adult supervision - on the understanding that he returned straight home each night after classes had finished. For a shy and withdrawn kid like Pacino, it was a difficult place to make friends. Instead, he had to contend with the bullies in the playground. To escape the constant, unwanted attention from both the boys and girls, he would make up stories about his life and where he was from. One time he told those listening he was originally from Texas or that he had a large number of man-eating dogs at home. It wasn’t long before he got a reputation as someone who liked to tell stories and was dubbed: The Actor.

Rose would constantly be called to school because of some mischief her son had taken part in, including ripping open his bottom lip on some barbed wire fencing and putting the teacher’s glasses on her seat so she sat on them. His pranks started to earn him some popularity in school but these were not the types of buddies his family would approve of. They led him away from studying and into school rebellion. They also introduced him to cigarettes and alcohol. This disobedience eventually led to Pacino being reassigned to a class for emotionally disturbed children. He lasted two days with his new classmates before seeing the error of his ways and promising to behave so that he could return to his main class.

Struggling academically, a love of baseball was an outlet for the young Pacino. After squashing the idea of becoming a clown in the circus years earlier, he aspired to become a professional baseball player. While playing at school, Pacino not only wanted to win but also revelled in showing off to his teammates. If I made a catch at third base, I’d do a double somersault and sprawl out on the ground, Pacino recalled when asked about his time playing. However, when the scouts for his beloved New York Yankees didn’t knock down his door he started to wonder what his vocation in life should be.

At the age of thirteen Pacino appeared in the school’s play, it was an adaptation of Craig Rice’s mystery comedy Home Sweet Homicide. One scene called for his character to be sick and, showing the first signs of his love for method acting, Pacino became physically and emotionally nauseous during the production. Afterwards a teacher told Rose: He’s the next Brando.

To a packed school auditorium, he read passages from the bible with such enthusiasm that months later a letter was sent to Rose from drama teacher Blanche Rothstein that suggested his talents lay in acting. Sensing light at the end of the tunnel for a rudderless son, Rose encouraged him with his acting all through High School. Pacino starred in a school production of The King And I which required him to sing. His showmanship was clear for all to see; however, his school work was suffering and he dropped out of many classes. Eventually the only two classes Pacino could be found in were Drama and English.

When it came time to leave Herman Ridder Junior High School, Pacino decided he wanted to continue his acting studies but because of his low grades the only place that would accept him was The High School of Performing Arts. This meant leaving the familiar neighbourhood of the Bronx and venturing into New York City. A daunting thought for a teenage Pacino. Eventually though, he became accustomed to the hustle and bustle of the city. Occasionally, Rose saved enough money to take her son to see a couple of plays. A fifteen year-old Pacino, and his mother, went to see a travelling theatre production of Anton Chekhov’s play The Seagull in a disused, vaudeville theatre called the Elsmere Theatre in the Bronx. It seated about three thousand people but that night only twenty seats were filled. They probably weren’t any good, Pacino later commented. But I had never seen anything like it in my life. My life changed that day. Pacino was brought back down to Earth the next day when he walked into a coffee shop near The High School of Performing Arts and was served by one of the leads from the play. Pacino bumbled his way through complimenting the actor-cum-barista.

Pacino wanted to learn the craft of acting but struggled while at The High School of Performing Arts. There they taught the Stanislavski Method, a form of acting developed by Russian theatre practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski. The method encouraged actors to greater understand the art by going deeper than physical and vocal training. Actors were expected to feel out the character. This wasn’t to Pacino’s liking, he simply wanted to act; he didn’t want to spend hours, days and weeks discovering who his character was. He started to grow disillusioned with the school and that was compounded by him taking Spanish classes only to realise the teacher taught it in Spanish You’ve gotta be kidding? he responded.

Aged sixteen, Pacino dropped out of the school. Partly because he had lost his enthusiasm but also because his mother had become seriously ill and he needed to supplement the family income. Rose had struggled with her health for a few years, at times coming home from work and going straight to her bedroom until the next morning. She had also taken against her son becoming an actor. Undiagnosed at the time, Rose struggled with depression and anaemia. She was in and out of hospital several times and then found she could work no longer. Never having been in the working world before, Pacino found jobs easy to get but hard to keep. He was a messenger, a toilet attendant, a supermarket cashier, a shoe-shiner, a furniture remover, a fruit picker and a newsboy all in quick succession. He became frustrated with the situation at home with his mother and opted to move out and live with a young woman he had met. He continued to send money home each month but would not be there to watch his mother gradually decline.

The desire to act still burned brightly in Pacino and he auditioned for a place at the Actors Studio. He was rejected but it didn’t deter him. In between his many different jobs he continued to audition for roles. Work in the acting world continued to elude Pacino and he ended up with a job at Company Magazine, a monthly Jewish magazine in New York City. There, he would leap over desks to get to his own cubicle and distribute the post with boundless energy. With a steady pay cheque from Company coming in, Pacino managed to save enough money to attend the Herbert Berghof Studio which offered professional training in the performing arts. Here he met one of the great influences on his acting life: Charlie Laughton. This acting teacher saw a spark in Pacino and became his mentor both in and outside of the studio. They spent hours wandering the streets talking about acting and writing, and how it affected the craft of acting. Pacino became so obsessed with absorbing all of the knowledge Laughton was offering him that his job at Commentary Magazine fell by the way side. Without a steady income, Pacino was kicked out of his apartment and started to live rough on the streets. Occasionally he would crash at friend’s house or sneak into the studio and sleep on the stage. It didn’t matter where he slept just as long as he could continue his unofficial father/son relationship with Laughton.

Pacino’s professional life was on the up but his personal life was delivered a devastating blow when his mother died of a heart attack in 1962. In the years since he moved out of the family home, Pacino had a very rocky relationship with his mother. She did not approve of his continued desire to be an actor and he took against her constant downbeat attitude towards him. Pacino fell apart when she died and the rest of the family were similarly traumatised by her death. Rose had struggled with depression for many years and a fatal heart attack at forty-three years old meant she would never get to see her Sonny Boy fulfil his acting ambition. Another blow struck the following year when Pacino’s grandfather suddenly died. Devastated by the death of his long-time father figure, Pacino turned to Laughton for help during those dark times.

The Eureka! moment for Pacino came when he was cast in a production of August Strindberg’s tragicomedy Creditors which was co-directed by Frank Bachimarso and Charlie Laughton. It was a revelation to me, Pacino commented years later. I could express myself in the play to such a point I couldn’t do it in life. For the next four years Pacino would, under Laughton’s tutelage, continue to study the craft of acting and appear in a couple of plays located in basements. Eventually, he was given another shot at auditioning for enrolment in the Actors Studio. As luck would have it on the day of Pacino’s audition he got to perform in two scenes, as opposed to the standard one piece, that demanded two very different acting approaches. The Actors Studio accepted him, and he felt he was lucky to appear in two pieces that day because they would not have accepted him based on just the first performance. It was an identity moment, said Pacino about being accepted.

After four years working with Laughton and living hand-to-mouth it was the moment Pacino had been dreaming of. From the outset, Pacino was nervous about attending the Actors Studio and at one point called Laughton to say he was done with it all. Laughton talked him down and told him to keep going. This was a smart move by his friend and surrogate father because not long after Pacino met Lee Strasberg, a teacher and one of the artistic directors of the studio. He would also become another father-like figure to Pacino. Strasberg had invented his own acting method, named after himself, that had been developed out of Stanislavsky’s system method. The Strasberg Method encouraged actors to magnify and intensify their connection to the material by creating their characters’ emotional experiences in their own lives. Pacino found much solace in Strasberg as a mentor and friend. Outside of classes they sat and listened to classical music, they also talked long into the night about acting and the world outside. During one workshop at the Actors Studio Pacino hadn’t learnt his lines and thought he could blag his way through it. Strasberg put him right with one piece of advice: Darling! Learn your lines!

With his developed sense of confidence following his work with Laughton and Strasberg, Pacino ventured to Waterford, Connecticut to be part of a production of Israel Horovitz’s one-act play: The Indian Wants the Bronx. Pacino was cast as Murph: one of the two punks who attacked the lead character, Gupta, as he arrives in New York City for the first time. A young actor called John Cazale played the other punk, Joey. The two struck up a close-knit friendship that would eventually see them on-screen together in the movies. Using his education at the Actor’s Studio and the wisdom Strasberg bestowed on Pacino to find the character, Pacino collaborated with Horovitz to enhance his performance before work on the text even began. The pair spent days walking the streets. They followed interesting-looking people, observing their movement and clothing and then translated that back into the performance of Murph.

After the run, Pacino returned to New York and the Actors Studio. During 1966, he was part of a New Theater Workshop production of John Wolfson’s The Peace Creeps. The following year he appeared on stage in Boston, Massachusetts in two different productions: Awake and Sing by Clifford Odets and America Hurrah by Jean-Claude Van Itallie. While starring in America Hurrah Pacino became enamoured with his co-star Jill Clayburgh and they began a relationship that, upon their return to New York, would see the couple move in together. 1968 became a defining year for Pacino. He started the year back on stage at the Astor Place Theater in New York with another run of The Indian Wants the Bronx. Cazale also returned and it ran for over two hundred performances and earned Pacino an Obie Award (the off-Broadway equivalent of a Tony Award) for Best Actor. Cazale also picked up Best Supporting Actor and Horovitz won Best New Play.

During the production’s run off-Broadway, the actor Faye Dunaway attended one of the performances and was so struck with the performance by Pacino that she recommended her manager Martin Bregman go see the play. Bregman was blown away by Pacino and offered to support him in any of his future projects. The young actor didn’t exactly know what Bregman meant by supporting him. It was only days later in Bregman’s office that Pacino understood what he meant. Bregman would act as a mediator between Pacino and the film studios. He would also be his financial advisor, and offer career advice. Al still had no idea what I was going to do for him recalled Bregman. In November an episode of the cop TV show N.Y.P.D. aired that featured Pacino and his real-life girlfriend Clayburgh. They played a couple and Pacino’s character was suspected of being in the Ku Klux Klan, and bombing a church in the South. It was Pacino’s on-screen debut.

The last year of the Sixties had its highs and lows for Pacino. He graduated to a Broadway stage in a production of Don Petersen’s racially-charged drama Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie? It ran for forty-eight performances at the Belasco Theatre and at the Tony Awards ceremony Pacino won the Best Dramatic Actor in a Supporting Role for his performance as the psychotic junkie Bickham. Juxtaposing with that was a short-lived and poorly-received eight run performance of Heathcote Williams’ play The Local Stigmatic at the end of the year.

By the early 1970s Pacino had finished at the Actors Studio, but continued to stay friends with Strasberg, and still concentrated on his stage acting, appearing in a Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams’ Camino Real? at the Vivian Beaumont Theater inside the Lincoln Center, New York. This ensemble piece, in which Jessica Tandy also appeared, saw Pacino bellow his way through his scenes, stealing the thunder from the other actors. Bregman had started to receive the occasional call from film studios who wanted Pacino to star in their productions. Both the unofficial manager and the actor batted them all away except one.

Me, Natalie was a coming of age melodrama starring Patty Duke. Pacino was on-screen for less than a minute. In that time his character, Tony grabs Natalie, Duke’s character, and forces her to dance. He follows that up with the line: You have a nice body, you know that? and Do you put out? When Natalie responds in the negative, Tony replies I don’t know what I’m doing talking to you. Somebody like you should be asking me. Then he leaves her and grabs the next girl to dance with. It’s a despicable, bold performance from a first-time film actor.

Another first for Pacino was directing. Travelling to Boston again he called the shots on Israel Horovitz’s play Rats at the Charles Playhouse during March 1970 under the watchful eye of David Wheeler’s Theatre Company. Bregman became Pacino’s official manager and it seemed wise for him to sign to a talent agency if he wanted to progress in feature films. He signed with Creative Management Associates who also represented, among others, James Coburn, Jackie Gleason and Judy Garland.

Movie offers soon started to fly in for Pacino and all offers were knocked back including roles in titles such as Tell Me That You Love Me, Catch 22 and Junie Moon. He also turned down a lucrative Broadway production of Zorba The Greek. Laughton and Strasberg were on-hand if and when Pacino needed them, which proved to be most of the time. Unsure of his next move Pacino turned to Bregman for advice. His manager recommended he sign on to a small independent movie that was to be set in his old neighbourhood of the Bronx. A movie in which he would play out his first leading on-screen role as an actor.

The Panic in Needle Park

Cast: Al Pacino (Bobby), Kitty Winn (Helen), Alan Vint (Hotch), Richard Bright (Hank), Kiel Martin (Chico), Michael McClanathan (Sonny), Warren Finney (Sammy), Marcia Jean Kurtz (Marcie), Raul Julia (Marco), Joe Stantos (DiBono).

Director: Jerry Schatzberg.

Synopsis: Heroin addict Bobby introduces his clean cut girlfriend Helen to a new strung-out world filled with young derelicts who steal, love, cheat, befriend and betray.

Few actors make the jump from bit part to big break but that’s exactly what happened to Al Pacino when he landed his first ever leading role in The Panic in Needle Park, Jerry Schatzberg’s adaptation of the novel by James Mills. This haunting depiction of 70s drug-culture was released on 13 July 1971 in the U.S., and thereafter had a gradual release in other territories.

The Needle Park in question was located in Manhattan, between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue. During the 1960s and 70s, it was an infamous drug-taking den. Growing up in the Bronx, Pacino would have been aware of the sleazier parts of New York and Sherman Square, the official name given to Needle Park, which was just 10 miles away from his childhood home. Where some of Pacino’s acquaintances even died of heroin overdoses. In short, his first starring role was set in a world he was trying to escape.

It had taken several attempts to lure Pacino into making a full movie. He explained to author Lawrence Grobel: "I turned down eleven films before I made my first one. I knew it was time for me to get into movies. I didn’t know what it would be. When The Panic…came along Marty Bregman [movie producer/personal manager] pushed and helped get it together." Bregman pitched Panic to the studio as Romeo and Juliet on junk.

Director Jerry Schatzberg had seen Pacino in the 1968 stage production of Indian Wants the Bronx at the Astor Place Theatre in New York. Based on that performance, he decided if he did venture into moviemaking, he wanted to work with Pacino. Schatzberg had previously turned Panic down but went back and re-read the script when he heard Pacino was interested in the project. Twentieth Century Fox told Schatzberg that Pacino was too young for the leading role. They didn’t want Kitty Winn either; they were pushing for Mia Farrow. After a recommendation by producer Dominick Dunne, Schatzberg went to see Winn in a play and recognised in her the innocence and vulnerability required for the role of Helen. Eventually Fox relented and Schatzberg had his two lead actors.

Before the cameras started rolling, the trio (Pacino, Winn and Schatzberg) spent several weeks frequenting junkie hang-outs and attending seminars to gain insight into the characters Pacino and Winn were to play. At one point, a group of drug users thought Pacino and Winn were undercover police officers and set upon them. The pair made a swift exit. Filming on this picture lasted ten weeks in and around Manhattan using the filming technique called Cinema Verite, the technical term for using hand-held cameras on real locations, adding a raw, gritty edge to the situations and dialogue.

For the majority of the runtime, the movie is shown from Helen’s point of view. Initially, Helen is a sweet, shy girl from the Midwest who has travelled to New York to experience bigger and better things. Her slide into the seedy underworld of drugs and prostitution, however, doesn’t take long. This film is a harrowing tale of the unforgiving nature of the big city. How it can swallow you up without a care. The all-too-real battle for Helen is to stay strong; to resist temptation. Time and again however, she loses her mind, and body, to drug abuse. Her other tragic flaw is her attachment to Bobby. He is a drug unto himself to Helen, betraying further her addictive personality.

While Pacino went on to bigger and better movies, it’s actually Kitty Winn who steals Panic. It’s a demanding role, especially during the drug-induced scenes. Slumped and eyes rolled, Winn portrays Kitty as a woman who wants excitement and one who can only ultimately achieve this by shooting up. It’s a bleak performance for any actor, and one that might traditionally be given to a man, but Panic shows addiction can bite either sex just as hard. Pacino’s Bobby, whilst addicted to drugs, is functional without. He seems to operate two different lives through the film: the happy, upbeat twenty-something who enjoys playing stickball, and the drug fiend. The latter takes over increasingly as the film progresses. When not on drugs, his fast, electric patter is non-stop He is constantly on the move, looking for the next big rush like a firecracker waiting to explode. A particularly nasty scene in the movie sees Bobby learn that Helen has been selling her body to pay for their drugs. Pacino’s now well-established tick of turning up the volume and punching out his dialogue is first seen here as he pummels Winn with blow upon blow. The scene ends with her retreating into the bathroom and locking the door as Pacino stands on the other side threatening to break in. Looking back on that scene now, it’s clear this is where Pacino developed the bellowing attitude that would almost become his signature move.

Director Jerry Schatzberg opted to film the movie in a raw, almost docudrama, style. There is no music in this film, which adds to the realism. Moreover, an early scene depicts an unidentified man shooting up. The camera lingers long and hard on the method. In the background Bobby and Helen are caught up in their love for one another but the drug-taking is the focus of this scene. The camera never veers away from the injection; the slow insertion of the needle; the plunge of the solution into the body; the withdrawal, followed by a shuddering as the drugs take effect. Footage like this had never been so graphic in a movie before. Pacino noticed there were real-life dealers all around while filming one particular scene in which his character had to deal drugs on a street corner. He said in an interview with Lawrence Grobel I looked at him, and he looked at me, and I got real confused. Chances are he is referring to the scene where Bobby tries to score drugs in front of the Museum of Natural History; a building located across from Central Park, which was itself a notorious crime den during the 1970s.

The Panic in Needle Park showcased the city within a city that New York had become. Movies such as Manhattan, All That Jazz and Saturday Night Fever have glamorised the 70s era in New York. Films such as these portray the 70s as the disco culture decade, when drug-taking in places like The Loft, Paradise Garage and celeb nightclub Studio 54 was an accepted pastime. Nobody spoke about the dangers of getting hooked on heroin, cocaine or any other chic, fashionable drug.

The film’s finale is open-ended, which is not unusual but does make the finish just as dark and disturbing as the rest of the runtime. Helen, post-abortion, is greeted by Bobby, fresh out of prison. He says two, simple words: Come on, and they walk off together into an ambiguous future. Fans have speculated for years about whether the pair ever got clean. During the course of the film however, we never see them hit rock bottom; there is no awakening. Schatzberg has commented that: I don’t know what will happen to those two characters, whether they are going to go back to drugs or find a life. From the tone of the movie, one could assume they are set to revert to their old lives once again. That their addiction will become a life-long cycle.

The Panic in Needle Park was rated R in the U.S. upon release and Twentieth Century Fox took out newspaper adverts that played up the love and drama. When moviegoers went to see the film however, they witnessed something altogether very different. Consequently, Fox had to run another set of ads that explained: If you see it now, it will sear your senses forever. And that’s the truth. The movie was banned in the UK for three years due to its intentional depiction of drug use. Germany gave it the dreaded X certificate again because of its portrayal of drug addiction and violence.

Panic received mixed reviews. The National Observer said it was: almost physically painful to watch. Pauline Kael described it as: worthy, but a drag…it feels undramatic. Saturday Review magazine called it A masterful accomplishment. Glossy homoerotic magazine After Dark exclaimed: This is a film of horror and of pity and of love. It will knock you down without ever picking you back up. Many critics didn’t like that a fashion photographer (Schatzberg) and a pair of literary novelists (Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne) were responsible for such a frank piece of work. In a 2009 interview with IFC.com, Didion reflected on her work on the movie: "When we were shooting, I was overcome with what I had failed to do. Actually, when I saw it [again], I was struck by how much we did do. When asked what drew her to the project, she said: The love story. Plain and simple. It was an interesting world that we hadn’t seen on the screen in exactly that way, so I just felt as if it could work. We didn’t really know about that life, so we did some research. We stayed at the Alamac Hotel for two or three weeks."

The Panic in Needle Park is a sobering romance film without a happy ending. Schatzberg tries to create compassion for the characters but ultimately they come across as unsympathetic losers who are the architects of their own downfall. The stark realism of the movie was too much for audiences at the time. With modern-day movies now keen to capture the true depths of drug abuse however, The Panic in Needle Park should be seen as a notable forerunner exploring the grim consequences for those who partake in substance abuse.

Kitty Winn went onto win Best Actress at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival for her portrayal of Helen. This said, she only made four more films after Panic, seemingly returning to her first love of stage work. Pacino however, had left his stage career behind and while he might not have been singled out for praise in his role as Bobby, something big just around the corner was about to announce him to the world.

Director Jerry Schatzberg on The Panic in Needle Park

You were an already established photographer, so why the jump into making films?

My first film was Puzzle of a Downfall Child. I had the story I wanted to tell about a model, about many models. One of my favourite models experienced this. Which is: when you get to a certain age or you’ve been used a certain amount all of a sudden the establishment just throws you away and you might only be twenty-five or thirty-five. You’re still very young. In today’s world they start at fifteen and by the time they are twenty they’ve had a career. They’ve been treated to first class everywhere in the world and all of a sudden they have to become a secretary somewhere. In those days the models were older and my model had had a couple of children and she was married and she did have financial problems because they live very high.

The story really affected me and I tried to think how I could do it. I thought I could do a photo-journalistic story in stills, but it just didn’t work. Then I went to London, a couple of producers called me from Hollywood and asked me if I would be a technical advisor on a TV special they were doing called The World’s Most Beautiful Women, and it took me about three or four seconds to say yes. When they came to New York I asked them who was directing it and they said they don’t have a director yet and I said I had been fooling around with the film, would you look at it and see if it’s possible? And they did and they showed it to the network and everybody said yes. So now I was the director.

When I went there [London] the first subject was Lady Antonio Fraser. I really liked doing it, it was really an exciting thing. I did that one segment and we were waiting for Queen Sirikit of Thailand to come. This was not just physical beauty but somebody who had a bit more brains and heart. My arrangement with them was if I had to go [back] to New York, I would [in order] to do my job and then come back again [to London].

I had to go back to New York and as luck would have it, the Queen [Sirikit] came in two days after I left and I couldn’t come back right away, so the two producers did the next interview and they were a couple of guys who were always fighting with one another all the time, and again they started fighting and they confiscated one segment, the one that I shot and the one they shot, and they wouldn’t give it to each other and the network cancelled them out. When I was flying back [to New York], I realised how much I liked that and that would be the best way to do my story and when I got back I talked to some friends of mine and they told me about different writers, and one of them had a friend that was a Frenchman who had written, in the 1940s. He did Gérard Phillippe’s first film [Les petites du quai aux fleurs] and it was a period that was sort of dark cinema and mine was pretty dark I thought. So I hired him to do a screenplay for me. He didn’t do a bad screenplay but he was so difficult to work with and he felt that a first-time director couldn’t give him instructions or couldn’t ask for rewrites. I felt it wasn’t going to work so I stopped there and then went looking for a new writer.

By that time I had become friendly with Faye Dunaway and she became part of the project. I shot the film. Put it together. The lab had scratched the last six minutes of my negative and I was very upset and at that time my agency was looking for a director for The Panic in Needle Park because they represented the writers also. My agency said Read this and I read it and I turned it down because I was really upset about my situation. I went up to my manager’s office and he said: You know there is a good script out there I said What’s It called? and he said "Panic in Needle Park. I said: I think I turned that down. He said: I think it’s a good script, and by now he was managing Pacino, so he said Al is interested" and I had seen Al on stage about four years before I even thought about doing a film.

Marty [Bregman] was my manager then and I said: If I ever do a film that’s the guy I’d want to work with, and now here I was. So I went back and re-read the script thinking of Al as the character and I thought it would be great. I went back to the producers and apologised and told them how foolish I was and they probably agreed with me. We all made it work and we did The Panic in Needle Park.

You mentioned you saw Pacino on stage. What was it that you saw in him on stage that made you think: ‘that’s the guy I want in my movie?’

I was sitting in the audience and I couldn’t turn away from him. He was so dynamic. Somebody exposing themselves so readily on stage was fascinating and I just thought he was a fantastic actor. He was just really dynamic.

When he was on set for the first time did you see nerves? Or was he as you saw him on stage?

On stage he wasn’t nervous at all. He knew what he was doing. He had already won a couple of Obie Awards for theatre, he hadn’t done any films yet. He was energetic. He knew what he was doing. He would knock you off your seat at times. It was just really exciting.

Watching the film, it’s fair to say Kitty Winn steals the movie slightly. What directions did you give to her? Especially the scenes where she is shooting up and getting high.

We had the advantage of hanging out together - Kitty, Al and I. We hung out for about a month and half before we ever started rehearsals. Just going to places where drug addicts hung out. We went to hospital seminars, just sat in as part of the seminar. We did a lot of research at the time. I had some friends that were junkies, so I was able to contribute. I think Al knew people that were. Kitty didn’t and then after the first couple of weeks of shooting I felt we had a problem because she wasn’t opening up. I spoke to Dominick Dunne, the producer, and said: maybe we’ve got a problem. We should think, since we are in the early stages, of replacing her. He was upset. I was upset and I said: Listen let me talk to her. I called Kitty and I told her I just didn’t think she…..she made every first choice rather than going deeper into the character and find the character, and using some of the stuff we researched. She was very upset and she cried. But she, by herself, went out to the places we used to go and she started researching more and it started to come to fruition.

You filmed in and around the Bronx, where you and Pacino are from. Do you think that helped you create a more authentic atmosphere in the movie?

That always has something to do with it. It’s familiar to both of us in a way because you never forget your roots. Al and Kitty are both professionals. They know what they are doing. Kitty came from a repertoire company in San Francisco and she was well into it. Of course Al was on stage. This was a job and you always set it up. We had lots of discussions and it was easy to talk to both of them. I had a lot of former junkies on the set. I tried to make sure there weren’t any users on the set and I didn’t find out until after the film that there was one, but it didn’t interfere with what we did. The former junkies were very helpful in telling us different things and the first one [in the film] that shoots up was a former junkie and he knows what it’s like to shoot up, so he came off beautifully in what he did. In the factory when they are mixing the heroin we had two or three people that had actually worked in those factories. So we were able to make it really authentic, or as authentic as we could.

The movie is very raw in its depiction of drug use and I don’t think that had been seen on screen before. Was it a conscious decision on your part to show all of it?

Yes. Yes. I felt unless you really knew their world you couldn’t feel their world and I said: ‘I do want to have them shooting up in the film.’ I had never seen anybody really shoot up, they always turn away. I wanted people to cringe at it. I thought I was doing a film that would really deter people. I had some surprises along the way because we had a seminar once where students from the inner city came in and I was talking as if I had done a film that would stop everybody from doing drugs and one of the teachers got up and said: You may think that but for these kids, what they saw in that film was a step up. It was a shock to me, but it was true.

When it comes to the finale of the film how do you view it? Do Bobby and Helen break their cycle and get clean? Or are they doomed to repeat?

I don’t want to say how I see it. I like that everybody take[s] their own experience with that. Most of my films end like that. I think it’s up to the individual. I think the audience is responsible for the film as much as anybody else. I don’t want to tell them how to think completely because we don’t know. My first film, I don’t know if she is going to straighten herself out and get a life for herself. In the second one I don’t know they are going to straighten out. Although I have known a lot of junkies that have and they go on and have a life. I think it’s up to the audience. I, personally, am an optimist. I always leave a little optimism.

I had this funny situation with Harold Pinter, because he did one of my films [Reunion], we were in Germany looking at locations and he doesn’t like to talk about work as much as he likes to talk about politics. We got into a conversation at dinner and he was talking about politics and was being very pessimistic about the world and I said: I like to be a little optimistic. I don’t want to say everything is going to turn out well. He said Well I joined this organisation and that organisation. I said to him: Harold, that’s exactly why I’m a little optimistic. We laughed about it. I am a little optimist. So I like to think something good is going to happen. I know that it could go completely the other way.

There is no music in the film. What was the thinking behind that creative choice?

We had a score written. Every time I put music in it, it took it away from the reality that I was trying to get. Cue after cue I just took it out. Nobody complained. I feel the noise of the streets was enough for that. I’m not sorry we didn’t have music. We tried but it just didn’t seem to work in there. We could have gone other ways. I couldn’t think of any music in there.

I’m not sure if you know this, the film was actually banned in Great Britain upon release. It was released three years later, cut. Then, when it was released on VHS it was cut by fifty seven seconds. It was finally released uncut in 2002. What is your reaction to hearing that your work has been cut?

I knew that it had been banned at first. I didn’t know about the cutting. I go through my work pretty thoroughly so I don’t like to see somebody else cut it. I would appreciate if they had talked to me about it. But I know that we are in a business and I know they are not really going to cater to some photographer’s ego. I get very upset if people crop my pictures. But after I see it maybe I can agree with it. I don’t know what they cut, if they cut the needles. If they did that’s too bad. I did know that it was banned at first. Man with the Golden Arm, which never showed anything really, but talked about heroin addiction was banned when it first came out.

How would you describe The Panic in Needle Park in just a few words?

I thought it was a realistic drug adaption of, maybe, Romeo & Juliet. It’s a love story that happens in all walks of life. I really like to get into some relationships with most of my films and I think that’s what we all relate to. I’m not into special effects and that kind of film. I just think it’s a realistic depiction of the drug world. Not taking into account that maybe it’s a step up for some people, but for the people I showed that’s what you could see. I remember walking the streets and looking in an alley way and seeing people shooting up. It was very much a thing then.

The Godfather

Cast: Marlon Brando (Don Vito Corleone), Al Pacino (Michael Corleone), James Caan (Sonny Corleone), Robert Duvall (Tom Hagen), Diane Keaton (Kay Adams), Talia Shire (Connie Corleone), John Cazale (Fredo Corleone), Richard S. Castellano (Clemenza), Richard Conte (Barzini), Al Lettieri (Sollozzo).

Director: Francis Ford Coppola.

Synopsis: Aging Don Vito Corleone is the head of one of New York’s five families. After an assassination attempt on the Don goes wrong, his youngest son Michael reluctantly steps up to assume control of the family and to seek revenge on those who have gone against the family.

Mario Puzo’s novel The Godfather, a look at the inner workings of a high-profile crime family, was released on 10 March 1969. It went on to sell 350,000 copies before the year was out. After two unprofitable novels, Puzo set out to write a book that would bring him the wealth he craved. He freely admitted The Godfather wasn’t well-written. When talk show host Larry King asked Mario about the book, Puzo said: If I’d have known so many people were going to read it, I’d have written it better. Within the first two years of printing, The Godfather had sold one million copies in hardback and eight million in paperback. Puzo had found his money-maker.

The option for the movie rights was secured long before the novel had even been published. Paramount Pictures were alerted to the novel in 1967 when a literary scout contacted Peter Bart, Vice President of Production at the studio, about Puzo’s unfinished manuscript. The studio offered $12,500 for the work and a further $80,000 if it eventually made a movie. Paramount confirmed their intentions to make a film shortly after the novel had been released, setting an initial theatrical release date of Christmas Day 1971.

After approaching several other directors, including Sergio Leone, Peter Bogdanovich and Otto Preminger, the studio settled on Francis Ford Coppola. Confident he would work for a small wage and with a low budget. Paramount’s Head of Production, Robert Evans, had further leverage over Coppola as his film company, American Zoetrope, owed Paramount money. That was thanks to George Lucas’ movie THX1138 going over budget. Coppola was officially announced as director of The Godfather on 28 September 1970 after which producer Albert S. Ruddy, writer Mario Puzo, casting director Fred Roos and director Coppola started auditions.

As patriarch of the family, the role of Don Vito Corleone required an actor who could dominate every scene. Coppola wrote a list of people he saw fit to play some of the main Corleone males in the movie. His list for Don Vito included such actors as Laurence Olivier, John Marley, Marlon Brando and, at one stage, Burt Lancaster. Puzo wanted Marlon Brando, the studio felt he was too much of a rebel and were pushing for Ernest Borgnine. Coppola was torn between Brando and Olivier. Paramount insisted it would be either Borgnine or Brando, but the latter would have to screen-test for the first time since 1953. Not wanting to offend Brando, Coppola tricked him into a screen-test by asking him to come in for camera and make-up tests. During these few hours, Brando created one of the most iconic characters in movie history. He swept his hair back; requested make-up that would age him twenty years and placed cotton wool balls in his mouth. When Paramount executives saw what a great job he had done, they relented and offered Brando the job. He was paid $50,000 for six weeks of work and an additional weekly expense of $1,000. It was further agreed he’d receive 5% of the film’s gross but this was to be capped at $1.5 million. Coppola, Puzo and Paramount had their Vito Corleone but at a high price compared to the rest of the cast.

Numerous actors were considered for the role of eldest son, Santino ‘Sonny’ Corleone, including Peter Falk and John Saxon. Also on that list was James Caan. Robert Evans wanted him; Coppola had previously worked with him on The Rain People. Born in the Bronx, Caan had the Italian-American attitude that needed for Sonny and was thus brought onboard quickly. Like Caan, Robert Duvall, who would play lawyer Tom Hagen had worked with Coppola on The Rain People. He was the preferred choice over actors such as Peter Donat, Ben Piazza and John Cassavetes. Pacino’s friend and roommate John Cazale was cast as the weak-willed and incompetent Frederico Fredo Corleone, the second son of Vito. Casting director Fred Roos saw him on stage in Israel Horovitz’s play Line, opposite Richard Dreyfuss, and immediately brought him to the attention of Coppola. There was no hesitation to cast him, Coppola said in the documentary I Knew It Was You: Rediscovering John Cazale.

Coppola gave small roles to members of his family but was reluctant to give the role of Constanzia ‘Connie’ Corleone to his sister Talia Shire. He thought she was too beautiful to play a homemaker. It was Robert Evans who signed Shire to play Connie. Coppola wasn’t happy and told her: The last thing you need when you are making a movie and your job is in jeopardy is your sister. Shire screen-tested and Coppola relented, not wanting to deny her the opportunity of a lifetime. Shire was paid $1,500 for her work which was considerably less than the rest of the main cast considering she had a lot of screen time (Duvall for example wangled the slightly larger sum of $36,000).

The role of Kay Adams, Michael’s girlfriend and eventually his wife, went to Diane Keaton. Karen Black, Jill Clayburgh, Jennifer O’Neill and Cybill Shepherd had all previously auditioned for the role. Keaton was a relative unknown at the time; Coppola had seen her in the film Lovers and Other Strangers and thought: maybe Diane could bring some eccentricity to it. Keaton had so many screen-tests with different actors auditioning for the role of Michael Corleone, she said: I think they finally got tired of seeing me they said Oh, for god’s sake, just give her the part."

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the toughest role to cast turned out to be one of the most important. Michael Corleone is the youngest son of Don Vito. A complex character who tries to steer away from the family business. On Coppola’s casting list were names such as James Caan (before being cast as Sonny), Martin Sheen and Dustin Hoffman. The role almost went to Robert De Niro, but he pulled out after accepting the lead role in the film The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot. Ironically, De Niro was taking the place of Al Pacino, the man who would eventually be cast as Michael Corleone. Coppola had seen Pacino on stage a few years earlier and wanted him from the start. Evans urged Coppola to consider Robert Redford or Ryan O’Neal. Other names mentioned were Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson. But Coppola kept picturing Pacino in the scenes set in Sicily.

When reading Puzo’s novel, Coppola could only picture Pacino in the role because he had a very Italian face. Coppola kept asking Keaton who he should cast as Michael and she looked at him and said: You know, it should be Al. A mammoth effort was required to get Pacino into the movie. Coppola had to screen twelve minutes of The Panic in Needle Park before Mario Puzo agreed with him. But Pacino had problems during the first screen-test. He hadn’t learnt his lines and started to improvise the scene. The studio felt this was sloppy and underlined why they didn’t want him. A second screen-test was organised and the same problem happened again. Coppola had now dubbed him: The self destructive bastard. A third and final screen-test was arranged a few weeks later. This time Pacino turned up having read and remembered his lines, and Robert Evans was suitably impressed with this new Pacino. Coppola screened Panic… for Evans as well. By this point Evans was on-board with the decision, but there were still some reluctant executives at Paramount. Through sheer determination Coppola got his wish and Pacino signed up for the role of Michael Corleone.

Filming began on 29 March 1971 and lasted for sixty-two days. Over forty locations were used for filming, the majority of them in and around New York. Further filming took place in Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Many scenes were also shot on location in Sicily.

Pacino’s first week of filming was hard for him. He wasn’t ready for a film like The Godfather which had such a huge scope. He was nervous around his co-stars, especially Brando. The first couple of day’s dailies were sent back to Paramount head office. The executives still didn’t like the way Pacino was acting. It wasn’t until towards the end of the first week that things clicked. Filming the infamous restaurant scene where Michael kills Police Captain McCluskey and Virgil The Turk Sollozzo, Pacino, on only his second take, offered a steely look that said everything Coppola and the Paramount executives wanted. It was the look of a man who has changed his destiny in two gun shots. A phenomenal shift for a young man who couldn’t remember his lines two months previously. Pacino had always been a huge fan of Marlon Brando and it appeared Brando’s method acting was rubbing off on his new protégé. Pacino withdrew from other cast members because he felt Michael was the outsider, and he wanted to stay in character throughout. Some of the cast found this difficult to understand, they wanted to help the young actor but he retreated into his own area of the set.

The mood on set was generally jovial. Brando kept writing little notes and sticking them to his head when the camera was focussed on the other actors. Brando, Caan and Duvall were constantly pulling down their trousers and baring their bums to the cast and crew. Marlon accomplished the ultimate mooning act when they filmed the wedding scene. At the end of filming he was given a belt buckle that said Mighty Moon King. Pacino joined in with these antics as he told Ladies Home Journal magazine: In a scene where I sit behind a desk, wardrobe made a big fuss about getting me a shirt with a smaller collar. So while everyone was looking at the shirt, I took off my pants. When I came out from behind the desk I got a laugh.

Unfortunately, this fun anecdote doesn’t reflect Pacino’s overall experience. He felt like the outsider because he had only made one movie unlike most of his other cast members. Furthermore, the threat of being fired loomed over him. Pacino had a hard time when filming in Sicily. He told Esquire Magazine: It was so hot. If you haven’t slept and you’re not feeling well and its 120 degrees and you’re dressed in all wool, well, you just want to go home. You start feeling, ‘What am I doing? I’m just shooting this over and over and I don’t know what this is anymore. Pacino couldn’t speak Italian, so Coppola changed the script at the last minute. Michael spoke in English and Angelo, his bodyguard in Sciliy, translated. Coppola also had a tough time. At one point, Pacino found Coppola sat on a gravestone crying because the studio wouldn’t give him the time or money to shoot an extra scene. He overheard crew members rubbishing both the film and him. He was constantly undermined by the studio heads.

Filming The Godfather had been a struggle for both Coppola and Pacino. Pacino learnt a lot about himself and the world of movie-making. He also finally understood his Italian heritage and what it had meant to those Italian-American’s living in New York. He commented: I felt like I could open up and cry for years. It was hard for me to liberate these feelings. But I spent too much time alienated and lonely. Pacino always felt like his work was being judged throughout the filming and that he still had to win over these people [studio heads].

Post-production wasn’t much easier for Coppola. Towards the end of 1971 the film was ready to screen to studio executives. On the first screening, Paramount asked Coppola to trim down the runtime. He turned in a second cut of one hundred and thirty five minutes but Robert Evans hated the new cut and told him to restore it back to its near three hour length. There was further complication with the sound. Coppola worked with Maestro Nino Rota to create its iconic score. But Evans hated it and refused to release the film with that music. Coppola said the only way it would be changed is if they fired him and brought in another director. The stalemate lasted a few days. Then Coppola suggested they screen the film for the public with the Nino Rota score to see what they felt about it. Thirty or forty people sat through the first public screening with the Rota score and all agreed it was wonderful. Thus, the music stayed, but to show he still held power over everyone, Robert Evans insisted two music cues be changed.

Such was the demand to see Puzo’s book come to life, the world premiere of The Godfather took place across five cinemas in New York on 14 March 1972. It was met with rapturous applause in each screen. There was however another screening Paramount didn’t know about. Producer Al Ruddy had been holding secret talks with the Italian American Civil Rights League for several months. They objected to the film being made, arguing it would be disparaging to all Italian-Americans. Ruddy started these meetings after finding his car had been shot many times over. The script was changed to eliminate the words Mafia and Cosa Nostra, replacing them with the five families. The League suspended any picketing against the film after these demands were met. On the night of the premiere, however, one of the mobsters called Ruddy and complained the five cinemas wouldn’t let them buy any tickets. Ruddy consequently snuck out a print of the film and gave a few hundred mobsters their own screening. Afterwards Ruddy received a phone call from the projectionist at the secret screening, who said: Mr Ruddy, I’ve been a projectionist my whole life. No one ever gave me a thousand dollar tip.

The Godfather opened in New York on a Wednesday. It had already garnered $15 million in pre-rentals from movie theatres. The two Al’s, Ruddy and Pacino, snuck into one of the first viewings in New York. They decided to leave early and come back towards the end of the film. Ruddy recalled to Vanity Fair: The lights came on, and it was the eeriest feeling of all time: there was not one sound. No applause. The audience sat there, stunned.

Over the next twelve months, The Godfather had praise piled upon it. The New York Times called it one of the most brutal and moving chronicles of American Life. Chicago Sun Times’ critic Roger Ebert praised the film’s ability to absorb the viewer over its three hour run time. Variety complimented Pacino’s work: It is Pacino who makes the smash impression here. Pacino matures under the trauma. By