Al Pacino by Lawrence Grobel

Author:Lawrence Grobel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2006-03-29T16:00:00+00:00

Pacino likes to think and talk—exhaustively—about his roles before filming begins. He has a soul mate in Coppola. “When he theorizes,” marvels Pacino, “all you have to do is listen for ten minutes and you’ve been given a wealth of imaginative, stimulating insights and images. I’ve read where people compare him to the don, but he’s more an emperorsario—maybe we’ve found a new word—than a don. He’s intense, preoccupied, doesn’t miss a trick. He’s a maestro.” Coppola values the same traits in Pacino: “I tend to have a running stream of dialogue with Al, telling him how I feel, what’s gone on before, more or less random thoughts, knowing he will seize on something that’s helpful and disregard what isn’t. Al is one of the most intelligent actors I’ve worked with.”

In the Godfather films Pacino sees a sweep that is nothing short of Shakespearean. “There is the king, who is the don [Marlon Brando], and there are his sons and his kingdom. The don’s life is threatened; he knows he is going to die. Which son will defend him? He loses one, Sonny, and the other one, Fredo, is inadequate. And then there’s the third one, who comes to his aid and takes over the kingdom, even though he never wanted it.”

But for all that grandeur, Pacino thinks, the movies speak to viewers in a very intimate way. He compares the situation of the Corleone brothers to that of second-generation immigrants in general. “The first generation of Italian Americans in this country brought with them the old cultural ways. The second generation sacrificed themselves for the third, which was supposed to achieve the American dream of power, success, and money. It has to do with holding on to your family, the old values versus the new, the old country and the new. It’s a family film, and it always has been. I think that explains its popularity.”

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