Al Pacino says ‘it’s fun’ to be a new dad at 84
The Godfather has never been a godfather. At least, he is pretty sure that is the case.
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One of the biggest film stars of all time, Al Pacino is sitting in a suite in a Beverly Hills hotel, looking surprised at the idea that this is an honour which has passed him by.
“I’m not convinced, but I don’t hang with people who’d ask me that, I guess," he muses.
"I don’t remember anybody asking me that."
If you are Al Pacino’s godchild and he has forgotten, as his character Michael Corleone famously said in The Godfather, “it’s not personal.”
Pacino has spent a lot of time recently looking back over his life, because at the age of 84, the star of films including Dog Day Afternoon, Heat and The Irishman has written his autobiography, titled Sonny Boy, after what his mother called him.
He explains that “part of the reason” he wanted to commit his life to paper was becoming a father for a fourth time last year - to a boy, who is now 16 months old, called Roman.
The book is a way of guaranteeing that the baby will have the opportunity to learn about his father’s story.
“I want to be around for this child. And I hope I am,” he shares.
“I hope I stay healthy, and he knows who his dad is, of course.”
Pacino, who has never married, is no longer with Roman’s mother, the film producer Noor Alfallah, but they are co-parenting. However, from what he says, most of his day-to-day involvement is limited to online contact.
“He does text me from time to time,” is what Pacino says about Roman.
“Everything he does is real. Everything he does is interesting to me. So, we talk. I play the harmonica with him on the other video thing, and we have made this kind of contact. So, it’s fun.”
Al Pacino once again won hearts and minds with an on-screen performance.
Friends have been contacting Al Pacino asking him why he’s written a memoir, and he admits to "sort of regretting it”.
Over the years he had turned down several offers but decided that now “enough has happened in my life it could possibly be interesting enough for someone to read”.
What he found particularly enjoyable was looking back over his childhood, growing up in New York’s South Bronx.
And it is clear that he has no problem revisiting his biggest films.
The Godfather
It is more than 50 years since Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather made Pacino famous. Its sequel, The Godfather Part II, has its 50th anniversary this December. Both films won Best Picture at the Oscars. (There was also The Godfather Part III in 1990, which Pacino says had "problems").
The truth is that Pacino was almost not part of them.
At the time, things were rather different. He was literally almost made an offer he could not refuse.
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Sitting back with a beaming smile, Pacino tells with relish the story of exactly how close he came to being sacked during the first two weeks of filming: “When your director talks to you and says, ‘You know, I had a lot of faith in you. What's happening? You're not delivering.’
"And you hear the chirping all around. You start to feel, I don't think I’m wanted here.”
The studio was putting pressure on Coppola to replace Pacino, whose performance they felt was flat.
Everything would change with the filming of one of The Godfather’s most famous scenes, where his character Michael Corleone uses a gun hidden in a restaurant toilet to kill a mob boss and a crooked cop, a sequence which allowed Pacino to unleash the power in a performance which is now regarded as an all-time great.
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He believes that Coppola moved the scene up the filming schedule to “Get to the meat because that’s what the studio wanted to see".
"He now claims he didn’t,” Pacino laughs.
Either way, it changed his life.
He then shares a fascinating theory about who would have replaced him if he had been sacked.
He pauses: “Bob De Niro comes to mind.”
This would certainly have changed film history – Robert De Niro entering the Godfather series a film early and playing Michael rather than the young Vito.
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“Yeah, sure. Why not?” chuckles Pacino. “Well, you know, I'm not irreplaceable.”
It is more than 50 years since Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather made Pacino famous. Its sequel, The Godfather Part II, has its 50th anniversary this December. Both films won Best Picture at the Oscars. (There was also The Godfather Part III in 1990, which Pacino says had "problems").
The truth is that Pacino was almost not part of them.
At the time, things were rather different. He was literally almost made an offer he could not refuse.
However, it is 1983’s Scarface which seems to hold a special place in his heart.
“It’s got something. It was powerful,” he beams when the ultra-violent, cocaine-fuelled gangster film is brought up, describing its rise from box office under-achiever and Razzie nominee to cult classic, as “a happy story”.
“It was the hip-hop community that embraced it and were able to see the story in there,” he says, pointing out that the film broke VHS sales records.
When I put the theory to him that perhaps this is the film for which he would like to have won his Oscar, rather than his triumph a decade later for playing a blind veteran in Scent of a Woman, he replies with a “Yes, that’s interesting”, doubling down with a “Yeah. I would like to even have got nominated”, before back-tracking slightly with a “Not that I’m turning my back on Scent of a Woman”.
But the implication is clear.