Cue Pacino’s story - Pasadena Star-News

Cue Pacino’s story

Beside his new memoir, a look back at his lesser-known films offers additional insight

Pacino, right, hugs Gerald Schoenfeld of New York’s Shubert Organization during a 1979 staging of “Richard III.” Pacino loved Shakespeare’s play and devoted a 1996 documentary to it, “Looking for Richard.” the associated Press

Pacino films “Author, Author” in 1981, one of his lesser-known films offering insight into his artistic choices beyond such well-known projects as the “Godfather” films and “Scarface.” David Handschuh — The Associated Press

Al Pacino’s memoir, “Sonny Boy,” recounts the actor’s life and career. Courtesy of Penguin Press

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By Stuart Miller

Correspondent

After more than half a century as a movie star, Al Pacino has finally told his story in his revealing, thoughtful and entertaining memoir, “Sonny Boy.” It’s a great read, but Pacino will still be remembered most for the stories he told through his characters.

Pacino has earned nine Academy Award nominations — for the first two “The Godfather” movies, “Serpico,” “Dog Day Afternoon,” “And Justice for All,” “Dick Tracy,” “Glengarry Glen Ross,” “Scent of a Woman” and “The Irishman.” He also starred in “The Insider,” which earned seven nominations, and in box office hits like “Heat” and “Any Given Sunday.” And, of course, he achieved pop culture icon status as Tony Montana in “Scarface.”

A career with so many heralded roles puts Pacino in an elite group with peers like Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro. But beyond the films everyone knows, Pacino has another 10 that may be less famous but that are worth seeing for any fan of Pacino or movies in general. At least three, “Scarecrow,” “Donnie Brasco” and “Angels in America,” deserve as much recognition as some of his more celebrated films.

“The Panic in Needle Park” (1971) was Pacino’s first starring role, a small film about two heroin addicts in New York. In his memoir, Pacino writes about growing up on the streets of the city and eventually losing his three closest childhood friends to drugs. The film, which was scripted by Joan Didion and her husband, John Gregory Dunne, feels authentic, fueled by Pacino’s performance; he radiates that nervous, sometimes manic energy that has captured audiences ever since.

After Michael Corleone made him a star, Pacino veered off in the opposite direction, playing a drifter named Lion opposite Gene Hackman’s Max in “Scarecrow” (1973). In the book, Pacino describes it as “a little bit ‘Waiting for Godot’ and a little bit ‘Of Mice and Men.’ ” There’s also a touch of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. While he and Hackman never fully connected — there was an “awkwardness between us” — the movie is packed with humor and pathos and indelible scenes. Pacino, who initially didn’t like the film, writes, “I saw it recently, and I was surprised at how powerful it was, how strongly I felt its impact.”

After his early American epic “Revolution” bombed in 1985, Pacino stopped making movies for four years. He returned in 1989 with “Sea of Love,” a thriller about a weary, hard-drinking New York detective, a role that suited him well. In his book, Pacino notes that the film’s story is “suspended by a very thin wire of believability” and he praised co-stars Richard Jenkins, John Goodman and especially Ellen Barkin, adding, “I was lucky to be a part of it.”

“Frankie and Johnny” (1991) is a cheerily commercial rom-com and, to be honest, its highlights are the slices of New York life and Michelle Pfeiffer’s performance as Frankie. But Pacino’s delight in playing Johnny as he pursues Frankie is infectious, and it’s a treat to see him doing light comedy, whether it’s in a sex scene with Kate Nelligan or bantering with Nathan Lane, who plays Pfeiffer’s neighbor and best friend.

If you want to know Pacino better, watch his passion project, “Looking for Richard” (1996), which he also wrote and directed. It’s a documentary exploring Shakespeare’s “Richard III” — a role Pacino had played onstage several times — that also featured filmed scenes from the play with Pacino, Harris Yulin, Alec Baldwin, Winona Ryder, Estelle Parsons and others.

Pacino writes extensively about his love of Shakespeare, whether he was reciting lines while wandering the streets of New York or starring in “Merchant of Venice” on Broadway. “Looking for Richard” gets more pages in the book than all but the biggest of Pacino’s films, and he says, “I was never happier” than when fulfilling this “personal vision.”

“The Godfather,” no matter its intentions, glorified gangsters, as did “Scarface,” “Goodfellas” and most others in the genre. That’s one reason “Donnie Brasco” (1997) stands out: Pacino’s Mafia hit man Lefty is a loser for whom a life in the mob has not brought riches or glamour. The movie plays like a cat-and-mouse thriller but is also a moving character study of both Lefty and Johnny Depp’s title character, an FBI agent who goes undercover and gets in too deep. “I hadn’t seen ‘Donnie Brasco’ in about 20 years,” Pacino writes “and I was surprised at how touching it was.”

Sure, “Insomnia” (2002) is another crime story, but its setting (the eternal daylight of Alaska), the casting (Robin Williams as the villain) and the directing (by pre-“Dark Night” Christopher Nolan) are all distinctive. In this taut and tense thriller, Pacino excels as a compromised cop, morally and physically exhausted and barely hanging on.

Pacino never lost his love for theater, returning to the stage throughout his career. He has also made small films of plays that were personal for him (“Merchant of Venice,” “Chinese Coffee,” “Wilde Salome” and “The Local Stigmatic”) and bigger films, adapting hit plays like “Glengarry” and “Frankie and Johnny.” But his most memorable screen role in a stage transfer came on television, playing Roy Cohn in the HBO miniseries “Angels in America” (2003).

The all-star cast also features Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson, Jeffrey Wright and Mary-Louise Parker, directed by Mike Nichols from Tony Kushner’s epic script.

Pacino had already played Satan in “The Devil’s Advocate” but Cohn gave him the chance to play evil in an earthly form. Sure, he chomps on the scenery here as much as he did in “Scarface”; yet again, it’s in the service of a greater truth about greed and power in America, only this time, as Cohn falls from his pedestal, ravaged by AIDS, the story hits even harder.

Jack Kevorkian was a “zealot,” Pacino writes, but he means it admiringly. “You Don’t Know Jack” (2010) dives into the life of the man who fought endlessly and heedlessly for the right to assisted suicide; Pacino’s performance is mostly understated, though when Kevorkian goes big, the actor embraces the moment. He clearly sympathizes with his character, but he is too good to worry about making viewers like him, which gives the TV film the heft it needs.

“Danny Collins” (2015) is the story of a washed-up rock star who sold his soul for money but has an epiphany that sends him seeking redemption, if he can only avoid screwing it all up. As an actor who has admitted making “some really bad films … just for the cash,” the role clearly resonated with Pacino, who calls the film “one of my favorites.”

It’s a rare feel-good movie from Pacino, in which his irrepressible exuberance and easy charisma carry the scenes even if it’s clear he’s not working especially hard. And while the film is more formulaic and less nuanced than his classics, it succeeds on its own terms, giving audiences what they want: Al Pacino playing an especially gleeful variation of himself.