John Lahr on Al Pacino

What I want,

what's most important to me,

is that I have a guarantee.

No more attempts on my father's life.

What guarantees can I give you, Mike?

[John] My name is John Lar

and I am the author of the Profile of Al Pacino.

I have to go to the bathroom.

[John] This scene is both pivotal

for his own personal story,

it's the scene that kept him in the film, from being fired.

But it's also in the sense of the narrative of the Godfather

that's where Michael Corleone earns his spurs,

where he becomes part of the mafia underworld.

He goes over to the dark side.

He had three screen tests

and even though when he was hired, by the way,

for $35,000 for the entire film,

the first two days they really weren't happy with him

because his underplaying,

his internal idea which he understood,

the producers were actually thinking of letting him go

until the Sollozzo scene when he finds a gun in the toilet

and comes out and shoots them.

(train screeching)

(gun firing)

And once that scene was over, that job was his.

(crashing)

One of his phrases, which he loves to use,

is go with the glow.

And he goes with the words and how the words play on him.

When he's out there in front of the crowd,

yelling at them attica, attica,

it's the humor that he finds in the character.

It's the freedom to express himself.

He wants to kill me so bad, he can taste it.

Attica, attica, attica!

Attica, attica, attica!

You want to play games, okay.

[John] Or in his second most popular,

and maybe even more popular than the Godfather is Scarface.

Say hello to my little friend.

(explosion)

[John] He says to directors I'll give you one for free

and he keeps doing it until he gets it

but he might do 20 takes just to get it right

and not one of those takes will be the same.

And as Mike Nickels told me,

the best one is always the last one.

You never open your mouth till you know what the shot is.

[John] He can identify and find a way in

of making these characters live,

and he lives inside them.

I wish I was an octopus.

A fucking octopus.

Eight loving arms and all those suckers.

[John] You could say he escapes

the gravity of his life.

He lost his mother and his grandfather

and he never really knew his father and he was living rough.

Had a buzz on for most of that decade as well.

But nonetheless, he came through it.

Part of the way he came through it

was living in the world of his imagination

and Al absolutely swears by the text.

The text is everything.

But why the text is everything

is it gives him a language.

It gives him a vocabulary.

And through that, the vocabulary of others, he can speak.

Me? I always tell the truth.

Even when I lie.