If you like hard drugs, gunfights, and the bluest language since Brian Blessed last stubbed his toe, then look no further than Brian De Palma‘s 1983 remake of the classic gangster flick Scarface, with a modern sheen and starring Al Pacino as Cuban refugee-turned-Miami drug kingpin Tony Montana.
The film was poorly received at first, but has since blossomed into a full-on classic, with its use of violence, striking visuals, and iconic music influencing countless followers, from directors and actors to musicians and beyond, but De Palma wasn’t the only legendary filmmaker who worked on Scarface.
I’m not talking about the time Steven Spielberg visited the set, but the screenplay was written by Oliver Stone, who had not yet risen to fame as a director. He initially turned down the offer to write the film, as he wasn’t a fan of the original, and now his work has entered the public lexicon, with “Say hello to my little friend” being one of the most quoted film lines ever.
Scarface was the first time Pacino and Stone worked together on a project, but it could have been the second. In the 1970s, the Vietnam War veteran was attempting to make the film that would eventually become Born on the Fourth of July, with Pacino initially on board to play the lead character, Ron Kovic, but when he walked away from the project, it plunged into development hell.
It seemed like the two heavyweights’ relationship had been mended by Scarface, but this wasn’t the case. When Sidney Lumet was originally going to direct Platoon from Stone’s script, Pacino was in the running to play the main character, but he dropped out again. The project would finally be completed many years behind schedule, with Stone serving as both writer and director, and Tom Berenger playing the part earmarked for Pacino.
These two rebuttals left a rather sour taste in Stone’s mouth, and unfortunately for Pacino, the Oscar-winning director isn’t one for holding his tongue. “Pacino is a schmuck,” Stone told People (via The Stacks Reader), “His career went into the toilet”.
Stone really shouldn’t have taken this so personally, because turning down movies is just what Al Pacino does. From Travis Bickle to John Rambo to Han Solo, the list of the legend’s rejected roles contains some of the best movies ever made, and this flaky attitude has drawn the ire of multiple Hollywood bigwigs. It’s a minor miracle he was ever offered a good role again.
Fortunately for cinema fans, Stone and Pacino put their differences to one side to finally work together in 1999, with the actor playing Tony D’Amato, coach of the fictional Miami Sharks American football team, in Stone’s sports drama Any Given Sunday.
This was a long time coming and should have been one of the biggest canon events in film history, but instead, Any Given Sunday was thoroughly average and absolutely not worth waiting over a decade for. Maybe these two were better off as enemies.
