The director who almost forced Al Pacino into obscurity: “I knew I was being threatened”
The idea of any director having the power or the inclination to force Al Pacino, of all people, into obscurity sounds farcical these days. After all, Pacino is one of the greatest stars to ever work in Hollywood, and his iconic status will forever be secured, no matter how many dicey direct-to-streaming movies he makes in his twilight years.
Back in the early 1980s, though, Pacino’s untouchable status had yet to truly set in, and a series of run-ins with directors on movies that became notorious commercial disappointments truly did force him to stare into the abyss. Indeed, it’s a testament to the ruthless nature of the movie business that a man who notched five Oscar nominations in the ’70s alone was considered on the brink of irrelevance barely a few years later.
For Pacino, the rot began to set in with 1977’s Bobby Deerfield, in which he played a famous race car driver who falls in love with a terminally ill Swiss woman. It was his follow-up to the hugely acclaimed Dog Day Afternoon, and Pacino would later describe it as the “favourite film” of his storied career. Unfortunately, he may have been the only person who felt that way, because he added, “Nobody liked it, and it got terrible reviews.”
Pacino rebounded in 1979 with …And Justice For All, which landed him one of his Academy Award nominations, but things went badly awry again with Cruising in 1980, a thriller about a serial killer targeting gay men in New York City’s ‘leather bar’ subculture.
That film has a cult following today, mainly driven by devotees of director William Friedkin, but at the time, it was a lightning rod for controversy and was a miserable experience for Pacino. He and Friedkin clashed constantly, with the director accusing Pacino of being unprofessional, and the star countering that he received so little direction on the core meaning of the film that he had no idea how to calibrate his performance in the final scene.
In the end, Pacino donated his entire Cruising paycheque to various LGBTQ charities that paid out through a trust fund for two decades. “I don’t know if it eased my conscience,” he admitted in his memoir Sonny Boy, “but at least the money did some good. I just wanted one positive thing to come out of that whole experience.”
Therefore, it stands to reason that Pacino wasn’t in an ideal headspace when he signed up for his next film, Author! Author!, a semi-autobiographical drama about a playwright whose wife leaves him with sole custody of their five children. It was written by Pacino’s good friend Israel Horovitz, who penned The Indian Wants the Bronx, the play that first brought Pacino to Hollywood’s attention in the late ’60s.
Even though he was coming off a couple of rough experiences, Pacino was eager to work with Horovitz again, so he agreed to make the movie. However, to his chagrin, he once again found himself at loggerheads with a director throughout the entire production. “The film’s director, Arthur Hiller, and I were not what you would call in sync,” Pacino wrote by way of gross understatement in Sonny Boy. “You may be sensing a pattern.”
Pacino’s lowest point on the shoot came when, around six weeks in, he was late to set one day thanks to a miscommunication. Upon arrival, he was greeted by a furious Hiller, who “went berserk” and dressed the star down in front of the entire cast and crew. Pacino, seething at Hiller’s conduct, got in his car and drove away with one of the “bigwigs of the film” in the passenger seat. “He had those kinds of eyes that eat fleas,” Pacino wrote with barely masked disdain. “He told me, ‘You’ve got to go back. Or you will pay for it.'”
An incensed Pacino realised he was being threatened by the executive, which enraged him further. “I thought to myself, ‘You’re going after the wrong guy there, fella.'” However, cooler heads prevailed when the star thought through the logical series of events that would follow, should he abandon the movie. “If you walk away, that means costing you money,” he noted. “That means calling in lawyers. That means going to court. That means publicity.” In the end, Pacino returned to the film, tail between his legs, and saw it through to the end.
Upon release, though, Author! Author! was “received with venomous disdain,” the second of his movies in a row to be treated with vitriol by critics. At that point, he felt like, “The handwriting was on the wall. I could feel myself slipping into obscurity.” Even worse than a director being able to push him into obscurity, though, was that Pacino felt so low personally and professionally that he found himself welcoming the chance to fade into Hollywood oblivion.
