“It was like the Somme”: the ill-fated jaunt to Norfolk that almost ruined Al Pacino’s career
If Al Pacino was even capable of destroying his career, then he’d have done it by now, with the last two decades of the legendary actor’s filmography overflowing with crimes against cinema.
In his defence, which admittedly has a lot to do with personal and professional mismanagement, the overriding reason why he’s made so many shite movies in the last two decades is that he was hovering perilously over a financial abyss that threatened to ruin his livelihood.
Once upon a time, Pacino claimed that he starred in so many substandard flicks because he fancied the challenge of seeing if he could elevate awful material into something that was at least mediocre, until he had a memoir to promote, came clean, and confessed that he’d actually been doing it because he was broke.
As a born and bred New Yorker, Pacino was as synonymous with the city in front of the cameras as he was away from it. Very rarely would he venture outside of the confines of the United States to shoot one of his pictures, and when he crossed the pond, pitched up in Norfolk, and made Revolution with Hugh Hudson in the mid-1980s, he left with his tail tucked firmly between his legs.
The historical drama was filmed in and around the docks of King’s Lynn, with the battle scenes unfolding on location in Dartmoor, and many of the extras hailing from Plymouth. Pacino descending upon East Anglia was strange in itself, but his rare visit to the UK was one he’d rather forget, since it fared so poorly among critics and audiences that he forcibly exiled himself from Hollywood for four years.
“We’d started filming in February, but it remained below freezing for four weeks during build and prep, and then when the thaw arrived, it didn’t stop raining for six weeks,” Hudson told The Guardian. “It was like the Somme.” The director admitted that happiness was not “the prevailing atmosphere” on set, describing it as “a tough schedule with a lot of pressure from the production company.”
Made at a cost of $28million, Revolution failed to even reach $350,000 in ticket sales in the United States, and coupled with a scathing reception, made it both the least profitable and worst-reviewed movie that the Godfather, Dog Day Afternoon, and Serpico frontman had ever appeared in, so it’s understandably why it had such a devastating effect on its self-confidence.
Still, Hudson couldn’t completely defend it. “The scorn heaped upon my film was painful, but perhaps right,” he acknowledged. “It was incomplete, and that has rankled with me and Pacino ever since. It’s been like a black sheep in our careers, but you have to pay attention to black sheep, as they’re often the most interesting ones in the family.”
It would be another four years before the leading man was glimpsed on the big screen again, but when he was, Sea of Love proved to be a triumphant return that restored his passion for acting and went a long way to undoing the damage caused by the total and utter shitshow that was Revolution.
