The movie that saw Al Pacino hit rock bottom: “It was a life-affecting thing”
It can be hard for an actor to find a professional balance. One must spend their entire life dedicated to a project, knowing that the final product will have only a small chance of becoming the successful machine you hoped it would. It’s a feeling that has plagued Al Pacino.
He’s one of the most successful actors of his generation, and yet the movies that failed are the productions that stay with him the longest. Sure, titles such as The Godfather, Scarface and Serpico are routinely hailed as some of the best movies of their time, but the pictures that he truly believed in that didn’t deliver are the films that haunt him.
It might sound like the plot of one of Pacino’s movies, but it is the same for every actor. Committing yourself to a role, being happy during production and then finding out that either the editing or the promotional run, or even the release schedule, has been compromised to mean that the audience just didn’t connect with your work must be devastating. This feeling can be amplified when you think about the role of directors.
They are continuously enveloped in every single aspect of a movie during production. They work hard to deliver their vision then are both at the whim of studio executives and the public appetite for the project. It’s the exact reason so many cult movies happen.
The successful movies certainly have their place in the career of Al Pacino, but there’s a good chance the actor and sometime director would be more willing to talk to you about a movie like Looking for Richard than Donnie Brasco.
The 1996 documentary saw Pacino step behind the camera and direct one of his first productions. The actor is involved on both sides of the lens, not only providing direction as the doc looks at the continuing cultural impact of William Shakespeare but also films a performance of the Bard’s Richard III. It was beloved by critics, with Pacino picking up the Directors Guild of America Award for ‘Outstanding Directing – Documentaries’, but the movie flopped with audiences.
“Looking for Richard got some recognition, but its failure to thrive hurt me, frankly,” explained the actor in his memoir Sonny Boy. “It wasn’t just a disappointment. It was a life-affecting thing. You can be in a position in life where you’re doing somewhat well, and then you experience that rejection and it completely overshadows all your past success. I didn’t really address that disappointment at the time, because it’s too much to face when it’s happening.”
The pain was once again delivered when, during a party at his next door neighbour’s house, Pacino was left dumbstruck that not a single member of the Hollywood elite at the event had heard of his movie: “I discovered that no one knew about. Here’s a film I wrote, directed, and starred in, with a cast of great British artists and American actors who filled the screen with their gifts. The Directors Guild of America gave me a ‘Best Director’ award for Looking for Richard, and The New York Times named it one of the top ten films of the year. But here at this party, not a soul knew about it. Not only had they not seen it, they never heard of it.”
It goes to show that no matter how successful a career we may have, sometimes our failures will be the heaviest burdens we carry. Pacino is one of the most gifted actors of his generation, but the fact that his most treasured production is forgotten hurts him more than any award could heal.
It’s hard being an actor… and a director, too, it turns out.
