“I don’t think I can do this”: the Oscar-nominated role Al Pacino tried to turn down
The 1970s was a time of great excitement and chaos for Al Pacino, who was quickly starting to land prominent film roles following a short tenure in the theatre.
Pacino had the talent and the looks, bringing a well-needed grittiness to the big screen. He was able to unravel layers of nuance with every charismatic performance, which made him the perfect candidate to play complex leading roles. Following the unprecedented success of The Godfather (it honestly looked like it was heading towards disaster at one point), he starred in the sequel, as well as the Palme d’Or-winning Scarecrow and Oscar-nominated Serpico, dominating the New Hollywood landscape with his presence.
Then came an offer to star opposite The Godfather co-star John Cazale in the Sidney Lumet drama Dog Day Afternoon. The film would see Pacino play Sonny Wortzik, who attempts to rob a bank with Cazale’s Sal, only for the situation to turn into a panicked hostage situation.
The movie is an early example of a mainstream film attempting to explore the relationship between a man and a transgender woman (the whole point of the robbery is so that Wortzik’s partner, Leon, can afford sex-reassignment surgery). It’s far from the perfect example of the trans experience, but to see such a seemingly taboo topic explored in a popular Hollywood film was refreshing, even though Leon is played by a man instead of the prospect of transgender star Elizabeth Coffey, who was rejected.
Among the budding seeds of gender representation in the mainstream at this point, Dog Day Afternoon looms a great example, despite its flaws. The movie inevitably became a huge success, with Pacino even earning an Oscar nomination for his milestone performance, but he very nearly missed out simply because his career was moving so fast, and he was worried the intensity of the part would cause him to burn out.
Producer Martin Bregman had “told me he wanted me to do it, and I had read it and thought it was well-written, but I didn’t want to do it. I was in London at the time, and I thought, I’m running out of gas. I don’t know if I could do this again,” Pacino told The Guardian.
But he knew there was something so special about Dog Day Afternoon, a film that meant well in its dedication to empathy, the plight of alienation, and being anti-authority. Still, “It seemed having that kind of intensity again and going through that was too close, I thought, to The Godfather II, which was an intense experience in a lot of ways, not the actual work, but everything that had been happening in my personal life was affecting me.”
Pacino was conflicted, almost ready to take his hat from the ring with a “great offer and thank you, but I don’t think I can do this. I’d like to pass”. The prospect of picking up another iteration of a firearm to rob a bank was not the kind of thing he felt included to go through; he was exhausted.
Nevertheless, something eventually clicked in Pacino’s brain, and he accepted the part once and for all, continuing his run of terrific movies across the decade.
