Why Al Pacino’s most overlooked movie ended up as his “saddest experience”
It is always hugely disappointing when a passion project doesn’t take off in the way you hoped, especially given that they usually require sweat, blood and tears to make in Hollywood.
In the film industry, the timeline of any production can range from months to years. Some filmmakers and actors are kept in the loop about a potential project for a painstaking amount of time before anything is actually made. It’s a ruthless art form, with anyone working in Hollywood needing an extra thick layer of skin when things don’t work out how they hoped for.
This was unfortunately not the case for Al Pacino, with the actor describing his permanent disappointment over one project he hoped would take the world by storm, but sadly made a small splash that left him quite bitter.
It’s rare when two great actors combine their joint prowess to make a great film, with audiences losing their minds when it was announced that Pacino would star alongside Robert De Niro in Heat or Meryl Streep alongside Philip Seymour Hoffman. As a result, we typically expect these films to do very well, with fans and critics alike eagerly anticipating their release.
But this was not the case when Pacino starred alongside Gene Hackman in the 1973 film Scarecrow, the story of two drifters who spend their time talking about girls and dreaming of opening a car wash. It’s a tender and melancholic slice-of-life story that is one of the most naturalistic projects from both of their careers, taking a fly-on-the-wall approach that displays a lesser-seen side to their talents (particularly for Pacino).
While it might be a surefire film to revisit now, and one that audiences have discovered over time and unearthed as a hidden gem, its impact was barely felt after its initial release in the ’70s, with Pacino expressing his permanent sadness over its reception by saying, “I didn’t think it made it. Scarecrow was the saddest experience of my career. That was a definite example of negligence. It was the greatest script I have ever read. Garry Michael White wrote it.
“There were people involved in that who were really screwballs. Because people wanted to come in below budget, we sacrificed the movie. There were scenes deleted. I mean, who comes in seventeen days early? I never heard of such a thing”.
Sadly, this is the case for many independent projects, with producers thinking they can get by on the quality of the script without funnelling any proper funding into it. As a result, the project is given a lesser chance at success, with less financial support and a poor marketing scheme that means few people hear of its existence, even if it is a great story. It’s sadly the kind of thing we see all the time, with films like Janet Planet being seen by so few people despite being one of the best films of last year.
It seems as though this has always been an issue in Hollywood, with the people in power exploiting independent filmmakers and not giving them a proper chance to flourish, meaning it is always on an uneven playing field with the heavyweight commercial projects.
