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Bonus video! Al Pacino was a demanding diva ... OR WAS HE??? (Patreon)

Published:
2025-03-02 17:00:07
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Hello there! In this week's bonus video, I have a curious case of conflicting stories from Cruising director William Friedkin, most of them relating to Al Pacino. To hear Friedkin tell it, Pacino was one headache after another: He was unprepared, didn't know his lines, showed up late, and his hair looked terrible.

However! I have a feeling that's not the truth (Ellen) and that Friedkin's doing a little historical revision. Why would he do that? Well, that's where the true mystery lies. But I have theories.

Files

Bonus video! Al Pacino was a demanding diva ... OR WAS HE???

Hello there! In this week's bonus video, I have a curious case of conflicting stories from Cruising director William Friedkin, most of them relating to Al Pacino. To hear Friedkin tell it, Pacino was one headache after another: He was unprepared, didn't know his lines, showed up late, and his hair looked terrible. However! I have a feeling that's not the truth (Ellen) and that Friedkin's doing a little historical revision. Why would he do that? Well, that's where the true mystery lies. But I have theories.

Comments

Marsia Powers

Everything I've read and heard is Pacino is overly concerned that he does his parts well.

Runar

There’s a great clip of Nicolas Winding Refn interviewing William Friedkin where Refn refers to Friedkin as «clearly a heterosexual man», and Friedkin shuts him down and explains that he doesn’t think of himself that way and talks openly about having had both straight and gay feelings throughout his life. He was quite a character.

Trevor MacIsaac

It comes off as more than a little strange to hear a director ridicule and mock an actor of Pacino's calibre, particularly with stories of highly questionable veracity, but I think your point is taken that Friedkin was not one to care about his actor's physical health, so why would he care a whit about damaging their reputations? You mention Ellen Burstyn's injury on The Exorcist, which was terrible, but the one I remember reading about was Linda Blair's where was flailed around on a harness Beverly injuring her spine, which later became scoliosis. The guy just seems like he was an all around giant asshole. You are also right that describing Al Pacino as a divaesque layabout is pretty much antithetical to everything else that everyone has ever said about the man and the actor. I remember reading this New Yorker profile of him from 2014, and the man is near fanatical about his pursuit of his craft. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/15/caught-act In it, he also talks about his near hero worship of Oscar Wilde, and had recently bankrolled, starred and directed a docudrama named "Wilde Salome" based on Wilde's 1891 play, which he premiered in the Castro district. He describes Wilde as a "kindred spirt", which may account for some of affinity for the Queer community as a whole. I recently came across this clip from David Letterman, when I was going off on my own remembrance of Gene Hackman, one of my all time favourite actors who we've recently lost. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSkSO2d0d1E In it, he describes working with Al Pacino on a long forgotten 1973 movies named "Scarecrow". I remember my father saying that it was one of his absolute favourite movies, but that it was impossible to a good copy of it. I've found out earlier today that I can be watched on Youtube, and I plan on watching it tonight (before the Oscars) in honour of my dad, Hackman and now Pacino too.

Lisa M. Williams

As always, super informative and interesting! And I’m hyped about the upcoming Dog Day Afternoon video. It’s truly one of the best films ever made, and Pacino and John Cazale were both brilliant in it.

Allan Mott

A picture of Friedkin should be in the dictionary next to the term "unreliable narrator".

mattbaume

Fortunately, it's easy for me to be skeptical of anything he says because of the strong physical resemblance to Garth Marenghi

mattbaume

Yeah, as interesting as Cruising is, I don't think it's truly GREAT in the same way as Dog Day Afternoon -- which is one of those absolutely perfect films. It was nominated for a bunch of awards but won relatively few, and I do think the queer angle is a part of that.

mattbaume

Oh yeah I gotta check out Scarecrow! I've heard it's very good, but vanished from memory ... I wonder if it was a case of bad timing, like Friedkin's Sorcerer.

mattbaume

Oh that's FASCINATING, what a thing to volunteer!

mattbaume

Oh I need to check that out! I bump into Dennis every now and then because we run in similar queer/entertainment circles.

mattbaume

I mean that's certainly the impression that comes across! I can't believe he'd give the kind of performances he does if he was the kind of actor who showed up on set not knowing what they're shooting that day.

Knights Who Say Sledge

That somehow simultaneously uptight AND frantic dance that Pacino does in Cruising is always the 1st thing I think of when I think of the film. It always elicits a gale of laughter from me. It's somehow incredibly serious and utterly silly all at once, which, for me is sort of an unintended theme of the film itself. The movie manages to be a somewhat agonizingly serious venture while also being almost absurdly rendered as well - as if someone made an achingly over the top instructional film about industrial manufacturing. The movie is ultimately sort of a hard core gay bdsm sex exploitation thriller that appears intended exclusively for people totally unfamiliar with all of the above. Which is sort of brazen in its utter disinterest in courting the primary audience for the subject matter of the film... gay people and BDSM enthusiasts. A wild notion to embrace something so fully while also rejecting the real life people who would inhabit such lives and spaces. It'd maybe be a little like making a porno for an audience disinterested in sex. So... that incongruous dance Pacino does sort of sums up everything for me about the film and maybe explains why I remain a fan of its unapologetic and inexplicable contradictions - it's a film that's rather intensely for absolutely no one at all.

claire bee

Oh hey look, a Korean stage version of the Rocky Horror Picture Show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmuSGgzpl4Q I think it’s a tribute to the power of the story that I watched this all the way through even though it’s a) mostly in a language I don’t speak, and b) clearly being filmed on a smartphone from right at the back of the theatre. Anyway, after watching this I went down a bit of an internet rabbit hole, and it turns out that Rocky Horror is actually really big in Korea. Exhibit A: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcAutD7gr9s Exhibit B: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_2FXDQf7fY and Exhibit C: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-Iwbra7dyk . Also apparently Richard O’Brien was involved in the first ever Korean production of the show. You mentioned on Bluesky that there was a significant Rocky Horror anniversary coming up, and asked for suggestions on how to celebrate it; I don’t know if this is the answer to that question, but I think it might possibly be a part of the answer! Wow, look, a less-than-essay-length comment! How about that?

Alexandra Kwan

Al Pacino played Roy Cohn in the TV version of Angels in America, too. Also, it could be the director was just trying to get ahead of a potential diss by Pacino, though the idea of dissing the director probably never entered Pacino's head.