It’s Saturday night on Hollywood Blvd and the sidewalk is illuminated by neon signs that invite, confuse, and disparage people from their shaded doorways; music filters from the windows and into the air – which is still warm despite the hour. One neon sign stands out from the others; it’s bright with the image of a pharaoh and I stand below it with a man from Oregon. He’s wearing a Pink Floyd 1973 North American tour t-shirt. I don’t know this man, but we get talking.
“I wanted to get a drink and then come over, but I saw
the line,” he sighs to a stop, still indignant about the whole thing. The line
he’s referring to is one that already stretches out of the gates and down the
sidewalk past the shaded doorways; it starts at the entrance to the Egyptian Theatre
and never ends. It reminds the man from Oregon of his young days lining up to
see Star Wars, but not in a good way, “I don’t mind lining up for something
I’ve not seen before, but this movie is 40 years old,” he stops and takes a
look around at all the people, at me, at his friends, at the far off woman
who’s number one “but this is for Pacino and he’ll talk for fifteen minutes
tops. I guarantee it.” He ends it there and re-joins his friends.
Once the doors open and we mill inside, I lose the man
from Oregon, but I’m not altogether displeased – I only hope the evening wins
him back. The evening in question (October 10, 2015), and the reason for the throng of people, is
the screening of Dog Day Afternoon, followed by a Q&A with Al Pacino, at
the Egyptian Theatre. Sidney Lumet’s 1975 masterpiece, his second movie with
Pacino and perhaps his most acutely observed movie about his beloved New York,
is still funny and touching; it's a gripping story about a bank robbery, subtly
operating all the time as a social commentary on its place and time. It’s the
mid-seventies and everything’s backward, the president turned the lights out,
and the movie captures the mood perfectly.
Yet, it’s a wonder it got made at all. Pacino walked away
twice, admitting he was in another state, “another world” during filming; a
combination of wild nights and a loathing for the movie-making process added up
to create a weariness that nearly ended the production on more than one
occasion. “I always found the whole process very difficult…very troubling, and
It was extremely, excruciatingly boring” (standing around for long hours
on-set).
Perhaps it’s no coincidence that an actor in love with
the immediacy and energy of theatre thrived under the directorship of Sidney
Lumet, a strong realist director who began his career off-Broadway, and who
rehearsed for a minimum of two weeks with his actors before shooting. “I always
preferred to be directed – to be told where to go and Sidney was great at that,
a real ‘director’ of people”, remembers Pacino, “In rehearsal he would say ‘ok,
Al, you go there, and then you go there, and you do this here and then come
around here’… and then we would rehearse it and I was robbing a bank! His
staging was so accurate, so interesting, it just put you in there, but it was
totally orchestrated by him – he was a genius”.
It’s a dual testament to the craft of rehearsal and the
close relationship between actor and director that some of the movie’s most
memorable moments are improvised; Dog Day Afternoon was the first time Lumet
had allowed his actors to do this. Chris Sarandon was nominated for an Academy
Award for his perfectly balanced portrayal of Leon, a performance essentially
captured in one fourteen minute scene – arguably the best in the movie – yet it
wasn’t in the original Frank Pierson script.
Pacino revealed they struggled for a long time to make it
work. “In the original, [Leon] came dressed as Marilyn Monroe and kissed me on
the cheek. I just thought it was over the top. We changed it to the telephone
but couldn’t get it right – it just wasn’t working - but because we’d rehearsed
so many times, Chris and I were able to improvise; we did three full
improvisations and Sidney took them away and wrote a scene around it. ”
The electrifying moment when Sonny chants "Attica!"
and almost starts a riot – a visceral moment of cinema with the power to stir
emotions 40 years after the fact – was improvised between Pacino and the extras,
and stirred up by the assistant director, Burtt Harris - a man who also took it
upon himself to rouse a weary, hungover Pacino each morning on set. “He used to
give me bitters in the morning and slap me around,” laughs Pacino. “We had all
these people standing around and Sidney would have me come out and do the scene
and go back inside [the bank], this one time just as I’m about to go out, Burtt
comes up to me and says, ‘hey, Al, say Attica when you go out there,’ and I
look at him…okay, you sure…just say Attica?...and he goes, ‘yeah, yeah, just
say it.' So I go outside and I’m doing the scene and I go, ‘yeah, remember
Attica, right’ and an extra stood off to the side shouts back, ‘Attica’! And I
go ‘YEAH, Attica!’ and that’s how it happened, and now it’s this iconic scene
in the movie.”
Another iconic moment is the "Wyoming" punch
line by John Cazale – a character actor whose career was cut short by his
untimely death in 1978. He made five films, all of which were nominated for
Best Picture by the Academy, and he is a man dearly missed by his friend Pacino.
“I learned more from John as an actor than anybody else in my life. I first met
him when I was nineteen and just fell in love with the guy.” It was Pacino who
recommended John for the role of Sal – a part originally written as a nineteen
year old kid. Sidney Lumet hadn’t seen the Godfather movies and didn’t know
John Cazale, but changed the role after hearing him read. That Lumet listened
to Pacino is a mark of the respect; an acknowledgement from the director that
his actor is skilled at selecting costars.
Pacino likes to work with his friends, and he spoke as if
he were presently amongst them. The audience at the Egyptian Theatre was
treated to a great movie, followed by genuine candor from a legend of the
screen.
I left the theatre with the masses and walked down
Cherokee Avenue. It was late, but still warm, and the neon was beckoning
everyone everywhere. I saw what I thought was Oregon man; he was ahead of me so
I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like him. He was smiling. He seemed happy.
The evening won him round, I thought, and why shouldn't it have?