Al Pacino was asked at Tuesday’s Amazon Prime TCA panel about adjusting to the rigors of TV series work.
“It’s just a different environment for one thing,” said Pacino, before TV critics to help promote the upcoming Amazon drama Hunters. “Every week or every two to three weeks, you get a new director. Shall I say more?”
For more than 50 years, Pacino has become accustomed to one film, one director. Shooting “The Irishman” with Martin Scorsese, for example, is not like working with a committee of episodic television directors.
“It’s a different adjustment,” said Pacino, who launched into one of several rambling stories during the packed Hunters session.
“I once was doing a play– I don’t mean to go on here, but I have to. I can’t help myself…the play was large cast, and we all knew each other, liked each other in New York.”
Pacino didn’t name the play, but it got terrible notices. “The more terrible it got, the less the actors were showing up,” said Pacino. “I had a scene where I had to talk to all of them by their names, you know what I’m saying? I mean, it’s hard.”
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The story went on and on. “They said, ‘How is Al’s going to do this tonight?’ And invariably, I would screw it up.'”
This was all Al’s way of telling us that things went much more smoothly on the set of Hunters.
Pacino plays a Nazi hunter living in New York City in 1977. He forms an eclectic team out to expose high-ranking Nazi officials conspiring to create a Fourth Reich in the U.S. Logan Lerman, Jerrika Hinton and Josh Radnor also star. David Weil served as creator and executive producer.
Pacino was asked: Is the character based on anyone he knows?
“Well, I’ve known so many people,” said Pacino. “I’ve done so many roles. I mean maybe that’s going to become my new answer to things. I don’t know. I’m old; leave me alone, kind of thing.”
Translation: Pacino gets the character from the writing. At this point, finding the character is no longer that conscious an activity for the Oscar winner. “If you’re free enough, those things come to the forefront.”
Pacino told another story. “When I was a young actor, I was in a repertoire. I did about two or three different plays. And the plays that I thought I would excel in, I didn’t. And the play that I didn’t want to do was the one I excelled in.”
What Al meant is that the character must have been “somewhere within me.”
“If I’m not being clear, if I’m not, just call me on it,” he said later. Nobody did.
After the session, I ran up to the stage to try and get in on the scrum. Pacino was already surrounded, so my only hope of getting within recording range was to find a spot directly behind him. A towering security guy gave me the hairy eyeball but let me have Al’s back.
It is probably not Pacino’s best side. On stage earlier, he had a mad scientist look, with his Dr. Strangelove circular specs and hair extending in all directions like a static electricity experiement. He even allowed that he was probably wearing too many scarves. Still, under all that, he was Al Pacino. Hoo haw.
From the back, his long, somewhat matted and under groomed hair seemed to betray a dark night slept on a hard floor, perhaps on a bench in a train station. Pacino is 79, and still has a full head of hair, so, I could simply be jealous.
Other than his hair, happy to report that Mr. Pacino is just as charming from behind. Asked about his childhood movie memories, he spoke about being an only child, growing up in the Bronx, going to movies with his mother. He singled out one film they saw together.
“Imagine seeing ‘The Lost Weekend’ at four,” he said.
That should be the title of his book.
