Al Pacino: Manglehorn

Screen legend Al Pacino talks Manglehorn, fatherhood, feeling young at heart and the physical realities of ageing. 

David Gordon Green, the writer-director of Manglehorn, said he wanted to make a projection of you. Is the film about you? 

“I don't think he got into my private life, if that's what you mean. I think he has his own, I won't call them issues, but he has a torn kind of relationship with his dad and his family. I guess that moves him and he wants to talk about it. That's all I can think. I don't have that.” 

You're a dad like Manglehorn. Has having kids changed you? 

“I think it's affected my desire to work. As a matter of fact, I preferred being with them for a period of time. And I still do. However, I would say that I'm drawn to the work when I feel that need.” 

Your kids live in LA, don't they? 

“Yeah and I have been there for a long time. I moved there from New York because their mother lives there, and I rent a house and see them 50% of the time. So I've been more or less a hands on dad. I'm not necessarily an advocate for that, but I see that my being there has helped.” 

Your dad moved out when you were two? 

“I never really knew my dad. I had a grandmother and grandfather and my mother, and so that gave a dynamic to the family life that I always enjoyed. I have fond memories of that. Feeling like I was a part of something. But the kids grew up in this split home, which they got used to early on.” 

You're ageing well and still really seem to be enjoying life and work. 

“I am young in spirit and having children sort of supports that because I just love it. And I knew I would. My first child was a little different because she wasn't planned. Turned out to be great, though.” 

You recently played a Jagger-like rock star in Danny Collins. Did you ever think you'd both still be grooving in your 70s? 

“I like being compared to Mick Jagger. You said the right thing! Let's have a drink afterwards.” 

Do you ever worry about ageing? 

“I try not to think about it because you're not in control of it. Things happen and best thing is to just keep going. One morning I get up and I can't move my neck. The next morning I get up and I'm just fine. It's sort of like the drinking days. So you learn to take aspirin before you go to sleep when you've had a night's drinking. I recommend it. But I don't drink any more, and haven't for decades.” 

You started to really drink when you became famous after The Godfather. Was it a new reality that you found hard adjusting to? 

“Naturally. I also think it was sort of a different world then. Almost 59 years ago, believe it or not. But the tone was different in the media, in the world, in terms of this whole idea of fame. It wasn't a part of our vocabulary as it is today. Now it's a more natural thing. It's what people aspire to.” 

But now you're an icon and can presumably do whatever you want. That must be great? 

“Well that is an extremely complicated idea when you think about it. I don't think about it much, but it's there. It's informed a lot of my life. So you get the great perks from it, but there's a dark side to it too. So you work with the balance as you go along. As somebody once said, it's a double-edged sword. And you're very grateful and you have what a lot of people want, and you also have a knowledge they don't have about it.” 

How do you adjust to everyone having preconceptions about you? 

“Hey, that's okay. Because what happens is I try to maintain an anonymity. That's one of the reasons early on why I wasn't so accessible to the press, because I always thought that knowing the character I am playing is more important to everything. To reality. To sanity. You know, I could have gone into a life of repertory somewhere, like other actors have, but I was lucky to be in these projects that took me this way. And so you say, 'The play is the thing.'” 

What has helped you keep your feet on the ground?

 “My kids. When I come home from any outing, whether it's a movie or some film festival stuff, I open the door and walk in and it's not about you any more. And there's a real relief to that. At first you're a little stunned like, 'Hey, wait a minute?!' Then you get back to reality.” 

Do you ever look back at your career, at films like The Godfather, Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon, and just think, 'Wow!'? 

“Well I don't have a real memory of the 70s. But things were happening, right?” 

Clearly. 

“But no, I don't look back and I would imagine that might be a blessing. I thank God for it. But you know what I like? I like when I meet someone and they say to me, 'Gee, I met you 10 years ago,' and then go, 'You were so nice to me.' I think, 'Oh, wow!' It's like seeing a biography of yourself and you say, 'Oh, I'm not a bad guy.'” 

Manglehorn is released on DVD in the UK on November 2

Knockout punches absent at Venice Film festival - Film - The Scotsman

Published: 08 September 2014

Al Pacino in The Humbling

By STEPHEN APPLEBAUM

Comedy captured the Golden Lion, but really big hits were missing, says Stephen Applebaum

The 71st Venice Film festival began on an avian note with Birdman and ended with the event’s top prize, the Golden Lion, going to Roy Andersson’s absurdist comedy A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting Existence. In between, there was often more fizzle than sizzle, in a selection of films that failed to deliver a knockout blow.

Off screen, things were not much better. Normally, the streets around the Palazzo del Casino on Venice’s Lido heave with people day and night at festival time, but this year felt relatively underpopulated. Screenings, too, seemed more empty than usual.

There were stars, of course. But while some flew in just for a press conference or red carpet appearance, the festival’s biggest name, Al Pacino, was more than happy to stretch out meetings with the press to a schedule-shattering degree, as he warmly reflected on his life and work. He was a dream for journalists but a nightmare for publicists, who had to stand by impotently as their careful planning fell apart.

Pacino had much to be happy about. After the indignity (he doesn’t see it that way, naturally) of appearing in Adam Sandler’s dismal Jack & Jill, the 74-year-old legend was on the Lido with two projects far worthier of the star of some of modern American cinema’s most iconic films.

First up was Barry Levinson’s loose-and-woozy, reality-skewing adaptation of Philip Roth’s recent novel, The Humbling (* * *). Pacino is perfectly cast as Simon Axler, an actor struggling with his craft, what may be incipient dementia, a young lover (Greta Gerwig) and unwanted visitors. The actor kisses the masks of tragedy and comedy at the top of the film, tipping us off about where he will be taking us in one of his rangiest outings for some time.

He was also on fine form in David Gordon Green’s offbeat character study, Manglehorn (* * *), playing a grouchy locksmith who clings to the memory of an old flame while keeping everyone except his cat at arms length. He commits fully to the role of an old curmudgeon who has locked his heart (and any chance of joy) away for so long that he doesn’t realise he holds the key to release it, with a dour, low-key performance that’s sprinkled with flashes of brilliance.

Another veteran, Peter Bogdanovich, made a lively return with the frothy screwball farce, She’s Funny That Way (* * *). Owen Wilson plays a Broadway director whose habit of giving call girls large sums of money to change their lives comes back to haunt him when one of them (a delightful Imogen Poots) auditions for his latest play. Think Woody Allen minus the angst, with lashings of Ernst Lubitsch and others thrown self-consciously into the mix. Fun for fun’s sake.

Many thought that Joshua Oppenheimer was robbed when his harrowing documentary The Act of Killing was beaten to this year’s best documentary Oscar by 20 Feet from Stardom. He may get a second chance with its companion piece, The Look of Silence (* * * * *)– winner of five awards in Venice – which returns to the subject of genocide in 1960s Indonesia. Whereas The Act of Killing focused on the perpetrators, this time a man whose brother was brutally murdered is given an opportunity to confront people with different degrees of involvement in the killings. Formally, The Look of Silence is more conventional than its predecessor. However, it is an angrier, more combative film, with just as much power to horrify and appal.

Abel Ferrara followed Welcome to New York, his thinly veiled roman a clef about former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, with another portrait of a controversial figure, Pasolini (* *). Willem Dafoe brings warmth and intelligence to his portrayal of the murdered iconoclast Pier Paulo Pasolini, during the last day of the film-maker’s life. However, his American accent, perhaps deliberately, makes him appear alien among the Italian cast. Meanwhile, Ferrara pitches his opaque film so specifically at viewers familiar with Pasolini that it’s virtually impenetrable for anyone else.

At the other end of the spectrum, Joe Dante’s Burying the Ex (* * *) was a refreshing splash of silliness. Screened to wild applause, the gleefully trashy zombie rom-com finds Anton Yelchin’s horror geek caught between the living and the dead when his clingy ex (Twilight’s Ashley Greene) returns from the grave, just as he is embarking on a new relationship with a like-minded ice-cream seller (True Detective’s Alexandra Daddario). Dante never lets good taste get in the way of a good rotting flesh or embalming fluid gag in a film that’s ready-made for cult status.

Finally, drug movies don’t get much more authentic than Heaven Knows What (* * *), a grimy drama about the lives of junkies living from fix-to-fix in New York. Starring newcomer Arielle Holmes – a former heroin addict playing a warts-and-all version of herself – Caleb Landry Jones (X-Men: First Class) and a supporting cast of real street people, the Safdie brothers’ unflinching vision of life on the margins is a kind of 21st-century version of The Panic in Needle Park. Tough but compelling viewing.