DISGRACELAND - Al Pacino: Good and Evil, Attempted Robbery, and the Role of a Lifetime

Episode Date: July 30, 2024

The death of a neighborhood friend, an attempted robbery that almost went horribly wrong, good vs. evil, and the road not taken: this is the Al Pacino origin story. It all culminates in the role of a lifetime. Not Michael Corleone. Not a role on stage or screen. The most important role of Al Pacino’s young life played out in front of a couple of detectives and a district attorney.To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at www.disgracelandpod.com.To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at disgracelandpod.com/membership.Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - GET THE NEWSLETTERFollow Jake and DISGRACELAND:InstagramYouTubeX (formerly Twitter) Facebook Fan GroupTikTok To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. This is the story about one of the greatest actors of all time, Al Pacino. It's also a story about one of the greatest movies of all time, the Godfather. But this is also a story about the death of a neighborhood friend, about a violent robbery that almost went completely wrong. And about the role of a lifetime,

a role Al Pacino starred in as a young man, a role that wasn't on stage or screen, but that played out in front of a couple detectives and a district attorney. This is a story about good and evil, about the road not taken. The Road Not Taken, a theme that Beach Boys lifted from poet Robert Frost

for their song, All This Is That, from their most excellent 1972 album, Carl and the Passion, so tough. great music. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called On Heaven's Beach, MK1.

I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to Are You Loansome Tonight by Elvis Presley. And why would I play you that specific slice of shall I come back again, cheese, could I afford it? Because that, was the number one song in America on January 7, 1961. And that was the day that a young Al Pacino was arrested in a small city in Rhode Island, an arrest that would later be used to inform one of the most incredible performances in Hollywood history.

On this episode, Dead Friends, Stickups Gone Wrong, The Performance of a Lifetime, and Al Pacino. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. In 1971, Francis Ford Coppola began production on his mafia epic, The Godfather. In my humble opinion, the first truly great movie ever made. Yes, I know that's a bold statement, one that sounds like some bullshit hot take, but I think it's the kind of take that an artist and visionary

like Francis Ford Coppola would respect. The director himself was all about hot takes. Coppola's generation, the film's. generation. Quote unquote, New Hollywood, Scorsese, Spielberg, De Palma. Their entire objective was to subvert the norm. To upend the way things have been done for decades, how movies were shot, how stories were told. Coppola telling the head of Paramount Pictures, Robert Evans, that five-foot-seven Al Pacino, a virtual unknown, should play Michael Corleone and the Godfather. Over more conventional bankable stars like Ryan O'Neill or Robert Redford.

Now that was a hot take. Robert Evans was old school. High-collar dress shirts, cashmere sweaters, a cigar by the pool with a phone receiver up to each ear. So, of course, Robert Evans did not respond warmly to Francis Ford Coppola's bold New Hollywood choice. Absolutely not, he said.

Michael Corleone will not be played by Al Pacino. The story about Coppola fighting to cast Al Pacino against all odds, about Coppola's pig-headedness, about his balls, the kind of unwavering faith that he had in the 31-year-old actor. It's a kind of faith that Al Pacino didn't even have in himself at the time. It's a well-told tale that I'm not going to get into here. Suffice to say that after auditioning 40 different Michael Corleones, after seeing early footage of Pacino in the film The Panic in Needle Park, and after enduring Coppola's tireless insistence,

Robert Evans, much to his alpha male dismay, changed his mind, and the kid stayed in the picture, as it were. For Al Pacino, it was a real chance. If the film was a hit, that would mean no more borrowing cab fare to get around New York, no more couch-surfing in his friend's apartments. He'd recently won a Tony Award,

but The Godfather, the movies, Paramount, This was way bigger than Broadway. Right now, however, Al Pacino wasn't thinking about his career so much as he was thinking about how much pain he was in. And I'm not talking about his face, even though the entire left side of his jaw appeared to be completely swollen. The pain was in his ankle. He rolled it on set shooting a scene in which he ran a little too fast and a little too hard.

And a mishap meant that he was now walking around with a cane. His face, meanwhile, only looked like it. hurt because the makeup guy was really good at his job. In his jaw, I've been wired shut and a prosthetic lump was stuck to his cheek in order to make it look like he'd been punched by a dirty cop. In The Godfather, his character, Michael Corleone, gets clocked by an NYPD captain named McCluskey, who's played with entitled Prick Gusto by Sterling Hayden. And this happens after Michael accuses McCluskey of being on the take from Virgil Salazzo, aka the Turk, narcotics man who just put Michael's father, Mafia Don, Vito Corleone, played by Marlon Brando,

in the hospital. Al Pacino as Michael Corleone was sitting in a big leather chair inside the Corleone compound. And the real pain throbbing in his ankle, it helped him portray the fake pain that was so clearly visible on his face in the scene. The film crew was ready. Coppola called action, and the camera rolled. This was it. The scene. The best thing. The best. seen in the whole movie. There's Michael sitting quietly, calm, reserved, taking it all in. Better to remain silent and be thought a fool or speak and remove all doubt or something like that.

Also quiet, Artesio and Clemenza. Two Corleone family Capos, one tall, one short, both capable men with ways and means. Meanwhile, James Kahn, playing Michael's big brother Sonny, is the polar opposite of Michael. He's volcanic, antsy, talking with his hands, bada bing, bada boo. And he's arguing with Robert Duval as Tom Haken, the Corleone family's concierge, fixer, and attorney.

Tom, trying to talk some sense into the eldest Corleone, that, yes, we understand your need for revenge, that you want to go out there and, bam, put a bullet in Salazzo's head because that piece of shit put a head out on your pops. But listen, it's not personal, Sonny. It's just business. A tough pill to swallow, I know, but it's the true. truth. And never mind killing a cop. You'd be starting a war, one which the Corleons would lose

very quickly. As the argument continued, Al Pacino, the actor, remained stoic. His character was a private man, a Marine just back from the war, distance from the family both in emotion and in business. He didn't put his feelings out there like his big brother Sonny or his other big brother Fredo. But the wheels were turning inside the head of the youngest Corleone. And in this scene, in this incredible scene, somehow, you can see those wheels turning. Al Pacino, the actor Michael Corleone, the character. He didn't let anyone know what was going on in his mind, but you knew something was going on. And Michael Corleone, Al Pacino saw a mirror image of himself.

A shy, introverted kid drawn into a world of violence, crime, and despair. A man forced to choose between the paths of good and evil. A decision that Al Pacino knew all too well. I said, what are you looking at, these scrawny little punk? The question was followed by a blow to the head. An open-handed slap that knocked him to the ground and left his eardrums ringing. He could taste blood mixed with his head. tears in the back of his mouth, and he just lay there, curled into a ball with his hands over

his face. His assailant was laughing now. That's right, you little mama's boy, lie there in the dirt. But with that, the nine-year-old girl turned on her heels and walked away, leaving six-year-old Al Pacino bleeding on the ground. Nineteen 46. The South Bronx was rough. Even 30 years before its urban decay was portrayed so vividly by hip-hop pioneers like Cool Herk and Grandmaster Flash. It was made even rougher by World War II. Kids lost their fathers. Others were killed on the battlefield.

And some, like young Alfred Pacino's dad, returned from service no longer fit for family life. Alfredo and his mother moved into his grandparents' cramped tenement apartment. A three-room unit they also shared with the odd aunt or uncle, whoever was able to pay the rent that month. His mother made ends meet working at a local movie theater. He loved visiting her at work, staring at a bright screen in a darkened room, transported out of New York City and into a completely new world.

He'd give anything to be there right now. Instead, he was wiping the blood from his nose and struggling to rise from the asphalt to one knee. It was bad enough that he just had the ship beat out of him by a girl, but a group of boys watched it happen, a group that now had him surrounded. At first, no one said a word. And then, one boy stepped forward and offered a hand. That boy was Cliff, age seven, one year older than the rest of them. Tougher, too.

More likely to dish out a beating rather than receive one. Al took the outstretched hand and pulled himself up. Hey, Cliss said, why'd you let her smack you around like that? Little Alfredo looked around at all those eyes staring at him, waiting for an answer. He had to say something. anything. So he did what came naturally. He acted. He told him his dad was a mobster. He said his old man didn't like when he fought at school. It drew too much attention, that his dad had these two huge German shepherds locked behind a game. If Al said one word to him about what had happened

today, his dad would feed that girl to those months and two seconds flat. The story hung in the air. The boys kept staring. Al wondered if they bought it. Cliff began to chuckle. and then the whole group was laughing. Eight years later, the group was still laughing. Only now they were teenagers, and the laughs were courtesy as some low-grade weed, crumbled up and mixed with a pinched tobacco. Cliff was still a year older, still tougher,

rocking full-on rebel regalia, black leather jacket, black motorcycle boots. Didn't matter that he'd never been on a motorcycle in his life. He had gotten laid, though. A fact which made Cliff the group's undisputed leader and thus made his word gospel. Al Pacino, or Sunny, as he was known to his friends, but I don't want to call him Sunny, because it's just going to get confusing,

since Sonny Corleone is a character and the godfather and all that we were just discussing. But 14-year-old Al Pacino stood next to his best friend, Cliff, eagerly awaiting a hit. Smoking a joint was their standard after-school ritual. That and a couple of bottles of Schlits if they could convince one of the neighborhood's older guys to buy it for them. Today was one of those days. After 15 minutes, the beer and the bud had taken effect, and they left the empty bottles behind the dumpster and then left the alley. Al cracked them up with his over-the-top impersonations of his snooty drama school teachers.

They all had to stick up their ass about the process, and it sucked all the joy out of acting. Then, suddenly, it hit him. Shit. Today was Wednesday. He was supposed to be at work. The job wasn't much. sorting fruits and vegetables, and the pay wasn't much either.

But it put a little cash in his pocket, and part of him just enjoyed the work. He liked the feeling of completion when he sorted a pallet of tomatoes until nothing was left but the bare wood underneath. So we managed to keep it up for three months without being late for a single shift until today. I gotta get the work, he told the group, and turned to walk in the other direction. Cliff jumped in front of him before he could leave. Why did Al bother with that penny any job? Come on, Cliff, Al told him. I'm saving up.

I need new shoes. As he said this, he pointed at the window shoe display in the shop that they were walking past. Cliff thought the job was bullshit, and he said so. In this neighborhood, people didn't get ahead by working at a fruit stand. They got ahead by taking what they wanted. Working a square job, that was for suckers.

Cliff turned towards the shoe display. You want some shit. shoes, you want some fucking shoes, I'll get you some shoes. Cliff stepped up to the display window, raised his black motorcycle boot, and without hesitation smashed it directly through the glass. He grabbed a pair of shoes and turned to walk back to Al and the others. Right then, an NYPD patrolman rounded the corner. The cop took one look at the busted window and another look at Cliff with the shoes in his hands, and he ordered all the boys up against the wall. Cliff tried to take the blame.

He said the other guys had nothing to do with it. The cop wasn't buying it. The crowd began to gather, like the crowd that had gathered when Al got his face rearranged by a girl some eight years prior. When Al's mother arrived on the scene, she placated the store owner while Cliff promised to pay for the damages. And only then did the cop let them go. Al Pacino's mom forced him to head to work and explained to his boss what had happened and why he was late. And he walked into the vegetable market, his eyes red and blue. bleary, the effects of the weed long gone. And the market's owner, a man Al's mother had convinced

to give him this job, looked back at this juvenile delinquent employee with disappointment. He led Al into the back room among pallets of tomatoes, onions, and peppers, but Al didn't start sorting vegetables as usual. Instead, his boss rolled out a blackboard they used to keep track of the shipments and wiped it clean. He spoke about the farm where these crops grew. He drew out trees, vines, and rolling hills. And through the farm, he sketched out two paths. He explained that in life, there are only two paths. And you, my friend, are on the wrong one.

Weeks later, those words were still bouncing around Al's head as he was walking home. It was Sunday evening. He couldn't believe the performance he just witnessed. A traveling theater troupe performed Chekos, the Seagull, for an audience of probably 20 people. but he was only there as a school requirement. But what he saw transformed him. The way these actors brought the Russian melodrama to life so vividly blew his mind. It was nothing like the joyless acting exercises at school.

Here was something real, something meaningful, a level of acting ability that he had never experienced before, and he wanted that ability for himself. Cliff, meanwhile, just wanted to keep taking whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, which, as the years went on, meant more bags of white powder, and those baggies gave Al an uneasy feeling, especially seeing Cliff's eyes when he was on it, all wild and unfocused.

Al steered clear of Cliff's temptations. He eventually dropped out of high school, but he kept putting in work as a janitor, a busboy, a messenger. He also put in the work at a local acting studio. One night, he cut through an alley after rehearsal, Usually the alley was empty, but on this evening a small group of people stood in a semicircle, just like Al and his friends used to do when they'd pass around a joint. But there was no joint.

There was just a body, lying stiff on the ground, arms covered in bruises and track marks. Cliff was dead from an overdose at just 19 years old. Soon, more friends from the neighborhoods succumbed to addiction, to crime. More than ever, Al was determined to his death. escape that fate. He stopped using drugs, and he rarely drank. Acting kept him busy and kept him out of trouble. And by the time he turned 19, he'd left that old neighborhood, the old friends, and that old sunny nickname. On stage, he was Al Pacino, but to the rest of the world, and more importantly, to the police, he was still that same scrawny Italian hoodlum from the South Bronx,

and it was about to take the performance of a lifetime to convince them otherwise. We'll be right back after this world, word, word. January, 1961, the New York City streets were uncharacteristically quiet for a Saturday, on account of the temperature. It was cold, real cold, and people were inside. But there was a lone figure standing on the corner, short, wiry, a shock of black hair, and deep-set, soulful eyes. A car pulled up near where the figure was standing in a window roll. down. And from inside the vehicle, a voice called out. You Al? 20-year-old Al Pacino just nodded his head and slid into the car's back seat.

Up front, the owner of the voice looked back at him. Same shock of black hair as Al, another Italian kid from the Bronx. He introduced himself as Vincent. That's Bruce, Vincent said, nodding toward the driver. Anyway, thanks for doing this. We really need three guys on this job. Al knew Vincent from the neighborhood, they went to the same junior high, they went with the same girls, and they must have crossed paths a hundred times. But somehow, they'd never officially met before today. They had one more thing in common, too. They were both trying to break into acting. At least that's what Vincent told Al on the phone a few days ago. Up north in Boston,

a theater was putting on a new gangster play, and they had parts for three young actors, preferably Italian. A mutual friend connected them, and when Vincent, explained the part, Al had to agree that they were perfect for it. Bruce, the driver, stepped on the gas, and they departed the city heading north. Once they made it to the freeway, traffic was light. They made conversation. Al and Vincent laughed about the scams they pulled as teenagers, the trouble they caused in school. Like Al, Vincent was at one time a troublemaker, that is, until a short stint and juvie for B&E

convinced him to turn his life around. So we said. The miles ticked by, and soon they were in Rhode Island, only an hour away from their destination. And the car approached a split in the highway. But instead of continuing north, as Al expected, Bruce, the driver, took another path. He turned the wheel and the car veered left, following a sign for Woonsocket. Sorry, man, Bruce said, taking the exit. Got to take the piss.

As the car continued into town, Vincent began talking about the plan for their audition. He gave Al a mischievous grin. They want a Guido gangster for this part, he said, and I'm going to give them the real deal. From a bag in the front seat, Vincent pulled out three black ski masks, and he slid one over his head and laughed. Check it out, he said, reaching into the bag. I even brought a heater. Al felt his body tense up as Vincent pulled a handgun out of a brown paper bag. Vincent told him to relax. It was just a prop. The gun wasn't even loaded. Vincent and Bruce both laughed. Al smiled, but inside his heart was pounding. Vincent calmly explained that he and Bruce liked to stop in this town on their way to Boston.

They knew a great spot to grab a few burgers and maybe a couple of beers for the road before they pulled into Bean Town. As they drove through Woonsocket, Bruce pulled the car off the main drag and into a seedier part of town. Vincent still had the black ski mask over his head. He toyed with a gun in his hand. and in the back seat, Al didn't know if he should play a cool or throw open the door and run. The car slowed. Vincent pointed out the spot, a rundown bar on the corner. Out front, the parking spaces were full, so they circled around the block and came back.

Bruce and Vincent had both grown quiet now. Al sat in the back seat waiting to see what would unfold. They came up on the bar a second time, and this time they found a spot to park. Bruce backed the car in and they looked back at Al. We'll grab the food and be right back, he said. Mind watching the car for a few minutes? In the front, Vincent and Bruce reached for their door handles. Al's heart felt like it was about to pound right out of his chest.

The ski mass, the gun. Vincent said there were props, but Al was beginning to think otherwise. He was frozen with terror, no idea what was about to go down, or exactly what he'd signed up for. And then, just before Vincied, Vincent and Bruce made their exit, just up ahead of them, a burst of blue and red lights. An Irish cop, his hair as red as Al's nose in the cold air, stepped out of a squad car and walked toward them. He was fixated on their black hair in New York plates.

The cop got closer. Vincent looked back at Al. We're on our way to an audition, right? Al nodded yes. The cop looked in the car and saw the ski masks and the gun. He told them all to get out of the car. and the Bronx address is on their IDs confirmed the officer's suspicions. Three Guido punks coming to cause trouble in his quiet town. Well, not on his watch, he's going to lock him up and throw away the key. And that's exactly what happened.

Al Pacino and his traveling companions were arrested for attempted robbery in a legal possession of a firearm, charges that could land them a decade in jail. They spent the weekend behind bars. Al woke up on Monday morning to the sound of a cell door sliding open. A cop called him out into the hallway, and as he stepped forward, Vincent and Bruce both shot him a look that said stick to the story. Al knew he needed to do more than stick to a story to get him out of this mess.

He needed to harness every ounce of his acting chops to convince these Irish cops that even though they looked like Italian hoodlums from the city, they were actually good kids, wannabe artists, with maybe a little bit more enthusiasm than common sense. The audience for this performance was small. Just two cops and the DA, and the scenery was bare. A table, a couple of chairs, and a single spotlight shining down from the ceiling. Al closed his eyes and centered his mind on the character he wanted to play.

A mama's boy, a fruit stand worker, a square. They stepped into the room and it was showtime. Over the next 90 minutes, Al Pacino gave a powerhouse performance. He swore the masks and the gun were just props for their audition. The gun wasn't loaded after all, right? At least he prayed to God it wasn't loaded. Fortunately, the DA nodded his head in agreement, and Al's confidence grew. He pulled out all the stops.

He cried tears while telling them how ashamed his mother would be if she knew he was arrested. He begged them to call the theater in Boston, which he hoped really was holding auditions like Vincent said. By the end of the interrogation, both the DA and the cops, were shaking Al's hand, and by the end of the day, Al, Vincent, and Bruce were released. Al's performance, plus a phone call to the playhouse to confirm the auditions, convinced the cops to drop all charges. But the trio didn't head on to Boston. Instead, they turned around and went back to New York.

Al never knew exactly what happened in Rhode Island. Did he almost unwittingly take part in a robbery? or were three wannabe actors goofing around and getting into character? But whatever the case, once they arrived back in the city, they went their separate ways. And Al never heard from Vincent or Bruce again. The world, on the other hand, was about to hear from Al Pacino. 1971, 10 years after his brush with the law in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, and Al Pacino was once again performing for a small crowd.

This time, however, the performance wasn't happening in a police interrogation room. He was on the set of the Godfather in the Corleone compound, sitting quietly in that big leather chair. His jaw and cheek were made up to look like he'd gotten smacked, when in fact the real pain was, as I mentioned before, throbbing in his sprained ankle. Francis Ford Coppola's camera rolled, and the director called action. James Kahn, as Michael's brother Sonny, and Robert Duvall, as the Corleone family attorney,

Tom Hagan, again were arguing over the pros and cons of killing not only Salazzo, the narcotics man, who put the godfather himself Don Corleone in the hospital, but of also killing McCluskey, the crooked cop protecting Salazzo. Sonny Corleone was a loudmouth and a hothead. He was also the eldest of Don Corleone's children, and thus it was taken for granted that he would be in control the family in his father's absence. Michael Corleone, on the other hand, was the dark horse, the silent type, the guy you never saw coming. In Michael Corleone, Al Pacino saw a mirror image of himself. That shy, introverted kid that was drawn into a world of violence, a world of crime, and of despair.

that man who was forced to choose between the paths of good and evil. Michael Corleone didn't do evil. At least, that was what you were made to believe. He was a good man, a fair man, a veteran of World War II who had no interest in the family business. But Al Pacino knew something that many didn't. He knew something no one watching the film for the first time when it was initially released in March of 1972 would ever suspect. Al Pacino knew that Michael Corleone was evil, that evil lay dormant inside of him,

just waiting for a reason to come out. That Michael Corleone now had his reason, the attempted assassination of his father, and the resulting struggle for control. Michael would fill that power vacuum, and in doing so, would set the chorus for one of the greatest villain character arcs in movie history. It was Al Pacino's job to portray the story,

transition, this turn in Michael's character, to play it so well that every audience in every theater around the country would buy it just like the cops and Woonsocket bought his performance some 10 years prior. But Michael Corleone was not Al Pacino. Michael Corleone chose a different path. Francis Ford Coppola's director of photography, Gordon Willis, didn't want to move the camera around for the scene. He wanted all the shots in the Godfather to be still, to look like paintings. But Coppola was bringing that new Hollywood energy again. He defied Gordon Willis' very capable instincts, just like he defied producer Robert Evans' casting choices.

Coppola had Gordon Willis slowly tracked the camera closer to Al Pacino as his character Michael began to speak in this scene. And there were no cuts, just a long, slow shot that moves in on Michael as he finally reveals his plan to a reality. room of family members and associates stunned into silence. They wanted to have a meeting with him, right? With Michael. Okay, they'd have the meeting. It would be him, McCluskey, and Salazzo. The Corleone's informants would find out where the meeting would be held, right? We'd make it a public place, a bar, a restaurant, somewhere with people, somewhere Michael could feel safe. He'd probably

be searched when he came in, so he wouldn't be carrying a weapon. But if they could figure out a way to have a weapon planted there for him, then he'd killed him. And by doing so, by playing the role of Michael Corleone, Al Pacino took the path he could never take on his own, the path of disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by yours truly is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it.

And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com slash membership. Members can listen to every episode of Disgraceland ad free. Plus, you'll get one brand new exclusive episode every month. weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and early access to merchandise and events. Visit disgracelampod.com slash membership for details. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook at Disgracelandpod, and on YouTube at YouTube.com slash at Disgracelandpod.

Rock a roll.