Audio Q&A: 'The Humbling'

The KCET Cinema Series showcased an advanced screening of the film, "The Humbling", directed by Academy Award winner Barry Levinson and starring Academy Award winning actor Al Pacino.

Based on the novel by Philip Roth, the film tells the tale of a titanic talent who, after 50 years onstage, finds himself unable to perform and the lengths he goes to regain his former glory. After the screening, KCET Cinema Series host Pete Hammond joined Pacino for an animated Q&A, where he shared his experience of playing this character, which he joked, was someone he related to. Pacino also reminisced on some his most famous roles, including The Godfather and Scarface.

Listen to the entertaining discussion between Al and Pete here:

Audio Q&A Transcript:

Pete Hammond: Congratulations on this Al! You have a future here in comedy, entertaining movie. I know this one was not easy to make. This is something you optioned yourself right?

Al Pacino: Yes, my agent told me that there is this book I should read, I went and read the book. I was glad he told me about it. It was a book about an actor who is going down or just losing his grip on his own craft, among other things. I found it, to make a movie from scratch even though you have a book; it is helpful if you have a subject matter that you are familiar with.

PH: An actor that is going down? No!

AP: There it was a world I felt familiar with. I do a lot of theatre acting. I started in the theatre and I keep going back. The familiarity with the pitfalls, the ins- and outs of the theatre, movies, show business, stardom and all of that. The ups and the downs, generally the world of the theatre and many of the people involved know that world. I got Barry Levinson, first choice. I thought that this would be something that he would want to try. I also thought that Phillip Broth is the greatest American writer. I think in the movie though we had to make some changes and so did Barry. We thought we would flavor the movie with some humor and it turned out to be a little bit more humor and then more. We like that Buck Henry was involved and then he was writing it because we all got together and did that stuff where you talk for a year and then the writer goes home and writes a few words and then you talk for another year and then it comes back. So, these things take time, I am exaggerating but it took time and then eventually a script came with the work of Harry Levinson, Buck Henry and myself. These ideas started coming in, we had to film it and we tried to film it in a way where the people who were involved in the movie, the actors were more or less people who could connect to the themes of it. Sometimes you get into movies, and they may be great actors but they are cast primarily because they need certain territories, they bring audiences in certain territories and sometimes the movie gets a little off balance because you have people playing parts that they don't feel so much, so we found people we felt fit.

PH: Great cast!

AP: It was, it was really a great cast put together by Barry Levinson but then it became difficult to get financing. So we decided to do it lowball, we thought, "Let the chips ride and see where it takes us." I was happy to involve myself in that kind of thing. We did it in increments; Barry did it in his home, his Connecticut home for one thing. We would do three, four days, come back do three or four days and then maybe do a week. Then Barry had a chance to cut it, edit it, put it together and then tell me that he thought we needed more stuff. Then I would come back and do more stuff. We shot it in twenty days really.

PH: You shot it in twenty days for two million dollars.

AP: A little less actually, one of the reasons you could do that, even come close to doing that is that it is our world, it is a world we know. So there is a kind of shorthand even though we worked a couple of years together to try to put it in perspective.
PH: It's amazing, knowing how many movies he has made that he let a film crew come in and shoot most of the film in his home, knowing what happens to homes after...

AP: But actors are worse on homes than film crews.

PH: It looks like a nice home though.

AP: Very nice, he used to like getting up in the morning and seeing people scurrying around. At least that is what he told me.

PH: Greta Gerwig is so wonderful opposite of you.

AP: Great actress and a very interesting person to be around, I like the fact that she is quite, I like the fact that she does not small talk during filming, she does not even talk. But neither do I, and we didn't have trailers so you are really a victim to someone who wanted to talk to you like Chuck Grodin but he makes you laugh so it's ok. I had one of Barry Levinson's bedrooms to go to. What I like about her is that when she talks usually she has something to say. It is unusual and rare don't you think? We were out in a car way in the distance and the camera was half a mile away. We were out there with little radios with radio mic and they would tell us "action", and that means we would take a drive in this convertible and we were way out and I was with Greta and we were alone, there was the transmitter, they talk into it. I have a block on that name because I cannot stand those things.

PH: A Walkie-Talkie.

AP: A Walkie-Talkie, there we were in a car out in the middle of nowhere and she did the most wonderful thing. She took out a book and started reading it. It was very encouraging I have to say. I felt good with her reading and my thinking, then they said "action", and we went. Then I saw her in Toronto and she was very talkative.

PH: At the Toronto Film Festival?

AP: Yes, I do not know, maybe it has something to do with being around the workplace and trying to be focused.

PH: This movie actually appeared at the Venice Film Festival and then you went to Toronto and had two movies at Toronto.

AP: Yeah, I did two movies that both went to the same festival but they were different movies. I had two red carpets on each occasion. In Toronto, I went on two red carpets and in Venice I went on two red carpets.

PH: That is unheard of.

AP: So every time I see a red carpet now I go toward it.

PH: I have to ask you, obviously you do so much stage work too, and this movie, when you look at this actor and what he is going through and all of that. Have you had your own real disaster on stage?

AP: All of the time. Any actors in here? I thought there would be more. I was in a play once, Shakespeare. In those days, I used to do eight performances. Now I just cannot, now I do not do eight performances, I do seven. It makes a difference, when you have a Wednesday matinee and you have a Saturday matinee you get warn out a little bit. I would rather do six but we are working on it. I was in this play and it had a large monologue, a soliloquy, me speaking Shakespeare. This was years ago, I had done a matinee, and we had an early evening performance that was the second performance in the evening having done it an hour earlier. I was in the middle of it, and then I got the notion in my head that I was saying every line of Shakespeare but I was saying it twice. The audience is there and they are hearing me say it twice and they are very kind and very generous because they are being forgiving and they are sad for me and it turns out I wasn't doing that. But, it felt that way because that is how exhausted you can get and it is very rigorous and this guy goes through a lifetime of the rigors. Anybody here ever seen The Dresser?

PH: Yes, with Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay, great movie!

AP: Wasn't that beautiful, that movie was great. Finney was fantastic; you really get the sense in Finney's performance what he has been through, what that actor has been through. Doing stage and the rigors of stage really does get to you, especially those big roles. You get to the point where you cannot play King Lear, you cannot play Hamlet without giving yourself to it one hundred percent otherwise audiences will leave unless you really get into it. It starts to get you after a while, as you get older, your very stamina starts to go. I think part of this character's problem is that his stamina is leaving him. He is also feeling he does not have the same kind of confidence, he is losing his memory, he is really going down hill. Acting is all he had really, that was his choice in life and he found it a wonderful way to live, to not have to face his past, his problems, obviously it's like water in a desert, performing. He got used to that and he never thought that it would end, he does not even remember his wives, he has no family, you saw the movie. I am not looking for sympathy really, I am just saying there is certain things that happen but I think that part of it is in order to be able to be up for the role, in the movies, movies are great. I love them; I do them all the time. I just did this one and with movies it's like a wire, you're a tight rope walker on stage but the wire is way up there on the roof so if you fall...You are on that wire and it really is that. The adrenaline is working and the energy is working but when you are in the movies, it's like the wire is painted on the floor because you can always go back again. That does something to your adrenaline and the way you are. With this guy that wire is starting to get wobbly and he is fearful. Another Shakespeare play I did I started speaking, "my lord so and so and so and so," and I realized that I was in another Shakespeare play. I was doing a speech from another play.

PH: In this play?

AP: In the play, shocking but I got out of it. I was young when I did that too.

PH: How did you get out of that?

AP: Well, it's history in Shakespeare, they give you eight or ten lines in Shakespeare's day that you have in your head that if you do forget those words you can go to those lines and that's a way to work your way back into it. I had a prompter there, "Wait Hamlet what are you doing? Go back this is our play. To be or not to be, no!"

PH: That's amazing, speaking of lines, I have to ask you this because you have had more iconic lines in movies than any actor that I can think of. When I was watching this movie again tonight, I watched you doing that "come back, Shane," I loved the way you worked that in there.

AP: Well, it was interesting because everything is connected to acting because in the part sometimes you hear me quoting Shakespeare "you are my..." whatever I say about love, "oh perdition catch my soul but I do love thee and when I love thee not, chaos is come again." I love that.

PH: That is great.

AP: What was I saying?

PH: Talking about lines, talking about Shane.

AP: Oh Shane! You remember the picture Shane, Alan Ladd? "Come back Shane," most of the audience that is under fifty does not know what the hell I am doing.

PH: Oh, I did.

AP: They will not be coming to see this movie.

PH: Fortunately you are making movies for audiences to come see like this one.

AP: I once said long ago, "You can't please all of the people all of the time but you can please all of the people some of the time." That is why I am sitting here I guess.

PH: Okay, of your movies, your favorite lines that you have said, "Attica" or "You are out of order or "Just when I thought I was out they pull me back in" or "Say hello to my little friend," that is from Scarface or "Hooah," you know that one?

AP: Well, "Hooah," that has to win.

PH: That's got to win?

AP: Yeah, I learned that because a lieutenant colonel was teaching me how to load, how to assemble and disassemble a forty-five, blind. It took longer than it did to make the picture to just teach me how to do that. Every time I got it right, the lieutenant colonel would look at me and say "Hooah." I said, "What is that?" He said, "That is what we do when the men are on the line and they get it right, when they snap two. We go 'Hooah.'" So, I thought I have to remember that.

PH: So you put it in.

AP: I used it in the movie, yeah.

PH: And you win an Oscar.

PH: And I win an Oscar for that.