Al Pacino (Scarface) Scarface
Pacino saw the 1932 original and became the project's driving force
The Scarface remake began with Pacino. He saw Howard Hawks's 1932 Scarface at the Tiffany Theater in Los Angeles and immediately called producer Martin Bregman to discuss remaking it. Pacino was not attached to a project that already existed — he created the project by recognizing what the original could become in a contemporary setting. (tcm)
"I had heard about Scarface for a long time... It was the model for all gangster pictures." — Al Pacino, Cinema Scholars (2023)
By 1982, Pacino was at a crossroads. His work in the 1970s — The Godfather, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon — had established him as the preeminent actor of his generation, but his recent films had underperformed. Scarface represented a gamble: a performance pitched at a volume and physicality he had never attempted, in a film that might be too excessive for mainstream acceptance.
He built Tony Montana from Roberto Duran, Bogart movies, and Cuban emigres
Pacino's preparation was layered. He worked with a dialect coach and spent time with Cuban emigres to develop Tony's accent, but the result was deliberately stylized rather than naturalistic. Tony himself claims in the film that he learned English watching Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney — and Pacino's performance carries that self-conscious artificiality. Tony is not performing an accent; he is performing America as he imagined it from a Cuban prison. (tcm, imdb)
Pacino also drew on Panamanian boxer Roberto Duran for Tony's physicality — the compact aggression, the forward lean, the refusal to step back. The combination produced a character who is simultaneously larger than life and grounded in specific physical detail.
Pacino improvised the word "yeyo" (slang for cocaine) during the chainsaw scene after learning it from Cuban consultants. De Palma kept it and used it throughout the film. (imdb)
The performance was attacked as overacting — and that was the point
The critical divide on Scarface centered largely on Pacino's performance. Pauline Kael wrote that "after a while, Pacino is a lump at the center of the movie" and that "nothing develops in Pacino's performance." The accusation of overacting followed the film for years.
"After a while, Pacino is a lump at the center of the movie." — Pauline Kael, Scraps from the Loft (1983)
The defense of the performance rests on the character's nature. Tony Montana is a man who performs himself at maximum volume at all times. He performs American rhetoric in the immigration interview. He performs confidence after the chainsaw scene. He performs ownership in Frank's office. He performs defiance while absorbing bullets. The performance is not naturalistic because Tony is not a naturalistic character — he is a man whose entire identity is a sustained act of self-creation, and Pacino plays that act at the pitch it requires.
"Pacino creates his freshest character in years." — Richard Corliss, TCM (1983)
He burned his hand on the M16 and shut down production for two weeks
During filming of the final shootout, Pacino grabbed the M16 prop by its barrel, which was red-hot from blank firing, and severely burned his hand. Production halted for two weeks while he recovered. De Palma used the downtime to shoot all scenes not requiring Pacino, and Spielberg visited the set during this period to help with additional camera angles. (syfy)
Pacino credits hip-hop with saving the film from oblivion
By Pacino's own account, he had lost interest in acting around the time of Scarface's release, and the film's modest commercial performance did nothing to revive his enthusiasm. It was hip-hop's adoption of Tony Montana in the early 1990s — rappers quoting dialogue, sampling the score, modeling personas on the character — that transformed the film from a commercial disappointment into a cultural institution.
"Hip-hop just got it. They understood it. They embraced it, the rappers." — Al Pacino, Billboard (2024)
"And then the next thing you know, VHS is going out and more people are seeing it. Plus, we're on the records, these rappers. And then it just carried and it kept going and going." — Al Pacino, Billboard (2024)