Al Pacino hails Kansas, walks entertaining high wire in Overland Park
You know that uncle who shows up to big family functions and you can’t tell if he’s jet-lagged or a little bit tipsy or, gosh darn it, just being his lovable self?
That’s what it was like watching Oscar winner Al Pacino entertain 1,100 people at the annual fundraiser for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Kansas City at the Overland Park Convention Center.
“Nobody walks the high wire like Al Pacino,” said Rolling Stone movie critic Peter Travers, who came to town to interview Pacino on stage.
A movie montage of Pacino’s greatest hits reminded the audience it was about to be in the presence of movie royalty.
Clips from “The Godfather,” “Scarface,” “Dog Day Afternoon,” “Carlito’s Way” and “Scent of a Woman,” his Oscar-winning performance, and other films flashed across giant screens like at those lifetime achievement awards shows. (Pacino has one of those awards too, from the American Film Institute.)
When the lights came up, Pacino was standing on stage, dressed all in black, his signature look, messy hair pulled back in a ponytail. The crowd stood and cheered.
“Hi, Kansas!” he said, taking a seat across from Travers. “Good to be back.”
(He’s been here before? Anyone?)
Travers began their discussion about “The Godfather” by bringing up the fact that “they almost fired your a**.”
Pacino said the studio didn’t like Marlon Brando “for a long time,” though he wasn’t sure why.
“And I was short,” he joked.
He said he was working 10, 15 years before director Francis Ford Coppola asked him to be in the movie. The studio didn’t like that Coppola had hired “all these amateurs,” like him, Robert Duvall and James Caan, he said.
“Who is this kid Al Pacino?” studio officials wanted to know.
Pacino said he was glad when bigger names – Jack Nicholson, Robert Redford, Robert DeNiro – didn’t work out. “Then it was down to me,” he joked.
A few times during the conversation Pacino wandered off topic, like when he leaned way over in his chair and peered out into the audience.
“How many people are back there? Hello, I want to see you. I want to talk to you,” he said in a slow, teasing way. “I want to talk to you about my life.”
And he did. About growing up poor in the South Bronx, where he got in trouble at school a lot. (“The Boy Scouts rejected me,” he said.)
About how he wanted to be a major league baseball player but wasn’t good enough. (That’s why people become actors, he joked, to do those things on screen that they’re not good enough to do in real life.)
About being a single parent. (“Everything’s play dates,” he griped.)
About his marital status. (“I’m divorced ... whatever that means. But I get the kids 50 percent of the time.”)
Taking another mental detour, he told the audience that “when I have movie clips it’s fun. I can tell the stories ... but I have no clips.
“What am I going to do? Sit here silently?”
Thank goodness that he didn’t.
He told a joke that he’s told before, about one time when John Wayne was doing Hamlet on stage. The story goes that when the audience laughed at Wayne he stopped in the middle of a soliloquy, walked to the edge of the stage and said: “I didn’t write this sh*t!”
Pacino delivered that punchline with Oscar-winning gusto.
He described a conversation he had with Coppola early in the making of “The Godfather.”
“I believe in you. I really do. (But) it’s not coming through,” Coppola told him.
Pacino’s reaction? “Well, f**k it then. I’ll go,” he said.
He said he watched some of his early work on the film and, he admitted, “I wasn’t very impressed.” But he figured everything would work out.
“I sorta did well, if you want to call it that,” he said to loud applause.
Last year’s Boys & Girls Club fundraiser made national news when Eric Stonestreet and his “Modern Family” colleagues got stuck in an elevator.
This year? We got to spend quality time with Uncle Al.
This story was originally published March 28, 2014 at 10:31 PM with the headline "Al Pacino hails Kansas, walks entertaining high wire in Overland Park."