Martin Scorsese and Al Pacino finally worked together in The Irishman, in 2019, but why did it take them so long to team up? Here’s what happened.
Martin Scorsese and Al Pacino finally worked together in The Irishman, even though they seem like a perfect match given Scorsese’s visual and narrative style and the roles that made Pacino so famous – so why did it take them so long to work together? The gangster genre has seen some of the greatest movies ever made, and thanks to their works in this, various directors and actors are now associated with gangster stories, as are Martin Scorsese and Al Pacino.
Throughout his career as a filmmaker, Martin Scorsese has worked with some of the most praised and sought-out actors in the film industry, such as Harvey Keitel, Robert De Niro, Paul Newman, Liza Minnelli, Winona Ryder, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Leonardo DiCaprio. Meanwhile, Al Pacino’s talent has led him to work with some of the most acclaimed filmmakers, most notably Francis Ford Coppola, Brian De Palma, Michael Mann, Quentin Tarantino, and Christopher Nolan. It’s hard to believe that Scorsese and Pacino didn’t work together in the 1980s and 1990s, and it wasn’t until 2019 that they finally joined forces in The Irishman – and here’s why it took them so long to work together.
Why Scorsese & Pacino Didn’t Work Together Before The Irishman
During a Q&A session at AFI Fest in 2019 (via IndieWire), Scorsese explained why it took him and Pacino so long to finally work together in a movie, admitting that he had been wanting to work with Pacino for years. Scorsese explained that Francis Ford Coppola introduce him to Pacino in 1970, but once he starred in The Godfather, he was “in the stratosphere” and became unreachable. Pacino’s role as Michael Corleone in The Godfather boosted his career, and he starred in a variety of movies after it, so it’s understandable that he was “unreachable”, as Scorsese put it. By the time The Irishman was in development, Pacino’s career had already slowed down, and Scorsese’s project finally gave them a chance to work together.
Scorsese recalled that he and Pacino almost worked on a film in the 1980s, but that wasn’t the only time they almost worked together. Al Pacino reportedly turned down the role of Jimmy “The Gent” Conway in Goodfellas, as he didn’t want to be typecast in the gangster role. Robert De Niro ended up playing Jimmy Conway, and Pacino reportedly regretted not taking the role, though that same year he played a comedic gangster in Dick Tracy, and he was nominated for various awards thanks to that role.
Martin Scorsese & Al Pacino’s Canceled Project Explained
The failed project Scorsese referred to was a movie about the life of painter and sculptor Amedeo Modigliani. The project was Pacino’s idea, who convinced film financier Keith Barish to buy the rights for the story and give him full creative control. Pacino later revealed that he had offered the project to Coppola, but if he turned it down, his options were Bertolucci or Scorsese. The latter told Empire in 2019 that Modigliani “would have been something special”, but he wasn’t going through the best time in his career after the underperformance of New York, New York and various personal struggles. In the end, Modigliani was rejected various times and couldn’t get the financing it needed, and it was ultimately picked up (without Pacino or Scorsese) and released in 2004, and it was a big critical and commercial failure. Although the Modigliani project sounds interesting and Al Pacino could have played a great Jimmy Conway, it was worth waiting for him and Martin Scorsese to join forces, as The Irishman was perfect for it.