Al Pacino Credits ‘Hip-Hop’ and ‘Rappers’ with Elevating ‘Scarface’ in Popular Culture

The Brian De Palma film celebrated its 40th anniversary last year and recently screened at Beyond Fest with Pacino in attendance.

When Brian De Palma’s reinvention of Howard Hawks’ classic gangster picture “Scarface” was first released in 1983, critics skewered it for its overt violence, drug use, and profanity, as well as its stereotyping of Cubans. The film wasn’t exactly a flop, earning $66 million against its roughly $30 million budget, but it wasn’t a runaway success either and many in Hollywood questioned Al Pacino‘s choice to participate in such a shallow and grotesque project such as this. Pacino shared in his recently published memoir, “Sonny Boy,” as well as on the “WTF Podcast with Marc Maron,” that he was “surprised it had that reaction” and that it took the Black community incorporating “Scarface” into their image and their music for the film to receive the acclaim and acknowledgement it deserved. 

“Hip-hop just got it, they understood it, they embraced it — the rappers,” Pacino said on the “WTF Podcast.” “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.”

To his credit, Pacino knows his drug kingpin Tony Montana is a lot to handle. Even he still isn’t sure what possessed him in crafting the character.

“What I was doing in that part — I don’t know what the hell was the matter with me,” said Pacino. “What happened to me? I’ve never been that committed to a role. I mean, I was there. I said, I am this guy.”

The Academy Award-winning actor told Maron that he was living with fellow thespian Kathleen Quinlan during production on “Scarface” and getting to come home to her after long, difficult shoot days was a “life saver.”

“It’s tough to be in a room with a lot of smoke and being in a lot of blood on you all day for 12, 14 hours,” Pacino said. “You come home and she would tell me about her day, which was so great, it just saved my life.”

Despite his bombastic screen presence and his efforts to portray cocaine use accurately in “Scarface,” when asked by Maron if he himself had ever used the drug, Pacino said, “Never. I have to say it. Nobody believes me, so I’ll say it anyway, it is the truth: I never had Coke in my life.”