Al Pacino Reveals His Character in ‘Heat’ Would ‘Chip Cocaine,’ But Michael Mann ‘Took It Out’

Pacino wrote about the subplot being cut out in his recently published memoir, "Sonny Boy," which he discussed on the "WTF Podcast with Marc Maron."

For decades, the line, “Cause she’s got a GREAT ASS,” shouted by Al Pacino in Michael Mann’s crime classic “Heat” has entertained, but also befuddled viewers. Most have chalked it up to Pacino’s lively performance style or the fact that his character is trying to mess with Hank Azaria’s, but in Pacino’s recently published memoir, “Sonny Boy,” he shared that the real reason LAPD Lieutenant Vincent Hanna is so hyped up throughout the film is because he built his whole character around doing cocaine.

“A lot of people didn’t know that,” Pacino said in a recent interview on the “WTF Podcast with Marc Maron” in which he discussed the memoir. “It took me 20 years before I could say anything about it.”

Though he was playing a character inspired by a real guy, Pacino developed his own version, making Hanna a recreational cocaine user and incorporating that element into different scenes. However, Mann ended up cutting that detail from the final film.

“I don’t think I think there was a reason he had to doing it,” said Pacino. “This is a wired character I’m playing anyway. But he did chip cocaine, not the real guy [it was based on], that I don’t know, but the character I composed.”

Pacino explained that this wasn’t just a feature of his character, but a subplot he felt was important to understanding all of Hanna’s quirks.

“There’s a scene in the film when I’m going into the club where you actually see me do it. Took it out,” Pacino said to Maron. “And he had his reasons, I’m sure.”

Earlier in the interview, while discussing his 1983 cult gangster classic “Scarface,” Pacino admitted that he himself had never tried cocaine, pointing to the nervous energy he actively carries as a deterrent.

“Never. I have to say it,” he said. “Nobody believes me, so I’ll say it anyway, it is the truth: I never had coke in my life.”

Around the time the novelized version of Michael Mann and Meg Gardiner’s “Heat 2” was published in 2022, Pacino shared following a screening of the 4K restoration of “Heat” that he’d like Timothée Chalamet to play the younger version of Hanna should a film adaptation of the novel take place. While the lackluster response to “Ferrari” have not helped Mann push the prequel/sequel along, the 81 year-old filmmaker told Variety at the beginning of this year that he aimed to begin production in 2024 with hopes of releasing the film in 2025, in time for the 30th anniversary of “Heat.” Other names floated as possible members of the cast include “Ferrari” star Adam Driver and Austin Butler.