Director of The Irishman, Martin Scorsese, has wanted to put actor Al Pacino in a movie for nearly 50 years. Opening up to a limited theatrical run prior to its streaming release later this month, the crime epic has garnered nothing but praise from critics and audiences alike, with many calling it another Scorsese masterpiece. Many are drawing attention to the all of the de-aging work which was necessary in telling the ambitious real life story of Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran, played here by Robert De Niro, and his life throughout WWII and beyond, to a life serving a crime family and the famous Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino) before his unexplained disappearance.
Other than the release of The Irishman, Scorsese recently made headlines when he publicly claimed Marvel films are not cinema. In his opinion, Marvel movies lack emotional and "psychological experiences to another human being," and the actors in the films are probably just doing their best with the material they are given. As suspected, many people took issue with these comments and jumped to the MCU's defense, including The Avengers director Joss Whedon, who took to social media to speak of his love for the Guardians of the Galaxy and the films' writer and director, James Gunn.
According to Cinemablend, Martin Scorsese recently spoke of his desire to put Al Pacino in one of his films for nearly 50 years now. It was the famed director Francis Ford Coppola, who brought The Godfather into the world, who introduced the two back in 1970. He talks about how, after his stint as Michael Corleone in The Godfather films, Pacino was kind of "unreachable." Apparently, the two men tried to pull something together in the 1980's, but it didn't work out due to financing. He had to ask his acting pal Robert De Niro what it was like to work with Pacino, and of course, De Niro described the actor as nothing short of "great."
Scorsese also speaks of the kind of "meta experience" one can have while watching films like The Irishman, which features two actors who have starred opposite together in several movies across the span of 40 years. The two actors both starred in The Godfather Part II, but they didn't have any scenes together, as De Niro played a younger version of Vito Corleone, the father of Pacino's Michael Corleone. They did act together in 1995's bank robbing crime thriller Heat, and then again a few years back in Righteous Kill. The director describes their relationship as actors on screen to be nothing short of "magical."
It is interesting to think about how a lot of working actors out there have their dream lists of which directors, writers and other actors they would love to work with, but clearly those lists of dreams exist for directors as well. With an award-winning director like Martin Scorsese, one might think they have already done anything and everything in their career they have wished to do, but movies like The Irishman go to show there's always more to do and accomplish, and the good ones never stop working or reaching. The Irishman is currently in limited release and will be available to stream on Netflix starting November 27th.
Source: Cinemablend
