'Hoo-ah!': Yale gets a scent of Pacino

COURTESY JEREMY STRONG Al Pacino delighted students and onlookers at the Dramat.

Amidst the chaos and ballyhoo of the eve of The Game, a select 30 theater studies majors and 150 members of the Yale community at large sat in quiet anticipation in the Yale Dramat, awaiting the slightly-delayed arrival of Al Pacino, a.k.a. Frank Serpico, Tony Montana, and Michael Corleone. Without an introduction, Pacino burst through the doors and boomed, "I really don't know what I'm getting into, but that's great!" as he stormed towards the stage with executive members of both the Yale Film Society and the Dramat in tow.

Pacino visited New Haven last Fri., Nov. 19 to receive a Mory's Cup from Yale College Dean Richard Brodhead, BR '68, GRD '72 on behalf of the Dramat. The cup was given to honor Pacino for his contribution to American culture through the media of theater and film. During his brief stay in the Elm City, the master thespian taught a Master's Class for the Theatre Studies majors and then hosted a question and answer session at the Whitney Humanities Center following a screening of his 1996 directorial debut, Looking For Richard.

The hour-long Master's Class was structured around the presentation of two brief scenes from Othello, after which Pacino discussed with the actors how to prepare for scenes and spoke of his fondness for Shakespeare. "Shakespeare is actor-proof," Pacino said. "He was an actor, and he knew how to write those transitions: they're built right in there. If I were to teach a course on Shakespeare to non-actors, I'd still make them act it, to see the phenomenon."

After a brief introduction at Whitney Humanities Center, Pacino strode up to the podium amidst a raucous din of applause and cheers (after all, these were mere movie-goers, not thespians), did his trademark "Hoo-ah," and then launched right into the questions. He explained that Looking for Richard began as a project to tune "an audience unfamiliar with Shakespeare so that they would respond" to it. "I wanted to use [Shakespeare] as a teaching device, make it personal to them," Pacino said. So he began by travelling to eight or nine different schools unannounced and talking them through Shakespeare's plays "in a language they could understand," gradually intermingling lines of dialogue from the plays with his own. In the end he had an audience that was eating Shakespeare out of the palm of his hand. "I thought to myself, `If I can get an audience to warm up to Shakespeare, maybe I can do it on film.'" The result was Looking for Richard.

Pacino's personable attitude throughout the Q&A kept the general tone light-hearted and fun, allowing students to feel comfortable asking a wide variety of questions. Pacino answered questions about his favorite of his own films (Scarface—"It was a scandal when it first came out, but I thought it had something and it gained recognition through the years.") and his most challenging role (Michael Corleone in The Godfather—"I always thought I'd get fired to the point where I wanted to get fired. But to make that transition, to turn this kid into what he becomes.").

He discussed his technique of method acting ("If I play a cook, I go hang out in a kitchen and hope I absorb something. I hope that, later, what I absorbed will come out. I might like the way a cook flips an egg, but that might not stay with me. It might be the way he wipes down a counter instead."). He also divulged what it was like to kiss Winona Ryder in Looking for Richard ("Oh man! It was why I made the movie! Let me tell you, it don't get better!").

As the session neared its end, a member of the audience asked, "What do you think Shakespeare's reaction would be to Looking For Richard?" Pacino laughed and answered, "Well first he'd say something about the screen and then he'd say, `well it's not David Mamet.'"

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