The Resurrection of Tony Montana

How Scarface went from box offin pariah to cultural iron in 28 years. Al Pacino, Oliver Stone and the easl and crew reli\e llic making of the influential gangster classic

IT'S DECEMBER 1.1983

vate party at Manhattan's celebrity-magnet eatery Sardi's, the wall-to-wall flesh pressing, ass kissing and backbiting could make your nose bleed. A handpicked list of stellar invitees—Eddie Murphy, Lucille Ball, Cher and Dustin Hoffman among them—have streamed in from a private screening of Scarface, a blood-soaked, foulmouthed, corpse- and bullet-ridden gangster epic directed by Brian De Palma about a brutish, ice-cold Cuban emigre's tumble from badass king of the cocaine world to doomed, addicted zillionaire. Amid the funereal arrangements of wild lilies, the guests scarcely make a dent in the buffet of seafood Newburg, beef bour-guignon, pasta and desserts. They're wait­ing to pay respects to the movie's star, Al Pacino, who is at that moment appearing in a revival of American Buffalo and will soon make his way through the Broadway theater district to the party.

Before the actor's big entrance, though, rent-a-car mogul War­ren Avis tells Scarface producer Martin Breg-man, Pacino's tough, old-school New York manager who had branched out into film production with Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon, "You've got a smash-smash." Cher enthuses, "I really liked it. It was a great example of how the American dream can go to shit." But the praise isn't unanimous. Writers Kurt Vonnegut and John Irving both bailed from the screen­ing, carping about the blood and gore. Supermodel Cheryl Tiegs calls it "the most violent film I've ever seen," adding, "It makes you never want to hear the word cocaine again."

The movie's then record-breaking 226 uses of the word fuck and its variants—one every 1.33 minutes of

its 170-minute running time—prompts Lucille Ball to declare, "We thought the performances were excellent, but we got awful sick of that word." Martin Scorsese cuts straight to the heart of the matter when he warns Steven Bauer, the young Cuban American actor making his movie debut as Pacino's best bud, "Pre­pare yourselves, because Hollywood's going to hate this film. It's about them." Toward midnight Pacino shuffles in to polite applause, and then Liza Minnelli, who hasn't seen the movie, rushes up and quips, "Al, what did you do to these people?" Pacino, who might still be wondering 28 years later, recalls, "The crowd looking at me coming into Sardi's was a lot like that audience watching 'Springtime for Hitler' in Mel Brooks's movie The Producers. They were frozen like in a wax museum. At least Eddie Murphy came over and was just full of the film. He got it. But let's say that in certain circles it was not at all appreci­ated." Although Bauer whispered naive

encouragement to Pacino ("They liked it!"), he admits today, "When the movie opened a week later, most reviews said it was a piece of shit, an insult, an outrage with an over-the-top performance from Al. We were devastated."

But wasn't Scarface—Universal Pic­tures' fat, shiny, gritty 1983 Christmas present to moviegoers—pretty much de­signed to devastate? With its ominous synth-disco score by Giorgio Moroder, its deliberately excessive iiber-1980s visual design by Ferdinando Scarfiotti, its lush John A. Alonzo cinematogra­phy and flamboyant stylist De Palma's fever-pitch attack on Oliver Stone's grit­ty, sprawling screenplay about greed, power and hubris, Scarface was deliber­ately and defiantly off the chain. It up­dated but followed the major contours of the seminal 1932 gangland classic Scarface: The Shame of the Nation, conceived by director Howard Hawks and screenwriter Ben Hecht as "the Borgias set down in Chicago." Freely adapted from a 1930 Armitage Trail novel about an Al Capone-like thug, the ferocious movie starred Paul Muni as Tony Camonte, an arrogant, vain, ruthless and utterly compelling gangster. The film was produced by billionaire ec­centric Howard Hughes and filmed in 1930, but it ignited a two-year battle with censorship boards across the coun­try for its brutality and glorification of Mob types such as the ones played by Muni and his henchman best friend, the coin-flipping, reptilian George Raft.

In the hands of Bregman, De Palma and Pacino as the swaggering, loutish, ruthless Tony Montana—named by San Francisco 49ers fan Stone after quarter­back Joe Montana—Hecht and Hawks's swift, deadly original ballooned into a long, loud, gargantuan black comedy, as much an assault as an entertainment. Stone variously saw Scarface as Richard III with cocaine or Tony Montana as a throwback to Fred C. Dobbs, the ruth­less money-grubber played by Humphrey Bogart in The Treasure of the Sierra Ma-dre. But unsuspecting movie audiences

saw the film as a blight on the Christmas entertainment of the day as typified by, say, the John Travolta-Olivia Newton-John supernatural comedy Two of a

Kind or the spy thriller Gorky Park. "We didn't get reviewed, we got eviscerated," says Pacino of the film in which he famously shoves his nose into a mountain of cocaine and then stag­gers through an entire scene like a drugged-out Pinocchio. "The reviews stunned me," admits Bregman, who had par­ticularly called out Hol­lywood for being, at the time, the town "where so many executives had

a dish of the white stuff at the entrance to their homes. Either they didn't under­stand the movie or hated that we did it." A few intrepid souls got it. Time magazine's Richard Corliss called it "a big, bloody entertaining tragicomedy," and The New York Times' Vincent Canby proclaimed it "the most stylish and provocative—and maybe the most vicious—serious film about the Ameri-

can underworld since Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather." L.A. Times critic Sheila Benson wrote it off as "one of the largest empty vessels to float on an ocean

of celluloid." Even the New Yorker review by Pauline Kael—usually a De Palma booster— lambasted Pacino as "a lump at the center of the movie...a star whose imagination seems im­paired" and the film itself as "limp."

Although Pacino today insists the $23.5 million-budgeted film didn't fail at the box office, when Hol­lywood's bean counters tallied the 1983 year-

end takings, Scarface ranked at number 16, just below Jaws 3-D and way below top earners Return of the Jedi, Terms of Endearment, Flashdance, Trading Places, WarGames and Octopussy. Oscar nominations? Not a one. Hol­lywood, and white America, weren't buying. Says Oliver Stone, "Hollywood

people would say to me, 'It's a desecra­tion. It's violent. It's vulgar. How could Pacino do such a thing?' We know it con­nected with Puerto Ricans and blacks in New York. People on the street got it— especially 42nd Street. It hit a niche, but it definitely wasn't a white middle-class or upper-class movie." Observes movie critic Armond White, "The mainstream media concentrated on the profanity and violence rather than on what De Palma and Stone were saying about social mo­bility, crime, money, drugs. Not being ready for it, they responded like blue-haired old ladies. But what's on-screen is an extravagant, beautiful, operatic and fairly original take on ethnicity, drugs, crime and ambition. It gets at sociologi­cal truth by revising the gangster genre, which is a big achievement, and it's got a fascinating, daring performance from Al Pacino and an equally daring one from Michelle Pfeiffer, who, frankly, has never been better."

When it comes to films, time has the damnedest way of settling scores. Some monster hits of the 1980s look sillv and

hopelessly irrelevant today. Yet Scarface is a bona fide global pop culture phe­nomenon, a virtual survivalist and life­style bible in the rap and hip-hop world and certain ethnic communities. It's such a broad-based phenomenon that refer­ences and shout-outs crop up every­where, from episodes of The Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy and Curb Your Enthusiasm to billboard ads for Lady Gaga's HBO concert; from music vid­eos by 50 Cent, Jay-Z and Gwen Stefani to Montana Management, the name of Scarface fan Saddam Hussein's reported

money-laundering front. A merchandis­ing bonanza—"Wanna buy a T-shirt, poster, water globe, bedsheet, beach towel, video game, billiard cue, DVD, action figure, Halloween costume?"—the movie had a long hard slog fighting its way out of the Hall of Shame to full-on triumph. To invoke a now signature slogan from both versions of the film, for Scarface these days "the world is yours."

If the old axiom that success has many fathers and failure is an orphan holds true, that goes double for virtually every­thing to do with Scarface, starting with the question of who officially proposed the idea of remaking the 1932 movie in the first place. Says Pacino, "I had heard so much about Scarface through­out my life but had never seen it. I was on a rare visit to L.A., and it was playing at a revival theater on Sunset Boulevard. I was stunned, knocked out by the film and by Paul Muni's performance. That made me want to do the film. I found

out later that Scorsese and De Niro were also trying to find a way in, to find how to make it work in the 1980s. As soon as I got out of the theater, I called Marty in New York and said I thought

we should remake it. Marty looked at the movie and agreed."

The Marty in question isn't rival Scarface enthusiast Scorsese but Martin Bregman, the New York talent manager of Woody Allen, Faye Dunaway, Bette Midler and Alan Alda. Bregman says, "I know Al thinks it was his idea to re­make Scarface, and somebody at Univer­sal also thinks it was his idea, but it was

mine. When I told Al about the idea, he wanted to go to Sidney Lumet. I thought it needed somebody with edge, someone more contemporary than Sidney."

For Bregman, edgy and contemporary meant the critically polarizing Brian De Palma, best known for the counter­culture quirk Greetings and the baroque thrillers Carrie and The Fury. De Palma and playwright David Rabe began at­tacking a Scarface period remake but gave up and moved on. Next up was Lumet, respected as the politically pro­gressive, craftsman-like director of 12 Angry Men and The Pawnbroker, who, according to Pacino, "came up with the brilliant idea of setting the movie against the booming drug trade in Miami and making the main character one of the re­jects brought out of Cuban prisons and asylums and sent to Miami during the Mariel boatlift [of 1980|."

Stone, whom Bregman wanted to hire, says, "I passed on it when it was origi­nally offered to me as a straight remake, but I was intrigued when Sidney suggested we do it Marielito style. I was bored with all that Italian gangster stuff. It was never going to be a Godfather kind of movie; it was always going to be a street movie." Stone badly needed an attention grabber. His Midnight (continued on page 160)

(continued from page 68) Express script had won an Oscar in 1979, but his 1981 directing project, the horror movie The Hand, had flopped; two projects optioned by Bregman, Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July (both meant to star Pacino), had stalled out and were made only years later with other producers and other stars.

For Scarface, Stone spent months in deep research mode, investigating narcotics traf­ficking and prosecution in Ecuador, Bimini and Miami, the last of which he recalls as being "like Casablanca then. It was a new world coming. You danced with the Latin girls in the clubs. Beautiful people were com­ing up from Latin America, spending big bucks. I got to know the Florida prosecutors, the defense attorneys dealing with narcot­ics, but I was playing both sides because I was under the influence of cocaine, and my activities and the research reflected that. I got into some dangerous situations. There was a chain-saw murder I was told about that was worse than [what you see in Scarface], and as you can imagine, drug-war crimes are bru­tal. But I was pissed off at pouring so much energy and money into cocaine, which I felt had hurt me. I felt that doing Scarface was my taking a form of revenge on cocaine."

Stone cut off his L.A. connections, took a Paris apartment and wrote the screenplay "stone-cold sober." He says, "I never went back to cocaine. I wanted out of that world and stayed out of the U.S. for about eight months, writing about this delusional para­noid Tony Montana, this tough guy with a heart who was an amalgam of Paul Muni in the original Scarface, the Bogart character in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and real guys I ran into in Miami. I wanted to do something more like the gangster movies of the 1930s." Stone's script was epic, muscular, grimy and realistic—white-hot with anger and social indictment and brimming over with lines of dialogue that, as uttered by Pacino's Scarface, would become chapter and verse for some:

"This town, like a great big pussy just waiting to get fucked."

"In this country you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women."

"Me, I want what's comin' to me...the world, chico, and everything in it."

"Say hello to my little frien'."

And what about the lines uttered by, respectively, the main character's gangland mentor and eventual rival Frank Lopez and his (and later Tony's) gorgeous, druggy bed-mate Elvira Hancock?

"Lesson number one: Don't underesti­mate the other man's greed."

"Lesson number two: Don't get high on your own supply."

Bregman brought the project to Ned Tanen, president of Universal Pictures. Bregman says, "Within three minutes Ned said, 'Go make it.' That was the easy part. The hard part was Sidney Lumet." Lumet wanted Scar-fate to indict die Reagan administration for its role in international drug trafficking. Says Bregman, "Sidney's take on the material was totally political, incorrect and unfair to the president. He felt there was something sin­ister happening. I said, 'Sidney, you want to make a different kind of film. I suggest you go make it.' We came to a parting of the ways, which I don't think he ever forgave me for." Stone, never one to shirk politics, recalls the circumstances much differently, saying, "I was given to understand diat Sidney thought the script was too rough for him. If politics was the reason Sidney Lumet got fired, then I disagree with Bregman, because the gov­ernment was up to no good, as had been documented since the 1970s, and the whole Iran-Contragate was starting to build. When Reagan came to power, word went out not only in Latin America but the whole world that the U.S. was open again for the old dirty business. Bregman is typically running away from the truth." Pacino suggests another pos­sible reason for Lumet's departure: "Sidney

wanted final cut, but I never talked any of this over with Sidney, even years later when I wanted him to do Carlito's Way." (De Palma would go on to direct that 1993 film.)

De Palma returned to the fold and signed to direct Scarface after his 1981 John Tra­volta thriller Blow Out died at the box office. De Palma had also exited the police-corruption drama Prince of the City (Lumet replaced him) and fled after a few weeks of working on Flashdance. Scarface arrived in the nick of what De Palma once called "a very bad time." Bregman scheduled the film to begin shooting largely in Florida in the fall of 1982, and New York casting ses­sions began primarily at the West 47th Street Puerto Rican Traveling Theater founded by Puerto Rico-born actress Miriam Colon. Colon, who had appeared on TV Westerns such as Gunsmoke and with Marlon Brando in One-Eyed Jacks and The Appaloosa, was eventually cast in Scarface as Pacino's mother, despite only a four-year age difference.

Although Bregman rode herd on the pro­tracted casting process, Pacino voiced definite opinions. For the role of Manny Ribera, the hero's fellow Cuban emigre and eventual vic­tim, De Palma hoped to land John Travolta. But Pacino refused to consider contenders until he had secured a screen test for little-known actor James Hayden, who had been praised in a 1983 Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's A View From the Bridge. Hayden would go on to act in director Sergio Leone's big-screen gangster saga Once Upon a Time in America and was set to co-star with Pacino in the Broadway revival of David Mamet's American Buffalo that would open on October 27, 1983. Pacino, who had declared Hayden "the best young actor that I've seen," says today, "He was a talent so rich. He had the gift of acting, and he had that other thing." But Hayden's audition failed to convince, and on November 8, 1983, less than two weeks after Pacino and Hayden had cele­brated their Broadway opening in American Buffalo, the promising actor lost his life to a heroin overdose at the age of 29, an event Pacino calls "utterly devastating."

All along, though, producer Bregman had been trying to hook up Pacino with Cuban American Steven Bauer, who had starred on the bilingual PBS comedy iQue Pasa, USA ? and had appeared on the 1980 TV mini-series based on James Jones's From Here to Eternity. Bauer, who along with wife Mela-nie Griffith was studying under Stella Adler at the time, recalls, "Everyone knew Brian wanted his pal John Travolta, but the cast­ing director called Brian and said, 'This boy is Manolo,' and sent me immediately to One Fifth Avenue to see Brian, who told me, 'You're really right for the part.' On his desk was Danny Sugerman's stupid book about Jim Morrison, No One Here Gets Out Alive, and everyone knew he wanted Travolta for that project, too. I said, 7 should play Jim Morrison,' and Brian said, 'Let's do one thing at a time.'" Despite screen tests by Eric Roberts, A Martinez and Erik Estrada among others, Bregman remained most impressed by newcomer Bauer, of whom he says, "Ste­ven had that life experience. He was perfect, and a strong actor." At Bregman's urging, Pacino finally met with the actor. Says Bauer of his private meeting with Pacino, "It was

love at first sight. He asked if I could teach him Spanish, and I said I could and also teach him the sense of humor of a people who've lost their country and who, like the Jews, laugh at our fate. He wanted to know about the mind-set of being an exile."

Pacino's casting fixations for Elvira Han­cock, the icy, cokey arm ornament passed from one powerful man to another? Meryl Streep, Jodie Foster and top choice Glenn Close, who may seem odd considering the final choice but less so considering that Stone recalls, "My original concept of that role was that she was a rich New York girl who was slumming." Bregman called Close "a wonder­ful actress who could probably have played it, but that would have been a mistake. Al wouldn't let it go; there was always a strug­gle. We tested everybody in town." Among

those reportedly eagle-eyed by casting executive Alixe Gor-din were Courteney Cox, Jamie Lee Cur­tis, Isabelle Adjani, Marg Helgenberger, Camryn Manheim, Sharon Stone, Debra Winger and Stepha­nie Zimbalist.

The very dark horse was Michelle Pfeiffer, a 24-year-old stunner desperate for a ticket out of TV series such as B.A.D. Cats and movies such as Grease 2. "Al at first wasn't too happy with Michelle because he felt she was too inex­perienced," Bregman says. "She read for me and Brian and was marvelous and very intense." The actress survived months of auditions she later called "brutal" and finally agreed to test with Pacino in a volatile confronta­tion scene that sent glassware and china flying, hitting Pacino and drawing blood. Admits Pacino, "I was

up in the air about the casting. Michelle Pfeiffer, well, I didn't understand who she was or what she was doing, but Marty wanted her. In the end I just deferred to him and Brian, and they were right." Admits Bregman, "I'll never know what made Al change his mind. Boy, it took a lot." The casting required script tinkering from Stone, who comments, "I dumbed down the dialogue, which worked. Michelle Pfeiffer definitely does not seem like a rich New York girl, so she had to be rewrit­ten as more of a typical American girl from Miami with good looks."

The final casting hurdle was the choice of who to play Pacino's beautiful, much-protected younger sister, Gina. Pacino lobbied for Saundra Santiago, a 25-year-old actress who had played opposite James Hayden in the View From the Bridge revival and would

later go on to play a detective on Miami Vice. Again producer Bregman prevailed, Bauer recalls: "After Saundra and I read together, Marty Bregman came over and, just like an old studio mogul, pointed out another beau­tiful, fresh and genuine dark-haired girl and said, 'See that girl right there? She's Gina. You two are beautiful together. Fall in love with her. Make it work.'"

Italian American Mary Elizabeth Mas-trantonio, whose theater credits included a 1981 Broadway revival of West Side Story, had yet to be cast in a film. Of what Bregman called Mastrantonio's "sensational" audition, the actress says, "I remember Marty Breg­man saying, 'Don't fuck this up. This movie is going to be big.' That kind of language, unfortunately, makes a lot of sense to me. I looked young and innocent, but I don't

think Marty realized he was dealing with a tougher broad than he thought."

Other major supporting-cast positions were filled out with formidable character actor Robert Loggia to play the powerful, aging drug dealer; a pre-Amadeus F. Mur­ray Abraham as Loggia's weaselly second in command; and Colon as the title char­acter's ferociously resilient mother. Says Loggia, "My parents, who were born in Sic­ily, were very proud people who believed in the American dream. When I saw the original Scarface, all us kids played cops and robbers, but I was also deeply embar­rassed that other people would think this film showed what Italians were really like." Colon found it nerve-racking to audition multiple times, she says, especially knowing "Pacino had casting approval. Because of the small

age difference between us, I wore one of my mother's dresses and tied back my hair in a bun to add 10 or 15 years."

In November 1982, on the Universal lot, the Scarface team held about two weeks of cast rehearsals. Abraham says, "They don't like to spend that kind of money when you're making movies, but we rehearsed pretty intensely, and when we later came to shoot our scenes, that gave everything such a sense of urgency." Colon recalls the rehearsals as "people in love with what they were doing— excited, committed. There was a beautiful energy. Pacino seemed in control."

Privately Pacino harbored concerns. After the early career highs of The Godfather and Dog Day Afternoon, he had been pum-

meled for his more recent efforts, includ­ing ...And Justice for All, in which he gives a florid, bellowing performance of the kind that had critics whiffing the distinct aroma of a ham. Pacino confided to co-workers, "A lot of naysayers are talking about how I'm going to do this like an Ital­ian. I need to get the Cuban thing right." Actor and dialect coach Robert Easton was hired to assist Pacino in getting that Cuban thing right. For additional ethnic authenticity—and to get the drug thing right—he turned to Steven Bauer, who says, "One of the first things Al came to me with was, 'Hey, I've never done cocaine and I'm supposed to know what it's like. Have you done it?' Yeah. 'But you're not doing it anymore, are you?' No. But I taught him all the nuances, the rituals, and when-

ever he did any scenes involving drugs, I'd be standing right by because he asked me, 'Watch me and make sure I look real.' And that's where I was the whole shoot."

Pacino admits of his preparation, "At first I just wanted to mimic Paul Muni, I was so inspired by that acting. But I did all the things one does for a role, going out and finding the look, right down to the body parts, the voice, the gestures. I was just digging and trying to gather a character. It wasn't random; it had a sort of form and a style to it. Steven was so helpful. He's an authentic Cuban; he knows it. We were together almost six months before we started shooting. It was completely wonderful to hang with him and to work with him."

Once Scarface began filming, though, alli­ances were made and broken and tempers boiled over. De Palma and company began

pre-production in summer 1982. Miami-area locations included the Atlantis Condominiums on Brickell Avenue (used for the exterior of drug king Frank Lopez's home), 728 Ocean Drive (the movie's Sun Ray Motel, where Tony Montana watches his friend get chain-sawed to death) and the Fontainebleau Miami Beach (the pool area where young Manny teaches Tony how to pick up women). Major troubles erupted—and fast. Producer Breg-man explains, "Some people in the Cuban community and in the larger community in Miami complained that we were making a movie with a Cuban drug dealer as the main character. According to them, there were no Cuban drug dealers. Without ever reading a script, they assumed the movie would be anti-Cuban, pro-crime, maybe both. They resented that we were doing this movie at all, let alone in Miami." Angry editorials and nasty articles clogged Miami newspapers, and the production was hit by bomb threats. Miami commissioner Demetrio Perez Jr. hoped to persuade the city council to deny the movie­makers access to filming anywhere in the city unless the script was rewritten to portray Montana as a Communist infiltrator sent to Miami on a special mission by Fidel Castro.

Bregman says, "Someone from the Cuban community called and said, 'Mr. Bregman, you are making a big mistake—and a dan­gerous one. We know your wife is pregnant, and we don't want to see anybody hurt.' I grew up a pretty tough kid, so I knew a seri­ous threat when I heard one. I was advised by experts not to let my wife or anyone in my family come to Florida. From then on I started to carry a weapon." Universal's brass took none of this lightly. After the crew spent less than two weeks on Florida locations, stu­dio overlord Lew Wasserman relocated the shooting to California, a step that delayed an already behind-schedule production and added an estimated $200,000 to the budget. In California, interior scenes set in the garish Babylon Club were built on a soundstage on the Universal lot, and other sets were built on location beneath the Santa Monica and Harbor freeways (for the immigration intern­ment camp scenes) and at a historic Santa Barbara estate (for the wedding of Tony and Elvira). Pacino was quickly reestablished as alpha dog, with the assertive Bregman not far behind. Colon recalls, "Pacino was ready, together and there. I was fascinated watch­ing the scrupulous attention he gave to every detail—clothing, accent, attitude and ges­tures. When Pacino was a youngster in New York, he knew guys like Tony Montana very well and observed them. He was never on the set just hanging around. He never took over the set, but he was focused all the time."

But as the L.A. shooting proceeded tor-turously slowly, some believed the situation cried out for someone to take over a pro­duction that was falling further and further behind schedule. Explains Stone, "Brian moves at his pace, which is a sluggish one. There was tension. There wasn't the com­munication between Al and Brian that one would expect. Al likes being talked to, but Brian is from the Spielberg school, where it's all about the setup and getting the shot— and the shot takes fucking/orewr. Making the movie became painful. What should have been at most a three-month shoot became a

six-month shoot. The energy kept flagging because everything was taking so long."

Loggia likens the on-set atmosphere to Mutiny on the Bounty, saying, "It's fair to say that, with the powerful personalities involved, De Palma was in way over his head. Pacino and some of the other actors had to steer the ship." Observes Abraham, "I got along with Brian very well. Who doesn't? Mr. De Palma was the boss, but nothing went for­ward without he and A] hammering things out in the trailer, sometimes for quite a while. But when they came out of that trailer, they really came out with something."

De Palma's work method was tougher on certain actors than others. Says one of the film's stars, "Brian wasn't there for Michelle Pfeiffer and manipulated her brutally. He's obsessed with women but in a very creepy way." During two days of filming the explo­sive scene with Pacino and Pfeiffer at the old-school Italian restaurant Marino on Mel-rose Avenue, Bauer says, De Palma "made Michelle feel like a scared, lonely little girl in a world of men. He did the right thing, but it was hard to watch. That poor girl was always alone, always on edge, very vulnerable, brave but alone in her performance. She lived on the phone with her acting coach Peggy Feury.

She needed some kind of lifeline."

Considering the orgy of drug use and the hard-edged sexual tone ofScarf ace, let alone the druggy decade in which it was made, it isn't surprising that rumors abound of ram­pant on-set sex and drugs. "There were zero drugs on that set," insists Bregman. "The cocaine people saw on-screen? Powdered sugar." Pacino, for his part, says, "If that was going on, I wasn't privy to it. I didn't drink at the time. Still don't. I didn't imbibe any of that. I stopped a while ago. I'm oblivious to that stuff. I can't act and do diat kind of thing." Bauer, who spent years overcoming substance abuse, concurs: "Druggies are always let down when they hear that Pacino didn't use drugs during the movie. He wasn't interested."

Sex, on the other hand, was commonplace and never more so than when hundreds of female extras were brought in for two weeks of filming the big Babylon Club disco sequence. The set was a deliberately bizarre, glitzy masterpiece of Greco-Roman meets Renaissance design by the film's masterful visual consultant, Ferdinando Scarfiotti {The Conformist, Death in Venice), who had intended it to be a "bright, brittle, glaring" playground for the rich and the damned. The sequence was shot on Universal's largest soundstage, Soundstage 12, built in 1929 and used for

movies from Frankenstein in the 1930s to Back to the Future and beyond. Bauer recalls, "Three hundred extras—100 of whom were great-looking girls—and I had a little dressing-room rendezvous once a week, at least. I've never been a dog or a misogynist. I'm obsessed with feminine beauty. With these women wanting to, why would I be aloof when there's a naked woman around?"

As for his magnetic co-star Pacino, who had been associated offscreen with such actresses as Jill Clayburgh and Kathleen Quinlan, Bauer says, "Every day on the set I would have to go to Al and say, 'Listen, there's this girl over there who's really beautiful and wants you.' He'd ask, 'Have you been with her?' I'd tell him, 'No. Just let her into your trailer.' But he'd whisper, 'I can't do that. She'll talk.' Then he'd ask, 'Is she really beau­tiful? Don't let her see me.' He might say, 'Bring her over while we're on the set' and then say hello, but that was all. Al was really careful, really old-school. In subsequent years I hear he relaxed a little in that area."

Pacino kept his sights solely on portraying Montana in a no-holds-barred, flamboyant performance that danced on a knife edge of bravery, brilliance and foolhardiness. Abraham compares watching and working with him to being up close to "an intelligent, dangerous fucking animal." Mastrantonio recalls, "When I didn't know what I was doing—i.e., always— I looked to Al, thinking, Man, he's daring to go that far and in that depth with all these people watching. I'm going to do that too. He set the bar so high. It was exhausting."

"I threw it to the winds," Pacino admits widi a self-conscious laugh. "There was some­thing in that role that I was, in my own way, saying or at least trying to. I'm not the way Tony Montana is at all, but who doesn't want to be fearless? Living that character 14 hours a day for all those months of shooting, I was so lucky and relieved to be in love with a woman I'd come home to and get away from that intensity. One night we went to the house of a friend who had a dog who didn't like men. I love dogs, and this one leapt straight at me, but I had no fear. The vein I was in because of playing Tony meant a strain of fearlessness was running through me. That fearlessness left, of course. I wish I could get it back."

Maybe that fearlessness helped provoke confrontations between Pacino and his col­laborators, one of the more dramatic of which saw the star refuse to play the incestu­ous undertone to his character's relationship with his sister, an element that Stone's screen­play carried over from the first Scarface film. In one scene Mastrantonio's stoned, grief-ravaged character angrily confronts him for killing her new husband, Bauer, accusing him of wanting her for himself. According to Bauer, Pacino, calling De Palma "a pervert," reported a volatile meeting at which "Oliver kept going, 'Al, I wrote it that way because I feel your love for her is unhealthy,' and Brian said that he thought it made the story more sick and complicated. Al said, 'It's not already sick and complicated enough that this guy wants everything? He wants to protect and control his sister. Look, I'm playing a mon­ster, but not that kind of monster.'" Pacino today insists, "I didn't see it as incestuous at all. How Tony felt for her was coming from a need to preserve something separate and

pure in his life." Mastrantonio, claiming to have no idea what De Palma or Stone had in their heads, says, "I assumed that Tony was Gina's hero and that she was a virgin until she met Manny. But it's an interesting, ambiguous thing. Film can be edited any way." Interest­ing, yes. Ambiguous, less so, especially to the many critics who would go on to comment on the movie's incestuous undercurrents.

Says Stone, who would soon clash bitterly—and irrevocably—with the film's producer, "Bregman was always worried about Pacino. He loves Al, but he referred to him as a madman, a nutcase. Al is a very sweet guy, creative, intelligent, and yeah, we're all a little crazy in this business, but I certainly don't see him the way Bregman does. Breg­man was afraid that Al would go off the deep end by having crazy ideas or refusing to do something. Universal was putting enormous pressure to cut things out, to get the movie finished. They were banging on De Palma's door, but the energy on the set was slowing all the time. There wasn't the energy to com­plete the movie. It was horrible."

Some on the crew believe that Stone's con­flicts with the production began when he learned early in the filming that Universal had cut from his screenplay a lengthy open­ing sequence that took Scarface and Manny from the docks of Mariel on a storm-tossed raft trip to the U.S. Recalls Bauer, "Once Oli­ver learned that whole scene had been cut,

he was always crazy and mad on the set. He finally got in Brian's way and became a pain in the ass. But he was right. The sequence had a semi-retarded kid falling overboard, and Tony Montana jumps in and saves his life. It established he's not just a monster. We never shot any of it. Right away they cut at the heart of the movie." Recalls Bregman, "Anydiing that was cut was because we didn't want to make a four-hour movie." Today Stone agrees that economics dictated the cuts, but adds, "My problems were with Bregman, a forceful individual and tough man to get along with. Our relationship ended badly. We had other things we were developing but never worked together again."

As if the shooting had not already become tense enough, the production lost Pacino for more than a week when, filming the final hit on Montana, the actor's left hand landed on the scorching-hot barrel of a gun, leav­ing him with second-degree burns. Stone recalls, "The assassination of Tony Montana in the script involved just a few people. Brian added what seemed like 100 assassins. Brian was glamorizing that world to a large extent. He isn't interested in reality. Things got big­ger, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's a Hollywood thing."

Scarface finally completed principal photogra­phy on May 6, 1983 after 24 weeks of filming

that had dragged on so unexpectedly long that Loggia had to reschedule his wedding. Mastrantonio, being paid on a weekly basis, wound up with what she called "a lovely bank account." De Palma skipped the wrap party because, according to Stone, "he couldn't stand being around the movie anymore." Editing the film consumed the summer. Stone inadvertently wrote his own exit music when he shared his concerns with Pacino about a rough cut he was shown: "Al told me my notes were very effective and wanted to implement them. He really weighed in. Giving feedback would have made sense in a healthy collabo­ration, except Bregman is not interested in any kind of healthy collaboration. I guess Al must have said something to Bregman, and also probably to Brian, that pissed them off, and suddenly I was persona non grata after I'd worked so hard on the script and spent six months on the set. It was heartbreaking."

With Universal gearing up for a Christ­mas release, the studio held several audience screenings, at which, Bregman says, "the response was always good, although they reacted negatively to some of the language, especially the fucks." But Marc Shmuger, a former Universal Pictures executive, has said, "Even in our test screenings the movie wasn't playing well. I was just stunned. I didn't know how to take it. The Godfather had seemed so perfect and proper, but Scarface just felt so aggressive." If a studio chairman

thought the movie was aggressive, that was small potatoes compared with the reaction, in October 1983, of the seven-member rat­ings board of the Classification and Rating Administration of the Motion Picture Asso­ciation of America, headed by Richard Heffner. Viewing the movie's hangings, knifings, dismemberments and gunfire— let alone hearing the profanity—the board slapped it with an X rating. With the film set to open in roughly 1,000 theaters, many owners of which would certainly refuse to show an X-rated movie, Bregman, calling the MPAA's decision "all bullshit," immedi­ately launched an appeal that, in the end, saw the ratings board walk back their deci­sion and give Scarface an R.

But even rated R, the movie unleashed a furor in theaters. Recalls Pacino, "Oliver came up to my apartment because he had seen Scarface in a movie house, and when I asked what he thought, he said, 'It's anarchy, Al. The theater was exploding. The audi­ence was in the aisles.' I remember going on a live morning television show, something I rarely do, and the first thing the host did was shake his head and say, 'How could you do a picture like this?' I got pounded. It was a pretty tough time for me. It affected me to the point that, after Scarface and Revolution, I didn't make a movie again for four years." The movie crushed the hopes of others as well. "I was embarrassed and self-conscious," admits Bauer, who had received predictions of John Travolta-level stardom before his screen debut. "It was so depressing that Al and I couldn't even talk about the movie. In 1985 I met Bono, who said, 'You're great, but I fucking hate Scarface. Everything in that movie is what's ugly about America.'

1 have hundreds of experiences like that. I

had to carry around the taint from Scarface

for years." Says Stone, "The movie worked

to the degree it worked. I was happy. But it

was trashed. It was not a hit. I couldn't get

arrested. I had to fight my way back with

Salvador and Platoon. Brian's turnaround

with the critics and public came only when

he did the clean, sanitized gangster picture

The Untouchables."

Yet 28 years after its release, Scarface has gone more than legit. It's practically impos­sible to walk into a college dorm without seeing at least one Tony Montana poster plastered on an undergrad's wall. A 2003 20th-anniversary showing of a restored Scar­face drew the four principal stars and the producer (though not Stone or De Palma); shortly after, the film's DVD debut sold

2 million copies its first week of release and

went on to break existing records as Univer-

sal's fastest-selling DVD. Today Scarface swag

is available in every conceivable permuta­

tion, and this past fall marked the movie's

debut on Blu-ray, an event deep-pocketed

fans can celebrate with a $999.99 limited

edition that features a hand-painted cedar

humidor. But how did all this happen?

The answer is that, by the mid-1990s, Scar­face had morphed from original gangster to original gangsta. Back in the day, the movie's reputation rose exponentially as it ran con­stantly on TV and cable and was watched repeatedly on VHS. Its raw energy, vio­lence, ethos and celebration/exploitation of possessions—bling, cars, clothes, dope, cribs,

beautiful women—helped it ascend to the status of "ghetto classic," as Kevin Liles, for­mer executive vice president of the Island/ Def Jam Music Group, described it, also call­ing it "the movie we all watched 100 times," one of the few that could "inspire people for that American dream." The movie won mad love from the rap and hip-hop culture, with artists including Snoop Dogg, Method Man and Sean Combs hailing it as a creative touchstone. The Notorious B.I.G. canonized the movie in his "Ten Crack Command­ments," Mobb Deep messed beautifully with Giorgio Moroder's iconic theme music for his hit "It's Mine," and the movie's look and style have influenced dozens of other music videos. In 2006 Shaquille O'Neal threw himself a $300,000-plus Scarface-themed 34th-birthday bash in Miami that featured Elvira Hancock look-alike models and rooms that replicated settings from the movie, including the Babylon Club.

It got so you couldn't watch MTV's Cribs without the featured star giving the movie props with a tour of his Scarface collection or doing a Pacino imitation. Geto Boys rap­per Brad Jordan went so far as to rename himself Scarface and called Tony Montana "my hero for life." Actress Miriam Colon says she understands why people, ethnic kids especially, relate: "Pacino's character is truly fascinating, especially to people in minority communities, because they see a minority person who learns how to survive, no mat­ter what, things so many of them face in their neighborhoods. They idolize and cher­ish the movie, memorize and repeat it again and again like a rosary. The movie paints an ugly picture of Tony's grossness and violence, but unfortunately they love his violence and ignore the way the character ends up."

In fact, the Geto Boys' Jordan was, until recently, incarcerated for four cases of fail­ure to pay child support. And just this past June the NYPD busted alleged East Harlem cocaine ringleader Ceferino "Papo" Perez, who apparently kept on his nightstand a framed photo of Tony Montana with his own face superimposed. But as film critic Armond White points out, the movie's appeal goes way beyond urban viewers: "The film spoke very strongly to people, who responded to it openly and fairly, and not just the hip-hop community. The underclass or the working-class people could catch it better than the middle class could." No wonder there's cur­rent Hollywood talk about producers Martin Bregman and Marc Shmuger taking a new whack at Scarface using many of the same dramatic elements but with a different eth­nic slant and backdrop.

Says Stone, who a few years later saw his "Greed is good" Wall Street line become an affirmation instead of the indictment he intended, "Our society is fucked. Our cul­ture is fucked. We don't even know right from wrong, everything is so upside-fucking-down. Maybe people think, If I'm going to go down with a bad guy like Tony Montana, at least the bad guy is telling more truth than the good guy.

"But anyone who wants the American dream at that price?" He shakes his head. "That's insanity."

IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO WALK INTO A COLLEGE DORM WITHOOT SEEING AT LEAST ONE TONY MONTANA POSTER.

"we didn't get reviewed, we got eviscerated; says al pacino.

Considering the orgy of

drug use and the hard-edged

sexual tone of Scarf ace, it

isn't surprising that rumors

abound of rampant on-set

sex and drugs.