SCARFACE (1983) – A 40th Anniversary Oral History

Introduction

There are very few films that scream 1980s excess as much as Scarface (1983) does. From its excessive and glorifying use of cocaine and alcohol. To its violence and expletive-filled screenplay, penned by Oliver Stone. The Brian De Palma-directed film is an undeniable product of its time. Yet, something strange happened after the poor reviews had faded away and the below-average box office receipts were all tallied up. The film endured. Indeed, like so many loud and over-the-top films of the 1980s, Scarface found a second home on VHS, Betamax, and on college campuses throughout the country.

In the Summer of 1984, Scarface exploded onto the home video market at just the perfect time. Home video sales were reaching its zenith and home movie viewing was becoming an essential part of a film lover’s diet. It became a massive hit on video. Scarface quickly sold one hundred thousand units upon initial release. At eighty dollars a pop, that was an additional four million dollars in revenue. The college crowd lapped up Al Pacino’s over-the-top performance as Cuban refugee turned drug lord Tony Montana.

Rapper/actor/producer Sean “Diddy” Combs claims to have seen the film sixty-three times “for the lessons” that it taught impressionable urbanites. The fashion. The greed. The gaudy clothes. The excessive lifestyle. Scarface took the ‘Me First’ generation of Reagan’s 1980s to another level and into the next century. Forty years later its enduring legacy in the hip-hop community, the film community, and the fashion community has been well-secured. Cinema Scholars celebrates the fortieth anniversary of Scarface by presenting an Oral History of its conception, production, and release. As told by the people who were there.

Beginnings

Loosely based on the 1930 novel of the same name written by Armitage Trail (aka Maurice Coons), Scarface first came to the big screen in 1932. Directed by Howard Hawks and written by Ben Hecht, the film told the story of the rise and fall of a Chicago gangster. Partially based on real-life mobster Al Capone, the film starred Paul Muni as Italian immigrant and gangster Antonio “Tony” Camonte. While the pre-code film struggled at the box office, Scarface was one of the most talked about films of the year. This was due to its controversial subject matter and violence, as well as its battles with and triumph over the Hays Office and censor boards. Cut to forty-five years later as Al Pacino, walking down Sunset Boulevard with friends, passes a revival theater:

Al Pacino spoke with Empire in 2011 about the genesis of wanting to take on the challenge of stepping into the legendary Paul Muni’s shoes and the greatness of his performance:

“…I had heard about Scarface for a long time…It was the model for all gangster pictures. When I saw it, it had a real feeling to it, a grand feeling, and it had a great performance by Paul Muni. He did something different. I thought it would be interesting to do a remake of this, in another way. So I called [producer] Marty Bregman, and he saw it and got very excited…What Muni had done was a base for me to start from. He gave such a solid foundation to the role, it was like a canvas. I knew it was a characterization I wanted to continue…”

Al Pacino, career-wise was at a crossroads. After lighting up the early to mid-1970s with critical and commercial hits such as The Godfather (1972), Serpico (1973), The Godfather Part II (1974), and Dog Day Afternoon (1975), the actor took on less flashy roles. Seeking out projects where he could exert some form of artistic control. The result was the miscast Bobby Deerfield (1977). A bounce back with the sleeper hit …And Justice for All (1979). And a pair of underwhelming films in Michael Mann’s Cruising (1980) and Arthur Hller’s Author, Author (1982). Now in his 40s, Pacino was looking for a project that would redefine his career and once again elevate him to Hollywood’s A list.

Pre-Production

Al Pacino had been a fan of the original Scarface since he saw it at the Tiffany Theater in Los Angeles in the mid-1970s. Pacino called his longtime friend and manager Martin Bregman and told him that he thought the potential was there for a successful remake. Bregman watched the original film and agreed that they should move forward in obtaining the rights. Pacino wanted to keep the new film a period piece. However, that would prove difficult. Director Sidney Lumet came on board and suggested shifting the film to modern Miami, where the drug and Cuban refugee crisis was exploding. He also suggested changing Tony Camonte to Tony Montana. Bregman brought on the volatile and brilliant Oliver Stone to work on a script.

Oliver Stone spoke with Creative Screenwriting in 2015 about taking Sidney Lumet’s idea and running with it and equating 1930s bootleggers to modern-day drug runners:

“…Sidney (Lumet) had a great idea to take the 1930s American prohibition gangster movie and make it into a modern immigrant gangster movie dealing with the same problems that we had then, that we’re prohibiting drugs instead of alcohol…It was a remarkable idea…I went with it and wrote the script. I researched it thoroughly in Florida and the Caribbean. I had been in South America recently and did some research there. So I saw quite a bit of the drug trade from the legal point of view as well as from the gangster point of view. Not many people would talk, it’s a very closed world…”

Sidney Lumet, Pacino, and Marty Bregman had developed a fruitful working relationship over the previous half-decade. The trio collaborated on, arguably, two of Pacino’s greatest films – Dog Day Afternoon and Serpico. Instinctively, Pacino and Bregman thought that Lumet would be the director to see the Scarface remake across the finish line. That proved to be incorrect as Lumet and Oliver Stone had a falling out over the finished screenplay. This time, however, Pacino and Bregman took Stone’s side. Lumet dropped out of the project due to creative differences. Acclaimed director Brian De Palma was brought aboard and proved to be the perfect fit. His over-the-top vision of Scarface was perfectly in synch with Stone’s script.

Casting

While the Scarface remake had its lead in Pacino (Robert De Niro had been offered the role and turned it down), the supporting cast was still very much up in the air. Specifically, relatively unknown actress (and future Oscar nominee) Michelle Pfeiffer was rejected by both Pacino and De Palma. Only Bregman fought for her and saw the potential. The part of Elvira, who eventually married Tony Montana, was a hot role, and every popular actress in Hollywood was being touted for it. Geena Davis, Carrie Fisher, Kelly McGillis, Rosanna Arquette, Melanie Griffith, Kim Basinger, Brooke Shields, Sharon Stone, and Sigourney Weaver were all considered. Glen Close was the original choice to play Elvira. Bregman stood firm and lobbied for Pfeiffer hard. She eventually got the part that would change her life forever.

Michelle Pfeiffer spoke with director Darren Aronofsky for Interview Magazine in 2017 about getting the life-changing part of Elvira and how difficult the shoot was:

“…I can tell you that I was terrified. And it was a six-month shoot, I think. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and I were really the only females. It was a boys’ club. And it was also the nature of the relationship for Tony Montana to be very dismissive of my character. So I would go to sleep some nights crying…I’m very willful, you know. I’m a survivor. It’s in my nature. I don’t look so tough, but I am. And I think I was able to hide behind the tough exterior of that character, who was just sort of tuned out and tuned off, drugged…”

Veteran character actor Steven Bauer had a similar experience to that of Pfeffier in getting to play the role of Tony Montana’s best friend and fellow Cuban immigrant, Manny. A relative unknown at the time, Bauer was studying theater in New York City with legendary acting coach Stella Adler. Bauer got the call to meet casting director Alixe Gordin who basically said he had the part just on looks alone. Unlike Pfeiffer, Bauer surprisingly didn’t even have to audition.

Steven Bauer spoke to a packed Belasco Theater in Los Angeles in 2011 (celebrating the Blu-ray release of the film) about how he snagged the part of a lifetime without even having to audition:

 “…It was day one of casting and she (Alixe Gordon) said, ‘Go see Brian.’ So I went to see Brian and he said, ‘Yeah, you look like Manny.’ And he said, ‘I’m going to call Marty Bregman in L.A.’ I went to L.A. and I saw Marty and the moment we met, he told me, ‘I’m going to tell you something. You’re going to do this film. You’re going to play this role.’ I said, ‘I haven’t auditioned yet.’ And he said, ‘Just take my word for it. You’re going to play Manny…'”

Filming

Principal photography commenced on Scarface on November 22, 1982. While it was originally intended to film on location in and around Miami, that plan quickly went sour. Early on in pre-production, the local Cuban community leaders got their hands on the script. Seeing the negative light that Cuban immigrants were being portrayed in, the Cuban community at large did everything they could to drive the production out of the City. Protests. Acts of vandalism. Physical threats of violence against the crew. Sabotage. All of this was par the course in the early stages of production. Even the Miami Tourist Board joined in the fray. Two weeks into production, the cast and crew packed up and moved everything to Los Angeles as a stand-in for Miami.

Location shooting wasn’t the only problem that the crew ran into on the set of Scarface. Along with multiple shut-downs in California due to bad weather, the crew also had to deal with its star getting injured and shutting down production for over two weeks. In March, Pacino accidentally fell on an M14 machine gun during a fight scene. The actor severely burned his left hand on the recently fired gun muzzle. Subsequently, Pacino was rushed to the Sherman Oaks Burn Center, where he recovered. To make matters worse, the mountains of baby laxative that Pacino was snorting, in place of cocaine, permanently damaged that actor’s sinuses.

Al Pacino spoke with FOX 5 Washington DC in 2015 about the different types of damage he did to himself on the set of Scarface as well as what it was he was shoving up his nose:

“…I knew that with Scarface, they combined it with stuff. I mean, not narcotics. Something else. To cut it down. But for years after that, I have had things up in there. I don’t what happened to my nose, but it’s changed. My breathing apparatus has been sort of altered a little…In movie-making, they have ways of making it look like its more than it is becasuse there just so much of that stuff you can take. You start really getting high for the wrong reasons…”

On top of injuries suffered by Pacino and a forced location change, two stunt coordinators were also seriously injured when a bomb exploded prematurely. As if all of this wasn’t enough, Brian De Palma blames the collapse of his marriage to actress Nancy Allen on Scarface. De Palma has stated that the film kept the couple apart for months. He further believes that Allen, who had co-starred in De Palma’s previous three films, was angry that the director had cast newcomer Michelle Pfeiffer over Allen as the female lead in his film. Things, including the film’s ballooning budget, were beginning to escalate out of control. Writer and advisor Oliver Stone was on set for all of it.

Oliver Stone spoke to Vulture in 2018 about being on set during the production of Scarface and how the combination of Al Pacino and Brian De Palma made things grind to a halt:

“…The movie was a nightmare to make, went three months over, and I was on that set all the way to the end…They kept me there. It was like, Who do you have to fuck to get off this ship? It was so slow the way they made it, because Brian’s not an energy guy, and Al’s a retake guy. It cost too much, went over, and was a black sheep from the get-go with Universal…”

Sprinkled in between all of the production and budget woes that the cast and crew were going through was a surprise set visit by Steven Spielberg. De Palma and Spielberg had been friends since the early 1970s. They were part of the original ‘movie brats’ that were now well on their way to taking over Hollywood. Its members also included George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, and John Milius. De Palma and Spielberg had always wanted to work together on a project. When De Palma invited Spielberg to the set, their wish finally came true. Spielberg was on hand and acted as ‘co-director’ during the climactic shootout in Tony’s mansion at the end of the film. Spielberg declined to be credited in the film.

The Ratings Board

With the world premiere of Scarface less than two months away, the film was given a death sentence by the MPAA Ratings Board. The film was slapped with a dreaded X rating due to “excessive and cumulative violence and for language.” While De Palma and Bregman knew that their film was violent and may stir some people up, they had absolutely no idea of the battle they were about to undertake. It was 1932 all over again.

The problem was that in order to be eligible for television advertising, films needed to obtain an “R” rating, or less. Upon initial submission, Scarface was immediately given an X rating. De Palma cut it down and resubmitted it, to no avail. A third cutting and resubmission proved useless. Finally, the matter went to arbitration where on November 8, an appeals board composed of twenty theater owners, independent distributors, and several studio executives, overturned the MPAA’s decision seventeen to three in favor of an R rating. It was a victory across the industry and throughout the world for freedom of speech and expression.

Brian De Palma spoke at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2018 (celebrating the film’s 35th anniversary) about taking on the MPAA Ratings Board and sticking to one’s convictions:

“…I said I’ve had it with these people, I’m not taking any more out. And I told Marty, and Marty said, ‘We’ll go to war with these people.’ And that’s what we did. We’re gonna put the movie exactly the way I originally cut it. I got an X on the third, I got an X on the second, I got an X on the first. We’re going with the original version. It was one of the great moments that we had. We beat the censor board…”

Release and Legacy

Scarface had its world premiere on December 4, 1983, at the National Theater in New York City. The early reviews were underwhelming. On its opening weekend, the film grossed $4.5 million. That was enough for second place behind Clint Eastwood’s latest Dirty Harry installment, Sudden Impact (1983). When all was said and done, Scarface grossed $66 million worldwide in its first theatrical run. Definitely not what Brian De Palma, Al Pacino, Oliver Stone, and Martin Bregman were expecting. The usual critics sniffed in disgust about the film’s over-the-top violence and profanity. Martin Scorsese, however, loved it. Some critics were able to see through the malaise. Among them, legendary critic Roger Ebert, who gave the film four stars, and stated:

“…Most thrillers use interchangeable characters, and most gangster movies are more interested in action than personality, but “Scarface” is one of those special movies, like “The Godfather,” that is willing to take a flawed, evil man and allow him to be human…What is original about this movie is the attention it gives to how little Montana enjoys it while he has it…”

While Scarface barely made enough money to cover its costs, that was far from the end of the journey for its cast and crew. Indeed, the journey was just beginning. The film exploded the following Summer into the home rental/sale video market via VHS and Betamax. It became a bonafide hit in houses all over the world, critics be dammed. Fans loved Pacino’s brutal but sympathetic gangster; Steven Bauer’s loveable but doomed best friend, and Michelle Pfeiffer’s vamping and sarcastic trophy wife. Oliver Stone’s script had struck a nerve with the ‘me first’ younger members of the Regan generation. They loved the excess, the humor, the clothing, the violence, the language, and Giorgio Moroder’s fantastic synthesized new wave/electronic score. 

In Conclusion

Decades later, Scarface remains a part of the cultural lexicon. Much like James Dean and Elvis, Scarface (and Tony Montana) is everywhere. Comics. Video games. Posters. Books. Music Videos. Tony Montana has become a cultural (and fashion) icon. For better or for worse. Walk through just about any college dormitory and you are bound to see a few Tony Montana posters on the walls. Legendary pop/punk band Blink-182 even took its name from the number of times that Tony Montana says the F-word during the film. Rappers and Hip Hop artists the world over are inspired by the film. Brian De Palma’s biting and scathing critique of gangster life – and the greediness that fuels it – makes Scarface one one the best genre films of the last forty years.

Check Out More Oral Histories From Cinema Scholars!:

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BOOGIE NIGHTS: A 25th Anniversary Oral History (Click Here)

The Hollywood Vampires – A Drunken Oral History (Click Here)