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[Joescoundrel]

From GQ ...

Robert De Niro and Al Pacino: A Big, Beautiful 50-Year Friendship

Al Pacino and Robert De Niro have spanned generations as acting royalty. And their latest, The Irishman, has the feeling of one final coronation. Here the two legends riff about Scorsese, The Godfather, and five decades of Hollywood fame.

By Zach Baron

November 20, 2019

“We got together early on,” Al Pacino said, gesturing at Robert De Niro. “And we shared something, which was a big thing at the time.” The two men were sitting in a hotel suite in New York, trying to sum up 50 years of friendship and the weird, singular bond that comes from being two of the most heralded actors of their generation. The balcony door was open, to catch the September breeze. Last night Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, in which they both star, had premiered at the New York Film Festival, and they’d spent nearly every hour since being fêted. And so, despite their often formidable reputations, there was a sweetness about them. “New York Film Festival, this is a prestigious film festival!” Pacino said earnestly.

After the first showing of the film, De Niro and Scorsese emerged onto a balcony in Alice Tully Hall, arms around each other, as the crowd stood to applaud. Later that night, I watched De Niro and Pacino become overwhelmed by well-wishers at an after-party at Tavern on the Green, where Joe Pesci and Spike Lee and Bobby Cannavale mixed in with triumphant Netflix executives in an overheated VIP room. The reviews of the film were good. They looked, sitting on a couch in front of me, like two men who couldn’t believe their luck.

In 1974 they both starred—in separate timelines that never intersect—in The Godfather Part II. It wasn’t until most of the way through 1995’s Heat that they finally appeared in the same frame of the same film, facing off across a diner table, and even then it was for only a few electric minutes. In the interim, both De Niro and Pacino made innumerable classics, and also 2008’s Righteous Kill, the first film in which they shared multiple scenes. In The Irishman—based on Charles Brandt’s true-crime book I Heard You Paint Houses, about the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa (played in the film by Pacino) and the underworld into which he disappeared (represented by the hit man Frank Sheeran, played by De Niro)—the two men give surprisingly emotional performances, suffused by their history with each other and, in De Niro’s case, with Scorsese. (Somehow this is Pacino’s first role in a Scorsese film, and the first time the three men—along with their costars Pesci and Harvey Keitel—have made something all together.) The movie has the feel of an old and august gang reuniting for one last job and looking back, sometimes ambivalently, on many lifetimes of work about violence and love and loss.

Pacino is three years older than De Niro and visibly protective of him. De Niro is famously a man of few words in life and a man of even fewer words in front of journalists. During the afternoon we spent together, he sat quietly on the couch and barely spoke, except to laugh as Pacino stood to roar or act out characters and scenes from their respective lives. Even now De Niro looks like himself: When he shrugs, you see a dozen iconic movie characters flicker through him. Pacino wore a baseball cap that he periodically removed to reveal a wild mane of hair—the watchful beauty of his youth has long since turned to a mischievous chaos, a visible glee to still be at it. Pacino is on a recent run of characters, as in The Humbling or Danny Collins, ravaged by time and pride, while De Niro has increasingly found himself playing fathers and grandfathers, men who have as much to express and as little to actually say as he himself does.

Their dynamic, at least today, was tender. Often Pacino would intercept questions intended for his friend and answer them himself. At the end of the interview, both men stood and embraced for a long, quiet moment. “I love you,” Pacino said to De Niro.

Al Pacino: It sort of bleeds out. It’s as though somehow Marty has found a way to get at his inner feelings about things in a very subtle way. I know when I saw it, I was moved by it and I thought, Why am I feeling this way? And I feel like it’s about us in a way. About people. What are we doing?

Bob, you talked Joe Pesci into doing the movie, in part by saying, “This could be the last one,” right?

Robert De Niro: Yeah, I was on Joe about it. But he knew that. We all know that. I mean, we’d like to do other projects together, and maybe if we’re lucky, we will, but this—I said, “Joe, you gotta.”

Is there something bittersweet about coming to a point where anything that you guys do together could be the last one?

Pacino: It didn’t enter my mind. It always feels like that’s in some way an outside determination. And perhaps in six weeks or something, I’ll say, “Hey, that was good while it lasted.” But basically you don’t think that way. Do you, Bob?

De Niro: No. I mean, you don’t.

Pacino: You don’t think that way. Because you’re in your body doing your thing, and you’re thinking, Well, it’s the same old, same old. The same old is: There’s a script, there’s a director, and is there a role for you? At least that’s the way I think: Is there a role for you to play in it?

These characters could have been going to see your films on the weekends; it’s the same period as Mean Streets and The Godfather. Is it strange to see times that you lived through turned into a period piece?

Pacino: As a writer, you see that, but we don’t think that way. Well, I’m not speaking for Bob here. But you don’t think of your life in the past as a period piece. You just don’t.

De Niro: [laughs]

Pacino: Someone said to me just recently, “How old are you?” And I said, “Well, that’s like asking me how long do you think I have left.” At a certain period, there’s something rude about asking someone how old they are.

Is the implication that you’re somehow too old for what you’re doing?

Pacino: I just don’t know. I think it’s personal. Like, I’m looking at you now. I’m not thinking about how old you are. You look like a young guy to me, but I see a marriage ring. I see, I wonder, Wow—but I don’t try guessing it. Certainly I don’t want to do it in front of you.

When I leave maybe.

Pacino: Yeah, when you leave, we’ll go over it. What do you think that guy is? How much time does he have left?

Also, you’re Al Pacino. If someone wants to know your age, they can look it up.

Pacino: Well, this is what we’re plagued with, you have to understand. When celebrities have birthdays, it’s all over the news. You can’t lie about your own age! Actually, that expression “You look good for your age” comes in. But I haven’t heard that in a long time. Maybe: “You look good to still be alive.”

De Niro: [laughing] Right.

Pacino: But it has a lot to do with choices, it has a lot to do with the kind of roles you get. Because with us, we don’t just go home and write. We need to find roles.

[Joescoundrel]

^ (Continued from above)

It’s fascinating what you said, Al, about age dictating parts somewhat. You’re on a great run of playing prideful men at the end of their lives: Danny Collins, The Humbling, Manglehorn. I wondered if you were doing those parts because you felt a certain kind of affinity. Or is it because that’s what you get sent in the mail?

Pacino: No, totally because of their thematic material. You look for that. I’m doing roles and thinking about doing things like King Lear. I’ve been approached to do that several times now. I’ve never thought of that as a film. And suddenly, you say, “Well, let me pick it up and start looking at it and reading it.” And you find there are things in it you understand more that you didn’t before. So it’s a funny kind of thing, when those awarenesses start to creep in on you without knowing it. I didn’t even think of doing King Lear, which I was offered 10 years ago. But now when I look at it, I understand some things I just didn’t then. So there’s these mini revelations that come along.

And Bob, for you it’s been fathers, like the character you play in Silver Linings Playbook: guys who have a lot of love to give but don’t necessarily know how to pass it along. And obviously that’s very much threaded through The Irishman as well. Is that a thematic concern you relate to?

De Niro: Yeah. It’s an appealing one, and it’s relevant to my life and I guess a lot of people’s lives, obviously.

You guys both have worked almost constantly. Bob, I’m not really aware of any break you’ve ever taken. Al, the only time off I really know you have taken was after Scarface, in 1983, then Revolution, in 1985.

Pacino: I went about four years without making films. Then I went broke. Bob knew about it.

De Niro: [laughing]

Pacino: That was only the first time I went broke. There was another time too.

What was the other time?

Pacino: We’ll leave that alone. But when I went broke the first time, the person I was living with at the time said, “What do you think you’re gonna do? Live off of me?” I thought, No. She said, “You gotta work.” I was relatively young when this happened to me. So I just decided not to do this for a while.

Why’d you decide not to do it anymore?

Pacino: It was just kind of an impulse. A bit of the bloom was off the rose for me, artistically and expressively. But somewhere in the back of my head, I always felt I could work. I always felt I’d be able to get work. And then the truth is I needed to go work. I had to earn.

Did you learn anything from taking a break?

Pacino: I remember how wonderful it felt to even sort of contemplate anonymity. Even though I wasn’t. But I did feel a little… You know what they say: out of sight, out of mind. Because there was an intense period. It was, I would say, more of a happier period in my life than I remember. That doesn’t mean I’m gonna do it again. [laughs]

De Niro: Was that the time you were doing the documentary you were showing me?

Pacino: Yeah, The Local Stigmatic [a little-seen extremely strange film by Pacino about dog- track betting].

De Niro: I liked that.

Pacino: I was showing Bob stuff. And he thought I was nuts. Of course he was very nice, though. Like, “What is he doing?” But we were close. We were very close. So pretty much—what, 30 years, 40 years?

De Niro: More, yeah.

What’s the earliest memory that you guys have of each other?

De Niro: Well, when we met, I think I was in my mid-20s. And you were maybe a couple years older than me. And that was about 50 years ago.

Pacino: I remember the meeting very clearly. Unbelievably, I saw this guy, I thought, Wow, he’s got such charisma. He wasn’t doing anything. He was just walking. Remember? You know, he was Bob. But you felt something from him.

Were you guys competitive with each other?

De Niro: It’s not that you’re competitive. You’re up for the same parts. Like Godfather—​Francis wanted Al. But every actor knew about it, and I think the studio was forcing him to look [elsewhere], from what I understood of it. And I never confirmed this with Francis, but they were putting pressure on him to use somebody other than Al.

I was in a reading once with Paul Sorvino where Francis was on the phone talking to one of the studio heads, maybe it was Bob Evans, about another actor—I’m not gonna say who it was, but if I said who it was, you’d say, “Jesus.” But they were in a hit movie at the time. And Francis is very open. He’s talking in front of an actor. Saying, “I really don’t think that they’re right for it, blah blah blah.”

Was it Michael that you were reading for?

De Niro: I could have been reading for Michael, or I was reading for Sonny. Because I knew that Francis wanted Al for Michael. But the word was out also that he wanted Jimmy Caan for Sonny. But he was going through the pressure, Francis, unbelievable pressure that they were gonna push you to do things. It’s just the nature of it.

I wonder if you guys are friends in part because so few other people can really relate to your respective life experiences.

Pacino: We get together. And there’s a trust there. There just is. We understand this thing together a little bit better. And you go there sometimes just to get some feedback. We talk about things.

De Niro: Kibitz. I don’t know if you know that word.

I do.

Pacino: We kibitz.

[Joescoundrel]

^ (Continued from above)

I imagine there are not a lot of people who can understand, really, what it’s like for the two of you —

Pacino: Well…

Maybe not. You’re disagreeing.

Pacino: I mean, it’s just such a different world now. Celebrity is different. And fame is, I think, sought-after more than it ever was in my lifetime. It’s sort of a cart-before-a-horse kind of thing.

Younger actors cite you guys to me, and they’ll say they admire you guys for giving less away. Like, Al, maybe you’ve done a couple of things, like a big Playboy interview, but Bob, you hardly do interviews at all.

Pacino: He used to tell it to me. He’d say, “No, I don’t need to. I’ll go to Al and talk about it.” No, I’m totally joking.

Did you have to learn that, Bob, or was that always your instinct?

De Niro: No, it’s just the way I am. I just feel a little—but I felt that you were that way too.

Pacino: I was that way. I mean, that Playboy interview, that was Larry Grobel, who I got to know. But I’ll tell you the truth, I think I did it because he did Marlon! And he did Barbra Streisand, you know? And I thought, Wow. And he came to me and I said, “Well, Marlon...” See, a lot of my influence, I don’t know about Bob, was Marlon. The way he dealt with things. He was reclusive in a way. And so I thought you don’t give that away, because that is part of what your performance art is.

De Niro: Yeah.

Pacino: It’s keeping the page blank or the canvas blank so it doesn’t affect the performance you’re giving or the character you’re playing. That was my idea of it. And Marty Bregman was a big help to me, my manager at the time. ’Cause he would always say to me, you know, something would happen, and I would say, “Gee, should I go on TV?” And he would just say simply, “Not you, no. You don’t want to do that.” And the truth is some of these people that do do it, the young people, are very good at it. They’re wonderful actors too. And they know how to because they grew up with it. It’s not the same kind of stigma as it used to be when we were younger. It’s changed. Some very prominent young star told me that too. He just said to me straight out, “I know how to do this because it just came out of my upbringing.” And he says, “I know you didn’t. You didn’t have that.” And I thought, Gee, he’s making a good point here. But there’s nothing really against it at this point. It can’t really hurt you. Not us. We’re not young. We’re beyond it now. Now they come to you and they want to write books.

You mean about you guys?

Pacino: They want to write a book about Bob, a book about me. I didn’t want to write a book. I still don’t. I would probably, if I was writing a book, I would wake up in the middle of the night screaming. Something about somehow talking about the life I had and how I lived and all the things in it, if it didn’t make me scream—I don’t mean that so much as it would really bother me to go back there and go through things.

It would?

Pacino: Yeah. I think it would, yeah. But my kids want me to write a book. They say, “Dad, write about it.”

Bob, you participated in making a beautiful film about your father, 2014’s Remembering the Artist, Robert De Niro, Sr., and I think at the time you said it was for your kids too, right?

De Niro: Yeah, I did it for the kids and grandkids and the family. That was the original intention of it. So that they were aware of who he was.

The Irishman is very much about a guy at the end of his life looking back, trying to make sense of it. When you look back at the lives you led, what do you think of first?

Pacino: [A long silence here.] Well, I guess I think about the people that are no longer in my life. That’s what I think about. And of course, my kids.

De Niro: Sure. You’re looking back, things that I’ve been through in my life. Did I make this decision correctly? And that one? And I say, “But this is what I did and you live and learn and that’s it.” You just gotta keep going and make the best of things, and I’m pretty fortunate in a lot of ways. So I want to always keep that focus.

Pacino: That’s a big thing. You start feeling grateful.

And when does that kick in?

Pacino: Well, when you practice it. Because you forget a lot about that. But then when you think: It’s true. There’s a lot to be thankful for.

Are there particular roles that you look back on with pride?

De Niro: Of course. But I mean, I feel that this film is a—I mean, I could have shot for another five or six months with Marty. It was a great experience. And this is something I’m very proud of that we did.

Pacino: What I’m happy about is to have desire. To feel appetite.

To continue the work, or just in general?

Pacino: Well, in general. Appetite for whatever—work, life. If you saw The Humbling, part of what motivated me to do that film is because I thought of that. The idea that what happens when you don’t have that anymore. God, to me it’s a gift. It’s a real gift. Desire, I think sometimes it trumps talent. Maybe it goes hand in hand. I guess it must.

The talent part is not in question for you two, but when you think back on how you became successful, is that luck, or is it that you had more desire than the next guy?

Pacino: It’s a combination of luck and other things. Let’s face it. Just something as simple as being at the right time, the right place. I mean, to come out of the ’70s, when our kind of actor was following the way paved by Brando and Dean and Newman and all these great people back then who opened the door for a lot of people like us. And Scorsese and Coppola and Spielberg and Lumet and these people—they were all around then. And Lucas and De Palma. This was a period at that time when film was flourishing. It was different than the time before it, I think. Not better or worse, mind you. It was different. And I think that there was a new kind of person out there, in that period.

We were talking about commonalities that you guys have. And one of many is that you’re both formally trained. I don’t know if there are Stella Adlers and Lee Strasbergs around anymore —

Pacino: Bob was a Stella Adler student. So was Marlon.

De Niro: I don’t know what the acting-teaching situation is today. I’m sure there are very good people who teach today. I know, with Stella, she had a thing called script analysis that I had not experienced when I was studying at the Dramatic Workshop. And she was opposed to what Lee would do because Lee, she felt, was a cult of personality. But at the same time, she had Marlon, who was very much all that stuff. But he was a great actor and wonderful, and part of his personality came through in his acting, it was all together. And we all looked up to him.

Pacino: I saw recently something he did, Streetcar, the film Streetcar. There’s a section in there, and I was telling Bob—or was I telling myself? But I was telling him about this time where he’s playing cards and Karl Malden is flirting with Vivien Leigh and they’re having a flirt together, and Brando’s by the kitchen playing cards with his poker buddies and he’s going crazy ’cause he’s losing and he’s half in the bag and he’s playing, and then she’s singing and the radio’s on and he starts saying things like, “Shut that radio off!” [Pacino is now fully performing as Brando in a loose re-creation of one the most iconic scenes in film history.] And then this one moment where the guy throws down his cards, Brando throws down his, he goes, [in full Marlon voice] “Bam! There they are. There they are.” And he lays down this good poker hand. And the guy next to him, his friend, goes, “Here! Here!” And he throws down a hand that beats him. And Brando just looks at it and gets upset, because this music is playing and he goes out into the other room and takes the radio, pulls it out of the wall, [Pacino is on his feet now, acting out the scene] and throws it through the window and it all winds up with him in the street going [at a full yell] Stelllllllllllaaa! This is a few minutes long. And it is a passage that is literally a tornado. It’s not like you’re watching an actor in an acting school getting really angry. It is more than anger. It is nature. And when I saw it, I just reflected on it.

[Joescoundrel]

^ (Continued from above)

Bob, you are famous for your preparation for roles, which we don’t have to rehash here, but I only found out recently that you watched The Godfather, like, 50 times before you did The Godfather Part II.

De Niro: Well, yeah, I looked at it. It’s funny, what I did with one of the producers, Gray Frederickson. But we went to the Paramount building right here, which is now a Trump hotel. We went there, and me and Gray went up to the 30-something floor, where the screening room was, and I had a Wollensak reel-to-reel tape recorder and a camera and I put it up there so it just caught the whole screen and then we shot. And then whenever Marlon’s pieces came on, I would record it. That’s how we did it. And I watched that a lot.

So no Al.

De Niro: No, it was all Marlon.

Pacino: I was this gangly kid. Like, “Look at him. There he goes.”

Just the Marlon parts.

De Niro: Well, that’s who I was playing. It was almost like a technical exercise in some ways. I was seeing what he did and how could I transfer that to the scenes that I had.

Bob, has your way of feeling your way into a performance changed?

De Niro: Everything is different. When I was younger, I’d be worried about certain things that I would not worry about now, because it’s just, you’re anxious and you want to make sure. And so you get all sort of revved up, whereas what you really should do is not get revved up and just relax and let things happen. And sometimes that just comes from experience. “It’s gonna be okay, you’re gonna be there. Don’t push for anything and don’t get anxious that you’re gonna get it, because then you’ll never get it.” So you’ve done all your homework, you’re ready to go, and you just go in and do it and don’t think about it. I mean, that’s a better way to go into something, and especially if you’re with a director who understands that, respects that, like Marty.

What do you think keeps you going and continuing to say yes to stuff? Especially when it would be very easy to say no to plenty of things.

De Niro: Well, I mean, sometimes it’s just financial. You do something and you get paid well and you say, “I’m gonna make it work.” Or, “There will be things that will be good about it.” And I’ve done that—when I was a young actor and I had to do stuff, I was lucky I got the part. And I said, “I’m not sure about this or that. They’ve hired me for their reasons, but I’m doing it for mine as an actor.” You don’t always have the luxury of working in a situation like with Marty or David O. Russell or Francis Coppola or Barry Levinson. Nothing against the other directors. But you take your chances.

Pacino: You know what? I may be falling into a bad habit now. I think I’m starting to get a little perverse. I’m starting to want to do films that aren’t really very good and try to make them better. And that’s become my challenge. I don’t think I go in thinking it’s not gonna be very good, but it’s like Bob said: Sometimes they offer you money to do something that’s not adequate. And you talk yourself into it. And somewhere within you, you know that this thing is gonna be a lemon. But then, when it comes full circle, and you see it, you say, “Oh, no. I’m gonna make this better.” And you spend a lot of time and you’re doing all these things, and you say, “If I can just get this to be a mediocre film,” and you get excited by that. It’s an impulse that I’ve got to just put that away now. “Every time I get the urge to exercise, I lie down till it passes.” That’s Oscar Wilde, I think. But the point is that it’s true. I work onstage a lot when I’m not doing other things.

I’ve always wanted to ask you about this. There’s an anecdote you used to tell about acting. You were in Boston performing for a very perceptive pair of eyes, and—

Pacino: Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. [to De Niro] You know that story? At the end of the play, there were these eyes on me. I went, “Who is this?” You know, “Is this gonna be my true love?” I see them again during the curtain call. I couldn’t believe this. There was such focus. So when the lights came up, I turned to the right, and there they were, two Seeing Eye dogs.

De Niro: Really?! [laughing]

Pacino: I said, “That’s the theater.”

I realized that I’m not sure what this story is actually supposed to mean.

Pacino: Well, it really means that when you’re out there, all kinds of impulses are working. You’re live. I mean, I was doing Richard III once, and I looked at the audience to talk about something, and in the second row was this woman standing up with a hunchback and her eyes—I was doing a monologue. And she’s up there looking up like this [Pacino is on his feet, impersonating a woman with a hunchback gazing toward the stage] and she was smiling at me. And I said, “Poor woman!” You know, I couldn’t help it, I smiled at her. “WE’RE RIDING HERE, BABY! YOU AND ME, WE KNOW IT!” And we just—

De Niro: She said that? She said that?

Pacino: She didn’t say it. I didn’t say it, either. I was doing Shakespeare. But at the same time, I felt it: We’re dancing here. Oh, my God! When those things happen, when you’re on the stage and a bat comes on the stage, I mean, for God’s sake, it’s so alive, you know?

I guess I always thought the point of that story is that performing is just communing with the void. You don’t know what’s out there.

Pacino: Exactly right. That’s what it is. I was young when it happened. I was in Boston. I was a kid doing a play. But at the same time, I was drawn to it. Because let’s face it, those dogs are focused. I mean, they’re protecting their owners.

You guys both have really interesting histories with the Academy. Al, you were nominated four times in a row in the ’70s.

Pacino: Wow. That’s intense.

You say “wow” like you didn’t know that.

Pacino: I didn’t think four times, but yeah. In a row? That’s pretty good.

You didn’t know that?

Pacino: I know there was a lot of times, but I didn’t know four in a row.

Yeah, it’s four in a row.

Pacino: That’s intense.

And you didn’t show up the first year, right?

Pacino: I don’t think I showed up a couple of those years.

Why not show up?

Pacino: Well, you have to understand, this was all new to me and I was extremely affected by it. I was a little concerned about what was going on with my life. There was a contrast to what I was and what I had so recently become. So I was going through a period of adjustment. And Bob knows. He was around when it was happening to me. I was having a difficult time. I think I was afraid of it for whatever reason. There was several reasons. I also took a lot of inebriants at the time. But I think I was…somewhat confused or something.

De Niro: [with great empathy] Yeah, sure.

Pacino: I mean, it happens.

[Joescoundrel]

^ (Continued from above)

Bob, when you won for The Godfather Part II, you also didn’t go, right?

De Niro: No. I had been away shooting with Bertolucci in Italy. So I couldn’t go. I don’t know whether if I was there I would have gone, but I was away shooting. I got a call at, like, six in the morning my time, like, nine at night, I guess, L.A. time.

I’m curious how you decide on projects. The last movie you guys did together before The Irishman was Righteous Kill. What’s the calculus on getting involved with something like that?

De Niro: [laughs]

Pacino: He called me! We thought we were gonna do something. It was an interesting story.

De Niro: I mean, we wanted to work together. I don’t want to say anything bad, because we did it and I did it.

I think I was more just trying to give the movie as an example. If a master filmmaker like Scorsese asks you to do his film, I can see why you’d do it. But you guys do all sorts of films, and you probably don’t need to at this point. So what—

Pacino: We really thought we had something there that we could do something with. There were a lot of different things I really can’t talk about now. He knows what I’m talking about. You’re better not talking about it.

De Niro: But we had a good time doing the movie. It’s what it was. And I did say when we were together—

Pacino: I’ll never forget that, what he’s gonna say.

De Niro: We went to Europe, a couple of cities, for the premiere, and I said, “Well, look, Al, one day let’s hope that we’re gonna be here for a movie that we can really feel great about.” That’s all. Nothing against that movie. But it wasn’t what this one is.

Pacino: It was very simple what he said. I said, “Damn, that would be good.”

Do you feel like your relationship to Hollywood has changed over time?

De Niro: I mean, I go out there. He lives out there.

Pacino: I live there.

I was talking less about the geography and more about Hollywood as an industry.

Pacino: I want to get back here a lot, and I do come as much as I can. I have friends here.

De Niro: We were just talking about it.

Pacino: I do have a hard time with the winters here, I must say. It gets too cold for me.

De Niro: You’re from Philadelphia?

I’m from Philadelphia, yeah.

De Niro: One of the coldest days I ever shot was in Philly, doing a reshoot with Bradley Cooper on Limitless. Oh, man.

Pacino: You had to be outside?

De Niro: When I did it, it was in the summer, so we wore lighter clothes, and we were shooting in the winter now. And I couldn’t even say the words.

Pacino: That’s the worst thing about film. That is the worst. Let’s face it. In the end, we are humans.

Well, I was about to say, can’t you just be like, “Excuse me? I’m Robert De Niro. Get me out of the cold.”

Pacino: “Let’s do it another day.”

De Niro: What are you gonna do? You’re gonna shoot. Put on long underwear, you have to go out and shoot.

Pacino: I wouldn’t do it. I would just say, “I’m sorry, there’s another day, it’ll be warmer. And if it isn’t, we’ll find another place. This is film, man!”

Zach Baron is GQ's senior staff writer.