'The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny' is a terrific, tangled love story

DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli. Today's show is devoted to a film that was made 50 years ago but is regarded half a century later as one of the most daring, vibrant and important movies of the 1970s. The movie, 1975's "Dog Day Afternoon," was based on a real-life Brooklyn bank robbery that had occurred three years earlier. The bank robber, who was married, was hoping to escape with enough cash to finance the sex-change operation for his male lover. But mid-robbery, the bank was surrounded by police, TV news crews and Brooklyn onlookers, and escalated into a tense hostage situation and media circus.

Al Pacino, fresh from filming "Godfather II," starred as Sonny the bank robber. Sidney Lumet, who already had directed Pacino in the intense cop drama "Serpico," was the director. Before staging and photographing the first scene, Lumet held weeks of rehearsal with the cast, encouraging them to improvise. He carried that same spirit into the on-location filming, and every scene crackles with energy. Here's an early scene with Pacino as Sonny, inside the bank with his hostages, and with the detective outside, played by Charles Durning, making first contact by phoning the bank.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "DOG DAY AFTERNOON")

CHARLES DURNING: (As Eugene Moretti) This is Detective Sergeant Eugene Moretti.

AL PACINO: (As Sonny Wortzik) Yeah.

DURNING: (As Eugene Moretti) OK. You're in there, and we're out here. What do we do now?

PACINO: (As Sonny Wortzik) I don't know. What do we do?

DURNING: (As Eugene Moretti) Listen. First off, we want to know if the people in the bank are OK.

PACINO: (As Sonny Wortzik) They're OK.

DURNING: (As Eugene Moretti) You alone, or you got confederates?

PACINO: (As Sonny Wortzik) I'm not alone. I got Sal.

DURNING: (As Eugene Moretti) Sal - what's that for? Salvatore?

PACINO: (As Sonny Wortzik) Yeah. Sal. He's a killer. We're Vietnam veterans, so killing don't mean anything to us. You understand?

DURNING: (As Eugene Moretti) In the Army?

PACINO: (As Sonny Wortzik) In the Army, yeah.

DURNING: (As Eugene Moretti) OK, so there's you. What's your name?

PACINO: (As Sonny Wortzik) Why? What do you want to know my name for?

DURNING: (As Eugene Moretti) Give me a name - any name - just so I got something to call you.

(SOUNDBITE OF HELICOPTER WHIRRING)

DURNING: (As Eugene Moretti) Come on, let's be reasonable, OK? Just give me a name, all right?

PACINO: (As Sonny Wortzik) Call me Sonny.

DURNING: (As Eugene Moretti) Sonny.

PACINO: (As Sonny Wortzik) Yeah.

BIANCULLI: Today on FRESH AIR, we feature archive interviews with both the star and director of "Dog Day Afternoon," beginning with the film's director, Sidney Lumet.

Sidney Lumet cut his teeth as a director in the early days of television, directing both live and filmed productions. In the early '50s, he directed episodes of the history re-enactment series "You Are There," the sitcom "Mama," the arts series "Omnibus" and many installments of live TV anthology drama series. One of his first of those was the 1952 CBS Television Workshop production of "Don Quixote," starring Boris Karloff and Grace Kelly.

Sidney Lumet made the transition to the big screen by directing the movie version of a live TV drama, "12 Angry Men," in 1957. But he kept alternating between film and television, doing strong work wherever he went. In 1960, his brilliant TV adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's "The Iceman Cometh" starred Jason Robards and featured a young Robert Redford. In the '60s, Sidney Lumet directed a string of classic films, including "The Pawnbroker" and "Fail Safe." In the '70s, after "Dog Day Afternoon," his next three films were Paddy Chayefsky's "Network," "Equus" and "The Wiz." And in the '80s, he directed Christopher Reeve and Michael Cain in "Deathtrap," and Paul Newman in "The Verdict." Sidney Lumet was awarded an honorary lifetime achievement Oscar in 2005. Terry Gross spoke with Sidney Lumet in 1988.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

TERRY GROSS: You've made about 38 movies in a little over 30 years. And it reminds me of the old studio days, in a way, when there were a lot of movies being made, and when directors and actors used to do a lot of movies per year. How have you managed to keep that pace up, especially considering how the movie industry has changed?

SIDNEY LUMET: Lucky, Terry (laughter). The - no, I love work, and I love movies. I would - I think if I had - if I could ever - and these things are clearly impossible, but if I could have had the artistic freedom that I enjoy now under the old studio system - which would have been impossible, by the way - I think I would have been very happy working at a studio because I love going from one project to another. I love when I work with actors who I find exciting to work with. I love repeating with them and working with them again and again.

GROSS: So you think of yourself as having more artistic freedom now than you did when you were starting because of how the movie industry has changed?

LUMET: Not - partially. I don't.

GROSS: Well, because of your stature (laughter).

LUMET: Part of it is muscle. You know...

GROSS: Yeah.

LUMET: ...You get a couple of hits behind you, and you can slowly start encroaching into that area. And - but I think you're right. I think the studio system has changed. I don't think that Louis B. Mayer would have given me final cut, no matter how many hits I'd had. He would have never given up that prerogative.

GROSS: Now, you insist on that, right? When you take on a movie...

LUMET: Yeah.

GROSS: ...You must have final cut.

LUMET: Yeah, because...

GROSS: Which means what exactly?

LUMET: Well, it means that there can be nothing - the film cannot be touched after you finish editing it, whether in the soundtrack or visually. It's yours.

GROSS: What kind of problem had you run into with previous movies that taught you you needed to demand final cut?

LUMET: Well, as an example, many, many years ago I did a very, very interesting picture - I think a very good picture. It's one of the few that I like better now than at the time that I did it. A picture called "The Hill" with Sean Connery. And it was not much of a success in America, but a good picture. And at that time - I did it through Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and at that time, they were being owned by a new person. They were changing hands almost daily. There were three new managements in the period of a year.

And at one point, they just said it as a matter of company policy that a picture had to run one hour and 55 minutes because they thought that this would work well for their relationships with the exhibitors. And the picture ran two hours and two minutes, and they just insisted that I take seven minutes out. They didn't care where it came from. It didn't matter to them that there were no seven minutes to take out without destroying the movie. And it was a hell of a battle. And the only reason I won it, actually, was because management changed hands again and the new management came in, which was - listened with slightly more sympathetic ears. But if the old management had had a - had continued running Metro, they simply would have taken the film and removed seven minutes, period.

GROSS: Right.

LUMET: And that kind of thing goes on constantly. A great many directors have suffered very severely from that.

GROSS: And that's still going on?

LUMET: Oh, yeah.

GROSS: Let's talk a little bit about your first film, made in 1957, and this was "12 Angry Men," a courtroom drama. You had before that been directing television, live television dramas. Was this a good transition to make, since it was basically a one-set movie? It's a courtroom drama. It's a jury drama. They're in the deliberation room most of the movie. Was that a good place to start?

LUMET: It was good, and it was a great problem, except that I was dumb enough not to know what the problem was. I found out, after I had done the movie and people liked it, that it was very difficult to shoot a movie in one room. That never occurred to me.

GROSS: Really?

LUMET: I had just plunged in with complete ignorance, knowing what I wanted to do with camera, knowing that I could make the camera a good interpretive part of the movie itself, and just blindly went ahead, shot it in 19 days, happy as a lark, and didn't know what the problem was. I may have felt enormously secure at the confinement of it because my background, as you say, had been live television and the theater. So the idea of staging something in one room was something that came very easily to me.

GROSS: Well, the movie starred Henry Fonda and Lee J. Cobb. Fonda is the only juror initially convinced of the defendant's innocent (ph). Cobb is the last holdout. I want to play a clip from this movie, "12 Angry Men."

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "12 ANGRY MEN")

HENRY FONDA: (As Juror #8) Did you ever see a woman who had to wear glasses and didn't want to because she thinks they spoil her looks?

LEE J COBB: (As Juror #3) OK, she had marks on her nose. I'm giving you that. From glasses, right? She didn't want to wear them out of the house so people would think she's gorgeous. But when she saw this kid killing his father, she was in the house alone. That's all.

FONDA: (As Juror #8) Do you wear glasses when you go to bed?

COBB: (As Juror #3) No, I don't. No one wears eyeglasses to bed.

FONDA: (As Juror #8) It's logical to assume that she wasn't wearing them when she was in bed, tossing and turning, trying to fall asleep.

COBB: (As Juror #3) How do you know?

FONDA: (As Juror #8) I don't know. I'm guessing. I'm also guessing that she probably didn't put her glasses on when she turned and looked casually out of the window. And she herself testified the killing took place just as she looked out. The lights went off a split second later. She couldn't have had time to put them on then.

COBB: (As Juror #3) Wait a second.

FONDA: (As Juror #8) Here's another guess. Maybe she honestly thought she saw the boy kill his father. I say she only saw a blur.

COBB: (As Juror #3) How do you know what she saw? How does he know all that? How do you know what kind of glasses she wore? Maybe they were sunglasses. Maybe she was farsighted. What do you know about her?

FONDA: (As Juror #8) I only know the woman's eyesight is in question now.

GEORGE VOSKOVEC: (As Juror #11) She had to be able to identify a person 60 feet away, at night, without glasses.

JOHN FIEDLER: (As Juror #2) You can't send someone off to die on evidence like that.

COBB: (As Juror #3) Oh, don't give me that.

FONDA: (As Juror #8) Don't you think the woman might have made a mistake?

COBB: (As Juror #3) No.

FONDA: (As Juror #8) It's not possible?

COBB: (As Juror #3) No, it's not possible.

GROSS: It's a heck of a cast. In addition to Fonda and Lee J. Cobb, you have Jack Warden, Jack Klugman, E.G. Marshall, Ed Begley. You were - you directed them your first time out on film, and you've since directed Paul Newman and younger actors like Al Pacino and Treat Williams. Is there a difference in the acting styles of the actors who you were directing in the '50s and the actors who came of age in, say, the '70s?

LUMET: Not really, Terry. They - the basic craft of acting is - in the United States has been set for some years, really, even before the method came in. Basically, people like Fonda worked out of a profound sense of truth. In fact, a man like Fonda didn't know how to do anything falsely and used himself - used himself brilliantly. Both of those elements are foundations of the method. And even though he wasn't called a method actor in the sense of having studied the method, he basically worked out of that, as most good actors did.

GROSS: Do you think of yourself as a method director?

LUMET: No. I become the kind of director that becomes whatever his actors need. When I did "Murder On The Orient Express," I could work the way the English actors work. When we did "Long Day's Journey Into Night," there was a perfect example. Kate Hepburn has a very specific way of working - her own technique. Ralph Richardson is a prime example of British technique, which is primarily from what we call the outside-in. Dean Stockwell works completely method, from the inside out. And Jason has his own glorious world of creating something from inside himself, and heaven knows where it comes from. But I think part of the job of directing is to not make the actors work your way, but to - for you to work, as a director, any way that makes them comfortable.

BIANCULLI: Sidney Lumet speaking to Terry Gross in 1988. We'll hear more of Terry's interview with Sidney Lumet after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's 1988 interview with Sidney Lumet. He directed "Dog Day Afternoon," the film that just celebrated its 50th anniversary.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

GROSS: You directed Al Pacino in two of his first big movie roles, "Serpico" and "Dog Day Afternoon." I want to play a short scene from "Dog Day Afternoon," and maybe you could tell me what you think Al Pacino needed when he was getting started. This is a scene from the very opening of the movie, when Pacino walks into a New York bank and he holds it up, and he wants the money to buy a sex change operation for his lover.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "DOG DAY AFTERNOON")

PACINO: (As Sonny Wortzik) Freeze. Nobody move.

JOHN CAZALE: (As Sal Naturile) Get over there.

PACINO: (As Sonny Wortzik) OK. All right. Get away from those alarms. Come on. Come on, get in the center. He moves, take his head off. Put the gun on him. Get out of the center.

GARY SPRINGER: (As Stevie) Sonny? I can't do it, Sonny.

PACINO: (As Sonny Wortzik) What?

SPRINGER: (As Stevie) I'm not going to make it, Sonny.

PACINO: (As Sonny Wortzik) What are you talking about? Put it on him.

SPRINGER: (As Stevie) I can't do it, Sonny.

PACINO: (As Sonny Wortzik) Sal. Sal?

CAZALE: (As Sal Naturile) What?

PACINO: (As Sonny Wortzik) Where are you? He can't make it.

GROSS: It's an interesting performance because Pacino is so manic in it and yet so insecure and incompetent at robbing this bank. What did he need when he was getting started? You were talking before about giving actors what you think they need.

LUMET: Primarily what he needed was he needed a great sense of freedom and a great sense of restriction. That - the creation of the character is really Al's own. He understood something about that man that is irreplaceable and I don't think a director can ever give. He understood him down to his bone marrow. The - what he needed was a sense of release, the confidence to know that as extreme as he got in the performance, that it would write (ph).

That it went - for example, there's a scene toward the end of the movie where he's talking to his female wife, his real wife, on the telephone, trying to decide what to do. And the scene is extraordinary in the sense that it requires a level of emotion that I've seen very rarely in movies. We did the scene in one take because I - with two cameras because I didn't want him to have to repeat that emotion over and over again. And when he finished it the first time, it was wonderful. And without waiting an instant, I didn't even cut the cameras, I said, Al, go again. And he looked at me like I was crazy because he was exhausted. He was spent, and I said, right now - action.

And what I was driving at was that he had reached such a height at the end of the first take, such an emotional peak, but that's really where I wanted the scene to begin. And he - it's one of the best pieces of movie acting I've ever seen. It was blinding in its intensity, agonizingly painful and just reached a level of emotion that, as I say, I don't think I've seen often in movie acting. And that knowledge that he could go as far as he wanted to within the confines of this situation and that man - the situation created by the script, the man created by Pacino - but that confidence to know that he could go as far as his feelings would carry him was very important to him. And that was really the biggest single directing relationship to his performance.

GROSS: Here's the scene from "Dog Day Afternoon" that Lumet was just talking about. Al Pacino's character, Sonny, is doing his best to keep it together. The bank robbery is falling apart. He has a bank full of hostages, and he's dealing with the police and the hostage negotiator. In the midst of the chaos, he calls his wife.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "DOG DAY AFTERNOON")

PACINO: (As Sonny Wortzik) I'm dying, you know that? I'm dying here.

SUSAN PERETZ: (As Angie Wortzik) Sonny, I blame myself. I notice you've been tense, like something is happening. Like, like, night before last, you're yelling at the kids like a madman. And then you want me to go on that ride, that caterpillar, from here to there full of those kids? It's ridiculous. I'm not about to go on the ride. So you yell at me. You pig, get on the [expletive] ride. Well, everything fell out of me. My heart, my liver just fell to the floor. I mean everything 'cause...

PACINO: (As Sonny Wortzik) Angie...

PERETZ: (As Angie Wortzik) You know what it felt like, you yelling at me...

PACINO: (As Sonny Wortzik) Will you listen to me a minute though?

PERETZ: (As Angie Wortzik) ...Like that in front of all them people? I mean, 'cause you never talked to me like that before, Sonny. I think, he's going to shoot me. He's going to dump my body in the river.

PACINO: (As Sonny Wortzik) Angie, will you just shut up and listen?

PERETZ: (As Angie Wortzik) I mean, I was scared of you. I was scared.

PACINO: (As Sonny Wortzik) Will you shut the [expletive] up and listen to me? Just listen to me.

PERETZ: (As Angie Wortzik) You see? You see that? See, with the language and everything?

PACINO: (As Sonny Wortzik) Well, I'm talking. I'm trying to talk to you. And you...

PERETZ: (As Angie Wortzik) ...Can't communicate with you.

GROSS: I wonder if you ever run into conflicts where there's one actor in a scene who works really well on that first or second take and another actor who sees it as their style to go for 15 or 16 takes until they really get it perfect. What do you do if you run into that?

LUMET: I have run into it, and so far - if there were a piece of wood around the studio, I'd knock on it.

GROSS: (Laughter).

LUMET: But so far, I've been able to convince the 15- or 16-take actor that the other works. The early takes are not imperfect. They are usually the freshest, truest. The repetition, I find and I think for most good actors, the repetitions tend to become mechanical. One doesn't find more truth in it as it goes on. Now, that partially has to do with the way I work because, as you know or may know, I rehearse very heavily. I rehearse two to three weeks, depending on the complexity of the characters before we begin. And those rehearsals are conducted like theater rehearsals in the sense that people learn their lines completely. They are working without scripts. They're completely blocked to the degree that we're having run-throughs by the end of it. So it's not as if once we get on camera this is their first exposure.

GROSS: Is that uncommon?

LUMET: Yes, it is. It is. It is not done often. I think mostly those of us who were trained in television do it. I think Arthur Penn does it. I know Arthur Penn does it - John Frankenheimer and so on.

GROSS: Oh, because you had to do it for the live drama.

LUMET: That's right. And - but it turned out for all of us, I think, in movies, to have other advantages.

GROSS: You know, between "12 Angry Men," "The Verdict," "Serpico" and "Prince Of The City," you've done your share of police and legal dramas. Is this a special interest of yours, or did you just like those scripts and want to do them?

LUMET: It's funny, Terry. You know, I don't really analyze these things. I just respond instinctively to a piece of material. But obviously, something in me somewhere is very involved with that level of life. Where it comes from, I don't know, but on looking back on it, boy, there are an awful lot of what I call justice stories. They somehow involve me very viscerally.

GROSS: Have you been affected by the new craze of market research?

LUMET: Yes. And fortunately, I've had my artistic controls in place before they ever came along because I think they are disastrous. I think they're destructive. I also think they're untrue. I think a person changes as soon as you ask them something.

GROSS: So do you have a no-market research clause when you take on a film?

LUMET: No, because I can't prevent the studio from doing it. But I sure in hell don't let it affect any of my decisions about what I'm going to do with a picture.

GROSS: You obviously love film directing. What - when you're doing a movie, what's the part that you most look forward to and the part that you know you have to do, but you really don't enjoy at all?

LUMET: There's only one part that I have to do. All of it is a thrilling process to me - preproduction, shooting, post production, editing, music. The only part that's a bit of a drag is what we call the mix, which is when we come in and do the final soundtrack and put every chair squeak in and every door slam in. It requires enormous concentration because it's largely a mechanical process rather than a creative one, although some directors use it very creatively. The soundtrack that I keep remembering, particularly is the soundtrack of "Apocalypse Now," which was a brilliant piece of work and a totally creative piece of work.

However, you do have to do it. I feel I have to do it myself because if the mix is a bad mix, if the wrong thing is emphasized, it can seriously affect the movie and be very destructive to a movie. So I have to do it, but it's the only non-joyful part of movie making to me.

BIANCULLI: Sidney Lumet speaking to Terry Gross in 1988. He died in 2011 at age 86. Coming up, we'll hear from the star of "Dog Day Afternoon," Al Pacino, as we continue our look at the film, which is 50 years old this year. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MIKIS THEODORAKIS' "THEME FROM SERPICO")

BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. I'm TV critic David Bianculli. We're continuing our golden anniversary salute to "Dog Day Afternoon" by hearing from Al Pacino, who starred as the bank robber Sonny in that landmark 1975 film. For Pacino, it was a brilliant performance, but only one among many. The movies in which he has starred and shone brightly include the "Godfather" films, "Scarface," "Glengarry Glen Ross," "Serpico," "Scent Of A Woman" and "The Devil's Advocate." For TV, he's played the title role in "Phil Spector," Roy Cohn in "Angels In America" and starred in the series "Hunters."

In 2024, he wrote a memoir called "Sonny Boy," which is when Terry Gross spoke with him. She started by asking Al Pacino about the first "Godfather" film and played a scene which featured not only him as Michael Corleone, but John Cazale as Michael's brother Fredo. Cazale would share the screen with Pacino once more as his bank-robbing accomplice in "Dog Day Afternoon." Here's the scene from "Godfather I." Pacino, as Michael, has begun his transformation into the hardened Michael. His father is still alive, but Michael is preparing to take over for him. He's with Moe Greene, a Vegas casino owner kind of modeled on Bugsy Siegel, and the Corleone family has helped back him. Also in the scene are Michael's not-very-bright brother Fredo and the family lawyer, Tom, played by Robert Duvall. Moe Greene is played by Alex Rocco. Michael speaks first.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE GODFATHER")

PACINO: (As Michael Corleone) Corleone family wants to buy you out.

ALEX ROCCO: (As Moe Greene) The Corleone family wants to buy me out. No, I buy you out. You don't buy me out.

PACINO: (As Michael Corleone) Your casino loses money. Maybe we can do better.

ROCCO: (As Moe Greene) You think I'm skimming off the top, Mike?

PACINO: (As Michael Corleone) You're unlucky.

ROCCO: (As Moe Greene) You d*** guineas really make me laugh. I do you a favor and take Freddie in when you're having a bad time, and then you try to push me out.

PACINO: (As Michael Corleone) Wait a minute. You took Freddie in because the Corleone family bankrolled your casino because the Molinari family on the coast guaranteed his safety. Now, we're talking business. Let's talk business.

ROCCO: (As Moe Greene) Yeah, let's talk business, Mike. First of all, you're all done. The Corleone family don't even have that kind of muscle anymore. The godfather's sick, right? You're getting chased out of New York by Barzini and the other families. What do you think is going on here? You think you can come to my hotel and take over? I talked to Barzini. I can make a deal with him and still keep my hotel.

PACINO: (As Michael Corleone) Is that why you slapped my brother around in public?

CAZALE: (As Fredo) Oh, no, no, that was nothing, Mike. Now, now, Moe didn't mean nothing by that. Sure, he flies off the hand once in a while, but Moe and me, we're good friends, right, Moe, huh?

ROCCO: (As Moe Greene) I got a business to run. I got to kick asses sometimes to make it run right. We had a little argument, Freddie and I, so I had to straighten him out.

PACINO: (As Michael Corleone) You straightened my brother out.

ROCCO: (As Moe Greene) He was banging cocktail waitresses two at a time. Players couldn't get a drink at the table. What's wrong with you?

PACINO: (As Michael Corleone) I leave for New York tomorrow. Think about a price.

ROCCO: (As Moe Greene) Do you know who I am? I'm Moe Greene. I made my bones when you were going out with cheerleaders.

CAZALE: (As Fredo) Wait a minute, Moe. Moe, I got an idea. Tom - Tom, you're the consigliere. Now, you can talk to the Don. You can explain.

ROBERT DUVALL: (As Tom Hagen) Just a minute. Don is semi-retired, and Mike is in charge of the family business now. Have anything to say, say it to Michael.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

GROSS: I just love that scene so much.

PACINO: Yeah. It's interesting on radio, too...

GROSS: It works.

PACINO: ...Just hearing it and not seeing it.

GROSS: Doesn't it work, though?

PACINO: Yeah, it does.

GROSS: Yeah.

PACINO: Really does - I was thinking maybe they'll do "The Godfather" on radio someday.

GROSS: (Laughter) That's a great idea.

PACINO: Yeah.

GROSS: You know, I interviewed Michael Cain years ago and - the great actor Michael Cain - and he was saying...

PACINO: Yes.

GROSS: ...When you're playing a powerful person, you don't wave your hands around 'cause when you have the power, people are looking at your every subtle gesture. They're trying to read you. They're trying to stay in your good graces and stay safe. And so weak people move their hands around, and powerful people don't. When we started talking, you were moving around a lot. So I'm thinking, was it hard for you to be as still as Michael is when he is exerting his power? - 'cause he knows how to not be still when he needs to, but he can be very still...

PACINO: Yes.

GROSS: ...And very opaque and very threatening at the same time.

PACINO: I know. I don't know how I did that.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: Yeah, I was wondering.

PACINO: I don't know to this day what possessed me.

GROSS: You literally, like, don't blink in that scene. I think you blinked once. How do you do that?

PACINO: (Laughter) I know. Well, I was in the situation, as they say, and I guess it came to me, you know, because things like that happen if you, you know, stay the course - meaning, if you are with whoever you are when you're playing it and your instincts are operating. I guess I was lucky, and I just went in that direction. And I didn't do it consciously. Yeah.

GROSS: You were nearly fired from the movie after the opening scene. And you write in the book that the opening scene was such a stupid scene for the audition because Michael is so, like, not a part of the family.

PACINO: Yeah.

GROSS: He doesn't really know who he is yet. His future is uncharted, and he's naive. So - yeah, go ahead. Go ahead.

PACINO: Judgment was off on picking that scene, I think, because it's a scene of, you know, quasi exposition. So...

GROSS: Yes.

PACINO: ...When you're going through it, what are you supposed to do, you know?

GROSS: He's just describing to his girlfriend Kay, who later becomes his wife...

PACINO: Yes.

GROSS: ...Like, who's here and who his family is...

PACINO: Yeah.

GROSS: ...And who they've helped kill and (laughter)...

PACINO: I know.

GROSS: So yeah, it's just to set up the story.

PACINO: All these wonderful people auditioned.

GROSS: Yeah.

PACINO: I remember them all - all of us young actors just doing that scene. And I thought, well, what can they see from that, you know? But somehow, I was the lucky one because Francis always wanted me before there was a script.

GROSS: Francis Ford Coppola, yeah.

PACINO: Yeah, he always wanted me to play Michael. That was in his vision, even though it wasn't in mine. I'll tell you that. I thought he might be making a mistake. (Laughter) I thought...

GROSS: You thought he was kidding, and it was maybe a phony phone call.

PACINO: Well, I did think when he called me and told me that he was given "The Godfather" to direct 'cause I knew him, like, a year before that, where I went out to San Francisco to do something with him. And I saw where he worked and the Zoetrope that - with Spielberg there and Lucas and all those - DePalma and all those '70s filmmakers that were about to explode on the scene. And I had met them in San Francisco. And he was getting to know me for another role he was doing in a movie that he wrote, "Love Story," which never got off the ground. And I went back to New York, and I hadn't heard from him in about a year. And then he called me. And I said, oh, Francis. I spent some time with him - three or four days - so I got to know him a little bit. And I thought, this guy's got something very special.

And he called me and told me he had "The Godfather." I thought, now he's gone too far (laughter). I thought, what life can do to you, you know? Now he's fantasizing things. So I said, OK. I went along with it. But after a while, I started to think, wait a minute. I think Paramount is pretty smart to pick this guy because this guy knows his stuff, and it's an Italian American. It's - he understands it somewhere. They picked him. You know, he had won an Oscar already for the script of "Patton," the George C. Scott film that was so wonderful. And so he already was starting to establish himself in Hollywood. And then I started to think, maybe he is going to do it. But when he said he wanted me to play Michael, then I thought, (laughter) oh, he's really in a fantasy.

GROSS: So, you starred with Robert De Niro in "Godfather II," but you're not in any scenes together because he's of a different generation from before you were born. And - however, you do have scenes together in "Heat" and also in "The Irishman." And I want to play a great scene from "The Irishman."

PACINO: Sure.

GROSS: OK, so here's a scene with you and De Niro toward the end of the film, and you've just gotten out of prison. He plays Frank Sheeran, and Frank Sheeran is somebody who got very connected to the mob, and then he became - you played Jimmy Hoffa, the head of the Teamsters Union. He became your bodyguard. So in this scene, you've only recently gotten out of prison. There was a big kind of ceremony in your honor. And then De Niro, as Frank Sheeran, comes up to you and explains that - basically that your time's up, that the mob wants you out of the Teamsters, out of the leadership position that you want to return to.

PACINO: Yes.

GROSS: But you're both talking between the lines (laughter). You're not coming right out and saying anything. You're talking between the lines. It's a great scene. You ping-pong back and forth. So let's hear it. It starts with De Niro.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE IRISHMAN")

ROBERT DE NIRO: (As Frank Sheeran) Tony told the old man to tell me to tell you - it's what it is.

PACINO: (As Jimmy Hoffa) What it is?

DE NIRO: (As Frank Sheeran) It's what it is. Please, listen to me.

PACINO: (As Jimmy Hoffa) They wouldn't dare.

DE NIRO: (As Frank Sheeran) Don't say...

PACINO: (As Jimmy Hoffa) They wouldn't dare.

DE NIRO: (As Frank Sheeran) Jimmy.

PACINO: (As Jimmy Hoffa) Please, Frank. Come on.

DE NIRO: (As Frank Sheeran) Don't say they wouldn't dare.

PACINO: (As Jimmy Hoffa) No, don't tell me that kind of - that's fairy tales.

DE NIRO: (As Frank Sheeran) Please. Don't say they wouldn't dare. Please.

PACINO: (As Jimmy Hoffa) Something funny happens to me, they're done. You understand that? And they know it because I got files. I got proof. I got records. I got tapes. Anytime I want, they'll be gone. These [expletive] spend the rest of their lives in jail, and they know it. They know it.

DE NIRO: (As Frank Sheeran) But what you're saying is what they're concerned about.

PACINO: (As Jimmy Hoffa) What I'm saying is, I know things. I know things...

DE NIRO: (As Frank Sheeran) Do you want to take over (ph)?

PACINO: (As Jimmy Hoffa) ...They don't know I know. Please, I...

DE NIRO: (As Frank Sheeran) Do you want to take that chance?

PACINO: (As Jimmy Hoffa) What chance am I - and why should I be taking a chance?

DE NIRO: (As Frank Sheeran) They're saying this is it.

PACINO: (As Jimmy Hoffa) They're saying this is it, and then it's it? Come on.

DE NIRO: (As Frank Sheeran) Jimmy, I'm trying to tell you something.

PACINO: (As Jimmy Hoffa) I know you are. You're telling me they're threatening me, and I got to do what they say, which is...

DE NIRO: (As Frank Sheeran) But it's more than a...

PACINO: (As Jimmy Hoffa) ...Absolute...

DE NIRO: (As Frank Sheeran) ...Threat. It's the bottom line.

PACINO: (As Jimmy Hoffa) Bottom line.

DE NIRO: (As Frank Sheeran) It's what it is.

PACINO: (As Jimmy Hoffa) They do something to me, I do something to them. That's all I know. I don't know anything else, do you?

GROSS: You don't get that De Niro's telling you, they're going to kill you unless you join (ph).

PACINO: (Laughter) Yeah.

GROSS: And they do (laughter).

PACINO: Yeah.

BIANCULLI: Al Pacino speaking to Terry Gross in 2024. We'll continue their conversation after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's 2024 conversation with actor Al Pacino. We're marking the 50th anniversary of one of his most famous films, "Dog Day Afternoon," and Terry is just about to ask him about it.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

GROSS: I just want to end with one more scene. And it's...

PACINO: Oh, OK.

GROSS: ...It's another very famous scene. And this is from "Dog Day Afternoon," and it's the Attica scene. So you've been holding up a bank. You've been trying to rob a bank to get money for your lover's gender-affirmation surgery.

PACINO: Yeah.

GROSS: Your lover is transgender - a transgender woman - and wants the surgery. Everything has gone wrong with the bank robbery, so now you're holding everybody in the bank hostage. And you step outside to make your demands, and the sergeant who's overseeing it wants you to just, you know, make a deal with him and end this siege. So the sergeant is played by Charles Durning. And in this scene, you get everybody chanting Attica. And that chant was an idea that was given to you at the last minute. I forget by who.

PACINO: As I was going out, this great assistant director, Burtt Harris - brilliant. He's done it all. And he and I made films together because he was Lumet's AD. Very clever. He used to - when I'd come in in the morning, he'd do all the things that, you know, break a hangover. You know, to get me ready to play Serpico, he had all these bitters and stuff. He understood things. He really worked with so many actors.

And anyway, on my way out to once again confront the crowd and the police and everything going on out there, as I was going out, he said to me, listen, Al. Come here. Say Attica. I said, what? What? Say Attica. Go. I said, say Attica? So I go out, and I don't know. I know about Attica because it was in the news. It was a terrible situation that had happened in Attica Prison and all that.

So I'm thinking - it's in my head. And I'm going on with the cops, and all of a sudden, I just blurt it out. I say, Attica. Remember Attica? You know, oh, that got - that just got the crowd, man. They just went with it. And they start going. And the next thing you know, everybody saying, (vocalizing). And the cops were all there, and they were saying, what the hell is this? What are we doing here? What happened?

GROSS: Yeah. And of course, Attica...

PACINO: They went wild.

GROSS: Attica referred to - in this prison in New York...

PACINO: Yeah.

GROSS: ...Upstate New York.

PACINO: Where they went in there and killed prisoners.

GROSS: Yeah. The...

PACINO: Yeah.

GROSS: ...The prisoners were demanding more humane...

PACINO: Yeah. Exactly.

GROSS: ... Conditions in the prison.

PACINO: Exactly.

GROSS: And they took some of the workers there hostage. And then the police moved in, armed. There was a riot.

PACINO: Yeah.

GROSS: A lot of people got shot - mostly shot by police. People died.

PACINO: That's right. Yes.

GROSS: And it was just - it was a disaster.

PACINO: Yeah.

GROSS: And so he starts - so your character starts shouting, Attica.

PACINO: Yeah.

GROSS: And there's a whole crowd of people watching the whole spectacle, you know.

PACINO: Sure.

GROSS: And I don't mean watching the movie being made. I mean watching the spectacle of the drama of the hostage crisis in the movie. There's police all around - dozens of police. There's snipers on the rooftop. And you come out...

PACINO: Yeah.

GROSS: ...Of the bank and start talking, and the sergeant's trying to make a deal with you.

PACINO: Yeah.

GROSS: And so when we hear the crowd chanting Attica in response to you chanting Attica, did they know you were going to do that? Is that...

PACINO: No, they didn't. And that's what I...

GROSS: And we watching that - go ahead. Go ahead.

PACINO: That's what is so wonderful about films - you can capture it. If you're free, if you allow the set to be free, you could capture anything on that camera as it happens within the structure or the context of the film you're doing and the scene you're playing. You never know what can happen. And it was - you know, it happened.

GROSS: And is that the take that you used?

PACINO: I don't know. I don't know.

GROSS: Right.

PACINO: Dee Dee Allen was cutting it. I would imagine it was. I mean, it's - they started doing it again when I went out for other takes, I guess.

GROSS: Yeah.

PACINO: It started a trend outside. I mean, there were hundreds of people who understood what I was saying. They were all part of the - you know, they're part of what New York was going through at the time.

GROSS: I'll just say one more thing about the scene. It is the opposite of Michael Corleone in "The Godfather." He's so...

PACINO: Yeah.

GROSS: ...Like, still and powerful and cold. And you play this as somebody who's, like, really agitated. You're pacing back and forth. You have a handkerchief in your hand that keep - like, you're waving it back and forth. You're just, like, one ball of impulsive, nervous...

PACINO: Yeah.

GROSS: ...Energy. And so let's hear the scene, and before we play it, I just want to thank you so much for talking with us.

PACINO: Oh, it's been a pleasure.

GROSS: And thank you for all your...

PACINO: Same for you.

GROSS: ...Great films...

PACINO: Oh.

GROSS: ...All your great performances and for the book.

PACINO: Thank you very much.

GROSS: (Laughter).

PACINO: Thank you.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "DOG DAY AFTERNOON")

DURNING: (As Eugene Moretti) Come on. Quit while you're ahead. All you got is attempted robbery.

PACINO: (As Sonny Wortzik) Armed robbery.

DURNING: (As Eugene Moretti) All right, armed then.

PACINO: (As Sonny Wortzik) Yeah.

DURNING: (As Eugene Moretti) Nobody's been hurt. Release the hostages. Nobody's going to worry over kidnapping charges. The most you're going to get is five years. You get out in one year, huh?

PACINO: (As Sonny Wortzik) Kiss me, man.

DURNING: (As Eugene Moretti) What?

PACINO: (As Sonny Wortzik) Kiss me. When I'm being [expletive], I like to get kissed a lot.

DURNING: (As Eugene Moretti) Hey, come on. Come on, now. Come on.

PACINO: (As Sonny Wortzik) You're a city cop, right? Robbing a bank's a federal offense. They got me on kidnapping, armed robbery. They're going to bury me, man. I don't want to talk to somebody who's trying to calm me. Get somebody in charge here.

DURNING: (As Eugene Moretti) I am in charge here.

PACINO: (As Sonny Wortzik) I don't want to talk to some flunky pig, trying to calm me, man.

DURNING: (As Eugene Moretti) Hey. You don't have to be calling me pig.

PACINO: (As Sonny Wortzik) What's he doing?

DURNING: (As Eugene Moretti) Will you get back over there?

PACINO: (As Sonny Wortzik) What are they over in there for?

DURNING: (As Eugene Moretti) Will you get the [expletive] back there?

PACINO: (As Sonny Wortzik) What's he doing?

DURNING: (As Eugene Moretti) Get back there.

PACINO: (As Sonny Wortzik) What's he doing? Look at him.

DURNING: (As Eugene Moretti) Get over there.

PACINO: (As Sonny Wortzik) Go back there, man.

DURNING: (As Eugene Moretti) Get over there, will you?

PACINO: (As Sonny Wortzik) He wants to kill me so bad he can taste it.

DURNING: (As Eugene Moretti) OK. No one's going to kill anybody.

PACINO: (As Sonny Wortzik) Attica. Attica. Attica. Attica. Attica. Attica. Attica. Attica. Attica. Attica. Attica.

BIANCULLI: That was Al Pacino inciting the crowd in the most memorable scene from the 1975 film "Dog Day Afternoon," which is now 50 years old. Al Pacino, who spoke to Terry last year, is now 85 years old. After a break, Maureen Corrigan reviews the new novel "The Loneliness of Sonia And Sunny" by Kiran Desai, which has just been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. This is FRESH AIR.

DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. The 2006 novel by Kiran Desai, "The Inheritance Of Loss," won both the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her new novel, "The Loneliness Of Sonia and Sunny," has just been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Our book critic, Maureen Corrigan, has a review.

MAUREEN CORRIGAN, BYLINE: It took Kiran Desai nearly 20 years to write her new novel, "The Loneliness Of Sonia And Sunny." I mean this as a sincere tribute when I say I'm amazed it only took her that long. Desai's near 700-page novel is about exile and displacement, not only from one's home country, family and culture, but also from one's own sense of self. The multicharacter, multistranded plot roams from locales in India and the U.S., Delhi, Goa, Vermont, Brooklyn, with side trips to Italy and Mexico. This is a novel of ideas, as well as, at its most elemental, a tangled love story.

Desai's characters inhabit a complex, postmodern, postcolonial world. And yet her own sensibility as a novelist is playfully old-fashioned. Consider the contrivance Desai brazenly concocts to enable a central moment of this story, a chance meeting on an overnight train between the two title characters after they've each rejected their own family's formal attempts to arrange a marriage between them. Dickens himself might have blushed.

There are plenty of complications, however, before and after that fateful moment. When the novel opens in the late 1990s, Sonia is a depressed college student in Vermont who hasn't been back to India in two years. Her grandparents, her lifeline back home, are baffled. Here's a sampling of a phone conversation a tearful Sonia has with her grandfather. What are you crying for, you lucky girl? Sonia tried to explain. I've ballooned in my own head. I cannot stop thinking about myself and my problems. I'm dreading the winter. In the dark and cold, it will get worse. Do some jumping jacks, get your spirits up and then pick up your books. The miscommunication there is generational, cultural and temperamental. Tragically, it makes the isolated Sonia ripe for the picking by a visiting art monster, a painter named Ilan.

Early in their affair, Ilan boasts to the impressionable Sonia, maybe I will paint a picture that the whole world will know, and you'll become angry and feel you don't exist outside the painting. And he does just that, appropriating her body and an intimate moment of shame in his art for all to see. Just as damaging is Ilan's theft of a treasured amulet that Sonia inherited from her German grandfather. Without that amulet depicting a demon protector, Sonia feels bereft.

But what of Sunny, our other protagonist here? He, too, has left India for the U.S., where we first meet him working for the Associated Press. A prime motivation for Sunny's move was his domineering mother, Babita. We're told Sunny had thought he would be able to love her better from New York. Instead, Sunny finds himself editing his life for his mother, for instance, hiding the existence of his live-in girlfriend, a Nordic Midwesterner named Ulla. In one of the many Black comedy set pieces in this novel, Ulla takes Sunny home to Kansas to meet her folks. Here are some snippets from that visit, mostly seen from Ulla's anxious perspective.

Ulla didn't want Sunny to find her father's consumer reports in the basket by his reclining chair. She didn't want her father to tell Sunny he'd found an excellent deal on his own tombstone. Ulla had told Sunny he was not to say anything complimentary about socialism or Jimmy Carter or even Bill Clinton. Ulla, vigilant to both sides, saw that Sunny was not able to perform to his eccentric self, that her parents' body humor was oppressed. They passed the beans and the cornbread. The tick tock asserted itself, while her mother wondered whether if it was safe to say she had enjoyed the movie "Gandhi." Maybe enjoyed was not the word.

What hope is there for us to understand each other, let alone ourselves, when so much of human interaction is performance? Sonia, a writer, considers that question as it applies to art, recognizing the danger of packaging an exotic India in her writing for the enticement of white people. Would the dilemma vanish, Sonia wonders, if the abundance of stories grew as abundant as life itself? In the loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, Desai has come close to achieving that ideal. This is a spectacular novel, nearly as abundant as life itself to savor, ruminate over and yes, even reread.

BIANCULLI: Maureen Corrigan is a professor of literature at Georgetown University. She reviewed "The Loneliness Of Sonia and Sunny" by Kiran Desai. On Monday's show, U.S. poet laureate Ada Limon discusses "Startlement: New And Selected Poems," a collection spanning nearly two decades. Limon's poetry documents everything from close observations of horses and kingfishers to the cosmos. One of her poems is engraved on NASA's Europa Clipper, bound for Jupiter's moon. I hope you can join us.

(SOUNDBITE OF BISS FRISELL'S "PRETTY STARS")

BIANCULLI: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Sam Briger is our managing producer. Our senior producer today is Roberta Shorrock. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Herzfeld and Diana Martinez.

Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Hope Wilson is our consulting visual producer.

For Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley, I'm David Bianculli.

(SOUNDBITE OF BISS FRISELL'S "PRETTY STARS")

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