ARTICLES / NEWS

Alec's role may 'gross' out Pacino, August 3, 2001 --

    (Thanks Lisa Wollney for this info)     
    The last time Alec Baldwin and Al Pacino were together in a movie was in David Mamet's lacerating Glengarry Glen Ross, in which a lot of four-letter words flew. Pacino may be cursing Baldwin out again when he learns about Alec's latest project.
    Starting Sept. 12, at the influential Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor, Baldwin will star in a new drama called Gross Points. He is onstage as a character who insiders will know is closely modeled on "Godfather" Pacino.
    The play is by Ira Lewis, who worked a couple of years for Pacino as a kind of in-house writer, brushing up scripts in which Al was interested. He performed these duties, according to Hollywood sources, in the hope and expectation that Pacino would get Lewis' own play produced.
    This is a fairly common (but never talked about) practice among big stars - get a bright young talent aboard with a promise to set him up with a production deal, then use him as your private development consultant.
    Anyway, according to sources, Lewis eventually realized nothing was happening to him and his play with Pacino, and their relationship ended. So he started working on Gross Points, a story about a young writer being "exploited" by a veteran star.
    Baldwin, who this year became a board member of Bay Street and really wants to help his local playhouse, seems more than ready to maybe upset Pacino in the course of creating a hit.
    The new work is being directed by Bay Street's artistic chief, Stephen Hamilton , and there's so much interest in it from Broadway and Hollywood
producers alike that its run could well be extended into October.

AL PACINO'S LOFT EDITORIAL NOTE: Don't be so sure it's Al.  In fact Al did produce and star in a stage production of Chinese Coffee, as well as produce, star in and direct a film version of it which is supposed to be released sometime this year or next.  If anyone finds a copy of this play or goes to see it I would be interested in your thoughts on it. 

 

Minnelli, Pacino among theater honorees -- The American Theatre Hall of Fame, Monday, November 06, 2000, By Christopher Rawson, Post-Gazette Drama Editor

    NEW YORK CITY -- The American Theatre Hall of Fame has announced nine new inductees for 2000, representing world and national theater as well as Broadway.
    Glamour is provided by musical theater luminary Liza Minnelli and acting heavyweight Al Pacino. Global distinction comes with famed South African playwright Athol Fugard. Jon Jory, retiring head of the Actors Theatre of Louisville, represents the vigorous regional theater movement. Veteran actresses to be inducted are June Havoc and Mary Alice. From the critical &nbs! p; side comes theater historian Otis Guernsey, and inducted posthumously will be actress Nancy Marchand and producer Robert Fryer.
    The induction ceremony will take place Jan. 29 at Broadway's Gershwin Theatre, where the walls of the upper lobby are encrusted with the names of nearly 400 Hall members in gold.
    Hall of Fame selections are voted each year by 275 members of the American Theatre Critics Association, members of the Hall of Fame and selected other critics and theater historians. To be considered, a candidate must have at least five major theater credits over a span of at least 25 years. This year's winners were selected from a list of 7! 8 nominees.
    Pacino, 60, is best known for his film work, but he won Tonys for "Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie?" and "The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel," and he has regularly returned to the New York stage to do such plays as "American Buffalo," Richard III and "Salome."

Pacino Set to 'Cometh' to B'Way for 'Iceman', By Ward Morehouse III , New York Post, 1997

     MOVIE superstar Al Pacino is planning a return to Broadway - to star in "The Iceman Cometh," one of Eugene O'Neill's greatest plays, Post Plus has learned exclusively.
    "Al wants to do it next year," said Michael Hadge, Pacino's partner in Chal Productions, the actor's production company. Hadge added that it would be for a limited run.
    Last year, Pacino - whose latest movie, "The Devil's Advocate," is currently No. 2 on the film charts - came back to the Great White Way for the first time in four years in what was initially billed as a six-week limited engagement of O'Neill's Hughie.
     But after getting rave reviews in the non-profit Circle in the Square Theater revival of the one-act 1941 O'Neill play, Pacino twice extended in the show, playing in it for nearly four months.
    Since then, the non-profit Circle has not only declared bankruptcy but ceased operations altogether - raising the question of where Pacino's "Iceman" might be done.
    Sources close to the Shubert Organization, which owns and operates 16 Broadway playhouses, said it would welcome a Pacino production of "The Iceman Cometh" with open arms.
    Asked which theater it would go into, one Shubert source told Post Plus: "Anywhere Al wants!"
    In other developments, Hadge said that while "shooting was complete" for Chal's film production of Ira Lewis' hit stage play Chinese Coffee, in which Pacino also stars (repeating his Broadway role), Chal wasn't going to enter it in Robert Redford's Sundance Film Festival in Utah in January as originally planned.
     "We're not going to get it ready in time for Sundance, so we're shooting for the Cannes Film Festival in May instead," Hadge said.
    The film version of Chinese Coffee, which is about two down-on-their-luck friends, co-stars Jerry Orbach of the TV series "Law and Order."
    Hadge also said that Chal, which also produced the highly praised Pacino-helmed film Looking for Richard, was planning to do a film version of Hughie.
    The verbose Erie Smith, the lead character in Hughie, was a precursor for the darker character of the equally talkative Hickey, in "The Iceman Cometh," first produced on Broadway in 1946.
     But while the action for Hughie takes place in a ramshackle Times Square Hotel, Hickey and his friends inhabit a rundown bar on Manhattan's lower West Side waterfront.

Al Pacino's Iceman Cameth, to L.A.'s Falcon 20-JAN-98, -- By David Lefkowitz Playbill

    The Al Pacino / Eugene O'Neill connection continues...
    Months ago, Broadway heard rumblings that the Scent of a Woman actor, bolstered by good reviews for Hughie at Circle in the Square, was hoping to take on a larger scale O'Neill work. According to Variety (Jan. 20), Pacino's choice is The Iceman Cometh, and he did four excerpted readings of the mammoth play at Los Angeles' Falcon Theatre in early January.
    Paul Benedict, Pacino's Broadway co-star in Hughie, was also in the cast, as were a number of film and TV names, including Bruno Kirby (Bunny Bunny, filmdom's Good Morning Vietnam), Harry Dean Stanton (Paris Texas), Michael Jeter (Grand Hotel), Peter Onorati, Felton Perry, William Biff McGuire, John P. Connolly, Pat McNamara, Bess Meyer and Jan Triska.
    Though Pacino self-staged Hughie, the Iceman readings were helmed by former Long Wharf artistic director, Arvin Brown. Under Brown, Long Wharf produced more than 200 plays, some 70 of which were staged by Brown himself. Many Long Wharf productions transferred to Broadway, most recently Chinese Coffee, with Pacino, in 1992. Two productions directed by Brown won Tony Awards as Outstanding Revival: All My Sons in 1987 and Joe Egg in 1985. Brown himself was nominated twice for Tony Awards as Outstanding Director, including his 1976 production of O'Neill's Ah! Wilderness.
    O'Neill's 1939 The Iceman Cometh tells of a talkative fellow who tries to dash the "pipe dreams" of patrons in a bar, only to share, finally, his own unpleasant secret. A landmark 1950s Off-Broadway Iceman made a star of Jason Robards, and a current London production features Kevin Spacey.
    Other plays by O'Neill include Beyond The Horizon, Mourning Becomes Electra and Long Day's Journey Into Night.
   

 

 

LINKS

http://www.broadwayarchive.com/ (buy videos etc. of plays here. None with Al.) THE DRAMA BOOKSHOP, INC, (a great place to buy plays:) 723 Seventh Avenue, NY, NY 10019 phone: 212-944-0595