EXCLUSIVE: Premiering tonight at the Princess of Wales, Easy’s Waltz marks the directing debut of True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto. It also marks the coming out party for Vince Vaughn as a Vegas lounge singer with great potential. As the singer’s mentor, Al Pacino plays perhaps the most dangerous man since his Michael Corleone days. Here, Vaughn discusses his night club plunge, and we both try to help Pacino remember what happened to him in the ’70s, when he made several all-time great movies.
DEADLINE: Vince, you sing really well and that was a surprise. How long have you harbored springing your inner lounge singer on a movie audience?
VINCE VAUGHN: I had the idea for a while. It was in my mind to play a lounge singer. I had thought of Vegas because I liked the idea that the dream was a personal dream. Not like, I want to be the biggest band in the world, or on the cover of Rolling Stone. But it was a dream consistent for the area that he was living, which was Vegas. I liked the thought that he lived on the grittier side of Vegas, and you could see the strip, the place he wanted to be, the career he wanted was just right there across town and from where he lived. He could see it. And I liked the idea of that sideways dream, something that’s not so overblown or grandiose, but something personal that matters to him. I had that thought that that would be cool. And I had played around with the idea. I had known Nick from True Detective. He’s such a terrific writer. I brought it up to him and he was interested. He went and wrote just an incredible screenplay and really made a terrific, complicated story out of it.
DEADLINE: Al, I’ve watched Once Upon A Time…in Hollywood so many times that when I saw your character in Easy’s Waltz and his mentoring skills, I thought of Marvin Schwartz, who tries to help Leonardo DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton into a slide into obscurity by putting him in Spaghetti Westerns. But here, your character dispenses all that great wisdom about how to succeed in Vegas, but the character has evolved into also being a dangerous man who orders broken bones and killings of those who cross him. What sparked you to play this kind of character?
PACINO: Well, it was always favorable for me if the text is really good, and Nick put together a beautiful piece of writing. That’s what I was drawn to. When Vincent was going to be doing that part, I was excited to join him. I really thought he was going to be a good role, a strong fit. But as it usually has been for me, it’s it the writing, and Nick certainly has that gift. Vincent, Nick writes novels, yes?
VAUGHN: Yeah. He writes novels, and I think he was actually an English professor at the University of Chicago at one point. So he definitely loves literature and it shows in his work.
PACINO: The character too was very interesting. I’ve known this kind of person throughout my life, people I knew, I’ve known throughout my life, people who are in show business and have that worship of the stars who do what they can’t do and who wish they could. And they have this vicarious reaction to those talented people, and it puts them in another world when they’re around their clients.
DEADLINE: You’ve met guys who have leg-breaking thugs hovering, and all he has to do is snap a finger to get them to snap a legbone?
PACINO: I saw one or two where, when they go the other way, wow, it’s buried and it comes out. I never really hung with those people; I saw the capability of that Jekyll-Hyde thing.
DEADLINE: The film feels like a throwback, nuanced layering to the storytelling, something evident in films that Al made back in the day but now seem to be on the endangered species list. Still room in this fast shifting play it safe business for movies that take their time?
PACINO: Yeah. That’s familiar stuff to me. But that’s another era.
DEADLINE: Vince?
VAUGHN: I think there is the space for it, and the want of it. I think unfortunately there becomes this rule book that isn’t really real, that the decision makers follow. One that doesn’t leave room for actually what draws all of us is ultimately stories investigating choices and behavior. It’s a bit like Greek myth, the morality tale, and the guy is cast, but we’ve just sort of…no one wants to get fired. And they say, oh, well, it was an IP, then I guess I can’t get fired. I just was saying to an executive recently, the marketing, I said, why? What is the issue with releasing a new idea? It’s exciting, a new idea. It seems easier on some level.
You hope that the audiences accept that kind of relationship and see it because there is a maturity in the writing and a deepness there, which Nick has of course. And you’re drawn to it because it’s knowledgeable, and it’s not boring at all because the story’s there, someone trying to survive in those circumstances. It’s a new world, and hopefully people have an interest in that because look how the world is today, it’s so different.
DEADLINE: We’re a long way from the ‘70s, which was the stomping ground of Mr. Pacino. Al, did you know you were on a Golden Age of film while you were making The Godfather films, Dog Day Afternoon and others?
PACINO: Oh, of course not. No, I didn’t know any, I don’t remember anything in the seventies, where I went in everything that I was doing. I mean, but what a time for me anyway. I mean…
VAUGHN: Yeah, you almost wish you could remember it.
PACINO: Yeah, I do. I remember having a good time, because I was floating and flying. But there were disasters, and maybe I was a disaster, myself. I’ve had my ups and downs, so to speak.
VAUGHN: The nice thing is a lot of the great moments are on film…
DEADLINE: Vince and I have seen most every single thing you did that decade We can vouch for you. You were present, you showed up.
PACINO: No question. Oh gosh. Yeah. But this film, there’s a language there that, and Vince, this is a Nick’s first directorial job in the feature space, isn’t it?
VAUGHN: Yeah, it is.
DEADLINE: I remember that first True Detective season with Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. The way they slowly peeled the onion of those characters, you could been it was an inflection point. Here, you can see the fine actors who show up and have a moment. Mary Steenburgen, she comes on briefly as Vince’s character’s cold and unrepentant mother, and wow is she devastating. A nasty bitch.
VAUGHN: She’s tremendous in it. It goes back to the characters in writing and returning to what you’re talking about…it’s human beings. And that’s the point of stories is people are complicated, and you can have many different emotions or feelings with them. Al had spoken about this before, your relationship with [agents]. It’s such an intimate relationship, but it could be many relationships, brothers, father, son, mentor, there’s so many relationships within it. And one of the great things about Al’s performances that makes it so captivating is he’s genuine, really warm, really kind, really fun, but then scary and not to be crossed. You get infatuated with this person who’s capable of just extremes of both generosity, but also force.
DEADLINE: Your plunge into lounge singer extraordinaire. How long have you been nursing that talent? Karaoke bars?
VAUGHN: Karaoke was definitely a starting ground.
PACINO: I was shocked when I heard him do his thing, in a very pleasant way. I must say it worked for my character because I was feeling, I’ve got somebody here. But Vince? I was really impressed, like, my God, where did that come from? Because he’s such a good actor that I think the acting, the song and the singing of it in tune and everything was what you see once in a while, but not often in the great musical artists of the theater. You see it with Frank Sinatra every day or any great singers that are out today too. Vince has it in this way that I haven’t hardly ever seen in an actor who is all at the real actor. What he does in music in a song, it’s like a soliloquy, like we’re watching Shakespeare at times. It’s like he’s expressing himself to it, and there’s nothing like seeing someone express himself through those songs.
DEADLINE: Vince, did you grow up with the Bobby Darin records? How did you get yourself to a point where you could be so believable as though you were in the 1950s or 1960s?
VAUGHN: Thanks for saying that. I was just a fan. Of Nathan Detroit and Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls, I’d like to do a remake of that with Al. should come back from the new one. Vincent remake of Guys and Dolls. We should do it onstage first, it’d be great.
DEADLINE: Al, can you and Vince pull off those roles played by Sinatra and Brando?
PACINO: I did a film like that, Danny Collins, which I thought was a relatively good film, but my singing wasn’t. Nowhere what Vincent does in this film. My God, it’s A Star is Born by comparison. I don’t mean to go over the top of this, but I can’t help it though. I was very surprised. As a dramatic actor, he crossed the line on greatness a long time ago and he’s done such great comedies. But this?
DEADLINE: Vince, I’ve met you enough to be able to say, now there’s a good guy. Had I not known that, I might have said, okay, this guy’s handsome, good head of hair, like six foot four, a versatile actor. And he can sing? Easy guy to hate, just from jealousy.
PACINO: [Laughs]. I always bring him down a little bit. I can’t help it. I just say, you got to lose a few inches there, buddy. Somehow I saw Meryl Streep do it in a film with me years ago. With Mike Nichols, Angels in America, the Tony Kushner play, right? Forgive me, I forget things…I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it.
DEADLINE: Everybody saw it, Al. You won one of a haul of Emmys it got…
PACINO: At one point, Meryl Streep is in there, and she’s playing a part and says in a hospital scene, I’m too tall to play Ethel Rosenberg. She came to Mike Nichols and said, I’m too tall for Ethel. Ethel was short. I was looking at her and going, really? And then she said, oh, no, no, it’s okay. I’ll take care of it. And I swear to you, the next take, she was short. I said, please don’t do that, it’s not encouraging for the rest of us, it’s just too much.
DEADLINE: More evidence that acting is her super power?
PACINO: Seriously. She put her body up there, and it was short. I think Vincent is good enough to do that. So I’m comparing him to Meryl Streep now. I don’t want to go too far, but it’s cool.
DEADLINE: Vince, can you play smaller?
VAUGHN: Gosh, that is so impressive. I wish I would’ve seen that. I’d have to study that. But yeah, maybe I could slouch a little bit. I don’t know. Maybe she did something with a leg or something. I mean, she could play an inanimate object for God’s sakes. That’s how good he is.
DEADLINE: Al, something on my mind after watching The Godfather a million times. Michael Corleone evolves so completely over two films. Did you really have no idea or instinct to save some for a Godfather Part II?
PACINO: I had no idea. That was the seventies, right? I had no idea.
VAUGHN: That is maybe the greatest performance in cinema ever. I still marvel at that from when you meet him. He is so genuine as a guy who has these ideas of life, and then when the father’s injured, just jumps in and starts this journey, and you still like him and you respect him so much. When he dives into ‘help his family,’ you go with him. And then it leads to that final scene, which is just maybe the most powerful scene I can ever remember, seeing it as a kid. When that door closes after he says to the wife that he had nothing to do with [Carlo’s murder] and that you can ask me about my business this one time. And if you look at that scene compared to when we first meet him, it is such a transformation. It’s unbelievable. Al, you take us with you, and we’re with you. You’re in the military outfit, you want good things in life. You don’t want to be involved. You love your family. But we are so along the ride with you that when we get there, it’s such a crazy moment for the audience to realize the choices we were rooting for and what it led to. It’s just an unbelievable performance.
DEADLINE: I have heard it all came down to all the participants in the first one needed a solid payday.
PACINO: There was that. But also there was a rush to get it out, get it into the script, and I rejected it until I thought that it had some stuff going for it. It wasn’t until Francis Coppola really took over that it became the script that we all saw and it was really something.
VAUGHN: You’re trying to escape the bed that you’ve made, and it’s so heartbreaking.
PACINO: Thank you guys. As I say, a little slow on the seventies, but I do remember something like that happening, with Francis and the script. And I remember the one point offering me so much money, but at the time, I sort of just was not looking at it that way, in any shape or form. Mario Puzo, bless his soul, gave me a script that he had done. But he said to me, they want me to give you the script for Part Two, but it’s really bad. I read it and it wasn’t good.
DEADLINE: So even if the money’s good, if the script is bad, you’re going to say no.
PACINO: Well, that’s the way it used to be. I don’t know if I would do that…now. When you see a script that’s good, you want to do it.
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