Your Guide To Al Pacino Screaming, From “Dog Day Afternoon” to David Mamet’s New HBO Film “Phil Spector”

Courtesy of HBO

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Phil Spector
HBO Films
91 minutes

Al Pacino yells a lot in this movie. Granted, that could be said of any number of Al Pacino movies.

Phil Spector, which premieres Sunday, March 24 at 9 p.m. ET, is the second time in three years that Pacino has starred in a Barry Levinson -produced HBO movie in which he plays a highly controversial real-life figure who ends up going to jail. (The other being 2010’s You Don’t Know Jack, for which he won an Emmy for his portrayal of physician-assisted suicide proponent Dr. Jack Kevorkian.) This time around Pacino is the eponymous record producer, the unhinged musical genius behind the “Wall of Sound” studio production technique—a thickly layered sound heard on classics like The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” and The Beatles’ “The Long and Winding Road.” Spector had long enjoyed a reputation for being a lunatic; his eccentricities were often eclipsed by allegations of a pattern of violence against women. Less appalling tales involve him doing things like holding The Ramones at gunpoint during a recording session in 1979.

All his wild and vicious behavior culminated in the shooting death of actress/model Lana Clarkson at his California mansion in 2003. For this, Spector was convicted of second-degree murder in 2009, and sentenced to 19 years to life.

The film, written and directed by the renowned—and sorta politically kooky—playwright David Mamet, focuses on Spector’s first trial and the bond between the defendant and his attorney Linda Kenney Baden (played by the dependably excellent Helen Mirren). Phil Spector possesses the standard Mamet traits—mainly, anxiety, butch dialogue, and loud, borderline uncontrollable vulgarity. The movie—clocking in at a short 90 minutes—is a worthwhile but mixed bag, zigzagging between the rudimentary and the absolutely riveting. Whatever the film’s inconsistencies, Pacino’s performance on its own is more than enough to warrant repeat viewing. He paints Spector as a unstable behemoth who embodies a unique combination of whining and wrath. The result is exhilarating, combustible, and at times nerve-wracking.

But the movie has gotten most of its attention for Mamet’s thesis that Phil Spector likely did not commit the crime for which he is imprisoned (forensic evidence, etc. etc.) This premise has angered victims’ rights groups, Clarkson’s friends, Clarkson’s former publicist, and many others. Some of the outraged have taken to waging a campaign against Mamet’s movie.

I am not an expert on the Spector trials, so whether or not Mamet has a point is something I’ll leave up to others to litigate in print and protest. But here’s something I am an expert on: Al Pacino shouting on camera. And in Phil Spector, Pacino delivers some of his most compelling shouting in years.

Below is an excerpt and screenshot from one of the film’s oh-so-Mamet-esque tirades. Pacino’s monologue gets set off during an aggressive part of a trial rehearsal, in which Spector’s defense team plays a tape of Spector’s ex-wife, Ronettes lead singer Ronnie, who claims repeated physical and sexual assaults. The scene is a doozy, and the best thing about the film:

That sick, no-talent…If I hadn’t found her in the gutter...Ah, fuck this, fuck this whole thing, this fuckin’ charade. Who are you? How dare you?! Who do you think you are to come in here and accuse me?!…This semi-talented nowhere, this back-up singer to whom I gave EVERYTHING I own! My life, her life, my children! And to have you come in here quoting her libelous, non-sworn, cowardly bullshit! What, what does it cost her to lash out at me? Or you for that matter?…What do you think I am, an idiot?! You think I’m a fool, you don’t think I know what this is about?! I’ve played this game a million times before, I KNOW HOW THE GAME IS PLAYED! I’ve done this my whole life, what do you think?! They kill men for telling the truth; THIS IS THE TRUTH!

This climactic screaming—masterfully timed, towering, and lyrically feral—is pure Pacino.

And now, as promised, here is a history of great Pacino screaming through the decades:

 

Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

…And Justice for All (1979)

Scarface (1983)

The Godfather Part III (1990)

Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

(This yelling was also written by David Mamet.)

 

carlito’s way (1993)

heat (1995)

 

city hall (1996)

the devil’s advocate (1997)

The insider (1999)

any given Sunday (1999)

the recruit (2003)

Gigli (2003)

the merchant of Venice (2004)

This has been a brief history of Al Pacino yelling and swearing at the top of his lungs.

 

Click here for more movie and TV coverage from Mother Jones.

To read more of Asawin’s reviews, click here.

To listen to the weekly movie and pop-culture podcast that Asawin co-hosts with ThinkProgress critic Alyssa Rosenberg, click here.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate