Cameo Appearances

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Cameo Appearances

A bumbling hitman, Gigli (Ben Affleck) is hired by the mob to kidnap the California district attorney's mentally retarded brother. Ricki (Jennifer Lopez), is sent to supervise Gigli as keeps the brother in his apartment. They end up on the run from the law and fall in love.

VARIETY reports Al Pacino will make a cameo appearance in director Martin Brest's GIGLI. The film stars Ben Affleck as a hit man who kidnaps the mentally-challenged brother of the attorney general to stop the prosecution of a mob boss. A old friend of Brest's, Pacino agreed to film the role. Pacino is repped by the Creative Artists Agency agent Rick Nacita.

Pitch

Pitch documents two childhood friends trying to do everything in their power to sell a comedy script they've written together.
Kenny Hotz and Spenny Rice born in Toronto, this dynamic duo began filmmaking almost a dozen years ago. Together they have written five scripts and produced two short films before collaborating on Pitch. The directors expose their valiant efforts to hawk their first feature screenplay at the 1996 Toronto International Film Festival. This humorous documentary recounts their relentless attacks on celebrities, producers and anyone else who will listen. Unperturbed, the filmmakers take their script to Hollywood. Pitch reveals the anxieties, psychoses and ruthless tactics that lie beneath the surface of show business - providing great entertainment in the process. (taken from DVD Box Office)

CAMEOS:
Al Pacino
Eric Stoltz
Fred Williamson
Illeana Douglas
Matt Dillon
Neil Simon
Norman Jewison
Arthur Hiller
Roger Ebert

In this Canadian documentary, two young filmmakers attend the Toronto Film Festival and pitch a film concept to various celebrities. Their film idea, titled The Dawn, concerns a Mafia don who goes for a hernia operation but gets a sex change instead. During the 1996 Toronto fest, they approach Roger Ebert, Norman Jewison (at a packed press conference), Eric Stoltz (leaving a limo), Al Pacino, and others without much success. On a roll, they leave Toronto for Hollywood, getting advice from Arthur Hiller and Neil Simon and finding an agent who expresses interest. Shown at the 1997 Toronto Film Festival.

Jonas In the Desert

Peter Sempel, known for Dandy and Just Visiting This Planet (shown at the 13th and 15th Mostra Film Festival respectively), has chosen underground director, poet, and intellectual Jonas Mekas for subject of his most recent documentary Jonas in the Desert.

In fact, Mekas had already taken part in Just Visiting This Planet singing a gipsy aria. Like Sempel's former work, Jonas in the Desert is not a documentary in the strictest sense of the word. Rather, it is a journey through the world of the artist - one of the exponents of independent U.S. movies; founder and director of the New York Anthology Film Archive - and captures his ideas, his creativity, and art.

In this way, he shows much of Mekas' personality and of his creative universe. Sempel brings together image and music, phrases and conversation, statements by many of the cultural icons such as Andy Warhol, Nam June Paik, Kenneth Anger, Allen Ginsberg, Yoko Ono, Al Pacino, Martin Scorcese, among others, and passages from Mekas' films. Sempel's style echoes throughout the work of the artist itself; nevertheless, it acts more as a complement than a mere tribute. The result is a precise expression of the essence of Jonas Mekas. In 1993, the 17th Mostra de Cinema held a Mekas in retrospect on film with ten of his films. (Taken from the Internet Movie Database)

Superstars of Action

A documentary about the career of Al Pacino. Hosted by Robert Wagner. Includes clips from his movies, interviews with Al and some of his co-workers. Twenty-five minutes long.

Wagner: "Al Pacino is one of a select group of actors who made film history in the 1970's with emotional and fascinating performances and offbeat movies that changed Hollywood forever."

Pacino: "The play is the thing, the play is first, the character is first in the work cuz that's very much the reason I'm here today is because of the characters I play and not because of my (sarcastic) scintillating personality."

Al and Godfather 2 Co-star, Andy Garcia.

Wagner: "Francis Ford Coppola's casting the role of Michael Corleone, Don Corleone's favorite son in the Godfather and the producers conducted a casting process unlike any seen in Hollywood........... Pacino getting the role was a triumph itself."

Pacino: "It was Coppola right down the line who wanted me always for the part. When I myself
didn't want to play it and when the producers didn't want me... and... Francis did. He... that's the way it is with directors, they have a vision and casting is a part of the vision."

Al and Martin Bregman

Bregman: "Pacino to me is the greatest American actor, in our industry today. I think he is just an extraordinary actor and also a leading man, which is unusual. There aren't that many leading men that are actors, that are artists. And I would classify Pacino as an artist."

Pacino: "I don't think I can do anything, I don't think I'm right for anything, or can do anything. That's how I start. And that seems to have always been the case with me. That's why I sort of prefer seeing things. Uh, plays and things. And then I, when I see the part, someone acting in it, then I get a sense of what it is like looking at a model, if I were a painter."

Wagner: "In 1992, Pacino chalked up not one, but two academy awards nominations. Nomination number six was for his mesmerizing supporting role in David Mamet's award winning Glengarry Glen Ross. Pacino also earned a best actor nomination for his portrayal of the blind, bombastic and embittered lieutenant Frank Slade in Scent of a Woman. Pacino breathed fiery life into every scene in the film giving one of the strongest performances of his career.....Seven proved the charm for Pacino as he finally won the coveted best actor Oscar for Scent of a Woman."

Pacino: "I remember I had to speak during the filming of Scent of a Woman to a group of young, aspiring actors in a high school and I remember for the first fifteen minutes speaking and not I didn't focus. I didn't see them. I was talking to a mass like that because I was in it. So you really take it into your daily life and stuff. Then finally you start to shed it layer by layer until hopefully you can do it on cue."

In conclusion.....or.....to be continued........

Pacino: "So I have been in movies for like over twenty years, twenty-five years, close to it, and you sort of learn to swim in different tides and survive through things, and find your way through things if you do indeed survive, but perhaps it will mean something different in my life I don't know, maybe retirement (laughs)."