Hey folks, Harry here... we haven't heard much of anything about this new Pacino flick, and unfortunately this first word isn't the best. But the film doesn't get released till sometime in December, so there is quite a bit of fine tuning time to work on it. Beware of spoilers.... Here ya go...
Hi Harry,
I went to a screening of the Al Pacino film People I Know last night in New York. I had been approached about attending it coming out of an opening day Jay and Silent Bob showing, so I mistakenly thought it would be a comedy. However, even if I knew it was supposed to be a drama, it would not change the fact that this film was a disaster.
We got the speech at the beginning about how the credits aren't there, the music will change, some of the sound isn't right yet, etc. This coupled with the fact that I hadn't heard of the film makes me fairly confident it's not supposed to open until next year. I don't know how much you know about the film, so forgive me if some of this is not news to you.
Al Pacino plays an old school southern (!) publicist in NYC. He does not own a cellphone. He invests his own money in his friend's bad plays. He bails out Ryan O'Neal's (his only decent client) friend from jail (Tea Leoni) who takes him to an opium den operating on an upper floor in the World Trade Center. She is looking for her "toy" - a handheld video game. They get back to her hotel room and after Al nearly passes out in the bathtub, Tea lets in room service, who turns out to be a thug who shoots her up with drugs and rapes her. Al sort of sees this in his opiated/sleepy state. It turns out she's a semi-famous actress and when her od'ed body is discovered, scandal begins. Meanwhile, Al is trying to get people to come to his benefit the next night for Nigerian refugees being deported back home by the fascistic Italian-American mayor of the city. He had met a power broker at the opium den he knew from way back, a Bloomberg-type played by Richard Schiff, and suddenly his event has heat. He gets a black Rev. from uptown to come as well, and suddenly he's Carter and the other two are Sadat and Begin. There's also a subplot with Kim Basinger as Pacino's dead brother's wife, and some ridiculous line about the three of them marching together in Selma - was Kim about 7 or 8 when the marching happened?
Al's event is successful and he finally realizes he's had enough of the city and he agrees to leave for Virginia with Kim the next day, but that night on his way home he is unknowingly stabbed (hey, that really hurt! he exclaims to the man who bumped into him on the street), goes home and sits in his chair, still not realizing he's been stabbed, and dies. The End.
There were so many problems, there's no way this thing could be fixed to a decent film. I have no idea who wrote or directed it since there were no credits besides the title and Al Pacino's name, but I'm pretty sure it's a Miramax film.
I hope this info is helpful to you and that I'm sending it to the right place. If you know of anyway I could be placed on some kind of list to attend early screenings of films, I'd be grateful if you could let me know how to go about that. I'd enjoy reporting back.
That's all for now, keep up the good work on the site,
ileen
