Pacino was born on April 25, 1940, in the Bronx, New York, to an Italian-American family. His parents, Rose (Gerardi) and Sal Pacino, divorced when he was young. His mother moved them into his grandparents' house.
Pacino found himself often repeating the plots and voices of characters he had seen in the movies, one of his favorite activities. Bored and unmotivated in school, the young Al Pacino found a haven in school plays, and his interest soon blossomed into a full-time career. Starting on the stage, he went through a lengthy period of depression and poverty, sometimes having to borrow bus fare to make it to auditions.
He made it into the prestigious Actors Studio in 1966, studying under legendary acting coach Lee Strasberg, creator of the Method Approach that would become the trademark of many '70s-era actors. After appearing in a string of plays in supporting roles, he finally hit it big with "The Indian Wants the Bronx", winning an Obie award for the 1966-67 season. That was followed by a Tony Award for "Does the Tiger Wear a Necktie?". His first feature films made little departure from the gritty realistic stage performances that earned him respect: Read Mini Bio Here
Scarecrow is a 1973 road movie starring Gene Hackman and Al Pacino The story revolves around the relationship between two vagabonds: Max Millan (Gene Hackman), a short-tempered ex-convict, and Francis Lionel "Lion" Delbuchi (Al Pacino), a childlike ex-sailor. They meet on the road in California and agree to become partners in a car wash business, once they reach Pittsburgh.
Lion is on his way to Detroit to see the child he has never met and make amends with his wife Annie, to whom he has been sending all the money he made while at sea. Max agrees to make a detour on his way to Pittsburgh, where the bank that Max has been sending all his seed money is located.
While visiting Max's sister in Denver, the pair's antics land them in a prison farm for a month. Max blames Lion for being sent back to jail and shuns him. Lion is befriended by an inmate named Riley (Richard Lynch), who later tries to sexually assault him. Max proceeds to teach Riley a lesson, rekindling his friendship with Lion. The two have a profound effect on each other, with Lion becoming more of an adult and Max loosening up his high-strung aggression (at one point doing a tongue-in-cheek striptease to defuse a fight at a bar).
When they finally make it to Detroit, Lion calls Annie, who is now remarried and raising their five-year-old son. She is still angry at him for leaving her, and spitefully lies to him that she miscarried their son. Lion is devastated, but feigns happiness at having a son. Shortly afterward, he has a breakdown while playing with neighborhood children and becomes catatonic. Max promises Lion that he will do anything to help him, and boards a train to Pittsburgh with a round-trip ticket.
Paramount Pictures obtained the rights to the novel before it gained popularity for the price of $80,000. Studio executives had trouble finding a director, as their first few candidates turned down the position. They and Coppola disagreed over who would play several characters, in particular Vito and Michael. Filming was done on location and completed earlier than scheduled. The musical score was composed primarily by Nino Rota with additional pieces by Carmine Coppola.
In 1945, at his daughter Connie's wedding, Vito Corleone hears requests in his role as the Godfather, the Don of a New York crime family. Vito's youngest son, Michael, who was a Marine during World War II, introduces his girlfriend, Kay Adams, to his family at the reception. Johnny Fontane, a famous singer and godson to Vito, seeks Vito's help in securing a movie role; Vito dispatches his consigliere, Tom Hagen, to Los Angeles to talk the obnoxious studio head, Jack Woltz, into giving Johnny the part. Woltz refuses until he wakes up in bed with the severed head of his prized stallion.
Shortly before Christmas drug baron Virgil "The Turk" Sollozzo, backed by the Tattaglia crime family, asks Vito for investment in his narcotics business and protection through his political connections. Wary of involvement in a dangerous new trade that risks alienating political insiders, Vito declines. Suspicious, Vito sends his enforcer, Luca Brasi, to spy on them. Sollozzo has Vito gunned down in the street, then kidnaps Hagen. With Corleone first-born Sonny in command, Hagen is pressured to persuade Sonny to accept Sollozzo's deal, then released. The family receives fish wrapped in Brasi's bullet-proof vest, indicating that Luca "sleeps with the fishes". Vito survives, and at the hospital Michael thwarts another attempt on his father; Michael's jaw is broken by NYPD Captain Marc McCluskey, Sollozzo's bodyguard. Sonny retaliates with a hit on Tattaglia's son. Michael plots to murder Sollozzo and McCluskey: on the pretext of settling the dispute, Michael agrees to meet them in a Bronx restaurant. There, retrieving a planted handgun, he kills both men.
Despite a clampdown by the authorities, the Five Families erupt in open warfare and Vito's sons fear for their safety. Michael takes refuge in Sicily, and his brother, Fredo, is sheltered by the Corleone's Las Vegas casino partner, Moe Greene. Sonny attacks his brother-in-law Carlo on the street for abusing his sister and threatens to kill him if it happens again. When it does, Sonny speeds to their home, but is ambushed at a highway toll booth and riddled with submachine gun fire. While in Sicily, Michael meets and marries Apollonia Vitelli, but a car bomb intended for him takes her life.
Devastated by Sonny's death, Vito moves to end the feuds. Realizing that the Tattaglias are controlled by the now-dominant Don Emilio Barzini, Vito assures the Five Families that he will withdraw his opposition to their heroin business and forgo avenging his son's murder. His safety guaranteed, Michael returns home to enter the family business and marry Kay, who gives birth to two children by the early 1950s.
With his father at the end of his career and his brother too weak, Michael takes the family reins, promising his wife the business will be legitimate within five years. To that end, he insists Hagen relocate to Las Vegas and relinquish his role to Vito because Tom is not a "wartime consigliere"; Vito agrees Tom should "have no part in what will happen" in the coming battles with rival families. When Michael travels to Las Vegas to buy out Greene's stake in the family's casinos, their partner derides the Corleones for being run out of New York; Michael is dismayed to see that Fredo has fallen under Greene's sway.
Vito suffers a fatal heart attack. At the funeral, Tessio, a Corleone capo, asks Michael to meet with Don Barzini, signalling the betrayal that Vito had forewarned. The meeting is set for the same day as the christening of Connie’s baby. While Michael stands at the altar as the child's godfather, Corleone assassins murder the other New York dons and Moe Greene. Tessio is executed for his treachery and Michael extracts Carlo’s confession to his complicity in setting up Sonny's murder for Barzini. A Corleone capo, Clemenza, garrotes Carlo with a wire. Connie accuses Michael of the murder, telling Kay that Michael ordered all the killings. Kay is relieved when Michael finally denies it, but, when the capos arrive, they address her husband as Don Corleone, and she watches as they close the door on her.
The film portrays life among a group of heroin addicts who hang out in "Needle Park" (then-nickname of Sherman Square on Manhattan's Upper West Side near 72nd Street and Broadway).[3] The film is a love story between Bobby (Pacino), a young addict and small-time hustler, and Helen (Kitty Winn), a restless woman who finds Bobby charismatic. She becomes an addict, and life goes downhill for them both as their addictions worsen, eventually leading to a series of betrayals.
In New York City, Helen returns to the apartment she shares with her boyfriend, Marco, after enduring an unhygienic and inept abortion. Helen becomes ill and Bobby, an amiable small-time drug dealer to whom Marco owes money, shows unexpected gentleness and concern for Helen. Helen considers returning to her dysfunctional family, but moves in with Bobby, and when she finds him taking drugs, he explains that he is not an addict, but only uses a little.
At Sherman Square, nicknamed Needle Park for the drug addicts who use it as a hangout to get drugs and get high, Bobby introduces Helen to various acquaintances, including his brother Hank, who burgles for a living. Helen witnesses the intricate ritual of addicts shooting up heroin.
Bobby and Helen are eventually evicted from their apartment and move into a sleazier one. After Bobby asks her to deliver money to one of his dealers, Helen is arrested and one of the officers, Detective Hotch, explains to Helen about what it's like when there is a panic in Needle Park. A panic is when the drug supply on the street is low and addicts begin to turn each other into the police in return for favors. The officer unexpectedly releases Helen, who returns to Bobby, who begins to use drugs more heavily. Helen eventually begins to shoot up, too.
Bobby soon realizes Helen is using and he proposes marriage to her. Hank asks what they will live on and offers Bobby work as a burglar, to which Helen objects and insists that she will get a job. However, Helen quickly quits her new waitress job. Just before Bobby is to assist Hank in a burglary, he overdoses. Hank is angry with Bobby for jeopardizing his plans, but he allows Bobby to assist him on another night, during which Bobby is arrested. While he is in jail, Helen finds it harder to get drugs and has sex with Hank for heroin. When Bobby is released, he and Helen have a big fight.
Bobby persuades Santo, a major drug dealer, to let him handle distribution in Needle Park, while Helen turns to prostitution for fast money. After Bobby distributes Santo's drugs, Needle Park residents are happy to have a reliable source. As Helen's health deteriorates from increasing drug use, their relationship suffers, and Hotch keeps an eye on her. When Helen and one of her customers are detained, Hotch asks the arresting officer not to book her, as he needs her for something he is planning.
Helen's mother writes to her, inviting Helen to meet family friends who are visiting the city. Reluctantly, Helen agrees, dressing carefully to hide the track marks on her arms. Instead of meeting the friends, she picks up a customer, who Bobby scares away when he finds them together. Realizing they have been through a lot, they take the ferry to the countryside and buy a puppy. On the return trip, they discuss making a fresh start by moving away from Needle Park, but Bobby refuses and convinces Helen to shoot up in the mens room. When the puppy begins to whine, Bobby puts it outside the restroom, and when Helen discovers the dog missing, she finds it just before it falls off the end of the ferry into the water.
Helen goes to see her ex-boyfriend, Marco, but soon returns to Bobby to steal drugs from him. Needing to get high, Helen goes to a doctor claiming she needs drugs for pain. Aware that she is an addict, the doctor gives her a few samples and tells her never to return. She is arrested for selling some pills to children, during which Hotch warns her about the dangers of the women's prison. Knowing that Bobby can lead them to Santo, he offers Helen a deal if she will help them to catch Bobby in the act of picking up a drug shipment.
In the next two weeks, Hotch approaches Helen several times, reminding her of her pending trial. Depressed, she increases her drug use, but finally agrees to help the police. One night Helen and Hotch watch a squad of policemen apprehend Bobby, who is in possession of a large amount of heroin. When Bobby spots Helen on the street, he yells at her, and months later, when he is released from jail, Helen waits for him at the gate. Although his first impulse is to rebuff her, he turns to her and asks her "Well?", and together they walk away.
From childhood, Brooklyn teenager Natalie Miller, with upper front teeth that are slightly bucked and a nose too large for her face, has considered herself homely and she never has subscribed to her mother's determined belief that she will grow up to be pretty. Her best friend Betty is a knockout gorgeous blonde with boyfriends, which further depresses her. Natalie's father, a druggist who doesn't share his wife's optimistic outlook, bribes myopicoptometrist Morris to marry her, hoping his nearsightedness will prevent him from seeing she's no beauty.
After she discovers her father's plan, Natalie leaves home and moves to Greenwich Village, where she rents an apartment from eccentric Miss Dennison and sets out to enjoy a Bohemian lifestyle. She finds employment as a cocktail waitress at the Topless Bottom Club and befriends drug-addictedgo-go dancer Shirley Norton. Although she contemplates suicide after discovering her aspiring artist lover David Harris is married, he finally convinces her she's a worthwhile human being and not the ugly duckling she imagines herself to be.
