Al Pacino suffered an ankle injury on the set of Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather,” and admits in his new memoir to feeling relieved that it might get him fired. At the time, the studio was still questioning whether Pacino was the right fit for mobster Michael Corleone, and the actor felt immense pressure to get it right.
In a new excerpt from the book — titled “Sonny Boy” — via The Guardian, Pacino writes that a rumor started to spread around set that he was going to be “let go.” “There was a discomfort among people, even the crew, when I was working. I was very conscious of that,” Pacino said. “The word was that I was going to be fired, and, likely, so was the director. Not that Francis wasn’t cutting it – I wasn’t. But he was the one responsible for me being in the film.”
One night, Pacino said Coppola invited him to a restaurant and told him “you’re not cutting it.” And after screening footage of the film so far at Coppola’s suggestion, Pacino agreed. “I don’t think there’s anything spectacular here,” he remembers thinking. Luckily, a key scene — where Michael enacts revenge against Sollozzo and McCluskey in an Italian restaurant — was moved up on the filming schedule. It was time for Pacino to prove himself.
But it all went wrong when it came time for Pacino to film the stunt where Michael jumps on a moving car. He didn’t have a stuntman, so it was up to him — and he missed.
“I had twisted my ankle so badly that I couldn’t move,” Pacino writes in the excerpt. “Everyone on the crew had crowded around me. They were trying to lift me up, asking me: Was my ankle broken? Could I walk? I didn’t know.”
Secretly, Pacino felt relieved that his time on “The Godfather” might be over. “I lay there thinking, This is a miracle. Oh God, you’re saving me. I don’t have to do this picture any more. I was shocked by the feeling of relief that passed over me,” he writes. “Showing up for work every day, feeling unwanted, feeling like an underling, was an oppressive experience, and this injury could be my release from that prison. At least now they could fire me, recast another actor as Michael, and not lose every dime they’d already put into the picture.”
But, of course, that didn’t happen. Despite his injury, Pacino’s performance in the restaurant scene convinced the studio that he was their leading man.
“Because of that scene I just performed, they kept me in the film. So I didn’t get fired from ‘The Godfather,’” Pacino writes. “I did have a plan, a direction that I really believed was the way to go with this character. And I was certain that Francis felt the same way.”
Pacino went on to earn an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor for his performance, and starred in sequels “The Godfather Part II” and “The Godfather Part III.”
Pacino’s memoir “Sonny Boy” is out now.
