Al Pacino To Play Joe Paterno In Upcoming Biopic

[Mitch Henessey]

UPDATE: Rarely have I gotten so many emails on a story that has struck a nerve among former students of Penn State. Some claiming to have clout in Hollywood say they will try to squash this project, and others are critical of me and defensive of the beloved Paterno, claiming he got a raw deal. I can’t imagine these apologists have kids. The idea that nobody acted seriously on information given by grad assistant and later assistant coach Mike McQueary that could have stopped a predator convicted on dozens of counts of molesting vulnerable children is unconscionable. Paterno defenders say that McQueary was vague in describing what he saw, but I fall on the side of those who feel that Paterno was so powerful at Penn State that he could have stopped this in its tracks had he chosen to follow up, or even if he had dialed three numbers: 911. McQueary certainly wasn’t vague in his testimony at Sandusky’s trial, saying he was sure he had stumbled upon Sandusky engaging in a sexual act with an underage boy. When I think of great college coaches, I wonder: what would someone like Bobby Knight have done if given the same information?

The administration at Penn State chose to protect its cherished powerhouse and lucrative football program, and went against the contract that any institution of higher learning has, which is to protect the young and vulnerable. The idea that this just somehow happened, and nobody but Sandusky was to blame, is something I will never embrace. Had that been the case, I doubt the university would have fired Paterno and later torn down his statue, or that the NCAA would have leveled devastating sanctions against the football program at the expense of current players who had absolutely nothing to do with any of this and who didn’t deserve punishment that was delivered to send a clear message about prioritizing what is important. Regretfully, that is Paterno’s enduring legacy now. But keep the emails coming!

EARLIER EXCLUSIVE, FRIDAY 5:30 PM: ICM Partners next week will be taking a package for a movie about former Penn State head football coach Joe Paterno, with Al Pacino attached to play the man called JoePa by most students at Happy Valley. The package will be built around Joe Posnanski’s biography Paterno, which is now atop The New York Times Bestseller List in its second week. Pacino’s manager, Rick Nicita, will produce.

The narrative arc of the movie that will be shopped is obvious. A man becomes the winningest coach in college football history and builds a powerhouse football program that turns him into a campus deity. When his former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky is revealed to be a pedophile and it comes out Paterno was told and helped hide the scandal, the coach was summarily fired. He died shortly after of cancer — and many feel of a broken heart — and the school had little choice but to raze a fabled statue of Paterno just as the NCAA dropped the hammer with sanctions against the school that included removal of Paterno’s wins going back to the cover-up. Sandusky was found guilty on 45 counts of sexual abuse against young boys and is expected to spend the rest of his life in prison.

Posnanski, an award-winning sportswriter who has written for Sports Illustrated and The Kansas City Star, had spent a year working on the book when the scandal broke. The book–and the movie–isn’t just about Paterno’s demise but rather his life before Penn State, his family and the iron grip he held over Penn State football and politics until his downfall. This can either be a feature film or a cable movie, because Shakespeare himself would have had trouble coming up with anything this shocking, and because the issues here still boggle the mind.

How could a coach whose mission was to mold college athletes into men and who was revered by his players stand idly by after learning one of his former coaches was a perv who used his charity for underprivileged kids, The Second Mile, to lure young fatherless victims for sexual trysts? An investigation indicated that Paterno used his influence to a degree that police weren’t even called after a graduate assistant (who later became an assistant coach) witnessed Sandusky engaged in what he believed to be a sexual encounter with a minor in the Penn State football facility showers but told the coach instead of calling the authorities. While Paterno told his superiors, he might not have wanted to sully his beloved football program with bad press, his inaction enabled Sandusky to operate unfettered for a decade, ruining young lives in the process.

A deal needs to be made, a script written and a director secured before this actually happens, but Pacino is a great choice. He played a memorable head football coach in the Oliver Stone-directed Any Given Sunday, and he also played Jack Kevorkian in the HBO film You Don’t Know Jack. I don’t often write about projects before they’re set up, but I doubt this one will stay on the market for long. John Burnham, Jeff Berg and Adam Schweitzer rep Pacino at ICM Partners, while the agency’s book czar Sloan Harris reps Posnanski.

http://www.deadline.com/2012/09/joe-paterno-movie-al-pacino-penn-state-gridiron-scandal/

I'm kind of late on this one, because I wanted to post this, but I kept forgetting about it.

Well, this was going to happen sooner or later. Pacino is the right man for this job. Unfortunately, he has a bad habit of choosing of awful films, but Pacino is still a great actor. The article mentions his role as the head coach in Any Given Sunday, and Pacino was just fantastic in that film.

Of course, this particular biopic will stir up a lot of controversy. The decision to make a film about the Jerry Sandusky scandal, and Joe Paterno's untimely firing and death will spark some strong reactions from audiences and critics one way or another. But the filmmakers should treat Joe Paterno's legacy with the proper respect it deserves. The man was a legend, and the scandal side of this film shouldn't overshadow his work as a football coach.

Thoughts on this?

 

[Dowdsy McDowds]

As much as it pains me to say it, this could be Pacino's last big role if the film does go through. What stood out to me in that report was that Pacino is attached despite little else being done in pre-production, although my guess would be that attaching Pacino's name is a means to get the ball rolling to draw other people to the project.

Any Given Sunday is an obvious reference point, but his turn in Angels in America is perhaps worth examining too. In AiA he played a closet homosexual dealing with AIDs in late 80s/early 90s America, or New York to be more exact. His character was a notoriously hard lawyer who seemed set in his ways and remained defiant to the end. Why I think this is a good reference is because it showed he can play a tough character that is hiding a big secret but can't come clean because of his reputation.

Definitely a project I'll be keeping an eye on.

 

[Mitch Henessey]

As much as it pains me to say it, this could be Pacino's last big role if the film does go through.

I was thinking the same thing.

Al Pacino is a seventy two year old man, and he's not a real box office draw anymore. The Pacino mystique died years ago, but he's still capable of delivering a good performance. As far as quality goes, we probably won't see Godfather II or Scent Of A Woman Pacino, but he can still give us Godfather III Pacino, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Still, depending on the future of this project, this could be Pacino's last major starring role. I hope he knocks out of the park, and if this film gains enough interest and attention, Pacino could have a nice little comeback story.