A film about two very different men becoming unlikely allies, “The Insider” is perfectly cast with two very different actors. Russell Crowe, 35, is all explosive energy. An assertive Aussie, he’s as known for his barroom brawls as he is for his breakthrough roles in “Romper Stomper” as a vicious skinhead and in “L.A. Confidential” as a hot-tempered policeman. On the other hand, Al Pacino, 59, is the sovereign of the slow-burn. The very private actor can pump up the volume when he needs to, as he did for his Oscar-winning turn in “Scent of a Woman.” But Pacino’s signature characters — think Michael Corleone in “The Godfather” and Frank Serpico in “Serpico” — play their cards close to the vest. “Al’s a regular flower child,” confirms Crowe during a recent interview in Century City, Calif. “He’s so relaxed, and so comfortable with himself. The things that you see between ‘action’ and ‘cut,’ that’s acting. Al’s one relaxed bloke.” For his part, Pacino ranks Crowe among the best actors he’s worked with. “I was stunned by Russell,” says Pacino, in a separate interview. “It was interesting working with him, because we also didn’t know each other at all. And I think instinctively, we thought that would be an asset for these two characters.” The actors’ differing personalities mingled well in “The Insider,” opening Friday. In the fact-based film, Crowe plays Dr. Jeffrey Wigand, a tobacco-industry whistle-blower who stands to lose his wife, his family, and his reputation when he agrees to reveal cigarette-company secrets on “60 Minutes.” Days before the interview is set to air, the segment’s producer Lowell Bergman (Pacino) and on-air correspondent Mike Wallace (Christopher Plummer) are forced to drop the story when CBS brass become fearful of a lawsuit from Big Tobacco. The movie covers a lot of ground. It’s the first inside look at brand-name journalism since “All the President’s Men.” It’s about why some men rise to the occasion and become heroes and others do not. And it’s the most exhaustive deconstruction of a moral dilemma since “Quiz Show.” But as far as co-screenwriter Eric Roth (“Forrest Gump”) is concerned, the heart of the movie remains the relationship between Wigand and Bergman. “The whole thing really turns on the unlikely friendship between these two guys,” says Roth. “It’s like a bad buddy movie in a way.” “The Insider” might be driven by its characters, but it’s the controversy which is stirring up interest in the movie. Mike Wallace, star correspondent of “60 Minutes,” recently told The Washington Post that he’s saddened and depressed by the film, labeling it “a betrayal.” Wallace and “60 Minutes” executive producer Don Hewitt are clearly ticked off by the idea of a movie re-examining an embarrassing episode in their show’s otherwise laudable history. Isn’t it ironic, says Pacino, that the “60 Minutes” muckrakers are so nervous about the cameras being turned on them. “The thing is that the movie is a mosaic, and [Wallace and Hewitt] are just one part of that mosaic,” muses Pacino. “But all they see is that one little corner. But there’s a lot of other things going on in the movie.” Still, as someone who has been scrutinized by the media for more than 30 years, Pacino feels a twinge of sympathy for what Wallace is going through. “He’s concerned about his legacy, that this [incident] will be remembered as his legacy,” says the actor. “But I don’t believe it will be because he’s done such great things. He comes off OK in the movie, as far as I’m concerned. I think he’s totally redeemed at the end, and he seems almost heroic.” “The Insider” isn’t the first time Pacino has played a crusader. In 1973′s “Serpico,” he was a real-life cop named Frank Serpico who blew the lid off departmental corruption. “I really like to play characters like Lowell Bergman and Frank Serpico,” notes Pacino. “I remember I once asked Serpico why he did it, why he made such a fuss? I said, ‘Frank, why didn’t you just not take the payoffs and continue being the cop you wanted to be?’ He said, ‘Well, if I did that, who would I be when I listened to Beethoven?’ That just came out of him. He had integrity, I guess.” That said, it was important to Pacino and Michael Mann (“Last of the Mohicans,” “Heat”) that Bergman be as flawed and well-rounded as Wigand and Wallace. “I think that’s the surprise of the picture, that we managed to avoid that kind of self-righteous hero type of stuff,” notes Pacino. “I thought we sort of opened up the idea of what happens to people when they are put into these extreme situations. So it’s not about winners and losers, by any means.” Pacino’s next movie — Oliver Stone’s “Any Given Sunday,” due on Christmas Day — is all about winners and losers. In the movie, which co-stars Dennis Quaid, Cameron Diaz, and Jamie Foxx, the actor plays a bullying NFL coach who comes to realize he’s past his prime. “It’s fun to play guys who are nothing like you,” says Pacino. “If you’re playing a guy like Scarface, for instance, and somebody says, ‘I’m gonna cut your head off with a chain saw,’ you get to go, ‘Screw you, buddy!’ Who would say that? So you get different opportunities with different kinds of characters.” Crowe has made a career out of playing vastly different kinds of characters. A former child star who gave up acting for nearly 15 years, the New Zealand-born, Australia-reared actor has found the one-two punch. He followed his career-launching turn as a racist skinhead in “Romper Stomper” (1992) with a role as a sweet-natured gay plumber in “The Sum of Us (1994). In 1995, he played both a kind-hearted preacher in “The Quick and the Dead” and a cybervillian in “Virtuosity.” If you only know Crowe from his ferociously glamorous turn in “L.A. Confidential,” you’ll be shocked by his appearance in “The Insider.” The actor gained 30 pounds and dyed and thinned his hair to play the fiftysomething Wigand. By the time the cameras rolled, Crowe was nearly unrecognizable. “I’ve got a photograph of myself, actually, at Jerry Bruckheimer’s house, on the night of the Kentucky Derby,” recalls the actor. “I met Sylvester Stallone for the first time that night. He was really enthusiastic about meeting me because he enjoyed ‘L.A. Confidential.’ And he kind of turned around, saw me, and you could just see it in his face: ‘Who the hell is that? “‘That’s not that guy.’” For his next role, Crowe will switch yet gears again to play a bloodthirsty he-man in “Gladiator,” the big-budget action film from Ridley Scott. “See, that’s all part of the plan,” says Crowe, who once worked as a waiter, a bartender, a bingo-number caller, and a rock band’s lead singer. “If I was going go to that extreme with Jeffrey Wigand, then I really needed something physical afterwards.” There were those in Hollywood who expected the Crowe-Mann combo to be combustible. Mann is a demanding director and Crowe is a reported bad boy who has been known to abandon interviews if he gets bored, engage in fisticuffs with fellow actors, and, on at least one occasion, pull a small pistol on a set stylist. “Before ‘The Insider,’ I got all these phone calls, all these messages going, ‘Hey dude, I’m buying a Kevlar vest! I’m getting a crash helmet, brother! You [and Mann] are gonna explode!,’” says Crowe with a laugh. “But it was the exact opposite of that experience. It’s when somebody doesn’t know what they’re doing, when the captain of the ship has no idea where he wants to go, that’s when my job becomes difficult. Michael Mann is insane. He is a megalomaniac. He drove me crazy. And I loved it.” As far as Mann is concerned, Crowe was the only actor for the job. “When Russell [auditioned], I was able to sense for the first time the inner annihilation of Jeffrey Wigand.” Mann is just as complimentary about Pacino, whom he calls “a great artist.” Pacino “is devoid of fear of embarrassment,” says the filmmaker. “He is out there. He takes chances. He walks the high wire.”

Kevin Lomax (KEANU REEVES) is a success in the courtroom and out of it. He’s a young Florida defense attorney who’s never lost a case. No matter how repugnant the crime, no matter how guilty the defendant, Kevin Lomax has the power to mesmerize the jury into accepting his arguments, buying into his logic, being convinced by his charisma – and freeing his clients. Lomax enjoys a happy marriage with his sexy young wife, Mary Ann (CHARLIZE THERON), and even has a good relationship with his straitlaced, churchgoing mother (JUDITH IVEY), despite her pursed lips over his small-town-boy-makes-good lifestyle. In fact, things seem just about perfect for Kevin – nearly Heaven on Earth. But not exactly.
One day Lomax is in court defending an alleged child molester. In order to win his case he has to break down the victim’s composure just enough to make the jury wonder if a teenage girl might have lied about her teacher’s slimy advances. And win Lomax does – despite his own awareness that his client is guilty as sin. Soon after, Lomax receives a visitor – an urbane New York attorney (RUBEN SANTIAGO-HUDSON) who explains that his powerful law firm has become aware of the Florida hotshot’s acquittal record and would like to meet with him personally – at their very lavish expense. Over the urgent objections of Lomax’s mother, who asserts that New York City is the world’s nexus of sin, Kevin and Mary Ann head for the Big Apple and a look at the astounding luxury that life in the big city can offer the fortunate. And Kevin Lomax meets John Milton (AL PACINO), the man who has summoned him in this extraordinary fashion. Milton, an earthy, brilliant and charismatic man, is the founder and head of Milton, Chadwick, Waters, a powerful, mysterious law firm with interests and clients all over the world. He’s been watching Lomax and he wants him at the firm. He can make Kevin a very enticing offer, he says – a home, a salary, a position in life that no one else can top. Lomax, dazzled by the gorgeous apartment he’s shown, the beautiful women and powerful men at Milton’s parties, and the brilliant, accomplished partners in Milton’s firm, grabs the brass ring. He and Mary Ann move into their elegant new home and begin a new life. But as Lomax tastes the power of being a wealthy New York attorney, something in him changes. Winning is no longer just a goal – it becomes an obsession. When Mary Ann starts telling her husband that the other partners’ wives are not what they appear, that their life is not a good as it seems, that she’s having frightening experiences she can’t explain, he comforts her brusquely and ignores what she’s saying. And when Milton’s interest in him seems inexplicably generous, Lomax decides not to question it. So by the time he finds himself defending a wealthy real-estate developer (CRAIG T. NELSON) who’s accused of three brutal murders, Kevin Lomax is thrilled by the challenge, not frightened by his growing belief that his client is guilty of an even bigger crime. Then Eddie Barzoon (JEFFREY JONES), the firm’s managing partner, dies a sudden, horrible death. Mary Ann’s terrified perceptions pull her away from sanity. Another law partner, the beautiful Christabella (CONNIE NIELSON), teases Lomax so seductively he can hardly think. Kevin’s mother comes to New York and warns him that the situation has gone too far and there are certain things he needs to know. And through it all, John Milton keeps reminding his prot‚g‚ that life is rich with possibilities for those who are unafraid to sample them. But Kevin is beginning to be afraid. Lomax’s existence in Heaven on Earth has ended. Now he’s stepping into Hell. And standing at the gates to welcome him is John Milton. Movieweb

(from Dancesport Studios, where Pacino studied for his big Tango scene. Thanks Sarah Scott for this info.)

Viewers may have seen a bit of that in the film “Scent of a Woman” when Pacino, playing a blind man on a wild last tear, led a hesitant Gabrielle Anwar to the dance floor and tangoed the wind out of her sails. That’s exactly what Pellicoro did the first time Anwar, who is no dancer, walked into his studio. In fact, he did the same thing when he was auditioning to be the dance trainer and choreographer for the film. He led director Martin Brest’s startled secretary from her chair, put a guiding hand on her spine, pressed his palm to her palm and ocho’ed his way into film history footnote. “When it was over,” he says of that first furious tango with Anwar, “it was like a roller coaster ride for her. She didn’t know what had happened. I swept her off of her feet. Not to flatter myself, but that’s one thing I can do in this life.” The obsessive Pellicoro, a former Adelphi University dance major, gave his life over to partner dancing as a hustle club kid of the ‘70s. He and his little gang of Van McCoy fanatics would carpool around the tri-state area, “challenging” the locals. Eventually they decided that they were too good to dance with ordinary people, that their look would be dragged down by the missteps of mirror-watching dilettantes. “The hustle was taken away from the people,” Pellicoro says. That’s when he decided that charity and grace would be the rule of any dance class he would teach. That does not apply, however, to his own dancing. He and his dance, love and business partner, Eleny Fotinos, are working toward their comeback in the competitive dancing world. Pellicoro met Fotinos, certainly one of the more remarkable flowers of Astoria, seven years ago when she was 16 and her mother was learning the hustle. Pellicoro and Fotinos danced in a Pro-Am tournament—he the pro, she the amateur—and they’re still each trying to get the other’s moves right. Pellicoro invited a guest to observe a practice session with the words, “Come in and watch us fight.” Pellicoro, with this obsessiveness, and Pacino, with all his actorly intensity, go right into the groove. It was another successful fusion for a man who lives to partner. For two months Pellicoro and Fotinos worked with “Al” in those quiet afternoons before the after-work dance class rush hour. They’d tango for 20 minutes. They they’d take a 15-minute cappuccino break. “I like breaks,” Pacino would say. “I’m big on breaks.”

Actor awe was not a problem, since Pellicoro seems almost unconscious of life outside of dance, and the glamorous Fotinos, whose feet have hardly left the studio floorboards since she partnered up with Pellicoro, didn’t even know what the man looked like. “I don’t like bloody movies,” is how she explains having missed the corpse-littered Pacino oeuvre. When the actor walked into the mirrored rooms above Columbus Circle with his shaggy hair and his baseball cap on backward, they kind of wondered if this guy could move. They couldn’t even tell if there was a working muscle in there. “He wears his pants five times too big,” said Fotinos. They taught him basic principles of tango and how to stand and move like a dancer. Pellicoro and Fotinos would dance, and they he would stand and imitate Pellicoro’s commanding Ramon Navarro attitude. “He was really a natural but he wanted to be perfect,” said Pellicoro. During breaks Pacino would grill them about their lives, “because he’s no longer a normal person,” as Pellicoro says. He was fascinated by their schedule—how they’d bike or use Rollerblades to warm up in the morning, then practice their own competitive Latin routines for three or four sweaty hours. They train teachers, do business, teach two hours of group classes and then throw a two-hour dance party in the studio every night, where people drink coffee and eat cookies and sweat like crazy in a salsa-spiked fever. Pacino couldn’t believe they could work so hard. As for his life, he told them how a bunch of friends had sort of taken over his Manhattan apartment for a 24-hour card game, so now he stayed somewhere else. “He was a sweetheart,” said Fotinos.

Then filming began. It was a new Al. He resisted learning his choreography, balked at practicing, kept insisting the editors would do wonders with cuts and splices. One day Fotinos ordered the cappuccino delivered three times, and three times the actor insisted it was freezing! He took a wad of bills form his pocket, threw them on the floor, and shouted, “There’s a hundred dollars in it for anyone who can get me a hot cup of coffee!” The tango team was in shock. It took them weeks to realize that Pacino had simply become his nightmare screen character. Filming or not filming, he embodied an impossible, crabby old man 24 hours a day. But as soon as filming ended, Sweetheart was back. Several times they’ve detected him in his big clothes cover on the street—”We know his body and his posture”—and he always greets them as if they were dear card-playing buddies.

Pellicoro did not become, as his ads announce in capital letters, The Man Who Taught Pacino to Tango, until well after the movie had hit. That’s when the phone calls began peppering his West Side dance studio from people who would ask, “Can you teach me to tango?” Guess what had inspired them? And suddenly Pellicoro realized, hey, I could use this. The ads went into the paper, and he went agent-shopping. “Paul is anything but career-minded,” says Eleanor Bergstein, ;the producer-writer of “Dirty Dancing.” She has a writing studio on Central Park South within sight of DanceSport, and in the process of writing a new film about ballroom dancing, she’s spent months taking lessons and soaking up color there. She laughs about how she tentatively introduced herself to him, expecting him to bore right in on a possible film job, only to be asked by him four weeks later, “Now why did you want to hang around here?” While Bergstein’s new film will not be based specifically on DanceSport, the spirit of those 250 people struggling nightly to convert their limbs into liquid poetry will be in her movie. She says, “I really want you to feel that what is so beautiful to watch could be you, and this is how you do it.” This is how you do it? As Fotinos and Pellicoro whirl around the practice studio, seat flying off their muscles in fat drops, they fling commands from clenched jaws. “You follow me—” he says to her. “I did.” “No, I followed you this time, why don’t you try following me?” The lyrics invite, “Have fun, do the samba.” Fotinos shrieks, “My RIBS!” They are a living warning not to take these dance classes too far. A movie set has got to be a break from this. Pellicoro is pursuing more film work, but it’s clear that it’s got to be on his terms, that it has to be real dancing and not just some fakey little shuffling. He is a purist. It’s got to look good, it’s got to be precise. At the end of one of each of his long practice battles with Fotinos, he retreats to an upstairs sanctum, showers and changes into another of his perfectly pressed outfits in colors by Gauguin. “It’s nighttime, it’s time to look good,” he says, as he stands in the tiny studio lobby where bent-over Columbia grad students breathlessly swap their Doc Martens for satiny T-straps. By Pellicoro’s elbow, on the counter, is a little dish of peppermints. They are a subtle invitation for students to freshen their breath and check their look before drawing a partner close in a soft, twilight samba. This articles originally appeared in New York Newsday on Monday, June 14, 1993.(pp. 44-45)

“Al Pacino is brilliant” – Kathleen Carroll NY Daily News

“A Stunning performance by Al Pacino” – Gene Shalit WNBC-TV

“The genius of Al Pacino. He’s a joy to watch.” – Pat Collins WCBS-TV

“Al Pacino‘s work cries out for an academy award nomination.” Norma McClain Stoop- After Dark

“Al Pacino achieves a sort of comic saintliness as he struts, rants, cajoles, commands. A Pacino gem.” -Joseph Gelmis Newsday

“Al Pacino rides triumphantly through ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ with his dazzling talents.” Bernard Drew -Gannett Newspapers

“Pacino shows another measure of his remarkable range… from start to end it is engrossing and unpredictable.” Charles Champlin, LA Times

“Al Pacino flatly is the best and most versatile actor in movies today.” Walter Spencer – WOR Radio

“Al Pacino is beautiful, intense and gentle.” Mort Sheinman- Woman’s Wear Daily.

“Al Pacino turns in his finest performance to date.” – Susan Toepfer