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It was Al Pacino's idea to remake the original 1932 version of Scarface. He saw the film and was so inspired by Paul Muni's performance, he wanted to recreate that iconic role in his own way. As he explains:
"I had heard about Scarface for a long time because I was working on a play by Bertolt Brecht called Arturo Ui, which was very influenced by the American gangster picture. And I heard, even as a kid, I remember my relatives talking about Scarface and how George Raft flips the half dollar. And so I had heard a lot about it and never saw the picture.
So I was one day walking along Sunset Boulevard of all places, and there was the — I believe it's the Tiffany Theatre now — and it was playing in a double bill with something else, I forget, was Scarface. And there was a few of us, so I said, well, why don't we just go and take a look at it?
And we went in and it was, you know, an astounding movie, astounding. And the performance of Paul Muni was astounding and inspiring. And I thought after that, that I just wanted to imitate him. I wanted to do something. I was inspired by that performance. And I called Marty Bregman (Al's producer), who then put together some people and they started working on developing this as a film."
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