Team Rhoades

Pacino is three years older than De Niro and visibly protective of him. De Niro is famously a man of few words in life and a man of even fewer words in front of journalists. During the afternoon we spent together, he sat quietly on the couch and barely spoke, except to laugh as Pacino stood to roar or act out characters and scenes from their respective lives. Even now De Niro looks like himself: When he shrugs, you see a dozen iconic movie characters flicker through him. Pacino wore a baseball cap that he periodically removed to reveal a wild mane of hair—the watchful beauty of his youth has long since turned to a mischievous chaos, a visible glee to still be at it. Pacino is on a recent run of characters, as in The Humbling or Danny Collins, ravaged by time and pride, while De Niro has increasingly found himself playing fathers and grandfathers, men who have as much to express and as little to actually say as he himself does.

tony: this is some good stuff! thenks paulie

paulie: aye t, i put them live bees in yous gabagool ya eatin, jus like ya asked

t: you WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

-one hour later-

tony: *looks in mirror*

Vito Corleone’s cat in The Godfather was a stray the film’s writer/director, Francis Ford Coppola, found on the Paramount lot. It purred so loudly that some of Marlon Brando’s dialogue had to be dubbed.