"The reason I did Scarface, sort of how it came to my attention... was I was watching the old Paul Muni film..." "At about 3:00 one morning when I couldn't sleep... or one evening when I couldn't sleep." "It occurred to me... that a film like that, a film like Scarface... the rise and fall of an American gangster... had not been done." "Certainly not been done recently." "It hadn't been done since Scarface." " Who'll stop me?" " I am." "I'm giving orders for the last time." "There's only one thing that gets and gives orders." "This is it." "I'll write my name all over this town in big letters." " Stop him, somebody!" " Get out of my way!" "I'm gonna spit!" "Having had done a number of films with Pacino..." "I'd always wanted to do a large gangster film... where he would have a part to play in this genre." "And it occurred to me that this was not the old Scarface... because the old Scarface had to do with the Prohibition... but the rise and fall of a gangster:" "An American gangster, a dynasty." "I talked to Al about it and I said, "There's something here." ""I don't know where it is yet."" "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." "I heard, even as a kid, I remember... my relatives talking about Scarface... and how George Raft flips the half a dollar." "So I had heard a lot about it and never saw the picture." "I was one day walking along Sunset Boulevard, of all places... and there was the, I believe it's the Tiffany Theatre now." "And playing in a double bill with something else was Scarface." "There was a few of us." "So I said, "Why don't we just go and take a look at it?"" "We went in, and it was an astounding movie." "And the performance of Paul Muni was astounding... and inspiring." "I thought after that... that I just wanted to imitate him." "I wanted to do something." "I was inspired by that performance." "I called Marty Bregman who then... put together some people... and they started working on developing this as a film." "We started to work on Scarface with David Ray... that was the first screenwriter on it." "David and I were working on it... and the screenplay was not exactly going... like everybody wanted it to." "And ultimately, I felt that we couldn't all agree... on what we were trying to do." "And David and I left the project." "I started to talk to other people." "One of the people I talked to was Sydney Lumet." "Sydney Lumet had the idea of putting it in Cuba... which I thought was a brilliant idea." "For years, I remember even Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro... had the Scarface movie in their repertoire... of things they wanted to do." "And it was a difficult thing to break through and find... a way in to do it in today's world." "He said, "Why don't you do this about the cocaine world?"" "And it occurred to me that that's it." "I enlisted Oliver, whom I'd known for a long time:" "Oliver and I were very good friends." "And we embarked on this venture... this quest... to explore the cocaine world." "He came to me after the failure of a picture I directed... called The Hand." "He wanted my services back as a writer." "I needed money and I was in a tough place." "I was leaving America and he said he wanted to do Scarface." "I said, "I'm not really interested in remakes."" "It was not until Sydney Lumet came into the picture..." "I think shortly thereafter, we had another conversation... and he told me that Sydney Lumet was very anxious to do the movie... and wanted to do it Cuban Miami... in 1980, 1981." "The Mariel boatlift to Miami." "I started into the research into Miami." "I went to Miami extensively." "I got to know both sides." "I got to know the law enforcement side... the Attorney General's..." "The attorney's office... the gangster elements through the lawyers... the ex-gangster elements... and eventually I wanted more." "I plunged on into the Caribbean... and went down to Bimini." "On another separate trip, I went to Ecuador... and to Bolivia." "My wife was with me because she was a part of my security." "A man with a woman seems a little less sinister... or less intrusive than a single man." "We struck up conversations with a lot of guys with jewellery... kind of playboy types." "I said I was a screenwriter and I was doing a movie about this." "They were flattered." "We started talking and went back to their place... drinking, snorting, and having a party." "And I mentioned the name of somebody who had helped me in Miami... with my research." "This person had been a defence attorney." "When I mentioned the name, their faces went white." "It meant that I may have been in some way connected to the prosecution... or to a cop or an enforcement officer and I was pretending to be a screenwriter... and I was going underground here." "I knew I was in trouble." "It was a scary moment." "It was good for me to get back in touch with that fear... that I had felt so often in Vietnam." "That fear is sort of what the essence of Scarface is about if you can capture it:" "Those moments of fear." "The concept if you don't know what's gonna happen next... the violence can come at any time." "I wrote Scarface in Paris, actually." "It got me away from that world of cocaine... because I was doing cocaine myself... and it was interfering with my thought process... and my brain cells were being damaged." "I needed to get away from America." "I knew too many people here... who were doing coke." "It was a time of cocaine in excess." "You do too much of that shit." "Nothing exceeds like excess." "You should know that, Tony." "I just got the script and on the first reading of the script..." "I realised how Oliver had captured that world... and made it his own... and brought out the wonderful texture and nuance... and power." "When Sydney read the screenplay, he didn't quite like it." "He felt it should take more of a political direction." "I thought that it not only wouldn't work, it wasn't true." "He thought it was too violent and over the top." "It wasn't what he wanted to do, so he left the project... which was disappointing." "Obviously, I would have loved to direct it." "I had directed The Hand and Seizure, but it was a big film with Pacino... and they would not let me direct it." "I went out and looked for another director and ultimately found De Palma... who saw the film as I saw it... as Oliver had written it." "When I first started with David Ray, we had more or less tried... to start with the original Scarface..." "Italian Chicago." "The script that came to me ultimately... that Bregman had developed with Stone, was completely different." "Nothing I had ever envisioned." "That's why I liked it so much... because of the whole new way of approaching this material." "And those elements were in the original script." "I liked the material specifically because... to me, it was sort of like a modern metaphor for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre... where cocaine becomes gold." "It's kind of the American Dream gone crazy... where you have this product... that you can turn into millions of dollars but in the process, you destroy your life." "It's like the capitalist dream gone bizarre... berserk, and as crazy as it can get, and completely self-destructive." "I think the direction that we chose... was pretty much embodied in the original Scarface:" "The elements that were basic in the construction... of the Muni Scarface." "I like Johnny." "But I like you more." "I like Frank, you know?" "Only I like you better." "There was the sister, the mother, the Manolo, the Manny character... his love affair with his competitor's girlfriend..." "All of these things were in the original Scarface." "And Oliver, being the brilliant writer that he is... invented the rest of it." "Bregman made some very important and very helpful suggestions." "Pacino had some good ideas." "Brian De Palma came on to the project... and was very supportive." "When we came to shoot the film, he allowed me... to take part in the film, be there, and study it." "Al was very much interested in the material... in how the characters developed and how it plotted out... and Oliver, of course, has very strong opinions." "It was a kind of lively collaboration, as I recall." "All I have in this world is my balls and my word." "I don't break them for no one, you understand?" "You want to go on with me, say it." "You don't, then you make a move."