SHE SHOOTS, HE SCORES Winn and Pacino need a fix.

Before Requiem for a Dream and Sid and Nancy, there was The Panic in Needle Park. A harrowing 1971 New York smack tragedy shot on location at Broadway and 72nd Street, the movie announced Al Pacino as a leading man, bringing him his next film, The Godfather. In advance of Panic’s rerelease at Film Forum, TONY caught up with members of the cast and crew.

Joan Didion, cowriter with husband John Gregory Dunne
I think I read James Mills’s book in the summer of 1967. I just thought it would make a terrific movie. John and I wrote a treatment; I had never written a treatment before. I saw it as a love story, not a drug story. I mean, it’s obviously a drug story. But it’s really about a middle-class girl from Indiana who falls beneath the range of the possible. That’s what struck me. In our writing, one of us would write 30 pages and then the other would brush it up and follow behind. They sold it on the line “Romeo and Juliet on junk.” John and I spent a couple of weeks living at the Alamac Hotel in Needle Park. Our determination was that we were never going back to the East Side; we were going to spend the entire time researching. Then we realized that they weren’t going to give us any clean sheets or towels. So we had to go to Bloomingdale’s.

Jerry Schatzberg, director
I read the script very fast and couldn’t get with it, turned it down. But my business manager told me that Al Pacino was interested. I’d seen Al four years earlier onstage. He was so different—so dynamic. I related to him. You know, we come from different parts of the Bronx, but there’s still Bronx in both of us. And I thought, Boy, if I ever did a film, that’s the guy. So I said, “Wait a second, I gotta read this again.” Luckily, they gave me a second chance, but the producers didn’t want Pacino. Hated him. I told them that he was the whole reason I was back. They asked me to go through the process of casting, which we did. Robert De Niro came in to read, not that I actually considered him. He was great, sure, but I had already made up my mind. De Niro could play the part; Pacino was the part. Then they wanted Mia Farrow instead of Kitty Winn.

Kitty Winn, “Helen,” Best Actress, Cannes Film Festival
I was a classically trained actor. In the spring of 1970, one of the plays I was doing was George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan. One night in the dressing room, someone handed me this script and asked if I would please read it. I never found out what they saw in my Saint Joan performance that screamed “drug addict,” but whatever. I stayed up all night reading it. So extraordinary: two people locked in a codependent relationship, a battleground. I had absolutely no experience with that world, no time for drugs. But that really is my arm in the film, though, getting the shot. I’m awfully glad it wasn’t Al sticking the needle in me because he was more nervous than I was. I didn’t even ask what was in the syringe. I just figured the guy was a medical person. We rehearsed it as though it were a stage play: me, Al and Jerry. No improvisation, it’s all the script. And it spoiled me forever. I don’t think I ever enjoyed doing another film as much again.

Adam Holender, Polish-born cinematographer
It was my fourth film in the United States; Midnight Cowboy was my first. I don’t want to sound immodest, but when you’re born and raised in New York City, you take a lot for granted. When you come from a gray, grimy Communist country, you notice things. Perhaps over the years, I’ve lost this advantage, but I had it then. Panic was an inexpensive film. Jerry and I spent an afternoon looking at The Battle of Algiers. After the first few days of shooting, our producer, Dominick Dunne, told us he got an angry call from the head of the studio, Darryl Zanuck, who said, “I don’t get what these guys are doing; it’s all blurry!” Jerry told him it was our conceit. Zanuck replied, “Oh, what the hell, it’s a cheap picture; who cares?” By the time we were done with the film, Zanuck had been fired.

The Panic in Needle Park opens Jan 30 at Film Forum.

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