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Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather take a trip back to the 80s to re-watch Scarface, which (this is getting to be a theme) they find to be stranger and more interesting than they remember. They discuss the aim and the art of the film, the incredible performance by Pacino, and they wonder a little bit about why this film’s poster graces every dorm room wall in America.
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Further Reading
- Easy Riders, Raging Bulls by Peter Biskind
Differences between “generations” in a medium is something that always interests me, because there’s a point where the serpent obviously needs to nibble at its own tail. Some media are probably too individualistic for that to make sense (poetry) and some are probably too old to find anything resembling an original generation (theater), but in other cases, we watch these things happen in real time, like film or comic books.
The funny thing about the obsession with Capone knockoffs, though, is that Capone (and Montana and other imitators, as Mark pointed out) was an idiot who actively undermined his role. Meanwhile, teenagers completely ignore the likes of Pretty Boy Floyd, who allegedly destroyed mortgage documents at every bank he robbed, making it impossible for the bank to prove they were owed money. I’m not saying that’s necessarily more admirable, but it’s certainly a more interesting dynamic. Though I grew up around mob-wannabes, so my thresholds might be different than most.