Previously:

With Fuqua back, new writer for Scarface remake

Fuqua circles back to Scarface remake

David Ayer drops out of Scarface remake

David Ayer in talks for Scarface remake

Coen Brothers will rewrite Scarface script

Fuqua drops out of Scarface remake; Diego Luna will play lead

Terence Winter to tackle Scarface script

The Scarface remake just got a lot less interesting

Scarface remake is Larraín's dream project

The Scarface remake just got a lot more interesting

According to Oxygen's Courtney Brogle, "The docuseries mainly tracks the rise and fall of Joe Exotic, a bombastic Oklahoma zookeeper who in January was sentenced to 22 years in prison for hiring a hitman in a murderous plot against a longtime animal rights activist enemy named Carole Baskin." Yet several articles this past week have wondered about another person included in the series: Mario Tabraue, who is believed to be one of the real-life inspirations for Tony Montana. As Bruney puts it in the Esquire article, "Tabraue breezily describes an informant's dismemberment, and still comes off as being among the most normal people featured in the series."

At Distractify, Mustafa Gatollari's headline reads, "Mario Tabraue Was Real Life 'Tony Montana' and Most Normal Guy in 'Tiger King'"...

The presentation of increasingly absurd and downright insane facts in Netflix's Tiger King docu-series is nothing short of masterful. Eric Goode and Rebecca Chaiklin can't receive enough praise for the way each episode was shot and edited. The way it's paced, how much time and attention is given to each fantastical plot point is awe-inspiring, and the unprecedented access they had to the folks in the documentary, like former drug dealer Mario Tabraue, is astounding.

I don't know any other way to put this, but a man who was once one of the biggest mover of illegal narcotics in Miami — a man who was a part of all the unsavory bits of business that went into moving feel-good contraband with his father just so he could support his exotic animal habit — is one of the most "normal" people featured in the docu-series. Let that sink in.

The fact that Eric and Rebecca were able to get access to Tabraue's private zoo and feature him in the documentary is pretty significant, especially because he's an extremely private person who lives in a secure compound that's under 24-hour surveillance.

Hailed by many as the inspiration for Tony Montana in the iconic drug film, Scarface, Tabraue is now the owner and founder of the Zoological Wildlife foundation in Miami.

At the height of his operation, the Miami Herald reported that Tabraue was the alleged leader of a 10-year-long drug operation in the '80s worth about $79 million. In addition to spending money on big cats, the "kingpin" owned several machine guns and an enormous estate with a mirrored ceiling and a "throne" like Montana's in the movie with his initials emblazoned on it: MT (versus TM in the film). Like Tony, Tabraue is also a Cuban-American.

Even though Tabraue used his exotic animal import business as a cover for smuggling drugs into Florida, his love for the majestic beasts trumped his passion for hustling narcotics.

Tabraue was eventually arrested after being involved in the murder of ATF agent and informant Larry Nash. A New York Times article indicated that Nash was killed by Tabraue's cartel during a massive marijuana trafficking operation.

"A drug-smuggling ring that killed an informer and cut up his body while trafficking in a half-million pounds of marijuana has been broken, the Federal authorities said today. The ring also bribed police officers to protect their operation, said Richard Gregorie, the chief assistant United States Attorney here. At one time, the indictment charged, members of the ring used Miami police officers to collect, count and disburse drug profits," the report stated.

In addition to being charged with the murder of Nash, Tabraue was also accused of killing his first wife in 1981 after she threatened to reveal the inner workings of his drug trafficking operation to authorities. He was acquitted of this charge, but in 1989 he was found guilty of racketeering and was slapped with 100 years in federal prison.

He complied with authorities in prison, working as an informant, and was released after a dozen years.

After getting out of prison, Tabraue and his wife, Maria, run ZWF, which cares for exotic animals and offers small group tours where visitors can get a closer look his private zoo. Those who have visited the ZWF have left mostly glowing reviews and despite Tabraue's criminal past, his foundation appears to be unassailable with a huge priority placed on animal nutrition and wellness.

Although Tabraue isn't necessarily the focal point of Tiger King — Schreibvogel, Baskin, and Antle's zoos take up more screen time — it's apparent he's running a much different operation than Joe Exotic's zoo, which was not only way larger by comparison, but housed a lot more animals and, at time, found difficulty in feeding the creatures it housed.

Nowadays you can follow Tabraue's work with animals on his Instagram page, mariowildlife.

The Hotel Mutiny, in Miami, was a pleasure palace where Hollywood royalty and rock stars mixed with America's most notorious cocaine kingpins. It was the inspiration for the famous Babylon Club in legendary gangster film Scarface *Say hello to my little friend*.

Now, a new book looks at life inside the hotel during its Seventies heyday. And author Roben Farzad, who has written the book 'Hotel Scarface', has given us a bit of an idea of all the bonkers stuff that led to Al Pacino and co. making a classic...

New Year's Eve, 1979, and behind the dimly lit bar at Miami's Hotel Mutiny, waitresses, hotel porters and cooks were stacking velvet whiskey totes full of cocaine.

These were the evening's tips at a legendary hotel owned by founder Burton Goldberg.

Sat amid crystal-lined tables were Hollywood royalty, rock stars and models - including Liza Minnelli, Ted Kennedy, Burt Reynolds, Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Eagles. But partying with them - as they did every night at the Mutiny - were America's biggest cocaine kingpins.

It was these who no longer paid staff for good service in currency. They simply - and openly - passed over wraps of drugs worth thousands of pounds.

In the Seventies, cocaine hit Miami with hurricane force and no place attracted the dealers and dopers quite like this luxury hotel in the city's affluent Coconut Grove enclave.

Among the regular drinkers were such notorious characters as bomber-spy-doper-Nazi-hunter Ricardo "Monkey" Morales, Mario Tabraue, the kingpin with leopards and a pet chimp that drove shotgun in his Benz, and Willie & Sal, the speed-racing 'Boys' who created a $2 billion cocaine empire.

For these men - and their tips - hostesses would always go the extra mile. They would hide weapons in cushions and breadbaskets. They offer discrete warnings whenever the cops were on the premises. One waitress was even adept at clicking her stilettos against new guys on the dance floor to check for an ankle holster on a suspected undercover officer.

How had a respected hotel come to this?

By 1979, South Florida was a failed state. It was raking in hundreds of thousands of Cuban refugees, including thousands sprung from Fidel Castro's prisons and insane asylums. Hit men were among them, showing up in Miami with their weapons tattooed on the inside of their lips, raring for contract work.

The homicide rate was out of control. The county morgue was so overwhelmed that Burger King had to lease it a refrigerated truck for the overflow of murdered corpses. Race riots left swathes of the city in ashes.

But in its heyday, the lush, members-only Mutiny Club became an oasis within the chaos -- where you would go (if you could get in) to escape the mayhem, even while you were seated among those who were causing it and becoming rich on it.

The dopers. The beautiful women. The celebs. One hundred and thirty differently themed rooms, based on fantasies like bordellos, Star Trek and Arabian Nights. The Mutiny had it all. It was the Magic City's Studio 54.

Filmmakers Oliver Stone and Brian De Palma knew as much. That's why they themselves stayed at the Mutiny when in town to shoot Scarface, their Miami remake of the 1932 gangster movie.

Similarly, when Miami Vice started shooting in town, one drug lord scored roles on two episodes, in exchange for quality blow for the cast and crew.

But what ultimately transpired at the Mutiny was stranger than Hollywood could ever imagine.

In its decade of existence, the hotel was an unprecedented ecosystem for drug traffickers, law enforcement, celebs, spooks, refugees, parvenus, informers, and scammers, playing host to a drama of murder, corruption, betrayal, and recklessness.

It was a surreal free-trade zone, of sorts, where three generations of Cuban gangsters partied debaucherously and plotted their dominance of perhaps the single most lucrative commodity known to man.

But the Mutiny's infamous orgies and hot tubs would ultimately give way to a decade-long pursuit by the Feds. It would turn from pleasure palace to the front line in the war on drugs.

Dive into the opulent luxury of 1980s Miami in the most breathtaking theater in Los Angeles! The world is yours with a cinematic masterwork on the big screen and an outrageously extravagant disco dance party before and after the film.

Al Pacino is the charismatic and savage Tony Montana, whose rocket rise in the 1980s Miami underworld is a fever dream of power and pleasure. Can he grab hold of the American dream, or will the high life take a turn? Also starring Michelle Pfeiffer in her startling, sumptuous breakout role teeming with glamour and grit.

The neon decadence of the Babylon Club comes to life on all five floors of the extravagant Los Angeles Theatre, from the exquisite balconies to the palatial ballroom, with full bars, DJs, and dazzling photos moments on every floor. Dress up in decadent glamour for our free photo studio to take your portrait home.

With virtuoso direction by Brian De Palma and Oliver Stone’s riveting script, you won’t want to miss this epic Cinespia night.

All ages, 21+ w/ valid ID for cocktails. Rated R No one under 17 admitted without parent or guardian.

De Palma’s ultraviolent, ultra-quotable, ultra-colorful, ultra everything remake of Howard Hawks’s gangster classic is the crass flipside to The Godfather, a massively deranged and gleefully disreputable tale of the rise and plunging downfall of a Cuban immigrant turned Miami drug kingpin. Al Pacino throws himself into the title role with the fury of an angry Rottweiler, while Michelle Pfeiffer glowers gorgeously in her breakthrough role as his trophy wife. Featuring cinema’s second most shocking shower scene, and a script by Oliver Stone, Scarface is the film of the Reagan eighties.

Robert De Niro: This is how I remember it, II could be wrong... We were talking about Scarface, and you were considering who to do it with, what director. And I was saying, you should really do it with Brian, of of the choices that you had. I don't... I thought I'd...[uttering a bit to indicate this is how he remembers it] and then I said if you don't do it, I'm going to do it, because I want, you know, I wanted to do it.

Al Pacino: Yeah, they were going to do Scarface, Marty and Bob. They hadn't... they didn't do it yet, they were playing with the idea.

De Niro: I was thinking the idea was, they would have done it.

Pacino: And then I know I was, when I saw Scarface in California, I said, call Marty Bregman. Who was the producer. And I said, I think this is a, this guy, Paul Muni, in this part, I said I think it was great. And I said, I would just like to do him, if I could [laughing]. And then he said, no, he didn't know Scarface. I said, "See the film, I think we can do it." I didn't know that Marty and Bob were interested in it, and...

De Niro: We were just talking, I think it was all loose. You know...

Pacino: When he got Lumet... Bregman and Lumet... it was Lumet's idea to do it Cuban.

De Niro: Ah.

Pacino: But then Marty and Lumet didn't quite agree on where the thing should go and how it should be done. And then Brian came in. They had a parting. And Brian came in. And then that was the... I think that was the thing that took it off. Because the way Brian saw it, and Oliver saw it, and Marty saw it, and I saw it, had this sort of, you know, this kind of... thing that was all... pretty much were opposite of each other, in certain areas. And that's when Scarface came about.

De Niro: I just thought, I think I remember, that I just felt Brian would be the best because he would be the least conventional of the choices of the other directors.

Pacino: [nodding] That's true.

De Niro: That was all. And I had worked with him, I knew him.

Pacino: Turned out that was very true.

De Niro: Yeah

Pacino: Because he did have his own way of doing it, which made it different, and it really did make that film. And so did Bregman, by the way. Marty had that feeling about it, too. Larger than life. Just that little step up.

Well, not counting when we knew each other on the Lower East Side when we were 16 years old and he wasn’t an actor and I wasn’t a filmmaker, I met him again when we were about 27 or 28.

Brian De Palma introduced us because he had worked with him on Hi, Mom! and De Niro actually knew many of the characters that I knew. All the people I grew up with, he knew them and he knew how they were reflected in Mean Streets, for example.

So pretty much he’s the only person left around who knows where I come from and who I knew, so that was the beginning of the bond of trust.

"By now, far more well-versed in De Palma's filmography (beyond, of course, my personal favorite, The Untouchables), this time around, I found myself far more easily caught up in the Montana family circus than before. The satiric epitome of the Me Decade as well as just a terrific gangster picture that comes (as they all do) with a warning against flying too close to the sun because you crave the feeling of warmth that you get from its rays, Scarface works extraordinarily well on a number of levels."

Earlier in the essay, Johans contrasts the ways Tony Montana interacts with Elvira and Gina:

When Manny makes the mistake of saying aloud that Tony's sister is beautiful, we learn that the Achilles' heel of 1983's Tony is the same as it was back in 1932. Taking the conversation from a two to a ten in seconds, Pacino's Tony shouts, "you stay away!" before warning Manny that "she is not for you."

Needless to say, that definitely telegraphs the future for would-be forbidden lovers, Manny and Gina. Yet it also reveals that, although paternalistic, in place of their American father who ran out on them years earlier, Tony's need to protect the chastity of his sister borders on an obsession that De Palma frames in a creepily romantic light from their very first scene together.

From the knock on the door to Gina running after him into the night, the moment plays less like the return of a black sheep son and more like a boyfriend who's been banned from the house since he's not the kind you take home to mama. And although this incestuous undercurrent ran through the original as well, between Tony and his sister in both versions of Scarface and James Cagney's character's obsession with his mom in White Heat, you get the impression that Freud would've had a field day with these gangsters and their Madonna-whore hang-ups.

Still, while his love for Gina is covert, Tony's most overt object of romantic obsession in Scarface is undoubtedly Elvira, the blonde, leggy goddess played by then-newcomer Michelle Pfeiffer. The girlfriend of Robert Loggia's character Frank who, incidentally, is his boss, when Tony first sees Elvira, she wears a backless teal gown that, depending on the light, flashes green like money or as blue as the ocean he crossed on his way from Cuba. Pacing with her back to him inside a glass elevator like a caged tiger, even before he sees her face, Tony knows he has to have her.

A thing to be acquired that's much too wild for him, like the chainsaw used in a bathroom in an early drug buy scene that's straight out of a horror movie or an actual tiger that he brings home as a pet, Elvira is something he feels that needs to be tamed. And sure enough, when Tony makes an early play for her, Elvira asserts her dominance like a predator by telling him not to call her "baby" before swatting him away with her paw.

Finally, "freeing" her from her gilded cage of life with Frank by (of course) taking him out because this is the law of the jungle after all and only the strong survive, Tony pulls back the sheet on her bed in the middle of the night with her deceased boyfriend's blood still on his hand to tell her she's coming with him. Having never even kissed her (consensually), unlike the scenes where Tony gives his sister an engraved heart shaped locket or watches Gina try on clothes, throughout Scarface, there's nothing romantic about his interactions with Elvira.

Not sure what to do with her once he's gotten her, since it was most likely the thrill of the chase that was his strongest aphrodisiac, we realize even before Tony does just how incompatible the two are as lovers. In their first dance together, Tony insults her while trying to size up her sex life with Frank, which is intriguing because we're not exactly sure she's better off with him since, despite the fact that Tony talks a good game in front of Manny, for all we know, the two seldom make love as it's never shown.

For a film that's known for its excess, the lack of a love scene in Scarface is significant. In fact, the only time sex is even mentioned is when Tony and Elvira fight, which doesn't bode well for their satisfaction in that department. Tony wants her to have his children but there's a reason why animals don't mate in captivity (and that's before an avalanche of cocaine is added to the mix). Proposing marriage by tying it into his rise to the top only confirms this isn't a courtship, it's a business deal, after all. Tony takes her out of one cage and puts her right into another.

By then, however, he's as addicted to power and status as she is to cocaine. But as the film continues, he matches her enthusiasm in that as well, at one point snorting so much from a mountain of coke on his desk that the drug sits on his nose like a dollop of whipped cream, making him feel even more paranoid and invincible than before. Right on cue, of course, that's when the bullets really start flying.

I don't usually think in terms of 35th anniversaries, so I hadn't been planning to post anything about the 35th anniversary of Scarface-- after all, at the 35th anniversary Scarface screening and reunion this past April at Tribeca, with Robert De Niro hanging around (it's his festival), De Palma at one point said, "35 is such an odd number to celebrate an anniversary- why not 50? Greetings was created in 1968, we’re all still here." In any case, I felt like posting the two images above, so here it is-- and here are a couple of links from the past few days, followed by a repost of the People Magazine coverage of the Scarface screenings and parties in New York and Hollywood:

Variety: Inside Scarface's Sometimes Rocky Road to Becoming a Classic

Mental Floss: 15 Surprising Facts About Scarface

Scarface 1983 Premiere

In its December 19, 1983 issue, People Weekly covered the parties of the Scarface previews that took place within 24 hours of each other in New York and Hollywood. It is interesting to look back at the celebrities' reactions to the film upon its initial release. The article, written by Kristin McMurran, David Hutchings, and Pamela Lansden opened like this: Kurt Vonnegut walked out after 30 minutes, muttering, "It's too gory for me." Author John Irving followed. Cheryl Tiegs called it "the most violent film I've ever seen. It makes you never want to hear the word 'cocaine' again." The celebs were unnerved by Scarface, the scarifying update of the 1932 Paul Muni classic, starring Al Pacino as a Cuban immigrant drug lord who shoots his way to the top and snorts his way back down (see review, page 12). At the movie's tag-team previews in New York and Hollywood, the verdict was generally the same: pro-Pacino and anti-firepower. Actor James (The Onion Field) Woods, though, had a different view. "Personally," deadpanned Woods, "I'm all for any movie whose lead character keeps a grenade launcher in his living room."

Pacino himself missed the New York preview because he was performing in a Broadway revival of David Mamet's American Buffalo, although he appears to have made it to the afterparty. In the photo to the left, Pacino is leaving the New York party by limo with his then-current girlfriend Kathleen Quinlan. In the photo at the top of this page, he is shaking hands with co-stars Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Steven Bauer. The caption underneath the photo quotes Bauer: "I feared rejection until I met Al. It's hard to imagine yourself in the same league."

The article says that Lucille Ball was the favorite of fans watching from the sidewalk, until Eddie Murphy arrived to upstage her. Murphy is pictured at left with Diane Lane, who arrived late herself. Murphy said, "Al Pacino is my favorite actor. I know the dialogue to all his movies. When I met him, I groveled." The article says that the preview audience was more subdued after the screening, quoting Lucille Ball (whom the article consistently refers to as simply "Lucy") as saying, "We thought the performances were excellent, but we got awful sick of that word."

Martin Bregman hosted an after-preview party for 130 guests at Sardi's in New York, where Cher, who brought her 14-year-old daughter Chastity along, told People, "I really liked it. It was a great example of how the American dream can go to shit." Raquel Welch, who also brought along her daughter Tahnee, said, "A lot of people will enjoy the comic-strip violence that goes on ad nauseam." Welch is also quoted in a photo caption as saying that "the violence is just for effect."

Another mother-daughter pair of interest showed up at the Los Angeles premiere: Tippi Hedren and daughter Melanie Griffith. Griffith at the time was married to Steven Bauer, and would go on to star in Brian De Palma's very next film in 1984, Body Double. According to the September 16 2003 New York Post, Bauer was planning to check out Griffith's performance in Broadway's Chicago while he is in town for the September 17 re-release premiere. Hedren was quoted in the 1983 article as saying, "Scarface was too brutal." The article concludes in L.A. with one of the big stars of the day, Joan Collins: Joan Collins, who would gussy herself up for a smog alert, was one of the few who dressed elegantly, sparkling in black sequined leather. Typically, Joan had the final word about Scarface's nasty language. "I hear there are 183 'f---s' in the movie," sighed Collins, "which is more than most people get in a lifetime."

Bregman discovered Al Pacino in an Off Broadway play. "I think it was The Indian Wants the Bronx, one of the early plays by Israel Horovitz in the late ’60s," Bregman's son, Michael Bregman (a co-producer on Carlito's Way) tells Deadline's Mike Fleming Jr. Bregman signed Pacino and became his personal and business manager. At various times throughout his career, Bregman also managed Alan Alda, Barbra Streisand, Woody Allen, Faye Dunaway, Candice Bergen and Bette Midler.

According to a Variety obit by Carmel Dagan:

Bregman nurtured Pacino as the actor built his stage and then his film career, helping Pacino land his first starring role in a feature, 1971’s “Panic in Needle Park,” for which the actor beat out Robert De Niro.

Building film projects around the young Pacino, Bergman produced his first films in 1973’s “Serpico” and 1975’s “Dog Day Afternoon,” both memorably starring the actor [and both directed by Sidney Lumet]. The two would later reteam for 1983’s “Scarface,” 1989’s “Sea of Love” and 1993’s “Carlito’s Way.”

Talking to Tucker about changing the story from Chicago to Miami, Bregman said, "It was Sidney Lumet's idea. When I first went to Sidney, with whom I disagreed later on a political issue, in the initial discussion, he had a great idea. Sidney said, 'Well, liquor is no longer outlawed, there's no such thing as Prohibition, and why don't you look into the cocaine world,' which at the time was reaching epidemic proportions as an illegal import into the country, and largely through ports in southern Florida. And that was it. That was a brilliant idea of his."

More from Tucker's Scarface Nation:

While completing the editing of Blow Out, De Palma was approached by producer Martin Bregman about remaking Hawks's Scarface with Pacino as its star. De Palma was intrigued by Bregman's idea-- which at that point was Scarface as a period piece, set during the early 1930s-- and began working on a script with the playwright David Rabe. (De Palma had collaborated with Rabe off-Broadway, in a revival of the 1971 play The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel, and on an early version of Prince of the City, which, with a different script, would eventually be directed by Sidney Lumet.)

But De Palma and Rabe never found a way to do the story that pleased them, and so they bowed out of Bregman's project, which the producer then took to-- in a tidy coincidence-- Sidney Lumet. Bregman paired Lumet with Oliver Stone. "I brought Stone in," Bregman told me. "I'd known him for years. I'd once optioned a script he'd written that I couldn't get anyone to make and that film was Platoon." (Ah, the ones that get away, eh?)

"Oliver was a wonderful writer and had experienced the ups and downs of cocaine. I'm not telling you anything out of school, because he'd tell you the same thing." And indeed Stone has, to me and in numerous interviews...

Stone's druggy days are, even in his own mind, legion. "I'll admit that cocaine kicked my ass. It's one of the things that beat me in life," he's said. "Cocaine took me to the edge."

Stone ticks off this era of his filmography as something of a pharmaceutical event: "Conan was written on cocaine and downers. The drug period was from Conan through The Hand, and into my research for Scarface.

Stone seized on Lumet's idea to transform Scarface from a '30s Chicago gangster to an '80s Cuban immigrant-turned-gangster. "Scarface grew out of this Lumet idea of the Marielitos coming to America, the brazenness, the drug trade, making it big, taking over from the old Cuban mob." Stone has said, "The Marielitos at the time had gained a lot of publicity for their open brazenness. The Marielitos were the 'crazies.' They were deported by castro in 1981 to America... it was perceived he was dumping all the criminals into the American system. According to the police enforcement in Miami Beach, they were the poorest people, the roughest people in the prisons, who would kill for a dollar. How could you get this outlandish, operatic character inside an American, contemporary framework?... That was the artistic challenge."

Stone did a lot of first-person research "in Florida and the Caribbean. I had been in South America [and] I saw quite a bit of the drug trade from the legal point of view as well as the gangster point of view... There's no law down there; they'll just shoot you in your hotel room. It got hairy; it gave me all this color. I wanted to do a sun-drenched, tropical, Third World gangster, sexy Miami movie."

Bregman told me that he, too, went with Stone on some of these expeditions: "We spent a good deal of time in Florida. Pretty much everything I saw was in the film. The way the big drug lords were depicted were [as] very successful businessmen, and their business was cocaine."

Stone lit out for Paris to complete the script. "I moved to Paris and got out of the cocaine world," he told Creative Screenwriting. "I was an addictive personality. I did it... to where I was stale mentally... I moved to Paris to try and get into another world... and I wrote the script totally fucking cold sober."

But when Stone turned in his script, Lumet balked, considering Stone's work florid, melodramatic, and simplistic-- more the blueprint for an exploitation film than the movie of ideas that Lumet had envisioned. He wanted to explore the politics and human plight of an immigrant who is forced by circumstance into crime. Stone says, "Sidney did not understand my script, whereas Bregman wanted to continue in that direction with Al."

Bregman put it to me more bluntly: "When I had completed the script"-- these producers, they take credit for everything, don't they?-- "Pacino wanted Sidney, okay? I had made two successful films with Lumet and Al, Dog Day Afternoon and Serpico, so I wasn't opposed to that. Sidney's a good director, and in my discussions with him, that's how the whole liquor [theme] changed to cocaine. But then Sidney said, 'I have a problem with this script. The problem is it's not political enough. I see the Reagan administration being heavily involved in the cocaine world.' Which is a crock of shit. There was nothing political about [the cocaine trade]-- it was a business."

For his part, Lumet says that he objected to "the corny elements" in the script, specifically the sentimental portrayal of Tony's mother and sister. "I also wanted to introduce political ramifications, exploring the CIA's involvement of drugs as part of their anti-Communist drive. I didn't want to do it on just a gangster or cop level. As it stood, it was a comic strip."

"And I wasn't about to do anything that would indict [then-President] Reagan, over something he had nothing to do with," retorts Bregman. "He wasn't involved in the cocaine world. At that point I said to Sidney, 'We're talking about a different film. Go make it. It's not this film.' So we separated.

As far as Lumet's dismissal of the script as cartoonish is concerned, Bregman has been quoted by writer Andrew Yule as saying, "De Palma and I had no intention of making a comic strip. We wanted to give the whole thing a larger-than-life, operatic quality." The italics [underlined] are Yule's; the "operatic" is, as I've said, the adjective that will be used by all principals in this production to give a high-culture gloss to its grand-grunge melodrama.

"Scarface is a timeless film that has influenced pop culture in so many ways over the last 35 years," Screenvision Media's Darryl Schaffer said in a press release. "We're thrilled to partner with Universal Pictures and Tribeca Film Festival to bring it back to the big screen in celebration of its anniversary. The Tribeca Film Festival talk was an important commemoration of the film. We're excited to extend it to the big screen and provide fans a behind-the-scenes insight into what production was like in the 1980s."

Paula Weinstein, EVP of Tribeca Enterprises, added, "Tribeca has a rich history of producing legendary reunion events. We are thrilled to be able to replicate the Festival experience with audiences across the country. Our gratitude to Screenvision and Universal. Scarface has had a strong influence on popular culture and reuniting the cast for the 35th anniversary was an evening not to forget."

About a week after the Tribeca event last month, Jesse Kornbluth, who moderated that on-stage Q&A, defended himself in a post at Head Butler, with the headline, "So I Asked Michelle Pfeiffer A Question...."

Recently, the Tribeca Film Festival celebrated the 35th anniversary of “Scarface” with a screening at the Beacon Theatre, followed by a panel discussion featuring Al Pacino, Brian De Palma, Michelle Pfeiffer and Steven Bauer.

I moderated the panel discussion.

There never was an audience for “Scarface” like the 2,894 film fans at the Beacon. Of course they knew all the great quotes, but even more, they cheered like opera buffs after the great scenes. And when it ended, better believe they were eager to be in the same air space as the stars.

I brought the actors onstage one by one. Bauer got some love. Pfeiffer got more. De Palma got a roar. Then, with one chair empty, I teased the audience: “There’s one more… I forget…. Oh, I got it….Al Pacino!” The theatre went nuts. Al basked at the standing ovation. “Still got it!” he said.

And then we began. I started with the person who had the idea to remake the 1932 classic: Al Pacino. I asked Bauer about being the only Cuban in a major role. I asked De Palma about getting around the repeated X-ratings, quoted Chekhov’s remark that a gun on the wall in the first act must be fired in the second and asked if having a chainsaw murder in the first 15 minutes of the film made him question if topping it in the final scene might be too much violence for any audience. And, of course, I prompted Pacino to deliver the most quoted line of his career: “Say hello to my little friend.”

Michelle Pfeiffer has described herself as a “set piece” in this film — the attractive woman who looks good on the arm of the leading man but who’s not essential to the story. And because questions of misogyny and female agency are no longer background noise, I asked her to look back at “Scarface” from the perspective of 2018. She spoke eloquently about what she learned as a very young actress paired with a powerful star giving one of his most aggressive performances: “One of the things that hit me the strongest from the beginning was watching him fiercely protect his character and really at all costs and without any sort of apology. And I have always tried to emulate that. And I try to be polite about it. But I think that’s what really makes great acting.”

Pfeiffer’s crisp, smart responses got little media attention. Only one exchange did. I was curious about her preparation for the role as a cocaine freak whose diet seemed to consist of cigarettes and Scotch. And I thought of my daughter, who is exactly the same height as Pfeiffer. She is thin. In “Scarface,” Pfeiffer was dramatically thinner. So I asked: “As the father of a daughter, I’m concerned with body image. During the preparation for this film, what did you weigh?”

The crowd — not all, but a vocal contingent — reacted instantly. There were boos. Someone shouted, “Bad question.” I also heard “Why do you need to know?” and “Why!”

I turned away from Pfeiffer to speak directly to the audience: “This is not the question you think it is.”

Press reports said that Pfeiffer was dismayed at the question and paused before answering. Not so. She paused because, like a professional, she was waiting for the crowd to settle down. And then she answered my question — at length: “I don’t know. But I was playing a cocaine addict, which was part of the physicality of the part, which you have to consider… The movie was only supposed to be a three-month, four-month shoot. Of course, I tried to time it so that as the movie went on, I became thinner and thinner and more emaciated. The problem was the movie went six months. I was starving by the end of it because the one scene, which was the end of the film, where I needed to be my thinnest, it was ‘next week’ and then it was ‘next week’ and then it was ‘next week.’ I literally had members of the crew bringing me bagels because they were all worried about me and how thin I was getting. I think I was living on tomato soup and Marlboros.”

At the end, the stars got a standing ovation. There was a small after-party. Around midnight, I went home and, as I generally do, logged on. To my surprise there was a YouTube report of my question to Pfeiffer, but because I wasn’t named as the moderator, I laughed and went to bed.

Friday morning I woke up to 20 emails. And to items in the Post and the Daily News and half a dozen other publications. All took me to the woodshed for asking an insensitive, inappropriate question.

By mid-morning, I was asked to comment. I replied:

“It is true that a gentleman should never ask a woman about her weight. But that was not my question. It is a comment on the knee-jerk political correctness of our time that no one would be shocked if you asked Robert De Niro about the weight gain required for his role in ‘Raging Bull’ but you get booed — not by many, but by a vocal few — for asking Michelle Pfeiffer about the physical two-dimensionality required for her to play a cocaine freak in ‘Scarface.’”

Finally, I caught a break: In the Daily News, Linda Stasi wrote a column headlined “Sorry, PC police — it’s not body shaming to ask Michelle Pfeiffer how much she weighed during ‘Scarface.’” Her first sentence: “What a bunch of fat heads!”

Later, I had a chance to add to my response:

Nobody booed when I asked Michelle about how she was able to “own and claim” her performance against one of Al’s fiercest performances.
Nobody booed when I asked Michelle if she could imagine a remake in which Tony Montana was Toni Montana — a woman.
Nobody booed when I asked Brian if he were making this movie now, would Tony be a Russian — or even Mark Zuckerberg?
Nobody booed when I quoted Tony Montana — “Who put this thing together? Me!Who do I trust? Me!” — and asked Al: Who does that sound like?

I’ll go further. Not to defend myself — it’s not possible to defend yourself against the accusations of people who know you better than you know yourself — but to tell you what I learned from this experience.

First, there’s a double standard here. When a man gains or loses weight for a role, that fact is served up to the media as an asset. It’s not just De Niro in “Raging Bull.” Matthew McConaughey lost 50 pounds and Jared Leto shed 40 for “Dallas Buyer’s Club,” Matt Damon lost 40 pounds for “Courage Under Fire” — the reporting of their preparation for roles is invariably admiring. For women, the topic of weight can also be an asset — if she reveals it, as Charlize Theron did when she told Entertainment Weekly about the 50 pounds she gained for her role in a new film. So why is it “insensitive” to ask Michelle Pfeiffer about her physical instrument in a movie she made 35 years ago? Has something happened in the last 35 years to turn a young actress who had the strength to stand up to Al Pacino into a timorous Victorian maiden who needs protection from a man asking a question about her public persona?

Before we went on stage, I quoted Oscar Wilde to Pfeiffer and Pacino: “There are no impertinent questions, only impertinent answers.” Yes, I could have worded that question better. And if the question, in any form, offended Michelle Pfeiffer, I apologize.

More to the point: If I knew the audience was hardcore liberal PC, I would still have asked that question, though I would have asked it another way. But I had no idea there are New York movie lovers who see little difference between a man asking a woman about something she did professionally and Donald Trump bragging about grabbing women between their legs. It’s not heartbreaking, but it’s really, really disappointing to learn that people who presumably deal with complexity and multiple levels of meaning in their careers can be as stupid and close-minded as people who watch Fox and think Pizzagate and Obamaphones are real.

Bottom line: I call BS on the yahoos who booed.