In an interview with GQ, Leguizamo revealed that he was so sick of auditioning to play drug dealers early in his career that he considered passing on his now-iconic role as Benny Blanco in Brian De Palma’s “Carlito’s Way.”

“I’m a Latin guy and I didn’t wanna play another drug dealer. I was just kind of sick of that kind of routine,” Leguizamo said. “So I turned it down three times.”

He continued to resist the role, only to learn that one of Hollywood’s other rising Hispanic stars, Benicio Del Toro, was also in the mix for it. Once he learned Del Toro was interested, Leguizamo said that he opted to do the film after realizing it was a good career move.

“The producers said, ‘Look, this is the last time I’m coming to you. We’re gonna go to Benicio,'” he said. “Okay, I’ll take it!”

Leguizamo’s thoughts about not wanting to play drug dealers echo similar comments he made in a recent interview with IndieWire. The actor explained that the limited range of roles he was considered for as a young actor shaped his view about the importance of representation in films.

Lyrics:

Met my boyfriend down at the taco truck
Pass me my vape, I'm feelin' sick, I need to take a puff
Imagine if we actually gave a fuck
Wouldn't that be somethin' to talk about for us?
Caribbean Blue in sweater weather, I'm falling into you
Although it seems I've gotten better, I can be violent too

Oh, that's why they call me Lanita
When I get down I'm Bonita
Don't come find me in Reseda
I'll go crazy
Read my gold chain, says "Lanita"
When I'm violent, it's Carlito's Way
Blood on my feet, on the street
I'm dancin' crazy

Spin it 'til you whip it into white cream, baby
Print it into black and white pages, don't faze me
Before you talk, let me stop what you're saying
I know, I know, I know that you hate me

Ahh, spring. There’s just something about the flowers blooming and the sun shining that makes us want to watch Tony Montana introduce an army of assassins to his little friend. If you feel the same, then join us for a nice mug of Aprilcino, our month-long celebration of one Alfredo James Pacino. Aside from SCARFACE, we’ll be screening Pacino classics like CARLITO’S WAY, DOG DAY AFTERNOON, SEA OF LOVE, CRUISING, and yes, even JACK & JILL for all you Dunkaccino (RIP) lovers.

A bit of cocaine-dusted brilliance from director Brian De Palma that spawned a million posters on dorm room walls, we’re kicking off Aprilcino with one of Al Pacino’s most iconic, swaggering performances.

The second team-up between director Brian De Palma and star Al Pacino, following 1983's SCARFACE, invariably acts as a perfect companion. Pacino’s Carlito Brigante strives to live a better life away from drugs and violence after getting out of prison, but a crooked lawyer (Sean Penn) and an up-and-coming gangster (John Leguizamo) have other ideas. As the man said (in a different movie), “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!”

Filmmaker: It’s interesting that Freddie seems to be getting away from the camera, yet is being tracked by it. I was wondering how you want to establish her relationship to the camera in the film.

Chou: It’s totally something that we built into the film, the dance between the camera and the actress. That reflects the dynamic of the character, her constant refusal to be labeled. I decided not to use [over the] shoulder camera. I thought it would be a bit too tautological for filming an agitated character. On the contrary, [we filmed] still shots on her face, but also larger shots with a lot of people. The best example is when she is first meeting her biological family at dinner; there are seven people around the table and it’s like she’s surrounded by people, but it’s only still shots. Then suddenly you can feel [the agitation] because, 20 minutes before, you got to know the fire inside of her and now you can read in her eyes. Even though she doesn’t move, she looks clearly petrified, but something is boiling in her. And I found the tension between [the] stillness of the shots and [the] politeness of the setting reflects a relationship in a traditional Korean family and the boiling fire inside her.

When she feels pressured by people, she starts to become her own filmmaker: transforming other people in the room into extra actors and secondary roles, deciding places and remapping, like at the bar in the beginning. It’s interesting, because it’s someone in the new territory. She’s remapping the restaurant, deciding which people are going to sit and everything like that. She’s not in control in a place that she doesn’t know anything about, so here’s an attempt at taking control. Interestingly, the way of taking control is to create chaos. I was very inspired by Nadav Lapid’s Synonyms and Brian De Palma’s Carlito’s Way for that chaos.

Another scene that’s interesting is the scene where Freddie dances and I’m on the track. I can do this camera movement, the camera can pan a bit and I myself can do the zoom. But then at the same time, I don’t control what she’s actually doing, she’s doing whatever she wants. It becomes this struggle between the two of us.

Filmmaker: Your film has a really interesting relationship to music, in addition to choreography. You have the beginning club scene where it’s on that track and you’re watching Freddie dance. Then you have the other underground clubs and singing at her birthday, which is even more pumped up and fantastical in a way, and even more chaotic. Then you have the last moment where she’s at the piano and she’s completely alone.

Chou: There is an evolution where I play with the cultural identity of the music, as well. At the beginning, you will hear a lot of old vintage Korean songs that symbolize a past Freddie can feel from the texture of the song. You can feel it comes from the ’70s, but because she doesn’t speak the language, it already embodies a contradiction of knowing it’s from the past, but also having no idea what it is. It’s your past that you don’t know. I felt that the first time I went to Cambodia and listened to old Cambodian music.

In the second part, much more of the music is as if she had emancipated herself from her past and decided in some kind of extreme, positive gesture to say, “Hey, you reject me from Korea. I assure you I can be Korean, but I’m not having any link with my family whatsoever. I killed your heritage and now I’m a Korean girl with a Korean boyfriend, a drug fiend and everything.” So the music is very contemporary German techno music, also contemporary Korean electronic music that was composed for the film and shows her state of mind.

The third part is more silence, as if she needed less music. Because music for many is some kind of refuge, for her it is some kind of place that she can jump into and find comfort in when she feels too much pressure. And that’s basically the dancing scene in the first act, when the music is suddenly put on and she dances and there are no other characters in that shot. She dances as if she was inventing her own space, time and temporality. In the last part, there is less music, as if maybe she was ready to listen.

Filmmaker: As opposed to escaping.

Chou: The music becomes not only a refuge, but also a place to express feelings and sentiments when language doesn’t allow you to do it. At the very end, as you say, I think that it is something different. She is ready to be active. This journey may be full of loneliness—being totally alone with herself—so that she can start to feel it’s time to play her own melody.

Rich Eisen: In Carlito’s Way, Pachanga’s lines were originally written in phonetically spelled heavy-accented slang that offended some of the crew members of Latino descent, so the lines were rewritten in standard English, and you were directed to improve – uh, improvise some slang. Is that true or false on that film?

Luis Guzman: Yeah, I improvised everything, and I improved everything. [Eisman laughs] And one of the lines that I did was, we were doing ADR, and Brian De Palma, who directed it, he said, ‘Can you say something here?’ And it’s like, it’s the scene where Carlito’s dying, you know, this is after he’s been shot by Benny Blanco, and I looked at him, and I dropped in the line, says, ‘It be’s that way sometimes.’ But that was a real thing that we used to say in the neighborhood, that the older guys would say. You know, if you complained about something, they would look at you, say [shaking his head], ‘It be’s that way.’ So, yeah. But you know…

Rich Eisman: That was improvised, from your upbringing, you brought it to the table.

Luis Guzman: Yeah, I did. I did. I did, that was Luis Guzman, courtesy of the great poet writer that I grew up with in the neighborhood named TC Garcia.

Rich Eisman: You got a good Pacino story for me?

Luis Guzman: A good Pacino story… Yeah, so one day, you know, we’re doing that scene when Viggo Mortensen rolls into the office? And so, I had to go from upstairs… well, no. I had… something, it was seeing that I was downstairs, the camera starts on me, and then Al’s in the office, he walks out, he’s coming down the stairs, I’m running up the stairs, and it’s total darkness. You can’t see anything. So, I think on the second take, so the first time, some guy walks by me, I made it up. Second time, the guy’s in my way. And I grab him and I push him to the side and said, ‘Get the hell out of my way, I gotta get up there!’ I did not realize that that was Al. [Eisman laughs] That was Al.

Made with the reflexive panache that would make most modern directors weep, De Palma’s second collaboration with Pacino proved to be a much more muted affair than their first. Carlito’s Way sees a reformed Puerto Rican gangster trying to keep things clean upon his release from prison, but his attempts to own a garish nightclub that’s an assault on the senses of sight and sound inevitably gets tied up with the nefarious deeds he wanted to avoid. Poor guy! There’s not much hope for him throughout the two-and-a-half-hour runtime, seeing as the opening shots show his dead body being carried away. It’s great seeing Pacino, the same year he won his Oscar, slum around as a noble ex-con building his life up from nothing.

In terms of delirious performances, Pacino actually struggles to let his Hooah-ness shine, thanks to the dominating lifeforce that is Sean Penn as Carlito’s insecure, belligerent, coke-fiend best friend. When Pacino isn’t trying to calm down Penn’s sweaty turn, he has to fend off a scenery-chewing Viggo Mortensen (wired and wheelchair-riding in his one scene) and a luminescent John Leguizamo as the flashy wannabe bigtimer Benny Blanco (from the Bronx). And, like all good movies, Luis Guzmán is in the background somewhere. It’s understandable how straight Pacino plays it; even in a De Palma movie, there’s a limit on how many insane performances you can have before a movie bursts at the seams. And while Pacino hadn’t yet leaned fully into the shouty, eye-bulging indulgences that the ‘90s would represent for him, he did get to lead a classic dialogue-free De Palma suspense sequence, evading sinister characters across a big railway station. Little victories.

Carlito's Way has a cult following today, but the perception of it as a minor rehash has mostly stayed intact. And therein lies the problem. Carlito's Way is not a lesser gangster film. It's not a gangster film at all. It bypasses the highs of Scarface to explore the lows of the subsequent hangover, and the result is a stealthy neo-noir classic I never tire of watching.