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Al Pacino's 86th b-day!!!

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"I always wanted to play Napoleon. There was even a time when Stanley Kubrick had me in mind, but that never got off the ground…”

**Al Pacino**, *Sonny Boy: A Memoir* (2024) 📖

It is perhaps cinema history’s greatest “what if.” In his newly published memoirs, Al Pacino reflects on the ghost that haunted his career—the dream of playing Napoleon Bonaparte, a dream that almost converged with Stanley Kubrick’s grandest obsession.

Between 1967 and 1970, fresh off *2001: A Space Odyssey*, Kubrick dove into preparation for what was meant to be the definitive film on Napoleon. It wasn’t just pre-production; it was an acts of fanatical research. 🎞️

Kubrick didn’t just want to tell a story; he wanted to reconstruct history. To do this, he created a massive analog database—a legendary file cabinet filled with over **15,000 index cards** (swipe to see our visual tribute to this archive 👉). These cards tracked the daily whereabouts of Napoleon and key historical figures throughout their lives. He knew what the weather was like during specific battles and what the emperor ate for breakfast.

Costumes were prototyped, Romanian army divisions were secured as extras, and a young, intense Al Pacino—possessing the perfect age and temperament—was in Kubrick’s sights for the lead role. Pacino writes that Kubrick saw Napoleon as a man “obsessed with details, much like Stanley himself.”

Ultimately, budget concerns and studio cold feet killed the project. But the archive remains a testament to a meeting of two obsessive giants—Kubrick and Pacino—that tragically never happened on screen. 🎬💔

I personally think if you're given four months instead of four weeks on a play, with the people who want to work that way, the play will invariably be different and stronger, and much more fulfilling and richer on all counts. There's no doubt in my mind about it.

(Al Pacino)

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