In their first joint television interview, cinematic giants Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Martin Scorsese talk about working together on "The Irishman," the film business and more in an interview with Lee Cowan for CBS SUNDAY MORNING to be broadcast Sunday, Oct. 20 (9:00 AM, ET) on the CBS Television Network.
The film, funded by Netflix, marks the first time Scorsese, De Niro, Pacino, Joe Pesci and Harvey Keitel have all worked together. "The Irishman" is a mob epic about the murder of the controversial Teamsters Union leader Jimmy Hoffa and is based on the book by Charles Brandt.
"All I can say is it's about time," Pacino tells Cowan.
Scorsese says he couldn't get major studios to touch the film, which cost $160 million to make, and uses computer generated images to make the actors appear younger. The director says it wouldn't have been produced without Netflix.
"No, never would have gotten made, because - they're not making - they don't want to make the pictures I want to make out there," Scorsese says of traditional studios. "It's over. It's finished."
For film fans, getting De Niro, Pacino and Scorsese together in the same project is significant.
"I always knew that it would be a special thing, no matter what happened - that we would create something and do something together all of us," De Niro says. "It was going to be special, no matter what. You can't take that away from us. That's all. If it gets a good reaction, that's even better."
The film is not "Goodfellas" or "The Godfather," Scorsese and the actors say. It's a reckoning - it's taking stock of lives lived hard. Pacino says that he wants people to leave the theater feeling something.
"Something comes off that is - almost - you know, sort of ephemeral. It's hard to say what it is, but you feel it," Pacino says. "It's affecting in that sense. And you don't even know why."
Adds De Niro: "It's about getting older and what's happening with us. It's about that. It's about getting older, and it's just realistic [about how] this is what it is."
CBS SUNDAY MORNING is broadcast Sundays (9:00-10:30 AM, ET) on the
CBS Television Network. Rand Morrison is the executive producer.
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