VENICE, Italy, Sept 4, (RTRS): Hollywood veteran Al Pacino is honoured by the Venice film festival on Sunday with a special prize and the presentation of his latest directorial project “Wilde Salome.”
Even at such a star-studded festival, where the likes of George Clooney, Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna have walked the red carpet this year, Pacino drew large crowds of screaming fans and autograph hunters to the Lido island.
He receives the Jaeger Lecoultre Glory to the Filmmaker Award at a gala awards ceremony.
“Wilde Salome” is part documentary about the staging of Irish writer and poet Oscar Wilde’s play “Salome” starring rising star Jessica Chastain, part an exploration of the author and part film version of Salome itself.
Pacino, one of the giants of cinema with eight Oscar nominations including one win to his name, admitted to being a little confused about what type of picture he had made.
“I guess what I tried to do is ... create a story,” Pacino told reporters in Venice after the film was shown to the press.
“But I don’t know what it is. I like to say it’s a documentary because it’s not a film, but then it’s not a documentary either, so I’m confused too.”

Hidden
The 71-year-old said that making movies for himself, some of which remain hidden away never to be shown, made him fall in love with cinema years ago and become a better actor.
“As soon as I started making my own films, I actually became easier on directors,” he explained.
“Because I was very difficult at first. I really didn’t know the medium, I didn’t know what the needs of a director were. Once I started, the magic of movies came into my life.”
The star of films including “The Godfather” and “Scent of a Woman” added that, unlike Orson Welles, he did not abandon the theatre once he discovered movies, but continued with both disciplines.
Pacino said Wilde, who was hounded for his homosexuality at the end of the 19th century, was a fascinating subject.
“We do know that he was ... a very liberal thinker and more than that he was a visionary in terms of his feeling for people and how he wanted society to be more humane and that he was really on dangerous ground at that time.
“Part of his sexuality was what they used against him to put him away. They wanted to silence him.”
Asked what the future held, Pacino replied:
“I have movies that are still coming at me and I always say that I’m going to be selective. I always say that, but I never am.
“I’m saying again — ‘I’m going to do it only when I feel it’s the thing to do for me.’ I hope I follow that philosophy. That’s my future. It’s blank.”


Up-and-coming Irish actor Michael Fassbender plays a sex addict in “Shame,” a movie by British video artist Steve McQueen that is vying for the top prize at the Venice film festival.
It is the second lead role for Fassbender in a competition movie at this year’s festival after his portrayal of psychoanalyst Carl Jung in David Cronenberg’s “A Dangerous Method.”
In “Shame,” the German-born Fassbender is Brandon, a handsome, 30-something executive living in New York whose only distraction from work is seducing women, and looking for sex on the Internet.
The tightly controlled rhythm of his life begins to fall apart when his needy, dysfunctional sister Sissy, played by Carey Mulligan, arrives for an unannounced visit.
Her presence, and her craving for Brandon’s attention, disrupt his lonely existence even further, and his only way out seems to be wandering the streets at night in search of new sexual adventures.
Fassbender, whose portrayal of Brandon was warmly applauded after a press screening on Sunday, said taking part in the film’s graphic sex scenes was not easy.

Uncomfortable
“Yes (it was) uncomfortable doing the sex scenes, you just have to jump and turn really,” he said.
“The most important thing I guess is that everybody involved feels as comfortable as they can. And then just go for it so you don’t have to do too many takes.”
McQueen, whose debut film was the widely acclaimed “Hunger” about the last months of Irish Republican Army activist Bobby Sands in Belfast’s Maze prison, said he saw similarities between the two films.
“Hunger” also starred Fassbender in the lead role.
“Clearly “Hunger” was a political film but ‘Shame’ is also political. That one was about a prison in northern Ireland, this one it’s about how someone’s freedom can actually imprison them and they need an addiction in order to numb a pain, how our lives have been changed sexually by the Internet,” he said.
“I love Brandon, he’s trying and it’s difficult. He’s not so far away from most of us at the end of the day. He is not a bad person, I think the character is not at all repulsive, maybe unfamiliar but extremely recognisable.”

The title “Shame” was chosen after interviews with sex addicts and their experiences in preparation for the film.
“The word shame came cropping up in those interviews,” McQueen said.
His career began with film-related projects, he quickly branched out to include sculpture and still photography, and his work has been displayed at the Biennale of Art in Venice.
McQueen said he saw no big differences between his artworks and his feature films.
“There are no barriers between the two. Of course in one you’re going to have a bit more narrative and the other less so, but the process is the same, it’s work.”
Asked why Mulligan, who was in Australia to shoot Baz Luhrmann’s “Great Gatsby,” had not come to Venice to present his movie, McQueen replied: “It’s out of order. She should be here.
“I am very upset about that, actually. I don’t know Baz Luhrmann, whatever ... I wouldn’t do to him what he did to me.”