Product Description

Life is getting complicated for Broadway playwright Ivan Travalian (Pacino). His flaky wife Gloria (Weld) is moving in with her lover, his director hates his new play and his leading lady (Cannon) is a terrified movie star who's never been on the stage. With five children to look after (most of them Gloria's), a budding romance with his leading lady, and a producer (King) demanding a rewrite, it's no wonder the emotionally and financially unstable Ivan starts to exhibit all kinds of irrational behavior.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #37608 in DVD
• Brand: PACINO,AL
• Released on: 2007-06-19
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Dubbed in: English, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 107 minutes

Amazon.com
During a downturn in his career, Al Pacino starred in this unfortunate comedy about a guy coping with a new romance, a house full of kids, and a new play--and doing a bad job of it. Pacino is a playwright who is convinced that he's about to have his first stage success. As opening night approaches, his wife bolts from the marriage, abandoning him with five kids (only one of whom is his). While he tries to juggle rewrites and a potential entanglement with a flighty actress and a demanding producer and director, he also has to solve his baby-sitting woes. Talk about trying to do it all. If only the material was as funny as Pacino, who may have made this film out of allegiance to its writer, Israel Horovitz, whose play The Indian Wants the Bronx gave Pacino one of his breakthrough roles in the early 1960s. --Marshall Fine

Customer Reviews

a rare Pacino comedy!
Author! Author! is a guilty pleasure. It features Pacino in one of his rare forays into comedy (the other being the underrated and little-seen '70s gem, Scarecrow) as a beleaguered New York City playwright who has to juggle a houseload of kids, a wife who is cheating on him and a play that he is struggling to get off the ground.

This is a sweet, endearing film that isn't too sappy as to give you diabetes. Pacino really keeps everything grounded and delivers a wonderfully understated performance. He lets all the kids ham it up and deliver the best lines, especially, as one reviewer pointed out, the youngest one who is a really good little actor. What happened to that kid? And you've got veteran thesps like Tuesday Weld, Dyan Cannon, and my personal fave, Alan King, who doesn't do enough films, IMO.

This is one of those comfort movies that you end up turning on partway through on TV and then watch all the way to the end. There is just something about it that is so fascinating to watch. Maybe because it was so reviled by critics and ignored by audiences that it now languishes in Cable TV limbo awaiting a possible DVD release... some day?

This film is also a great snapshot of NYC circa the late '70s early '80s. The film uses its locations so well and anyone who has lived there (or still lives there) will instantly recognize certain places and areas. It's almost like stepping into a time machine to a New York that doesn't exist anymore.

Watching this movie makes me wish that Pacino would do more comedies but sadly, he has a rep for doing intense dramas and is probably only offered these kinds of films anymore.

Good film but..............Don't be fooled
Well I love this film........................the video version........There is a problem with the dvd version and the version that has been shown on TV.......................It's missing the last scene..........If anyone has seen this film they will remeber after Ivan and the kids leave the resturant and read the review in the NY Times. The next scene is him in the waking up the next morning in bed and the kids are crowded around him with more reviews from newspapers and hitting him with a cake. Well that scene in cut from the dvd/tv showings. It ends when they read the NY Times review when they leave the resturant...........What A jip.............Now it's finally going to be relesed here in the US. I don't know if I'm going to get it. After seeing the import version. Also............the beginning credits is supposed to have the NY skyline as it's backdrop...................................No t here either.....................So I'm sticking with the original VHS version.........

a disappointing wait
I have waited for years for this movie to make it to DVD, only to be SO DISAPPOINTED with the treatment it recieved!! Not only is this a very good Al Pacino movie, but it is a very good movie period, so why when it is turned out on to DVD is it treated like a stepchild at a family reunion with the final scene left on the cutting room floor. I thought that the idea of DVD was to give the audiance what couldnt be give given on a 2 hour VHS tape, and the scene that was cut was one of the best in the film...when the kids bring him 'back down to earth' after the has spent his first day as a hit playwrite in bed. Guess I'm back to waiting for the 'soon to be released' Collector's or Deluxe Edition of this movie.