Production shingle for theater and film
Chal gives actor time, space to work through ideas
Formed nearly two decades ago, the company is the actor's means of hatching and developing projects intended either for the camera or the stage, and in a concrete way, represents his ongoing desire to find a fusion between the two arts.
Unlike production shingles of his peers, Chal has never been intended as strictly a filmmaking venture.
"The focus of what we do will shift, depending on what Al is working on,'' says Pacino's assistant and right-hand man at Chal, Tim Judge. "If it's a play, then all the energy here is geared toward that. If it's a film, then we become a movie company.''
The firm's name is a blend of the first names of Charlie Laughton and Pacino. Laughton (no relation to actor Charles Laughton) was an important early acting teacher for Pacino during his salad days in New York. Though Pacino is a lifetime member of the Actors Studio and is strongly associated with Method acting, Laughton has long been the actor's central mentor.
Chal's projects are indicative of its wide-ranging goals: "Looking for Richard,'' Pacino's experimental 1996 investigation of Shakespeare's "Richard III''; a reconceptualized version of Eugene O'Neill's one-acter "Hughie,'' which Pacino (wearing three hats as actor, director and adaptor) changed from a monologue to a two-hander; and "Chinese Coffee,'' a film based on Ira Lewis' play, co-starring Pacino and Jerry Ohrbach.
Co-produced with the Shooting Galley, "Chinese Coffee'' screened at last year's Telluride and Toronto film festivals, and awaits a 2001 release date from distributor Fox Searchlight.
Even before the lauded "Richard,'' the Chal unit was Pacino's experimental refuge, where he made his first film, "The Local Stigmatic,'' a 54-minute work based on Heathcote Williams' one-act play and never intended for commercial release. After several years of tinkering, Pacino finished the work and occasionally screens it for private parties.
Of course, Pacino is famous for tinkering, and "this company gives Al the time and space to work through his ideas," Judge says. "It took three years plus, from buying the rights to final cut, to finish 'Chinese Coffee,' but you have to factor various interruptions, including a couple of movies and staging 'Hughie' at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. Each time he comes back to one of his films after working on something else, he finds a fresh perspective. He enjoys revisiting things that way.''
Though Pacino may be the first to say that, as an actor, theater is the art form closest to his heart, it is the process of making a film that is far less pressured in terms of time. Chal's operation, like Pacino's life, is bicoastal, with a small L.A. office staffed by three and two New York offices -- a formal one in midtown Manhattan and a larger, loftlike 3,000-square-foot downtown space staffed by a core of five. The latter can function as a rehearsal space during Chal's play projects, or as a film studio capable of holding sets. Both "Richard'' and "Coffee'' were partly shot there.
Although no upcoming Chal projects have been announced, several are under discussion.
"There's no way to predict what will happen next, just like there's no label you can put on what we do," Judge says. "'Looking for Richard' is a perfect example. You can't classify that film as a drama, a documentary, a Shakespeare movie, or an investigation. It's all of those.''
