Film: Late actor John Cazale lionized in documentary

Every movie John Cazale appeared in was nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture, and three of them -- "The Godfather," "The Godfather: Part II" and "The Deer Hunter" -- won the top prize. Collectively, his five films earned 40 Academy Award nominations.
He was the best supporting actor any star could ask for, whether playing Michael Corleone's (Al Pacino) ineffectual older brother Fredo in the first two "Godfather" movies, a jittery accomplice in a botched bank robbery in "Dog Day Afternoon" (also with Pacino), an assistant to an obsessed surveillance expert (Gene Hackman) in "The Conversation" or the buddy of a Vietnam recruit (Robert De Niro) in "The Deer Hunter."
With his thin, angular face, deep-set eyes, bushy brows and high forehead, Cazale is the poster boy for the best films of the 1970s -- a fertile decade in Hollywood history. Mathematically, Cazale would have made a clunker at some point in his career. But he never had a chance. He died of cancer in 1978 at age 42.
"He was always my favorite actor, but when I wanted to read something about him, I found almost nothing," said Richard Shepard, director of "The Matador" starring Pierce Brosnan and an Emmy Award winner for directing the "Ugly Betty" pilot. "It was like he was forgotten."
Shepard is determined to rectify that with his documentary "I Knew It Was You: Rediscovering John Cazale," which played at the Sundance Film Festival and will air on HBO later this year. It will get a sneak preview Thursday in San Francisco with Shepard in attendance (an event I helped program as a volunteer).
The cooperation of Meryl Streep was essential before the film could get made. She fell in love with Cazale when they co-starred in "Measure to Measure" in Central Park in 1976 and put her career on hold to minister to him when he became ill. It took a year of letters, e-mails, calls and a personal plea from Cazale's brother, Steven Cazale, before Streep, who is known to be reluctant to talk about her personal life, agreed to participate in the documentary.
Shepard put together a trailer by combining clips of Cazale on film with interviews with Streep and Sidney Lumet, director of "Dog Day Afternoon." Sending it out, he soon had a producing partner, Brett Ratner -- director of the "Rush Hour" trilogy and "X-Men: The Last Stand" and another devoted Cazale fan -- and a commitment from HBO to finance "I Knew It Was You."
The title comes from Michael Corleone's famous line to his brother in "The Godfather: Part II" when he is sure that Fredo has conspired against him: "I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart."
"Everybody knows John as Fredo, but nobody knows his name," Shepard says. "So the title means you are going to actually get to know who it is you know just from his face."
Shepard fell in love with Cazale watching his movies when they first came out.
"There was something about John -- a sensitivity and a vulnerability that isn't always seen in movies," he says. "Fredo was a bad guy. He was a pimp and a gangster. Yet you loved him because he was vulnerable and fragile. And John was able to show the fragility and weakness in an honest, non-actorly way. One of his talents was that he was unashamed. His ego didn't get in the way."
Every one of Cazale's co-stars who was asked to be in the film said yes.
De Niro and Hackman talk onscreen, along with Pacino and Francis Ford Coppola, each of whom made three pictures with Cazale. Coppola wrote a part for Cazale in "The Conversation" after directing him in "The Godfather."
"He was inspiring. He made you better," Pacino says in the documentary.
Streep said that at that early stage in her career, "I was probably more glib and ready to pick the first idea that came to me (for a role). John would say, 'There are a lot of possibilities.' That's a real lesson I learned, and I still think about it today."
Lumet gives an example of Cazale's offbeat sense of humor that resulted in a hilarious ad-lib in "Dog Day Afternoon." Believing the police are going to give them an airplane for their getaway, Pacino's bank robber asks Cazale as his accomplice, "Any special country you want to go to?" After a long pause, Cazale says, "Wyoming." Lumet said he and Pacino almost ruined the take from laughing so loud.
Pacino recalls that when Cazale first worked with Streep, "He told me he met the greatest actress in the history of the world. She was just made for him, and he was made for her, and they found each other."
"I Knew It Was You" touchingly shows the kindnesses Cazale brought out in people. The producers didn't want him to be in "The Deer Hunter" because his cancer diagnosis made him uninsurable. Although De Niro never told Streep this, she believes to this day that "Bob secured the bond on John's participation because he is a very generous man."
Pacino marvels at how Streep took care of Cazale throughout his illness and was at his side at the end.
"As great as she is in her work, that's what I think of when I think of her," he says.
Shepard hopes Cazale's buddies bind together one more time for a specific goal: to convince the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to bestow a posthumous Oscar on Cazale. He was never so much as nominated. Shepard realizes these Oscars are rare. But if baseball is a metaphor for life, he has the perfect analogy.
"If John Cazale was a baseball player," he says, "he would be in the Hall of Fame."

(E-mail Ruthe Stein at pinkletters(at)sfchronicle.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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