The Scarface icon is in Venice to promote his new directorial project Wilde Salome, a part-documentary about writer/poet Oscar Wilde and part-movie adaptation of his play Salome, and he picked up the Jaeger Lecoultre Glory to the Filmmaker Award at a glitzy gala on Sunday night (04Sep11).
Earlier that day, his film was screened to members of the press and, during a news conference after the showing, Pacino admitted he was fascinated by Wilde’s lifestyle as a homosexual man living in the late 1800s.
He said, “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.”
