Al Pacino set to play Joe Paterno in movie on legendary Penn State coach’s life

pennstategamedayr | January 17, 2013 at 6:41 pm | 1 Comment

Penn State Nittany Lions head coach Joe Paterno takes the field before the game against the Indiana Hoosiers at Memorial Stadium. (Michael Hickey-USA TODAY Sports)

The complex life of Joe Paterno is set to hit the silver screen and the legendary Penn State head coach will be portrayed by a legendary actor.

According to CBS, Al Pacino will reunite with director Brian de Palma in order to put together what promises to be an extremely difficult film to produce. JoePa was a living legend in Happy Valley, where he ran one of the nation’s winningest programs for five decades. The college town in which he rose to fame is now also the tentative name of a planned biopic on Paterno’s life and death.

Producer Edward R. Pressman, for one, is excited about the potential the two bring to this project.

“‘Happy Valley’ reunites the ‘Scarface’ and ‘Carlito’s Way’ team of De Palma and Pacino for the third time, and I can’t think of a better duo to tell this story of a complex, intensely righteous man who was brought down by his own tragic flaw.”

Pacino and de Palma worked together on 1983′s “Scarface” and 1993′s “Carlito’s Way”. If the general pace and themes of those two cinematic classics are any indication, the Paterno biopic will be a deep, dark look into not only JoePa’s tendencies as coach, but as a person.

And as the superior when graduate assistant came to him after witnessing the sexual abuse of young boys with assistant coach Jerry Sandusky.

The uproar after Sandusky’s actions hit the public sphere not only directly caused the firing of the man who had collected the most wins in college football history, but some believe may have indirectly caused the passing of a man in fragile health.

Soon after his firing in the middle of the 2011 football season, Paterno succumbed to complications from lung cancer.

While no one has mixed emotions regarding Sandusky and his terrible, tragic actions, Paterno is another matter. The movie will attempt to convey the intricacies of a man who would do anything to win, and who may have never seen himself as doing anything wrong.