Hank Azaria on his Heat reaction shot: ‘I was truly scared’

I wouldn’t normally write an entire post about a tweet from a celebrity, but let’s be honest, any excuse to talk about Pacino’s GREAT ASS!!! scene from Heat is a good one. On last week’s Frotcast we were discussing the scene, a moment so infamous that it’s since taken on meme proportions, and has been a drop on the Howard Stern show for years. I was saying how Hank Azaria’s horrified reaction as he’s being interrogated is at least as priceless as Pacino’s insane line read. A few people emailed to tell us the story of how Pacino had supposedly done the scene flat dozens of times, and then on the 17th or so take, he did the huge GRRREAAAT ASSS line read that you see in the movie, and Azaria’s horrified reaction to it was basically genuine and not in character (a story Azaria apparently discusses on Kevin Pollak’s podcast). Today, he basically confirmed as much on Twitter (see? Twitter can be neat sometimes):

I wasn’t acting, I was truly scared MT @filmdrunk Thx to @the8bitlife for sending me my fav @hankazaria reaction shot ow.ly/jGDF4

— Hank Azaria (@HankAzaria) April 3, 2013

Filmmakers spend all their time thinking of ways to create the perfect scene, and so often the best ones are just things that happen that you could never hope to plan or try to recreate. That’s why trying is for suckers, I always say.

[HankAzaria, thanks to The8BitLife and Farthammer for the background info]