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Ridley Scott's House of Gucci has caused a stir with the Gucci family, with Patricia Gucci – the only daughter of Aldo Gucci – calling Pacino's version of Aldo "shameful, because he doesn’t resemble him at all." She went on to call Pacino's Aldo "fat, short, with sideburns, really ugly." Ouch.
Speaking with Total Film for an extended Q&A, Scott addresses the criticism, saying that he tried to be "as respectful as possible by being as factual as possible" to what happened. However, he adds that the family writing to the production were "alarmingly insulting" when talking about Pacino.
"The people that were writing from the family to us at the onset were alarmingly insulting, saying that Al Pacino did not represent physically Aldo Gucci in any shape or form," Scott says. "And yet, frankly, how could they be better represented than by Al Pacino? Excuse me! You probably have the best actors in the world, you should be so fucking lucky."
The filmmaker goes on to discuss the movie being intentionally played for laughs. "I think a lot of it is comedic," he says. "Certainly for the first two acts. Jared Leto, there's not a lot of information about [his character] Paolo, but there are pictures of Paolo and that's exactly what Paolo looks like. We found the pictures and Jared did what he did and dressed the way Paolo dressed. There's not a lot of Paolo on camera talking. And so that had to be, to a certain extent, imagined, but clearly Paolo was a very colorful and flamboyant man."
"The flamboyance of Paolo was quite nicely captured," he adds. "And how could that be offensive? We paid attention to not getting too overt if we can avoid it."
Since the interview with Scott, the Gucci family has once more criticized Scott and the film, saying that Aldo and Paolo are portrayed as "thugs, ignorant and insensitive to the world around them." They did not discuss their thoughts on Pacino's looks.
For more, check out our full interview with Scott, in which the director also talks Lady Gaga and why he never finished his version of Dune.
