How’s Al Pacino Doing, Ed Koch?

Don’t be surprised to see Hiz zoner Al Pacino catnapping on the job in “City Hall.”

It’s one of the real-life idiosyncrasies the actor, who plays the mayor of New York in director Harold Becker’s drama due next fall, picked up recently while hanging around with some of the Big Apple’s present and past political luminaries.

Pacino has met with ex-mayors Ed Koch and David Dinkins, as well as the incumbent, Rudolph Giuliani. While Pacino declined to talk about the meetings, the irrepressible Koch had plenty to say about the meeting and two dinners he had with the actor the other day.

“He wanted me to talk about my life as mayor, about my routine, about how I spent my time in the car,” Koch says. “I spent a lot of time dictating to my press secretary because you have to use every moment. Because I’d get up every morning at 5:30, I’d maybe get five hours of sleep. There was a lot of catnapping in the car, 10 minutes at a time. Occasionally, I would sleep standing up in the subway.”

And if the press caught him slumbering on the public’s dime, Koch would snip: “I couldn’t care less.”

He gave Pacino plenty of tips on how to deal with the press: “You’ve got to feed that piranha or they’ll eat you. The print press is the least helpful--go for the radio; it’s the best.”

While Koch’s input may add to Pacino’s role, director Becker says the role is primarily based on two other role models: Fiorello LaGuardia, one of New York’s most beloved mayors who reigned over the city in the ‘30s and ‘40s, and recently ousted New York Gov. Mario Cuomo.

“Cuomo is a great orator and LaGuardia was truly a man of the people,” says Becker. “You may even see a little of Mark Antonio, the congressman from New York, in Pacino’s character. All of these men were strong populist, charismatic leaders. This film is a political drama, but more than that it’s about struggling with character and moral dilemmas. It’s about the relationships of the people who govern, and light that’s shed into the very darkest of places.”

The plot involves three murders, those of a boy, a police officer and a drug dealer, which eventually lead to the unraveling of major political corruption. The story was written by Ken Lipper (“Wall Street”), a former deputy mayor of New York under Koch from 1983 to 1985. The script was rewritten by Bo Goldman.

The tale turns on the relationship between the young, idealistic chief deputy mayor, played by John Cusack, and his somewhat jaded boss, Mayor John Pappas (Pacino), a veteran of the greased-palm school of political dealmaking.

“In many ways this is a thriller,” says Lipper. “It’s about the dilemma of the person wielding power and how much of a price he pays to do that.”*