THE FIRST TAKE CLUB

THIS MONTH

SCREENWRITER JOE BARTON SAYS HELLO TO HIS LITTLE FRIEND — AL PACINO/BRIAN DE PALMA’S SCARFACE— FORTHE FIRSTTIME

IT’S TAKEN ME 34 years to see , surprisingly, given that it centres around two of my favourite things — doing cocaine and shouting at people. I actually thought that I had seen this film but it turned out I’d just fallen asleep in front of the telly and woken up halfway through . But even, it was easy to feel like I had. The poster and “Say hello to my little friend” have entered the cultural lexicon and the whole thing induced an almost Proustian memory of playing as a teenager, to the extent that whenever Pacino walked past a car I instinctively pressed triangle on my PlayStation controller to try to make him steal it.