Serpico

The Sidney Lumet film "Serpico" has been making the cable rounds lately. Until this week I hadn't seen it for several years. Over the last few days or so, I kept picking it up on HBO somewhere in the middle, before I finally happened to catch it at the beginning.

If you're like me, and you saw it years ago, or maybe read the Peter Maas book, it's worth watching again.

Frank Serpico would be one of my favorite film characters of all time -- a hippie, non-conformist cop, a civil libertarian law enforcement officer, a man of refined tastes in art and music who made his living for years working in the gutters of NYC -- the sort of man who seems to embody contradiction and yet seems so perfectly adjusted. He would be one of my favorite characters except for the fact that he's very real.

Every time I watch this movie, I feel a little ashamed. How he managed to stand on principle, for as long as he did, taking the kinds of risks that he did, is just amazing to me. Especially because I'm pretty sure that if I were put in his shoes, I wouldn't be able to do it myself.

Apparently Al Pacino asked him once, when he was preparing to play him, just exactly why Serpico did what he did. Why did he risk everything, literally risk his life, to preserve his integrity?

His answer?

"Well, Al, I don't know. I guess I would have to say it would be because ... if I didn't, who would I be when I listened to a piece of music?"