Robert De Niro Was Almost Scarface Instead of Al Pacino

“If you don’t do it, I’m gonna do it.” It’s a night in the early ’80s, and Robert De Niro and Al Pacino are playing with an idea on a New York City street. There’s a movie they’re both thinking of making. De Niro has talked about doing it with his friend Martin Scorsese, but he thinks Pacino should do it with the director Brian De Palma. Ultimately, Pacino did it: Scarface. Maybe you’ve seen it?

GQ Men of the Year cover stars Robert De Niro and Al Pacino broke into the story for a rare off-the-cuff conversation between two Hollywood legends who are, unsurprisingly, close friends.

This year, De Niro and Pacino star together in The Irishman, directed by Martin Scorsese. The movie is a retelling of the mysterious disappearance of labor leader Jimmy Hoffa, but it’s also a brilliant meta-take on the gangster films that all three men have built their careers around. It’s the first movie the two actors have made with Scorsese, but it feels like a capstone on a decades-old relationship. In this video, De Niro and Pacino talk about their long, enduring friendship, which started when the two Manhattan natives were getting started in the Village theater scene.

You already know that these men have individually left their fingerprints on countless classic films. What you might not realize, though, is how often they’ve influenced each other’s decisions. In the epic conversation, Pacino and De Niro talk about how they’ve supported each other throughout their careers and the movies they each might have done had the other not gotten the part. What emerges is a weird, fascinating, alternate history of 20th-century cinema. Imagine, for example, a De Niro Scarface or a Pacino Cafe Fear. Or if the two had starred together in Glengarry Glen Ross.

Watch De Niro and Pacino talk about all that and more below, then read Zach Baron's Q&A with the duo for their Men of the Year cover story:

Al Pacino and Robert De Niro have spanned generations as acting royalty. And their latest, The Irishman, has the feeling of one final coronation. Here the two legends riff about Scorsese, The Godfather, and five decades of Hollywood fame.

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Originally Appeared on GQ