No Jerry Schatzberg, no The Godfather. Well, there actually likely still would have been a The Godfather, but it would certainly not have been as good. Why? Because it was Jerry Schatzberg who discovered Al Pacino on the stage and gave him his first major lead role in 1971’s The Panic In Needle Park, which (as seen in the wildly entertaining and utterly mesmeric new TV series The Offer) prompted Francis Ford Coppola to fight to have the young, largely unknown actor take centre stage in his much touted mob epic.

There are a handful of parks around the world that have been referred to as “Needle Park,” because heroin addicts have shot up in them. But the authentic Needle Park (a dubious distinction, but part of our lore) was on the Upper West Side: a sliver of a traffic island, wedged between Broadway and Amsterdam, off 71st Street, which played a leading role in a 1971 film classic.

Jerry Schatzberg hated working in his parents’ fur business. They sold their coats to retailers wholesale and only came in finite templates. Schatzberg was frustrated by their lack of variation, and wondered why no one ever mixed and matched the furs into something new. Bored in the showroom, he read Town & Country—not out of an early attraction to fashion, but because it was the only magazine ever there.

“It’s a very difficult chore to make films,” says Jerry Schatzberg, the photographer and filmmaker who’ll be in town this weekend to show off his finest pictures, both still and motion.

The writer-director of Menashe sits down with one of his cinematic heroes, a 1970s directing great.

Jerry Schatzberg, who directed the 1973 Palme d’Or winner starring Al Pacino, Gene Hackman, has plans for sequel

Schatzberg's opportunity to photograph Dylan came through a friend of a friend. While his career first began as a photography assistant for Vogue Magazine, he says his access came more through relationships. He says he was very friendly with English photographers, through whom he met Mick Jagger and developed a rapport with the Rolling Stones. The buzz about Dylan came through these circles.

A STIFF wind was blowing through Chelsea, driving the cold rain sideways. It was last Thursday, early evening, just after quitting time. Seven in the evening is hardly a decent hour for a must-attend party, let alone one held outdoors in a space sheltered, though barely, by the elevated train tracks of the High Line. Still, New York being New York, there were already people lining up by a half-shuttered riot gate, umbrellas blown inside-out, waiting to get in.

The Panic in Needle Park is an American art film that would have found its natural home in a 42nd Street grind house—although the new print of this 1971 Jerry Schatzberg dope opera at Film Forum this week looks a lot better now than it did then.

Jerry Schatzberg felt intimidated when he first met Bob Dylan to photograph him in 1965, but as these pictures testify, he soon broke the ice, as he tells Charlotte Cripps

American photographer Jerry Schatzberg, granted behind-the-scenes access, recalls a time that proved pivotal in haute couture