Unsung Auteurs: Jerry Schatzberg

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.