- published: 01 May 2016
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John Gregory Dunne (May 25, 1932 – December 30, 2003) was an American novelist, screenwriter and literary critic.
Dunne was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and was a younger brother of author Dominick Dunne. He was the son of Dorothy Frances (née Burns) and Richard Edwin Dunne, a hospital chief of staff and prominent heart surgeon. With several siblings, he grew up in a large, wealthy Irish Catholic family. Their maternal grandfather Dominick Francis Burns had founded the Park Street Trust Company.
The young Dunne suffered from a severe stutter and took up writing to express himself. Eventually he learned to speak normally by observing others. He attended the Portsmouth Priory School and graduated from Princeton University in 1954, where he was member of the Tiger Inn.
He started working as a journalist in New York City for Time magazine. He credited the political essayist Noel Parmentel with being his mentor in many ways.
In the late 1950s he met Joan Didion in New York City, where she was an editor at Vogue. In a 2005 interview Didion recalled, "We amused each other and I thought he was smart. He knew a lot of stuff that I didn't know, like politics and history - I had managed to go through school without learning much except a lot of poems." He invited her to travel to Connecticut one weekend in 1963 to visit his family: New England Irish Catholic, with six children. Didion said she "liked the set-up, liked being there, and liked him."
Alfredo James "Al" Pacino (/pəˈtʃiːnoʊ/; born April 25, 1940) is an American actor of stage and screen, filmmaker and screenwriter. Often considered by audiences and commentators to be one of the greatest actors of all time, Pacino has had a career spanning more than fifty years, during which time he has received numerous accolades and honors both competitive and honorary, among them an Academy Award, two Tony Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, a British Academy Film Award, four Golden Globe Awards, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute, the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award, and the National Medal of Arts. He is also one of few performers to have won a competitive Oscar, an Emmy and a Tony Award for acting, dubbed the "Triple Crown of Acting".
A method actor and former student of the Herbert Berghof Studio and the Actors Studio in New York City, where he was taught by Charlie Laughton and Lee Strasberg, Pacino made his feature film debut with a minor role in Me, Natalie (1969) and gained favourable notices for his lead role as a heroin addict in The Panic in Needle Park (1971). He achieved international acclaim and recognition for his breakthrough role as Michael Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather (1972). He received his first Oscar nomination and would reprise the role in sequels Part II (1974) and Part III (1990). Pacino's performance as Corleone is now regarded as one of the greatest screen performances in film history.
Wishin' on a shooting star
The dreams alone won't get you far
Can't deny your feelings anymore
The world is waitin' right outside your door
What are you waiting for?
C'mon here's your chance
don't let it slip right through your hands
are you ready for the ride of your life?
your dreams are riding on the wind
just reach out and blow them in
get ready for the ride of your life?
In your heart you know what you must do
you've only got yourself to answer to
don't let fear of falling hold you down
your spirit's flyin high above the clouds
you're goin there
c'mon here's your chance
don't let it slip right through your hands
are you ready for the ride of your life?
your dreams are ridin on the wind
just reach out and blow them in
get ready for the ride of your life
your on your way no lookin back
and there's no future livin' in the past
and you're free at last
you're free at last
(repeat chorus)