Tim McGraw: How Al Pacino (Almost) Influenced His Career
Tim McGraw says that because of actor Al Pacino, he wanted to be a lawyer. In a discussion about Labor Day, he discussed jobs he might have had.
Tim said, “I wanted to be a lawyer for as long as I could remember. In fact, I think I was 11, 12, or 13 years old, and I saw And Justice for All with Al Pacino. And from that point on, I always wanted to be a defense attorney. I went to college to be a lawyer, and then I picked up a guitar and started playing music so that all went out the window.”
He added, “So if there was something I’d wanna learn more about, it’d be the law and government. I’m sort of a political junkie, so I would like to learn more about that, and probably history. I’m a big history fan as well.”
And Justice For All hit theaters in 1979, and features Pacino playing Arthur Kirkland, a Baltimore defense attorney, who is in jail on a contempt of court charge. He was in jail because he punched Judge Henry T. Fleming (played by John Forsythe) while arguing the case of Jeff McCullaugh (played by Thomas Waites). McCullaugh was stopped for a minor traffic offense, then mistaken for a killer of the same name, and has been in jail for a year and a half. The film features the famous scene where Pacino’s character yells, “You’re out of order! You’re out of order! The whole trial is out of order! They’re out of order!” (You can watch the very NSFW scene here. It’s very NSFW.)
Labor Day plays a big part in one of Tim’s biggest hit songs, “Something Like That,” from 1999. The lyrics include, “It was Labor Day weekend, I was 17 / I bought a Coke, and some gasoline / And I drove out to the county fair / When I saw her for the first time / She was standing there in the ticket line / And it all started right then and there / Oh, a sailor sky made a perfect sunset / And that’s the day I’ll never forget.”
The chorus, “I had a barbecue stain on my white t-shirt / She was killing me in that miniskirt / Skippin’ rocks on the river by the railroad tracks / She had a suntan line and red lipstick / I worked so hard for that first kiss / And a heart don’t forget something like that.”
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