Production and Controversy

Scarface was directed by Brian De Palma, and written by now famed director Oliver Stone while the latter battled a cocaine addiction. Stone consulted the Miami police and the Drug Enforcement Agency while writing the film, incorporating many true crimes into the film (one set of crime scene photos Stone was shown depicted a man who had been dismembered with a chainsaw and stuffed into an aluminum trashcan). Also, there is some controversy regarding the origin of the character Tony Montana. Some people believe that the character was originally based on a character which appeared in The World Wrestling Federation in the late 1970's. Ironically, a popular character in the 1990's by the name of Razor Ramon was believed to be based on the character Tony Montana.

The film was originally to be filmed in Miami but it received criticism from the Cuban community, which objected to the film's representation of Cubans as murderous drug dealers. Leaders in the Cuban community wanted Stone and the movie's producers to include scenes which would show Anti-Castro activity in Miami as part of the movie's plot. After protracted negotiations over the script, the producers ultimately refused to give in to their demands, saying that the film was about cocaine and not the politics of Castro's Cuba. As a result, the exception being obvious exterior shots, the movie was filmed in and around Los Angeles. The film does contain scenes where other Cubans are disgusted by Tony's actions. One of the undercover officers during the sting was a Cuban commenting, "You make a real Cuban throw up!"

When the film was submitted to the MPAA, it was rated X for the graphic language and violence. DePalma would re-edit the film two additional times, toning down the violence but still getting an X-rating from the MPAA. After the film was rejected for a third time, DePalma, when he appealed the MPAA's decision, convinced the MPAA with help from a panel of various real life police officers and narcotics officers, who told the MPAA that the violence in DePalma's films was an accurate portrayal of real life drug dealers and that the film should be released with its violence intact so as to show and educate to viewer towards how violent the drug trade was. After a vote of 18 to 2, the MPAA agreed to give the third cut of the film an R-rating. But DePalma, who felt that there were no real differences between the two "clean" cuts he put together and the original director's cut version, arranged to have his original "X" cut released to theaters with an R-rating.

For the remainder of the 1980s, Scarface held the record for the movie containing the most uses of the word "fuck." (A popular Internet rumor states that the group Blink 182 got their name from a mis-count of how many times Tony says "fuck" in the film.) It lost this title in 1989 to Born on the Fourth of July. In 2006, a viral video entitled Scarface (Short Version) began circulating the internet. Consisting solely of clips of the word "fuck" (and its variations) from the film, it runs one minute and thirty seconds.