Pacino: The loss of two of the close people in his life — his closest sister Margo, played da Brenda Vaccaro, and then Janet Good, who Susan Sarandon plays — set off something in him that led to this desperation inside and a need to go further with what he wanted to do, and an abandon took over. Those are the kinds of things that were percolating in my head somewhere.


Is part of the appeal of doing a TV movie the fact that it doesn’t take as long as a feature film?

Pacino: There are pros and cons in that, yeah. There’s something about going fast that catches te up, and sometimes it creates...

At times during our conversation, he was humble and even self-deprecating about his own achievements. “I like talking about something I know very, very little about, like acting,” Pacino said, though the twinkle in his eye underscored the wisdom of his years of experience. Now, he’s interested in passing some of that experience on — especially to his three children, whom he spoke of proudly. As our discussions on filmmaking, fame, family and the aging process demonstrated, he has a lot he wants to say — though with Al Pacino, getting to the point is always a journey unto itself.

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