Pacino: The loss of two of the close people in his life — his closest sister Margo, played por 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 you up, and sometimes it creates certain spontaneity. But, you’re going fast with highly tuned people who are there and are with it, and they’re not going so fast that they’re negligent. It’s just the nature of the beast.
You have to do it because it’s all about how much money there is to do these things. But, I’ve done it before. I did another HBO thing and felt the same way. It’s just that there were so many scenes in this. At one point, we did 16 scenes in two days, and that is a lot of stuff in two days.
At the same time, it was exciting because that lent an energy to the thing because you’re in the hands of Barry Levinson. You’re in the hands of a consummate filmmaker, so you know he’s operating. And, they used a lot of cameras, which is also helpful. If I had it to do over again, I would say, “Yeah, sure.” I would do it. You do get very tired sometimes, when you’re sitting around for hours in movies. You get depleted. Here, that didn’t happen.
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 you up, and sometimes it creates certain spontaneity. But, you’re going fast with highly tuned people who are there and are with it, and they’re not going so fast that they’re negligent. It’s just the nature of the beast.
You have to do it because it’s all about how much money there is to do these things. But, I’ve done it before. I did another HBO thing and felt the same way. It’s just that there were so many scenes in this. At one point, we did 16 scenes in two days, and that is a lot of stuff in two days.
At the same time, it was exciting because that lent an energy to the thing because you’re in the hands of Barry Levinson. You’re in the hands of a consummate filmmaker, so you know he’s operating. And, they used a lot of cameras, which is also helpful. If I had it to do over again, I would say, “Yeah, sure.” I would do it. You do get very tired sometimes, when you’re sitting around for hours in movies. You get depleted. Here, that didn’t happen.