jack kevorkian

Yesterday was cable's first day at the press tour, and a morning full of panels by the Discovery networks and a few other assorted cable entities was followed by three hours of star-studded panels for HBO. I mean, we're talking about one huge name in entertainment after another: Claire Danes, David Simon (The Wire), Rosie O'Donnell, Susan Sarandon, Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, Ricky Gervais. Oh, and Al Pacino.

Pacino is playing Jack Kevorkian in the HBO movie You Don't Know Jack (Sarandon is also in the movie), and during the panel discussion, Pacino was acting a bit... odd.

How odd? He wore sunglasses on stage for the first half of the panel. His answers were often rambling statements punctuated with occasional insight. And the Bronx native spoke in a modified Midwestern lilt that made us think he hadn't gotten Kevorkian out of his system yet. When asked what it was like filming a movie for HBO, he replied, very Zen-like: "Well, it's television. It's HBO, and so HBO is television."