Pacino, Walken and Arkin: Three stand up guys in a one-act play in an empty noir city at night | Roger Ebert

"Oh! Who could that be, I wonder? Actually, could be, now that you mention it. I can't think of anybody--well, I don't remember--I don't know, I can't remember a character. You guys know my work."

Walken: "Donnie Brasko."

Pacino plays a character named Lefty in that film, who's over the hill.

Arkin: "He didn't have the bravado, this guy."

Pacino: "No, as Mike Newell, the director, told me, my character was more a kind of a 'Death of a Salesman' gangster."

I grow thoughtful: "Does it seem to you that our lives are getting to be about closure?"

"Well, they always are, whether you like it or not," Arkin says. "I think people would like to put it out of their minds. It's not out of my mind anymore. These days I look at a script and say, 'What page are they gonna knock me off on?' I say, 'Oh! I live until page 83! That's a good script.' "

"Thinking back to YouTube," Pacino said, "Have you seen Key and Peele? Oh, man, they're comics! African-American comics. They have this thing where the both of them, they're in a bar, and one sees a girl he likes at the end of the bar. He says, 'Gee, you know, I'd like her.' It's obvious he's married or something but he'd like her, you know. He says, 'Gee, I wonder if I can get her number,' and he goes to the bar and of course, his friend is there already, and has the number of the girl. He sees another girl and he goes to that part of the bar and he hits on her and of course his friend is talking to her. Anyway, he gets home and he's looking through a magazine and he sees this beautiful girl in the magazine and his friend is in the picture with her. He grabs his wife and looks in the mirror and he sees his friend as himself and it just won't stop."

Pacino begins laughing so uncontrollably tears run from his eyes. Walken and Arkin regard him.

"Like 'The Twilight Zone,'" Arkin says.

Me: "I'm sitting here with three legends. It occurs to me that it's a little one-act play."

"You come out to about 150 years between the three of us," Arkin says.

Me: "It's a little silly for me to go around the room asking interview questions. Why don't you three guys just talk?"

Pacino: "Alan's good at that."

That starts them talking about actors who refused to rehearse, and how much they all love to rehearse.