But really, can Pacino ever outdo Dick Tracy?

Following Woody Allen in the Week of Gratuitously Self-Loathing '70s New York Movie Icons, Al Pacino today reflects a sassy candor on his last three decades of "work":

"I know I haven't made a good film since Dog Day Afternoon," he admits. "Somebody at a press conference once asked me, 'Do you think you'll ever be as good as you were in Dog Day?' and I said flatly, 'No.' That answered that."

Ha! Oh, Al... yes. Yes it did.

Actually, I do not believe for a second that this incident ever happened, but you still have to love Pacino's jokey modesty--kind of the equivalent of falling hard on a sword too blunt to pierce him. Or balancing his checkbook in the middle of an interview. Still, I really would like to be the guy at the press conference who asks, "Do you take your career seriously anymore?"--if only because Big Al was making milestone films like Heat as recently as 1995 and now hits the multiplex like Avian bird flu once a year. The Godfather and Dog Day Afternoon are virtually irrelevant in this context, don't you think?

In the same interview, Pacino also notes that he wanted to box Dustin Hoffman "without gloves" at Madison Square Garden years ago. Also cute, if not totally arousing in a Michael-Corleone-kicks-the-shit-out-of-Benjamin-Braddock kind of way. This probably happened on the set of Dick Tracy, anyway, so if anyone has a less apocryphal tale than Pacino's, I am all ears.