captioning funded by cbs and ford-- built for the road ahead. >> pelley: our hidden cameras captured one of the most outrageous cons we have ever reported. >> you can't find a surgeon in the world who doesn't support our approach. >> pelley: he's a 21st century snake oil salesman bilking desperate patients out of their life savings. >> we've gotten people out of wheelchairs. >> pelley: i'm scott pelley. i'm with "60 minutes." his bogus treatment costs $125,000 cash and promises the impossible. i understand that you have had patients that have stood up and

walked away from wheelchairs. >> there have been patients that have improved to... to that extent. >> pelley: you know, mr. stowe, the trouble is that you're a con man. >> couric: ever since "the godfather," al pacino has been considered one of the biggest stars in film. but we were surprised when pacino told us he thought the studio was going to fire him, until this scene. ( gunshot ) now about to turn 70, pacino is in a new hbo movie where he transforms into dr. jack kevorkian, and with the help of technology, gets interviewed by mike wallace. >> jack kevorkian, dr. death, is a fanatic. >> zealot. >> i'm steve kroft. >> i'm lesley stahl. >> i'm scott pelley. >> i'm bob simon. >> i'm morley safer. >> i'm katie couric.

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[ male announcer ] there's no finer way to travel. the new toyota avalon... comfort is back. ♪ bring me a dream >> pelley: con men used to travel town to town hawking medical remedies said to be made of chinese snakes. snake oil was useless and dangerous. so the f.d.a. was created to put a stop to it and other food and drug scams. but today, quack medicine has never been bigger. in the 21st century, snake oil has been replaced by bogus therapies using stem cells.

stem cells may offer cures one day, but medical charlatans on the internet are making outrageous claims that they can reverse the incurable, from autism to multiple sclerosis to every kind of cancer. desperate people are being bilked out of their life's savings. we've been looking into this surging crime, and we found there is no better window on how it works than the practice of a man who calls himself "doctor," a man named lawrence stowe. stowe has been unaware that, lately, some of his patients have been working with "60 minutes." one of those patients is steven watters, a college administrator in lufkin, texas, who, six months ago, received maybe the worst diagnosis imaginable. he has a.l.s., amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as lou gehrig's disease. about 30,000 americans have a.l.s. at any given time.

and like watters, they all will die, most within five years, as their nervous system gradually disconnects from their muscles. >> steven watters: everything just takes a little longer. i just set things up to where it requires minimal manual effort. just handling personal hygiene is difficult-- teeth brushing, flossing, very difficult, time- consuming. so you just make the adaptations that you can and go on. >> pelley: eventually, watters will be able to move nothing but his eyes. the same fate is ahead of michael martin, who also has a.l.s. martin has nearly lost any ability to speak, and very soon, he won't be able to walk. i wonder what it was that your regular doctor back home told you about your disease and what your prospects were. >> michael martin: he said i had about two years.

>> pelley: you had about two years to live. no patient has ever been cured of a.l.s. no patient has ever seen the symptoms reversed, even temporarily. but still, desperate people find themselves drawn to a place that promotes the impossible-- stowe biotherapy in la mesa, california, near san diego-- which bills itself as a "medical oasis." we asked a multiple sclerosis patient to go in with a hidden camera to hear larry stowe's pitch for his miracle treatment. that's stowe telling our m.s. patient that he can reverse her disease with his program of herbs and vitamins to boost the immune system, custom vaccines, and stem cell injections. medical experts say it's nonsense, but it's the same pitch that we secretly recorded again and again as stowe claimed to reverse cancer, a.l.s., m.s., parkinson's disease and more. >> lawrence stowe: we're the only one's who's been able to

get anybody that's down here back up to here, and they stay back up to here. if we were a major pharmaceutical drug company, you know, we'd be talking about all of our research associating getting nobel prizes in medicine and things of that nature. >> pelley: larry stowe is not a medical doctor. he claims two phds, but we found he only has one, in chemical engineering. he had a career at mobil oil and holds patents in the oil industry. but by the 1980s, stowe had taken a strange turn into pseudo-science. for a time, he promoted something called "eon water," which, he said, slowed the aging process. and by 2003, he had created the stowe foundation to advocate unproven stem cell therapies. michael martin, one of the a.l.s. patients helping with our story, had heard about stowe from a friend. and before we ever met martin, he'd already given stowe a down payment of $47,000 to start the treatment.

when dr. stowe said that he could reverse this disease with stem cells, you thought what? >> martin: oh, i...i wanted to believe. >> pelley: you wanted to believe. how does larry stowe make believers of the desperate? we wanted to see. >> stowe: steve watters? glad to meet you. larry stowe. >> pelley: so we set up hidden cameras in michael martin's home in houston, and invited a.l.s. sufferer steven watters to pose as an interested patient. stowe came in on crutches. he's missing a leg, which he says he lost to cancer. everyone in the room knew about our hidden cameras except stowe. stowe had claimed what he called a "permanent fix" for a.l.s., so we gave watters questions to ask about stowe's therapy. >> watters: so, is there a permanent fix from the stem cells? >> stowe: oh, yes. yeah. you'll be able to... >> watters: exercise again?

>> stowe: ...exercise again. oh, yeah. >> watters: well, if i opt for the permanent fix, will i avoid a feeding tube? will it keep me out of a wheelchair? >> stowe: yeah. oh, yeah, absolutely. we've gotten people out of wheelchairs. >> watters: am i going to get closer and closer to, at some point you can say, "okay, you're cured. you're healed from this disease"? >> stowe: i believe that that is 100% possible, because we've done it with other conditions. i mean, we've done it with cancer, you know, which is just a different form of tissue destruction. >> martin: didn't your mother have cancer? >> stowe: my mother had pancreatic cancer, and we completely reversed her pancreatic cancer. she died cancer-free with a healthy pancreas. >> watters: what will it cost me for the permanent fix?

>> stowe: that'll be around $125,000, because it's $50,000 for phase one; the stem cell transplant is going to run you around $25,000. and then, we do follow-up therapy after that to make sure the results hold, and that's another $50,000. >> pelley: stowe told them they would have to travel to monterrey, mexico, for the treatment. he said his research associate there would take blood-forming stem cells harvested from umbilical cords or bone marrow, and inject those cells into their spines. those blood cells, he said, would transform into nerve or neural tissue that would reconnect with their muscles. is there a stem cell fix for a.l.s.? >> professor sean morrison: no. >> pelley: professor sean morrison is director of the university of michigan center for stem cell biology. his lab is one of the world's leading stem cell research centers. so, when stowe says he's going

to take blood-forming stem cells and put them in the spinal cord to create neural cells, what do you make of that? >> morrison: you know, we study blood-forming stem cells every day in this lab, including umbilical cord blood cells. and blood-forming stem cells don't make nervous system tissue. >> watters: and then, what do the injected stem cells do next? >> stowe: they start to regenerate your nerve tissue and repair the synapses. >> pelley: stowe's incredible pitch often works, because his victims have heard something about the promise of stem cells, but don't really know much about them. at one time, some scientists thought that blood-forming stem cells could replace any kind of tissue, as stowe claims. but science now knows that's wrong. stem cell therapy is the standard of care in only leukemia and certain rare diseases of the blood-- nothing else. there is very early research into whether stem cells might one day help a.l.s. patients, but nothing like the claims

stowe is making. dr. morrison thinks breakthroughs are years or decades away. he says stowe's claims are baseless. >> stowe: classically, people are reporting three to four weeks that they begin to... to notice the effects. >> pelley: notice the effects in three or four weeks. >> morrison: you might notice side effects in three to four weeks. >> pelley: you described it as "miraculous," that's what it would be. >> morrison: if somebody squirted some stem cells into the spinal cord of an a.l.s. patient and they stood up out of their wheelchair and had a permanent fix, that would be miraculous. >> pelley: but that's what stowe was promising in michael martin's living room as he weaved a pitch with lies of legitimacy. >> watters: are you currently working with anybody in the f.d.a. regarding...? >> stowe: oh, yeah. yeah, we... at all levels. >> pelley: even the university of texas, he said, was planning to build a research center with

a particular name. >> stowe: stowe research center for regenerative medicine in affiliation with the university of texas. you can't find a surgeon in the world who doesn't support our approach. >> pelley: after hearing the pitch, steve watters and michael martin, working with us, told stowe they would go to monterrey, mexico, for the treatment. we followed them there with hidden cameras. and we found stowe's so-called research associate. that's dr. frank morales in the dark jacket. in an email to watters, morales claimed: "we have treated well over 1,000 patients without any side effects other than positive results, which range from minimal to miraculous." but we have found that morales is improvising stem cell procedures for profit with no scientific basis. morales is an american citizen, living in texas, with a mexican medical license. we got the credentials he submitted to one monterrey hospital, and found that the

medical degree came from a caribbean school that was later shut down for selling diplomas. morales dropped out of residency training in texas. morales and stowe took our patients on a tour of the hospital where morales was already doing stem cell procedures. he explained the techniques he uses. >> morales: our team will go in through a catheter and place it right up close to the brain, or will go intrathecally, you know, right into the spine, and do other things that are pretty aggressive. >> pelley: mexican officials tell us stem cell therapy for a.l.s. is not authorized. the hospital says it didn't know morales was using stem cells and wouldn't have allowed it. >> morales: so we could just go right in and, okay, you got your stem cells and you're out of here. >> pelley: we found one of morales' former patients, muna erickson, in michigan. she has multiple sclerosis, for which there is no cure. what exactly did morales tell you about what you could expect?

>> keith erickson: he told me that i could expect her to be up out of the wheelchair and walking. >> pelley: she'd get out of the wheelchair? >> keith erickson: uh-huh. >> pelley: and walk away from it? >> keith erickson: uh-huh. >> pelley: erickson and her husband keith are not people with a lot of money, so in desperation, they sold their home in order to wire $15,000 to morales. the ericksons say they arrived in a rundown mexican clinic for a scheduled spinal injection of stem cells, but morales gave her a stem cell i.v. instead. >> keith erickson: so, he ended up coming in and hanging an i.v. off the tip of her thumb that was barely viable. >> pelley: muna, show me with your hand, if you can, precisely where that i.v. went in. right at the tip of your thumb. >> muna erickson: yes. >> pelley: what did you think? >> keith erickson: i thought about taking my wife and taking her home, but she was so set on getting these stem cells, i... i think she would've had a complete mental breakdown if... had i just boarded her back on a

plane. >> pelley: muna, did you get somewhat better? >> muna erickson: no, i got worse. >> pelley: back in monterrey, mexico, morales and stowe came to a hotel room, where they met patients michael martin and steve watters. they were expecting to see another down payment-- $35,000 in cash. but that is not what came through the door. mr. stowe, mr. morales, i'm scott pelley. i'm with "60 minutes." what happened next, in a moment. >> good even, canceled flights because of ash because of iceland's volcano could cause airlines a billion dollars. treasury secretary timothy geithner says the u.s. economy is growing faster than the obama administration expected. and for the second time this

month there is a dead heat at the box office. i'm russ mitchell, cbs news.

>> pelley: steven watters and michael martin, two a.l.s. patients working with "60 minutes," traveled to monterrey, mexico, to meet larry stowe and frank morales. stowe and morales said they could treat the symptoms of a.l.s. with an unproven stem cell therapy. the men met in a hotel room that we set up with hidden cameras. stowe and morales expected to see a cash down payment of $35,000. but instead, we walked in for an on-the-record interview. that's larry stowe sitting on the right. on the couch were michael martin and steve watters. and morales was explaining how the stem cell treatment would go. hey, steve, michael. mr. stowe, mr. morales, i'm

scott pelley. i'm with "60 minutes," and i'd like to ask you a few questions on the record about what you propose. i understand that you have had patients that have stood up and walked away from wheelchairs who have a.l.s. >> stowe: there have been patients that have improved to that extent. >> pelley: you reverse the condition? >> stowe: yes. >> pelley: you know, mr. stowe, the trouble is that you're a con man. >> stowe: really? >> pelley: you're lying about this protocol. you've lied about your association with the university of texas. you've lied about your work with the f.d.a. and now, you're lying to these gentlemen about what they can expect. >> stowe: now, why do you say that? >> pelley: nobody at the f.d.a. knows anything about any of this. and the university of texas is not going to be starting a regenerative medicine clinic with your name on it. >> stowe: really? >> pelley: when we asked stowe

to back up his a.l.s. claims, his story changed. give me a stowe foundation patient who has a.l.s. who has stood up out of a wheelchair and walked away. >> stowe: we don't have any a.l.s. patients; we have m.s. patients. >> pelley: we are talking about the treatment that you have taken their money for. is that a treatment that would allow them to stand up out of a wheelchair and walk away? >> stowe: with an a.l.s. patient? no, we've done it with m.s. patients. >> pelley: i don't believe that's what they understood. >> stowe: well, then... >> pelley: i don't believe that's what you told them. >> stowe: then, they weren't listening. >> pelley: can you give me... oh, actually, we were listening very carefully. >> stowe: okay. do you have the tape recordings? >> pelley: i do. >> stowe: pull them out. >> pelley: i have. >> stowe: pull them out. i want to hear them. >> pelley: i can do that. >> stowe: okay. >> pelley: and we did. this was your meeting in houston just a few weeks ago.

>> watters: well, if i opt for the permanent fix, will it keep me out of a wheelchair? >> stowe: yeah. oh, yeah, absolutely. we've had a number of a.l.s. patients be able to get out of their wheelchairs. >> pelley: that's not true, is it? >> stowe: the stowe foundation has not. >> pelley: you told steve that you were going to keep him out of a wheelchair. that's not true, either, is it? >> stowe: no, that's very true. >> pelley: you're going to sit here after seeing that, and you're going to look this man in the face and tell him that he's going to stay out of a wheelchair. i mean, that's cruel. >> stowe: really? what is his prognosis if he doesn't do this? >> pelley: his prognosis is the same either way. >> stowe: no, it's not. >> pelley: mr. stowe, you told these men in houston that a cure was, in... in your memorable phrase, "100% possible.

>> stowe: "possible." is that a guarantee? >> pelley: the folks at home are wondering what goes through your mind when one of these men pushes a suitcase full of cash across the table to you. what are you thinking? >> stowe: i'm thinking that they came to the right place if they want any hope at all. >> watters: so, is there a permanent fix from the stem cells? >> pelley: many patients have pinned their hope on dr. frank morales and his improvised stem cell procedures. recently, he injected stem cells into the spine of a seven-year- old american boy in an attempt to treat the boy's autism, a procedure with no basis in medical science. we found morales' training is dubious. this is the certificate he presented to a monterrey hospital, showing he completed his training at texas tech university. but in the interview, he switched schools. have you ever been licensed to

practice medicine in the united states? >> morales: i have, and i worked under the university of texas, where i was at... at el paso and came to mexico after that. >> pelley: the university of texas, el paso, has no medical school and no record of morales as a student. but you have a license, or had a license to practice in the state of texas? >> morales: absolutely. it was an institutional license at the university of texas, el paso-- utech, utep-- so you can go there, you can find it. i mean, that's simple, if you did your homework. that's lousiness, i mean, on your behalf, i'm sorry to say. >> pelley: not only does he have no credentials from the university of texas, we found that his texas tech credentials are fraudulent. a texas tech lawyer told us: "where it was obtained or manufactured i couldn't say, but it was not issued by texas tech." several minutes into the interview, we watched the stowe- morales relationship dissolve. morales walked out, then came

back to disavow stowe. >> morales: scott, scott. yeah, you know, i think that just in the sense of... of using, you know, his... you know, using him to try to bring me down, i think that that is inappropriate. >> pelley: well, sit down and talk to me about it. legal experts tell us that both stowe and morales have broken u.s. law, committed fraud, by making a false claim. it doesn't matter that the procedure is done in another country. we wondered why the f.d.a. is not acting against the many stem cell con artists whose web sites are up for anyone to see. but the f.d.a. commissioner margaret hamburg declined to talk with us on camera about any aspect of stem cell quackery. many experts believe that the f.d.a. is outmatched. >> larry goldstein: patients need to beware. >> pelley: larry goldstein, a prominent stem cell biologist, and researcher doug sipp, are with the international society for stem cell research, an

organization of the world's leading stem cell scientists. sipp is tracking bogus stem cell clinics all around the world. how have these operations grown, say, in the last five years or so? >> doug sipp: i would say the growth has been explosive. i've been tracking it closely for the past three years, and i've been able to come up with more than 200 clinics that are offering some version of stem cells for some type of medical condition for which there is really no good evidence that the stems would be either safe or effective. >> pelley: well, are all of these clinics frauds? >> sipp: on one end of the spectrum, you have people who are doing, essentially, badly designed, uncontrolled human medical experiments for profit. and then at the other end of the spectrum, you just have thieves who are preying on the sick and their families. >> goldstein: now, an a.l.s. patient might say to you, "how could i possibly be worse?" this is the question you get sometimes. "how could i possibly be worse?" >> pelley: "i'm going to die. why not give it a try?" >> goldstein: "i going to die in two or three years. why not give it a try?" well, what if, as a result of this treatment, you ended up in excruciating pain?

what if you managed to bankrupt your family through the use of one of these expensive, unauthorized treatments so they can't care for you properly as you decline? there are things that are worse than your current situation, i think. >> pelley: the experts in stem cell research believe these procedures are at best ineffective and potentially dangerous. a study by ucla found patients at a chinese clinic often developed spinal meningitis. but there's rarely any mention of risk on the web sites that offer false hope for dozens of afflictions, ranging from down syndrome to cancer. >> sipp: one of the different things now is the power of the internet now gives just tremendous global reach to people who, in the past, would be kind of the local quack. >> pelley: so, instead of the snake oil salesman standing in the back of a pickup truck, he can now reach every a.l.s. patient on earth. >> sipp: and say, "come to me, and i'll help you out in mexico, or in russia, or in thailand." >> pelley: what we see here,

essentially, is stowe on an industrial scale. >> goldstein: stowe on steroids. >> sipp: yeah, you could say that. >> goldstein: he might as well be sticking his hands into the pockets of those people and taking the money out without even talking to them. that's how bad i think it is. >> pelley: i wonder what you think when the top people in the field that you pretend to work in call you a "snake oil salesman." >> stowe: comes with the territory. >> pelley: it does come with the territory. we wondered what stowe would say to the idea of giving michael martin his $47,000 back. >> stowe: has he asked for it? >> pelley: i'm asking. >> stowe: we'd give it back to him. >> pelley: now, that's a deal i'd like to make. >> stowe: really? okay, and when he continues to go downhill six months from now and hasn't made any progress, are you going to cover the cost of his care? >> pelley: i'm not buying what you're selling. >> stowe: fine. >> pelley: of course, that

refund never came. when we first walked into the interview, we thought stowe might not stay. but he sat there for two hours as though, if he only talked long enough, he'd convince us. thanks for sitting with us and talking to us. >> stowe: now, you're not running away on me, are you? >> pelley: well, i was planning on leaving, yes. >> stowe: okay. >> pelley: i think i'm done. >> stowe: all right. >> pelley: thank you. >> stowe: you just cost this man his life, i want you to know that. >> pelley: you know, i don't think so. larry stowe never gave up, even after his lies were exposed. when we left the room, he turned to a.l.s. patient michael martin and tried to close the sale. >> stowe: we'll keep in touch, because i can tell you-- you know what's going to happen if you don't take some type of aggressive action. >> pelley: when we brought stowe and morales to the attention of the f.d.a., the agency started

an investigation, which is ongoing. michael martin and steve watters continue to fight against the progression of a.l.s. what would you like to see happen to larry stowe? >> martin: i... i don't care. >> pelley: "i don't care," martin said. >> martin: he has to live with himself. >> pelley: "he has to live with himself." in what was perhaps an attempt to keep this story off the air, frank morales filed suit against us, larry stowe, and the two a.l.s. patients, steve watters and michael martin.

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>> couric: only a handful of people have won an oscar, an emmy, and a tony award for best actor. the combustible, gritty, larger- than-life al pacino is on that short list. next week, he'll turn 70 years old, and the day before his birthday, he'll star in an hbo movie playing dr. jack kevorkian, the crusader for

assisted suicide. it's one of pacino's meatiest roles in years. though he's made a living in front of the camera, he's notoriously private. but at this point in his life and career, with a new movie he's proud of, he decided now was a good time to talk about himself and his most important roles, including the one that made al pacino-- michael corleone in "the godfather." ♪ when you were on the set of that movie, did you realize, "this is going to be more than a movie; it is going to be a classic"? i mean, did you have any conception of that? >> pacino: no. "just get me through the day." >> couric: really? >> pacino: oh, yeah. >> couric: were you that miserable? >> pacino: oh, i mean, with diane, and i'll never forget it, we did a scene there, at the table... >> couric: at the wedding? >> pacino: at the wedding, and we went home that night, just

got drunk, and we just said, "this movie's going to die." >> couric: not only did al pacino think the movie was going to bomb, he never expected to get the part playing opposite diane keaton. a successful stage actor, he was virtually unknown in hollywood when director francis ford coppola picked him to play the pivotal role in the movie. nobody wanted you in the role but him. >> pacino: he was the only one. >> couric: pacino says executives at paramount were adamantly against casting him, and even dismissed him as a "little runt." only after being made to audition four times did the studio reluctantly give him the part. but pacino didn't feel secure in the role, and worried he might be dropped even after filming began. >> pacino: and even francis started to lose it a little bit, because i wasn't producing what they expected at that time.

and i kept thinking, "well, it's going to come later," you know. >> couric: because you wanted to show how michael evolved, how he became... >> pacino: that's right, i did. >> couric: ...one of them. >> pacino: i had this in my head, i worked on it for a long time before we went to shoot. for months, i mean, i just focused on that character. >> pacino: but what happened was they got to do the sollozzo scene, where michael shoots sollozzo. ( gunshot ) they kept me after that. >> couric: what do you think they saw in that scene? >> pacino: well, i shot somebody and it worked. ( laughs ) ( gunshots ) >> couric: that scene transformed michael corleone from war hero to mobster, and launched al pacino's career. >> pacino: touch me again. i'll kill you. i want him dead. no! >> couric: his movie career spans four decades, 42 films, and eight oscar nominations. >> pacino: say hello to my little friend. >> couric: his performances are often defined by volcanic

moments, so much so that some of his directors wonder where his intensity comes from. >> pacino: you're out of order, you're out of order. "let's make a deal." >> couric: sidney lumet once said of you, "everything stems from some incredible core inside of him that i wouldn't think of trying to get near because it would be like getting somewhere near the center of the earth." >> pacino: whoa! >> couric: but where does sort of the explosive nature of your performance, where does that come from? >> pacino: we all got that in us. i see it every day. i see it in babies, i see it in animals, i see it in people all the time. >> couric: what, rage? >> pacino: yes. it's right there in everybody. it's just that actors access these things. >> couric: a conversation with al pacino twists and turns, drifts and digresses. his mind goes in so many different directions at once, following him isn't always easy. >> pacino: i keep losing my train... >> couric: that's all right.

but it's this kinetic thought process that serves his acting so well. he used to walk from one end of manhattan to another, talking to himself, trying to absorb his character-- his latest, the controversial jack kevorkian. >> pacino: you'll fall into a deep coma as the lethal dose of potassium chloride stops your heart. >> couric: you looked eerily and seemed eerily like jack kevorkian. how did you do it? >> pacino: what i did with jack kevorkian is i worked. i went into my little bunker by the house. a lot of acting is private time. >> couric: you're in your bunker, you're watching... >> pacino: i'm watching the pieces. i'm reading the script. i'm listening to the sound of him. it's like work. it's me, serpico. >> couric: when he took on the role of new york cop frank serpico nearly 40 years ago, he became so immersed in the part, he had trouble getting out of character. >> pacino: i was in a cab once, and i was serpico. i was playing serpico.

and there was this truck, and for years, it's been a pet peeve of mine when they blow out that carbon monoxide from the back and it's all black. it pisses me off, really. so i saw that thing and i just rolled down my window and i just, "pull over! pull over!" i was going to pull him over and put him under a citizen's arrest, i guess. >> couric: pacino was raised on the rough streets of the south bronx by a single mother and his grandparents. >> pacino: i mean, when i was a kid... >> couric: he dropped out of high school at 16, and eventually headed to greenwich village to act in small plays. his only money came from tips. he was broke and homeless. >> pacino: you learn to go without food. >> couric: but you were sleeping under storefronts and... >> pacino: well, i... i remember...

>> couric: ...and stages. >> pacino: i remember, at one point, i would sleep there at night on the stage. they had a lovely couch. it was very comfortable. well, this is it. >> couric: but he got his first break when he was accepted at the actor's studio in midtown manhattan, where marlon brando, james dean and paul newman were trained in method acting, which teaches actors to draw on their own life experiences. do you think you'd be successful if this place hadn't been here in new york? >> pacino: well, i think it had a lot to do with my success, because when i was younger, they weren't hiring people like me to play in shakespeare, or anything else, or moliere or noel coward. you could do everything here. but you just keep going. >> couric: on the streets of greenwich village today... >> pacino: hi, how are you? >> couric: ...walking with al pacino feels like old home week. >> pacino: hi. sorry for the intrusion. hey, hi, guys. >> couric: does this happen wherever you go? >> pacino: if i go with a big camera and you, i think then it might happen. >> couric: his mother never lived to see moments like these. she died when he was 21. was it hard that she never saw

you attain success? >> pacino: yeah, it was. and my grandfather, too, who raised me. those are the two most important people in my life. but they never saw it, no. >> couric: they never saw him win an oscar for his role as the blind lieutenant colonel frank slade in "scent of a woman". >> pacino: here i am. sharp to the hairline, down. >> couric: while he was preparing for the part, pacino picked up the character's signature phrase. >> pacino: hoo-wah! i had this guy, this sort of lieutenant colonel guy working with me, because he taught me how to assemble and disassemble a .45 blind. and i just practiced with this guy. and then finally, when i would get it, the colonel would say, "right. hoo-wah!" "hoo-wah," he'd say to me. and i thought, "hoo-wah. what the heck is that?" hoo-wah! ( applause )

>> couric: every character is a work in progress, and he's been known to improvise. take the 1975 film "dog day afternoon," where he plays a bumbling bank robber who has a face-off with an army of cops. >> pacino: and we were doing the scene as written. and this great assistant director, burtt harris, comes up to me and he whispers in my ear, he says, "al, say 'attica.'" i said, "attica?" "just say 'attica.'" >> couric: the attica prison riot that was brutally suppressed by police was emblematic of the anti-authority sentiments of the time. >> pacino: so i tried it. i just said, "attica!" boom! attica! attica! attica! the next thing you knew, the crowd just came alive. attica! remember attica. and this whole scene evolved from this very brilliant assistant director-- just threw

it at me. >> couric: you pay such attention to detail, sort of, every minute detail. >> pacino: sometimes. sometimes, i don't, and i... >> couric: really? >> pacino: ...and i always pay a price for that. >> couric: when don't you? >> pacino: when i'm not that interested in what i'm doing. >> couric: what role did you feel you didn't pay enough attention? >> pacino: well, there might have been a couple. you see them on television, occasionally. i go, "whoa, what was that? what was i thinking there?" >> couric: pacino says he's never felt comfortable with fame and had trouble dealing with his rise from obscurity to stardom. you started drinking in the '70s. >> pacino: the '70s? mm-mm. >> couric: sorry. the '50s? >> pacino: hmm, now we're talking. >> couric: you had some dark days there, didn't you? >> pacino: i was drinking. that was part of my life. it's part of the climate. as they asked the great sir laurence olivier, "what is the best thing you like about acting?" and he said, "it was the drink after the show."

i was doing it to excess. >> couric: do you drink at all today or ever? >> pacino: no, i don't. no. >> couric: he says he hasn't had a drink in 30 years. he keeps a low profile, but has had a series of leading ladies in his life, which begs the question... why have you never gotten married? >> pacino: ( laughs ) >> couric: whoa. >> pacino: i dream about that question, that someone's going to ask me that question on national television, and i'm going to say, "i don't know." i'm also going to say, "well, maybe i will one day" or, you know, "i'm too... i'm a little young for marriage." >> couric: you have nine-year- old twins right now... >> pacino: i can tell you, i should've. >> couric: what, you should've? >> pacino: now, a couple of times. >> couric: who? >> pacino: i can't say. >> couric: come on. >> pacino: but i should've. i made a mistake not to. >> couric: really? >> pacino: yup. if that means anything. so, there's hope is what i'm saying. >> couric: much of his free time is spent directing his own quirky independent film projects. >> pacino: so that cut doesn't work.

it's not clear. >> couric: for four years, he's been obsessed with his movie about oscar wilde's play, "salome." how much of your own money have you spent on this project, al? >> pacino: how about this? it's... i have to go back to work. ( laughter ) >> couric: this week, al pacino is back at work in the movie "you don't know jack." >> pacino: victorious? i never feel victorious. i just go ahead and do what i do. >> couric: in 1998, dr. kevorkian went on "60 minutes" with mike wallace and showed a tape of himself giving a lethal injection to a patient. >> wallace: is he dead now? >> dr. jack kevorkian: he's dying now. >> couric: in the movie, across from mike wallace sits al pacino as jack kevorkian. >> wallace: jack kevorkian, dr. death, is a fanatic? >> pacino: zealot. okay. it gave me an opportunity to do something i haven't done before. i think that's what is interesting. in all my roles, i don't think there's anyone like that.

>> couric: al pacino has been at the center of so many iconic movies. >> pacino: hello. >> couric: but after all these years, he's still most comfortable on the stage, reciting shakespeare, as we discovered with this impromptu parting performance. >> pacino: arise fair sun, kill the envious moon who is already sick and pale with grief that thou her maid art far more fair than she. that's all you're going to get from me. >> welcome to the cbs sports update presented by lipito are. at the verizon heritage jim furyk defeated brian davis on the first extra hole. davis had forced the play-off after a birdie on 18. in the nba kobe bryant scored 21 as the lakers beat oklahoma city in game one of their first round series. and in the nhl phoenix beat

detroit to take a two games to one series lead. for more sports news and scores log on to cbssports.com.

>> stahl: now, andy rooney. >> rooney: why is it, i often say to myself, that most of us have a desire to eat more than we need?

whether we're having peanut butter on toast or leftover rice, we eat more than we need to keep our bodies going for the rest of the day. it seems as though one serious and constant defect in the human character is desire. we have more desire for almost everything than we need. people have more desire for sex than the world needs to populate it. just about all of us have this great desire to make more money than we need to live comfortably on. many of us can't stay away from the stores where we buy stuff. we have this great desire to buy and acquire more possessions than we can use. can't something be done about this? those thoughts occurred to me recently when i brought my lunch up here to my desk from the cafeteria downstairs. i ate what i had, then i wanted a cookie, so i went back downstairs and bought two cookies-- not because i was hungry, but because i desired the good taste of cookies.

maybe what some of us need from the medical profession is an anti-desire pill. if we had a desire for too much food, money, sex, sleep or a thousand other things, we could just take this pill and it would hopefully kill the desire for whatever it was that we didn't need. if they ever invent the anti- desire pill, i'm going to take one before i sit down in front of the television set every night, because i always end up watching a lot of stuff i'm not interested in. >> stahl: i'm leslie stahl. we'll be back next week with another edition of "60 minutes." so many arthritis pain relievers -- i just want fewer pills and relief that lasts all day. take 2 extra strength tylenol every 4 to 6 hours?!? taking 8 pills a day... and if i take it for 10 days -- that's 80 pills! just 2 aleve can last all day... perfect.

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