Bloomberg 

The outsized pay package may be in part because Mr. Pacino--who after a wilderness period in the 2000s has returned to acclaim with TV and stage roles--is historically associated with Glengarry Glen Ross, having played the role of young striver Ricky Roma in the film adaptation. In a twist worthy of Freaky Friday, Mr. Pacino is now playing the elderly Shelley Levene; his connection to the production adds value beyond that of a typical star.

Kate Winslet (Getty Images)

With this past weekend's Grammys, producer Scott Rudin became the latest entertainer to earn the ugly, ineffective title of "EGOT"--having won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony. (His new Grammy was for The Book of Mormon.) He's one of only eleven such winners--and the first in a decade. We demand yet more societal approbation for our most gifted singer/actor/producer/whatevers! Here, in order, are some entertainers who stand a chance of getting the Quadruple Crown (sorry, but a way better term than "EGOT") in the next ten years:

Kate Winslet

Why she could do it: All she needs is a Tony, having immediately jumped to TV once she had an Oscar in hand--and winning an Emmy immediately thereafter. She has the eye of the tiger and is likely training to play Mama Rose as we speak.

Mitigating factor: The Tonys have gotten more sensitive about awarding carpet-bagging movie stars.

Fun fact: She beat the Muppets, among others, to win her Grammy for Best Spoken-Word Album for Children.

Robin Williams

Why he could do it: We haven't heard from Robin Williams in a while, and it'd be a nice little comeback narrative if he were to win the Tony he needs to complete the square.

Mitigating factor: The last time we heard from him was an appearance on Broadway after a long absence in Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, for which he failed to medal.

Fun fact: He probably shouldn't have an Oscar!

Al Pacino

Why he could do it: He just needs a Grammy, and other awards bodies have shown a willingness to hand Mr. Pacino trophies more as a signifier of respect/fear than for a decent performance (c.f.: Scent of a Woman).

Mitigating factor: Not known for a mellifluous voice, and a spoken-word album for children is probably out of reach.

Fun fact: He was nominated for a Blockbuster Entertainment Award for Any Given Sunday, which he lost to Tom Hanks.

Elton John

Why he could do it: He's missing an Emmy, and given the spotty state of his career (recently picking a fight he couldn't hope to win with Madonna over a song from Gnomeo and Juliet) is about five minutes from a PBS special or self-aggrandizing 30 Rock guest spot.

Mitigating factor: Has probably picked fights with half the television Academy; was not amazing on Saturday Night Live last year.

Fun fact: Is already a knight and summarily probably doesn't care about the Emmys.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone

Why they could do it: If and when The Book of Mormon comes to the screen, it could give the South Park creators the Oscar they need.

Mitigating factor: Failed to win an Oscar for their song from the South Park movie, and are probably better-remembered among Ernest Borgnine's contemporaries for dressing in drag at the ceremony.

Fun fact: Really wacky guys!

Cynthia Nixon

Why she could do it: She's such a Miranda! (By which we mean: Hardworking.)

Mitigating factor: The award she needs is the hardest one to get (the Oscar), and she was passed over for the Rabbit Hole role that got Nicole Kidman nominated last year.

Fun fact: Actually defines herself as "more of a Cynthia."

This is a good time for a confession: I am not much of a Shakespearean. I've read some of the plays, and I've seen others produced, but I've never studied them, and I don't speak reverently of Olivier's Hamlet (nor, if you prefer, Jude Law's). I don't love what I've seen, either: I find some of the plays overlong, repetitive and more than occasionally ridiculous. (Were Elizabethan husbands really so dim that they could regularly be fooled into believing their wives to be men by the change of a hat and a different tunic?) And, most basically, I reject the idea that deep study is a prerequisite to enjoyment of a play; an informed, intelligent and engaged theatergoer should be able to enjoy the performance he sees even without homework.

All of which makes me pleased to report that two Shakespeare in the Park productions-The Merchant of Venice and The Winter's Tale, which are being presented in repertory and opened on consecutive nights late last week at the Delacorte Theater-are spectacularly delightful evenings. Both productions-Merchant is directed by Daniel Sullivan, and Winter's Tale by Michael Greif-are accessible and comprehensible, florid and moving, and, for the most part, sparely but gorgeously staged.

First, Merchant. It's one of Shakespeare's most familiar plays: the money-lending Jew, the pound of flesh, the pricking and bleeding. In Central Park this summer, it also offers one of New York's most famous-and New Yorkiest-actors, Al Pacino.

And the good news is that this notoriously hammy actor, in a potentially very hammy part, largely manages to restrain himself, chewing much less scenery than you might expect. Shylock's famously enraged speeches are ferociously emotional-as they should be; the man has spent his life being insulted, dismissed and spat upon for his religion-but there's very little of Mr. Pacino's hoo-ah film mugging.

Still, the familiar mannerisms are sometimes jarring: "Let the forfeit," Mr. Pacino growls, laying out the terms of Shylock's notorious loan, "be nominated for an equal pound"-here he shrugs-"of your fair flesh"-another shrug-"to be cut off and taken"-now a pause-"in what part of your body pleaseth me"-finally a slight, small "heh" of release. And, elsewhere, his New York honk, on full display, leaves some lines read as if by a Boca retiree. If we catch the early-bird, one nearly wonders, do we not get a better deal? But that's what you get with your Pacino. And he is, anyway, charismatic, almost addictive, impossible to look away from while he's onstage.

Much of the rest of the cast is as good as Mr. Pacino, if not better. Lily Rabe is marvelous, her heiress Portia not only beautiful but also alluringly confident, intelligent and more than a little snarky. Other standouts include Hamish Linklater as a nervous and charming young nobleman Bassanio, whose cash-flow problem necessitates that his patron Antonio seek Shylock's unusually structured loan loan, and Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Portia's caring but stern lady-in-waiting, Nerissa.

Mr. Sullivan's production puts these 16th-century Venetians in Edwardian clothes and sets the action around a large, wrought-iron contraption in the middle of the Delacorte's stage, parts of which rotate into different scenes-a stock exchange as the play opens, Portia's house, Shylock's house and so on. It's all very handsome, if perhaps just a bit fussy.

And of course, the big question: Is The Merchant of Venice anti-Semitic? I don't know. Shakespeare created one of the iconic images of a money-grubbing Jew; he also makes clear Shylock was only driven to such dramatic revenge after a lifetime of indignity and while his daughter is being essentially stolen from him. But it's worth noting that the play is considered a comedy, and, as such, it has a happy ending: three contented couples finally brought together, and one forcibly converted Jew.

THE WINTER'S TALE, meanwhile, is one of those Shakespeare plays that I find simply too ridiculous. Women in Merchant may put on hats and convince their husbands they're male judges, but in Winter's Tale, one rogue changes his hat twice and manage to con the same people three times. The play has an intense, chilling first half-Leontes, the king of Sicilia, in an unfounded jealous rage, sends off his newborn daughter to die, causing his wife and son to die, too-and a lighthearted second half, with mistaken identities, broad comedy, happy reunions and a seemingly miraculous reincarnation. (It is also known for, of all things, a stage direction: "Exit, pursued by a bear.")

But if the play is silly, Mr. Greif, directing a fine cast, makes it a fine silliness. Jesse L. Martin is commanding as the king of Bohemia; Mr. Linklater, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Max Wright (you'll recall him as Willie from ALF) pleasantly pratfall their way through the comedy. And Ms. Jean-Baptiste, once again playing a lady-in-waiting, is once again excellent, the clarion voice of reason in Sicilia as her queen is wronged.

Mr. Greif leaves the Delacorte's big, round stage mostly bare, with only a large glass wall upstage tilting up and down to sometimes suggest the sea, or a wall, or just a hill in the distance. He spreads his actors around it, creating sprawling and open tableaux in the open and sprawling park.

Early in the play, when Leontes puts his wife on trial and against all reason convicts her of adulterous treason, the magisterial Linda Emond, as the magisterial Queen Hermione, is on a small, raised platform in the center of the stage, in a flowing white dress, with burning cauldrons around the stage and sentries standing guard at its edge. She rails against the injustice being done to her, with her hair and dress and the trees behind her blown by Central Park's winds as she stands on that platform, almost a gallows, all alone. And the moment-fine acting, stark staging, a beautiful night in the beautiful park-is unforgettable.

editorial@observer.com

Bedbugs shut down Soho Hollister. [AP]

Paterson: I'll be busy all day, vetoing. [Albany Times Union]

But the budget battle won't be over before the holiday. [AP]

Apartment sales have risen significantly in Manhattan, though prices remain flat. [NYT]

One of the Russian spies snooped on Columbia students and professors while she was a grad student. [NYP]

Hot dog phenom Kobayashi wants to compete in the Nathan's competition, but on his terms. [NYDN]

Police arrest 17 in massive car theft sting. [NYT]

Domino will be partially revived, à la Gourmet. [WWD]

Praise for Pacino in the park. [NYT]

“That guy sort of reminded me of Ron Silver,” said men’s wear designer Billy Reid of Mr. Boal, approvingly. He termed the look “easy, but not sloppy.” Mr. Reid, who sells buttoned-up, Southern-style suiting out of a cavernous shop in Noho, himself also maintains a neat beard (reined in by an electric trimmer) and side-swept floppy hair, at least lately. He said that men’s hair and beards are becoming “more well kept. They’re paying more attention to it.”

Men’s hair trends—like men themselves—are usually more sluggish than women’s. Since men started growing their beards like unkempt hedges, for example, the fairer sex has powered through Cleopatra bangs, 1940s Veronica Lake waves, Heidi braids, the long Gwyneth bob, Alexander Wang side braids and now, this spring, pink streaks reminiscent of the Kool-Aid–colored dye you made at summer camp. But men also seem to be experimenting more! Sure, Stumptown baristas still wear mustaches to serve mochas, and full beards are common in yoga studios in Brooklyn and at the bar at Freeman’s, but the Bowie-esque long-on-top, shaved-on-the-sides look is currently in vogue at art openings and on Bedford Avenue, and many of the city’s best barbers—like its interior designers and restaurateurs—say they’re currently in the throes of Mad Men mania. Paul Andrew, an owner of Panyc Salon on 17th Street, said men are buying more product than women these days and coming in every two weeks, compared to six weeks for women. “Men are more high maintenance than ever,” he said. “I’ve been doing hair 25 years, and I’ve never seen it like this.”

SLIDESHOW: A history of floppy hair, from the Kennys (Rogers and Loggins) to the Jasons (Schwartzman and Reitman) >>

NOW, MANY ARE are turning to the blow-dryer decade for inspiration. Experts say they have sniffed the beginnings of a Jon Peters revival here in New York (he’s the hairstylist–turned–movie mogul and Barbra Streisand ex that partly inspired Shampoo), and that it’s not as low maintenance as it looks. “Actually, on Wednesday, I went to play music in Brooklyn, and I was in the subway and I saw two dudes like this,” said prominent men’s stylist and salon owner Martial Vivot. “I said, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, what’s going on here?’ I was looking at them, they were very well put together, very well dressed, and I thought, Are we having a trend starting here?” He described the general vibe as “end of the ’70s. Hair parted, but not a sleek part, a part with volume. Like you blow-dried your hair.”

“A more groomed, shaggy, ’70s feel is something we’ve been venturing into in the salon already,” said Shaun Cottle, an owner of Seagull Salon on West 10th Street, which features a picture of Cat Stevens on its Web site, adding that he himself has “a medium-length blond shag with bangs. … I have exactly the ’70s haircut you’re talking about. It starts at the top of my eyes with the bangs and goes right around my face to the back of my neck.” (He admitted that he chemically straightens his pseudo-shag and has it blown out once a week.) He described the look, embodied to varying degrees by everyone from Mr. Boal and Mr. Reitman to Jason Schwartzman and Noah Baumbach to New Orleans tight end Jeremy Shockey, as “obviously very stylized, and giving a really specific projection, but that projection is, ‘I am organic.’”

Indeed, it’s a look that channels hot tubs and guitars, more ’70s porn star than grumpy Unabomber. “I’ve done a couple of really extreme bowl cuts from the ’70s on men,” said Mr. Cottle. “No part at all, kind of Peter Berlin in That Boy.”

The style’s key elements are soft, floppy, washed locks, a trimmed beard (if one is worn at all) and a creative, unfussy affect that contrasts with that of the stylized punk hairdos, uncomfortably full beards and strangulating jeans in which New York men have suffered through the past few years. It combines the relaxedness of a recession—very ’70s!—with, perhaps, a dawning optimism. “It’s getting away from the Julian Casablancas, that Williamsburg kind of look,” said Jordan M, a men’s stylist for Bumble & Bumble. “That grown-out, tendrilly, long, Jesus-looking hair that just looks like they haven’t had a hair cut in forever.”

“Before, you will have people who will ask for more hair, and then they just have the pillow hairstyle, like you are asleep, you wake up and whatever happens, happens,” said Mr. Vivot. Now, “I’m seeing kids in their 20s asking for more hair, but they want to take care of it.”

Unlike harder-to-pull-off trends like the Bowie do, the updated porn shag can work for anyone. “Just yesterday, someone got in my chair and it was exactly that,” said Jordan M. “Straight guy, Rolex, works in an art department, and he had the trimmed beard and long shaggy hair, pushed back loosely, probably doesn’t use any product. He basically told me, ‘The more you can make it look like I cut it, the better.’”

The faux–low maintenance of the look eases this transition, in some men, from Paul Bunyan to Kenny Rogers. “You got into a period where everyone was rough and rugged, and soon enough it’s going to be the complete opposite,” predicted Eddy Chai, co-owner of the popular men’s boutique Odin. Mr. Chai foresaw a welcome loosening of clothes to accompany the boyish, floppy shift in hair, democratizing men’s dressing back into a straightforward, unironic affair. After all, Mr. Boal and Mr. Reitman were hardly the best-looking men at the Oscars, but the look, inclusive with an air of historical significance, lent them a flatteringly low-key intellectual edge.

On Sunday, March 14, Gabriel Berezin, 33, the guitarist and singer for the bands Monuments and Ghost Gamblers, was weathering the rain on Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint in an updated Laurel Canyon look he pegged to 1970. “You know who it was?” he said, asked to name his inspirations. “There was a picture of Paul McCartney right after the Beatles broke up, when he first started doing solo stuff. I remember being in college, saying, ‘If I could just get my beard and hair looking like that, I’d be totally psyched. Of course, I couldn’t grow a beard at that point. It took me a long time to get the beard in this condition.’ (He said he trims and clips his beard every few days with scissors or a trimmer.)

Mr. Berezin admitted he thinks about his hair “in terms of some old idea of what a musician looks like,” since “part of being artistic is not really giving a shit.” But still, he has a day job to think about these days, and a girlfriend.

“I think it’s kind of rude to have a superlong beard,” he said. “It’s hard for a girl to navigate through.” (Of course, the grizzled look poses its own perils, like a certain prickliness during one act of love.)

Meanwhile, Jordan M, from Bumble & Bumble, cautioned that the rounded shape of ’70s hair-and-beard combinations can add an unwanted fullness to the face. “When the hair’s longer on the sides, it doesn’t look like masculine or flattering to me,” he said.

But early adopters of the trend say they’re not after flattery, but comfort. Indeed, Mr. Reid, the retro-shagged designer, who said he’d been in a continuous process of growing out and shaving off a Paul Bunyan beard since college, suggested the whole thing might be accidental. “You’re probably seeing a lot of guys saying they want a change, and that’s where they’re at—in the in-between,” he said. “It’s hard just to take the full plunge of cutting [your beard] off and going back to nothing.”

mbryan@observer.com

SLIDESHOW: A history of floppy hair, from the Kennys (Rogers and Loggins) to the Jasons (Schwartzman and Reitman) >>

In the depths of Maspeth, Queens, sandwiched between massive power plants and factories, in a neighborhood where sidewalks are merely a suggestion, lies the Clinton Diner, an old-fashioned dive featured in numerous movies, television shows, and music videos. 

The owner, Nick Diamantis, is proud of  what a Hollywood hot spot his diner has become.  It's currently being used as a  location for HBO’s You Don’t Know Jack, the Barry Levinson-directed biopic of Jack Kevorkian, starring Al Pacino as Dr. Death.

On Tuesday, August 19, a release from Christina Wilkinson of the Newtown Historical Society, stating that principal photography would begin Wednesday morning at 5:30 a.m., and inviting reporters and photographers to come have a look, fell into the hands of the Transom.

It seems nobody bothered to clear the invitation with You Don't Know Jack brass.

Standing in the hot sun, members of the press from New York 1 and the Daily News were told by the movie's producers that they had “no idea” what that release was about.  Waiting to hear back from the studio in Los Angeles, the group (or at least this reporter) tried to pass the time by talking to random production assistants, extras, and enjoying the free watermelon provided by the caterers.

 What happened?

Mr. Diamantis said he had nothing to do with the email (we're waiting for comment from Ms. Wilkinson). The mystery only added to the excitement. “There’s a lot of waiting and stop-and-go, silence,” Mr. Diamantis said.  “I’m actually a SAG [Screen Actor’s Guild] actor also, so I’m on set a lot, too.”

At one point, Mr. Pacino exited his trailer, wearing a pair of slacks, a dress shirt, and prosthetic makeup, particularly visible around the nose, and headed into the diner.  (All actors, including the extras, were wearing conservative ’80s clothes; the scene was supposed to be taking place in middle America, so there was nothing too posh. ) The Transom walked into the parking lot to get a peek but was shooed back by a production assistant, since we would've obstructed the shot.

Sadly, nobody directly involved with the production of You Don’t Know Jack were able to comment on this publicity snafu (which is actually not such a snafu, since both the diner and the movie are getting plugs here!) due to confidentiality agreements.  But the crew did distribute fruit cups and water, mercifully, to the panting press that had trekked out to Queens. 

Need a movie to keep you company until you literally can't keep your eyes open? Join us tonight when we pass out to Scarface [starting @ 11:50 p.m. on Starz in Black]

Why we’ll try to stay up and watch it: The news yesterday that Al Pacino agreed to play an aging and exiled Napoleon Bonaparte for an adaptation of the children’s book Betsy and the Emperor is something that could only be met with rolling eyes. (The Hollywood Reporter headline “Bonaparte of a lifetime for Pacino” didn’t help matters either.) Mr. Pacino is long past his expiration date of relevance, and with each passing credit he drops further down the rabbit hole. If you think we’re being harsh, consider that he’s also signed up to play King Lear and King Herod in upcoming features; we can only assume that financing for a King Solomon project has yet to materialize.

Obviously, it didn’t always used to be like this. Seeing “Al Pacino” on a movie poster carried weight up until 1999. But then something seemed to change inside the man. To illustrate the problem with Mr. Pacino’s last 10 years takes some deft needle-threading, but we’ll try it anyway: The diminutive star, even in his most-lauded performances, was always broad and grandiose … but he never seemed bored. Consciously or unconsciously, he appeared to be the only purveyor of the Strasberg Method who realized its inherent cheese and took glee in playing to those aspects; now he’s just going through the motions. That’s what makes his bombastic performance in Scarface such a winner. Mr. Pacino is so invested in turning Tony Montana into the most opulent character ever—right down to the laughable accent choice—that he elevates him to an almost transcendent level. He has fun reveling in his most base instincts as an actor.

If Mr. Pacino’s performance gets an “A” for “Are You Serious?”, the rest of Scarface does not. A funny thing about this neo-classic: it’s relatively crappy. The film is a rambling mess of homage and tired gangster clichés. Oliver Stone famously wrote the script, and there are plenty of times when it feels like the quintessential Oliver Stone film—overwrought, overlong and overcooked—though since Brian De Palma is the director, no one should expect anything less. Directors like Zack Snyder and McG bow down at his alter; Mr. De Palma is truly King of the Hacks.

When we’ll probably fall asleep: A good thing about Scarface’s lack of congruous cinematic quality is that it becomes perfect for needle dropping. So we’ll flip around to ESPN and the MLB Network, until about 1:50 a.m., two hours into the film. After leveling another round of stomach-turning verbal abuse onto his coke-obsessed bride, whilst in public (“Her womb’s so polluted, I can’t even have a fucking little baby!”), Tony pontificates to the onlookers and admonishes their lack of cujones. We only wish Mr. Pacino would take Tony’s slurred words to heart; before he rides off into the sunset for good, we’d like one last chance to “say goodnight to the bad guy.” Playing Napoleon in a kids movie just won’t suffice.

In 2007, his boss, Maurice Mann, then a midsize New York landlord, partnered with the billionaire Lev Leviev’s company to buy the Apthorp, that monolithic 101-year-old limestone rental building at Broadway and 79th Street. Last month, Mr. Leviev’s group filed suit, accusing Mr. Mann of wildly, absurdly incompetent mismanagement, if not willful wrongdoing.

“Bullshit. It’s bullshit, it’s bullshit,” Mr. Herbitter said.

Mr. Leviev is an Uzbek-born diamond billionaire, one of the world’s great benefactors of the orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch movement, and a dear friend of Putin. Among other things, his suit accused Mr. Mann of allowing both an illegal immigrant to live in a penthouse and an affiliate to live in two ninth-floor units (while calling them vacant on rent rolls). “I’m not even going to justify that bullshit. It’s bullshit. It is total bullshit, all right? Excuse me,” Mr. Herbitter said. “It’s bullshit.”

Mr. Herbitter takes the management of the building very personally. His voice gets misty when he is asked about the best part of his job. “Sitting in that courtyard; taking a deep breath. The building is such a phenomenal …” He had to pause. “I’m describing something that becomes very emotional.”

The Mann era at the Apthorp started as a story about go-go New York real estate, but the old nerve-frayed clash between the building’s new landlord and its tenants (about half rent-regulated) seems quaint in retrospect. Now it’s a story about Manhattan’s downfall, where googly-eyed ambition—the total asking price for all proposed Apthorp units was announced at $1.06 billion, beating 15 Central Park West’s initial cost per square foot—has devolved into panic and hatred.

What was once a rental farce became a joke about a rabbi, red ants, a gun-carrying real estate manager, a diamond billionaire, and a jeans magnate who walked into a monumental Upper West Side rental building, tried to make it into a gold-plated condo, and may be walking out in foreclosure on Jan. 15, the date one lender has reportedly given as a deadline for avoiding default.

MR. MANN was first reported to be buying the Apthorp in November 2006, when he agreed to pay about $425 million—or $2.6 million per unit, well above the previous high for a U.S. apartment building. “It was a little surprising,” a source said. “I didn’t expect him to be at the winner’s circle.” Mr. Mann planned to keep the Apthorp “a very high-end rental and to keep it exactly the way it is,” he told The Times then.

One day after the deal closed in March, a Wall Street Journal article, which quoted Rotem Rosen, the chief executive of American operations for Mr. Leviev’s Africa Israel and the husband of billionaire Tamir Sapir’s daughter, said the building would go condo.

“That was misinformation,” Mr. Herbitter told another newspaper six days later. “We’re long-term investors and we plan to improve the property while maintaining it as a rental, despite press to the contrary.” Before the end of the month, a news release from Africa Israel reiterated that the apartments would be converted and sold off.

If one of Mr. Mann’s investors hadn’t backed out at the last minute, Mr. Herbitter said, he would never have met Mr. Leviev. “Four days before the closing, when you have $25 million fall out of your package, you have a lot of scrambling to replace it. So someone introduced us to them, and they saw the building on a Thursday. On Friday, they wired in $55 million without a term sheet, just saying, ‘We want in.’”

Meanwhile, Mr. Mann’s other investors included the shoe importer–cum–landlord Ralph Braha, and Joe Nakash, who co-founded Jordache. (“Synonymous with sexiness,” the denim brand’s Web site says.) “Those pals are in many of our deals,” Mr. Herbitter explained. “We find a deal and they say, ‘All right, put me in for a certain piece.’”

Africa Israel took a 50 percent stake in the Apthorp, but agreed that Mr. Mann would manage the building.

The investors took out a $385 million first mortgage from Anglo Irish Bank, which only three years earlier had done such little American work that its annual report apparently gave one sentence about the U.S. from its chairman. This December, the bank’s CEO, David Drumm, and its chairman, Sean FitzPatrick, both resigned after regulators discovered that Mr. FitzPatrick had secretly transferred $120 million in personal loans. Anglo Irish, once the world’s best-performing bank stock, is now effectively nationalized.

But the real lending difficulties for Messrs. Mann and Leviev came from their $135 million second mortgage with William Mack’s Apollo Real Estate Advisors. On Jan. 12, Mr. Mann said he would meet with this reporter and a photographer at the Apthorp the next day to discuss it all. Later, an email from his address said: “I hate to burst your bubble and disappoint you, but, unfortunately Mr. Mann has some blood tests in the morning that I cannot change.”

IN EARLY OCTOBER, before his fight with Apollo came to a head, Maurice Mann’s people met with Lev Leviev’s. It had been four months since the attorney general had approved their billion-dollar conversion plan, but not a single apartment had been contracted to sell.

According to the Leviev lawsuit, there were several proposals at that October meeting, including one that Mr. Mann resign and be replaced by an acceptable manager. “They wanted to co-manage the building,” Mr. Herbitter explained this week. “We said no. Our partners said no. They weren’t happy with that decision. That’s all.”

On Nov. 17, there was a meeting at the offices of Mr. Nakash, the tight-jeans mogul. “Everyone got into the same room, where various options were discussed; the principals went out and had a private meeting,” a source who was present said. “I didn’t perceive sensitivity. Nobody was breaking down and crying. It was a serious meeting.”

It was decided that a brokerage would be hired to sell off the entire building for $552 million. The parties further agreed, according to Leviev’s suit, that they would cooperate on marketing, and that Mann would consider stepping down as manager.

“It’s not true. They said it and ran out of their office as they said it,” Mr. Herbitter said. “It was never, ever agreed to. …  Rotem, on his way out, with his coat on, said, ‘O.K., we’re going to co-manage! Co-manage, that’s what we’ll do! See you later!’”

So what does Mann’s president think Africa Israel has been up to? “They wanted control, which their arrangement doesn’t allow them.” He pointed out the reports that Africa Israel has pulled away from American real estate; the company’s stock was $3.10 a share in November, down from $43.58 last January. “So I would guess that they would want to get out what they could—if they could.”

MR. HERBITTER is the man whom a New York City Civil Court judge passionately and, at least around the Apthorp, very famously upbraided in September when Mann Realty tried to evict Nancy Robbins from her 720-square-foot penthouse, a case that ended last Wednesday. Red ants were supposedly spreading from Ms. Robbins’ plants.

“Mr. Harbitter—I’m sorry, Herbitter is the right name, not Harbitter, I’ll correct myself,” the judge said then. “Anytime I say Harbitter, I mean Herbitter. Mr. Herbitter … was caught in several whopping inconsistencies.”

The Apthorp ant decision, which includes, for example, the judge’s declaration that Mr. Herbitter has lied about his memorization skills, is probably this young century’s greatest piece of New York real estate legal history. (A runner-up is the lawsuit at the Plaza, where billionaire Andrei Vavilov’s wife apparently burst into tears when she first saw their poorly completed $53.5 million penthouse unit; that suit was filed by Y. David Scharff, who is also Mr. Leviev’s attorney at the Apthorp.)

According to Darryl Vernon, the ant lady’s attorney, Mr. Herbitter showed up to one deposition with a gun on his belt. Tony Smith, the co-chairman of the Apthorp Tenants Association, once asked Mr. Herbitter about his much-gossiped-over firearm. “I said, ‘I’m told you carried a gun.’ He said, ‘Yes, I’m licensed to carry a gun.’ I asked why and he said, ‘I’m an EMT.’ I think a lot of people feel threatened by him. He’s very brusque and cold. I don’t think he has threatened anyone, to the best of my knowledge; I think he likes to convey a little bit of menace, I think he enjoys that.”

The N.Y.P.D. confirmed that Mann’s president has a pistol license—for a .380 Sig Sauer and a .380 Walther—but said it’s only a residence permit. “Not germane to the issue,” Mr. Herbitter said this week when asked about guns.

THE REAL TROUBLE for the Apthorp came in the first week of December. Apollo, one of the lenders, made a $22.7 million capital call and demanded that Mr. Mann submit a new business plan for the project. “I send new ones every week,” Mr. Herbitter complained Monday. “They’re very arbitrary.” Had the world economy not tanked, he offered, “Apollo wouldn’t be losing the money they’re losing and have to focus on minutiae. ‘What toilets are we putting in?’ they asked one day. It’s ridiculous! Toilets!”

Mr. Mann responded to Apollo by threatening a lawsuit. If “you do file,” Apollo’s counsel wrote, “all bets are off and this project will quickly spiral down the toilet.”

He filed his suit anyway, asking for “an amount no less than Five Hundred Million” and accusing the lender of demanding a ransom payment and trying to get the Apthorp at a “fraction of its worth.” The suit, which misspelled screenwriter Nora Ephron’s name in its list of past Apthorp residents (“Norah Ephron, Al Pacino, Conan O’Brien”), even though she wrote a famous piece for The New Yorker on her life there, was quickly dropped.

Mr. Leviev’s people were livid. They sued to get Mr. Mann to agree to enter arbitration over management, which was, they said, an attempt to avoid foreclosure and save the Apthorp. Besides anger over Mr. Mann’s business plans, and besides those charges about the penthouse and ninth-floor units, they complained about an amateurish and embarrassing marketing campaign, especially a film about the building. (A segment of the movie is still on the building’s Web site, and features strings out of late-’70s pornography and a woman purring, “The Apthorp: A moment of passion that lasted a hundred years.”)

“The film was done at a time when the market was different; the market was sexier,” Mr. Herbitter explained.

More importantly, they complained that Mr. Mann had allowed excessive vacancies, and then had to lease the empty units at fire-sale rents after realizing that the so-called warehousing violated rules from the attorney general’s office about condo conversions. “Yes, we did create inventory!” Mr. Herbitter explained. “There’s natural attrition. People left. And in some places we didn’t lease them out so I could sell them!”

Then there was the charge that Mr. Mann was “overpaying for certain renovations while neglecting others.” According to a sales brochure, the Apthorp—known for its old-school grandeur but a sort of professorial untidiness—was going to have units outfitted with onyx in the powder rooms, for example, or hand-cast lion-head spouts. Even in the bubbliest market, those might not have been the ideal choices; a building known for its periodically murky tap water—“A few days ago we had brown water for 12 or 15 hours,” said Mr. Smith of the tenants’ committee—might not bother over hand-cast lion-head spouts.

Though the condo units won’t be getting lion-head spouts after all—“We’re not renovating many of them,” Mr. Herbitter said, “we’re selling them now as is”—there are still plans to construct an all-new central air-conditioning system. As it happens, the new cooling will not extend into the rent-stabilized apartments. “Well, as in any occupied conversion, the benefits accrue, for the most part, to the purchasers. The rent-stabilized tenants have their rights, so they get to stay there and get some improvements,” Mann’s president said. “But something like the central air-conditioning? No.”

Finally, among other things, the suit said Mr. Mann had unilaterally decided to replace the building’s third-party construction manager with one connected to his business partners.

“That has not happened,” Mr. Herbitter said. “There is a proposal for that. But it has not happened.”

ACCORDING TO Mr. Leviev’s investment agreement with Mr. Mann, the parties can solve stalemates by finding a mutually agreeable rabbi from a court known as a beth din, or house of judgment, to arbitrate their case.

But there were problems with finding a rabbinical court. First, Mr. Mann’s side didn’t think there was any technical stalemate: “But that doesn’t stop them from trying to push their agenda,” Mr. Herbitter said.

Then Mr. Leviev’s side recommended the orthodox Beth Din of America. According to court transcripts, Mr. Mann’s lawyer cited online research about that court “which gives us pause and concern; namely, an article that appeared online and a quote.”

“We regularly have commercial cases, O.K.?” said Rabbi Ronald Warburg, a coordinator for Beth Din of America, who was willing to answer general questions about the process. “It’s nothing unusual, O.K.?” Has he ever seen an argument over such a huge deal? “It’s not necessarily an issue of the amount of money. It’s an issue of the complexities.” Considering that Mr. Leviev is a renowned supporter of Orthodox causes, what happens if someone involved has made a contribution to the court? “It generally doesn’t happen,” Mr. Warburg said, “but if there’s a problem, there’s a disclosure beforehand.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Mann’s choices were the Joint Beth Din of the Conservative Movement, and something called Beth Din Zedek, which the court dismissed because it was picked “from the telephone book.” Mr. Leviev’s lawyers have complained that the Joint Beth Din doesn’t have enough experience in commercial real estate issues, and have said they will ask a State Supreme Court judge to decide on Jan. 14 what kind of rabbi will arbitrate. Time is tight: Apollo has reportedly made the following day its default deadline, extended from Jan. 9.

Mr. Scharf, the attorney for Mr. Leviev, declined specific comment, other than referring The Observer to court filings. Mr. Mann’s attorney did not return emails or phone calls.

CITING AN ANONYMOUS source, the Web site for The Real Deal magazine reported on Jan. 12 that “Mann has agreed to resign as managing partner of the landmark Apthorp condominium conversion.” Later that day, he denied the story to The Times. “I control the Apthorp,” Mr. Mann said, “100 percent.”

“I think,” a longtime associate of Mr. Mann said this week about his friend, “he’s just gotten himself into an unfortunate situation—a project bigger than he was expecting it was going to be. I don’t know if he really knew what he was getting into. He’s a decent, good guy. He tries to do the right thing, that’s what I’m going to say.”

“I can’t characterize him as a good guy or a bad guy,” Mr. Smith from the tenants’ committee said. “There are tenants who are chortling gleefully. My feeling is, we should not be gleeful.” After all, the Apthorp could be foreclosing this week. “That may be worse,” he said, “than frying-pan-into-fire. I am not gleeful.”

Does Mann have any regrets? “You need to put this into perspective of what happened to the economy,” Mr. Herbitter, its president, said. “Every yuppie would be taking his bonus and asking, ‘Is there someone who can get me into the Apthorp?’”

mabelson@observer.com

Need a movie to keep you company until you literally can't keep your eyes open? Join us tonight when we pass out to The Devil's Advocate [starting @ 10:50 p.m. on Encore]

Why we'll try to stay up and watch it: Winning an Academy Award is a tricky thing. If an actor gets it too early in their career, chances are they'll never live up to it again. But if they get it too late--for the wrong performance--it winds up validating all their negative habits. So when Al Pacino finally won his Oscar for Scent of a Woman, it wasn't as a make-up for all the times that he deserved the trophy but lost; it was the warm embrace by Hollywood for the over-the-top ham he had become since Scarface. It was a statement: "Sure we liked your subtle Strasbergian work in the 70s, but we really love your screaming in the 90s!" And so that brings us to The Devil's Advocate, a movie that must have been pitched with four simple words: Al Pacino is Satan.

The Devil's Advocate is a Frankenstein monster of a film, combining elements of The Firm, Rosemary's Baby and, the aforementioned Scarface, into an overstuffed 2-hour-and-20-minute package--we have to wonder if director Taylor Hackford yelled, "it's alive!" when the editing process was finally completed. Everything about the film is so unbelievably gratuitous and grotesquely overboard that it wouldn't surprise us to learn there was a deleted scene featuring Mr. Pacino and a group of pigs literally wallowing in their own filth. And yet! The Devil's Advocate is hilariously fun, just so long as you don't take anything about it seriously. This is easily the closest movie Mr. Pacino has ever made that resembles a straight-up comedy. To wit: A young hotshot defense attorney from the south (Keanu Reeves with a southern accent; need we say more) gets called to New York at the behest of big time lawyer named John Milton (get it?), a mysterious man who ends up being... Lucifer. If you aren't laughing yet, wait until you see the final act.

When we'll probably fall asleep: The third act of The Devil's Advocate is, for lack of a better word, bananas. Here is just some of what you can expect: Mr. Pacino lip-syncing to the Frank Sinatra song "It Happened in Monterey"; Connie Nielsen's breasts; more drive-by incest than an episode of Gossip Girl; and a nearly 14-minute monologue that ranges from the absurd to the truly absurd. It's like the script is just a pure stream of consciousness. Pacino-as-Satan utters howlers like, "I'm a fan of man", "We're gonna come out, guns blazin'" and "I'm peaking; it's my time now" with such passion and fire that you can't help but be wildly entertained. So we'll stay up until 12:50 a.m., two hours into the film, to see Mr. Pacino do his song and dance routine. The sad part is that he's better in the last twenty minutes of The Devil's Advocate than he was in all two hours of Scent of a Woman. One performance got him an Oscar... the other got him derision. The Academy Awards giveth and the Academy Awards taketh away.