Pacino’s latest a real gem

ON Saturday, please watch HBO’s “Paterno.” It’s terrific. Al Pacino playing Joe Paterno is A-1. Great.

Director/producer/award winner Barry Levinson’s magnifying glass examines Penn State’s famous coach. It shows how glory overrode the responsibility of protecting students — within his care — who were being molested.

Guilt was his “blind eye” to the crisis. Idolatry of the high and mighty proved more seductive than sexual abuse of innocent children. Familiar story. Today’s crime against humanity is abuse of women.

Levinson: “Filming this was Al Pacino’s idea. We wondered what the hell really happened. Pedophile Jerry San

dusky worked for Paterno 30 years. How’s this possible under Joe Pa’s leadership? What didn’t he see?”

Pacino, whose character’s makeup took an hour: “Since I go mainly by the text, first I had empathy for him. Maybe he knew, maybe not. A savant who controlled the school, he graduated 85 percent of the students. He had tunnel vision. With this situation, he went back and forth. Denial, outrage, then responsibility, remorse, then guilt.

“He was uncomfortable with Sandusky. Considered him a jerk.”

Levinson: “We filmed it all here and Yonkers and a school in Long Island. Paterno led a ritualistic kind of Asperger life. He was too busy, didn’t get it.”

He even asked, “What is sodomy?” His lawyer son said, “It’s a term of Greek literature.” Then you think, how did he not know? What didn’t he understand in front of his eyes? Levinson, who won an Oscar for “Rain Man”: “Once a film is released, I never watch it again. When I can do nothing more, I can’t watch it. I fi- nally saw ‘Rain Man’ again after it was out 30 years. I was just at a film festival in Switzerland, and they were showing it. I was the guest of honor.”

Richard Plepler, CEO of HBO: “A great institution losing its way is a Shakespearean tragedy.”