is one: eugene o'neill of the greatest playwrights of the 20th century.he only american founder to have won the nobel prize for literature. he has been called the father of american theater, paving the way for arthur miller. the iceman cometh is one of his most powerful place. pl --ays. joining me now, two tony winning actors, nathan lane's and brian dennehy, i am pleased to have them at the table. welcome. nathan: thank you. charlie: there is a story i read, you saw this production was take place, and you said this is right for me. you notify the director? -- you notified the director? withn: yes, it started kenneth branagh and a bar. he said you have to do these great parts. charlie: i've never thought of that. you do, youaid if will learn a great deal and it will be life-changing, it does not matter what anyone says. i read an interview 10 years falls,ith brian and bob and they were discussing potentially revisiting "the iceman,." did o'neill play that? nathan: i think he did. when i heard them discussing brian taking on the role of larry, i wrote an e

and i went wild with the eugene o'neil -- and i was really giving it the old gung ho. stepping on the gas and stuff. it wasn't that good. it was over and he was looking at me and the audience got kind of teary about it. it had a lot of commitment and energy. he said, here's what i would like you to do. immediately, this was the genius with him. he said, i want you to do i want you to do hamlet as hickey from "teh iceman cometh" and hickey as hamlet. i immediately went into it. he was very happy about that. i did not pause. i just switched it. charlie: the character of hamlet and the text of hickey. al: yes. and the text of hamlet and -- charlie: and hickey as the presence he had. al: i learned more that day than i had in my entire life. charlie: and how have you managed to be a star to this day not playing character roles as much as you are playing stars? you are the center of these two films. pacino: again, i am going by what i am feeling. you know, some movies i have made that were not character driven, i don't know. it's a mystery to me. a mystery that i'm here talk

i thought, gee, i've got these monologues in me, these great eugene o'neil monologues, and i had the wonderful robe from what a slave am i, shakespeare and hamlet, and i had them committed to mind. i went up for the first time, and finally i got up the nerve to sign up and lee strasburg looks at the paper and say -- i loved that he was able to pronounce my name. i grew up with that in school. he said, al pacino? yes? what's this, hamlet and the iseman cometh? okay. let's see them. he said, you know, we take all kinds in here. (laughter) so i got up there and i did a ferocious rogue peasant, and then i went wild with the eugene o'neil, and i was really giving it the old gung-ho, stepping on the gas, really wasn't that good. and it was over and he was looking at me and the audience got kind of teary about it because i had a lot of commitment and energy and i was young. he said, listen, al, here's what i would like you to do -- immediately, this was the genius of him -- he said i want you to do hamlet as hickey from the ice man cometh and hickey as hamlet. i immediately went into it, an

>> well, you know, when i read the play when i was a kid, when i had gotten the collection of eugen o'neillton nose and a twinkle in his eye. you know he always writes these very long descriptions of characters, rather too specific for everyone to live up to. but what he created, i thought and what i was bringing up to bob in my e-mail was you know, it's defined by jason robards. he was the gold standard and he and quinn taro in 1956 when they did the revival off broadway defined who that character is. and it was a very dark, much darker than say the original production in 1946. and jason brought this sort of mischievous malevolence and kind of an otherworldly quality to it. and i was saying to bob, wouldn't it be interesting taking what o'neill has said about him, the notion is he loves these guys. and just as he, you know, he ultimately says he killed his wife, that it was an act of mercy out of love, he has come to help them. and change their lives and bring them peace. unfortunately, it's-- he feels the only way to do that is for them to kill their illusions, their pipe dreams as they a

foundly was that of -- profoundly was that of our nation's greatest play wright, the nobel laureate eugene o'neill. do you remember o'neill? i ask college kids, and they -- [laughter] no, they shake their heads. they don't even remember who arthur miller was. it's extraordinary. but o'neill suffered from a tremor that resembled parkinsonism but was not the same. a tremor that prevented him from writing and also periodic bouts of deep depression. and my father, i don't know if i've said this yet, he was trained both in psychiatry and neurology, and he was widely admired in boston for his expertise in being able to untangle the intermingled causes and symptoms of both physiological and purely psychiatric illness. so he was asked by one of kneel's closest friends -- o'neill's closest friends to come to new york to examine him, and o'neill took an instant liking to him. this happened a hot, and i don't know, something -- in this happened a lot, and i don't know, something just about the way my father examed him -- examined him, very thoroughly. psychiatrist or not, he always gave his patients medical

roanoke, virginia, when alison parker's parents speak but joining us right now from chicago, eugene o'neill from john jay college and we have been looking at the video of the gunman's apartment. stark and depressing and very sad. about the type of existence this person was living and as adam reiss points out, doing so within a stone's throw from the tv he worked and then fired. so what type of profile is being painted here as we see the living conditions of vester flanagan? >> i'm not sure bad housekeeping and poor choice of interior decorating is kind of profile issue going forward. the problem with these cases often is that it's only looking backwards after the events that you can start to put together the circumstantial evidence that suggests maybe this guy was dead ending. maybe this guy had no plan to be with us any longer after he did what he did. such a difficult issue here because isolating people that are even threatening often there's a huge number of people just make threats and don't carry them out. >> right. >> and then a subset of people that just act. and that's one of your i