Al Pacino, the on-screen maestro of mobsters and macho men, appeared at the Time Warner Center for the New York premiere of the HBO film Phil Spector.

In the title role of the legendary music producer and convicted murderer, Pacino explores the professional relationship between Spector and his defense attorney Linda Kenney Baden, played by Helen Mirren.

While Mirren couldn’t make it, the real-life Baden walked the red carpet alongside fi lm producer Barry Levinson and co-star Jeffrey Tambor. Writer and executive director David Mamet was at home letting the West Coast air battle his bronchitis, but his daughter Zosia’s Girls co-star Allison Williams was there, along with other A-listers who included Aida Turturro, Regis and Joy Philbin, James Lipton, Star Jones, and Joy Behar.

The screening was followed by dinner at Porter House New York, where guests such as Argo writer Chris Terrio and Glee’s Ryan Murphy discussed the biopic over steaks as juicy as the courtroom drama. The topic of the evening? The question of Phil Spector’s guilt or innocence.

“Do I know if he’s a murderer of not?” Pacino asked rhetorically, dismissing the question as out of his province as an actor. “I played the part and I don’t take a stand. What authority do I have?” Baden, however, stuck by her client: “I believed in his innocence then and I believe in it now.”