Sonny Boy by Al Pacino (2024)
Before there was Al Pacino, there was little Alfredo James Pacino - affectionately known by all close to him as Sonny Boy - born and raised in the slums of the South Bronx. If you're at all familiar with the area he's describing you'll know that it is one of the toughest neighbourhoods in New York City, which makes it one of the toughest neighbourhoods in the USA. However, despite constantly veering on the wrong side of the tracks, Al speaks of his childhood with mostly deep affection and warmth. His tales of growing up with his little band of brothers seem to still hold a deep resonance within. This may be because three of the four of them ended up dead from heroin overdoses before the age of 25, Al himself really being the only person who made it out alive. As he puts it quite profoundly, his life was a moon shot.
Despite the abject poverty around him, the lack of a father in the house and a mother who suffered severe mental problems, Al somehow managed to find acting - a universal intervention that he credits for saving his life. Seemingly from an early age, people earmarked his talents and, in one lovely story, a teacher from his high school trekked all the way to the tenement where the Pacino family lived to plead with the family that he simply has to keep up the craft of acting. Whoever that soul was, bravo to them. Also helping his cause was an iron-clad, seemingly unshakable, belief in himself as an actor. It's really quite remarkable and, as with most things in this book, although Pacino doesn't care to analyze the origins of this mettle too deeply, he seemed to just have an innate sense of what his destiny would be. This being despite the fact he was homeless, coming from nothing and constantly fired from an endless litany of dead-end jobs.
Eventually things started to happen in the theatre world, with Al winning an Obie award and a coveted Tony award before dipping his toe into films. Remarkably he went from his film debut in 'Panic in Needle Park' (1971) to what is widely considered to be the greatest film ever made, 'The Godfather' (1972). The stories around Pacino in the role of Michael Corleone are legendary. The studio didn't want him, he didn't want to be there, and even his biggest champion, Francis Ford Coppola, considered firing him on multiple occasions. However, that mettle remained and through a combination of talent, fortitude and, this book reveals, alcohol, Pacino kept his job and turned that role into one of the greatest characters of all time. What followed was the underrated 'Scarecrow' (1973) with Gene Hackman, 'The Godfather pt 2' (1974) and 'Dog Day Afternoon' (1975). To have those five films be your first five film credits, surely you'd be tempted to hang it all up there and then. Where do you go from there?
The pages of this book, however, reveal that Pacino cares not for accolades, or legacy, or even money - evidenced by the fact that he goes fully broke not once but twice in his life. What he cares about is the art, and that serves as a fantastic reminder throughout. In the ultra-capitalistic age we now live in, it's so refreshing to see someone talking about the trappings of fame as purely a matter of fact. Saying things like "I rented an entire floor of the Dorchester Hotel and flew my family out on a beautiful G5 Gulfstream" aren't shallow braggings, he says these things only to illustrate how much money he was spending with absolutely no care or thought behind it. All that seems to concern Al is finding the truth of the work in front of him and somehow using it to, as he puts it, "touch the holy grail". I'm not saying we should aspire to be as foolhardy as to go from having millions of dollars to broke, but Pacino always seems to put life first. That, I would argue, is not the worst message in the world for the youth of today.
Most showbiz autobiographies often come across as a bit self-satisfying and pious (Will Smith's 'Will' being a grim example), but what struck me most here is how unaffected Al seems to be, despite his status as one of the more successful and recognisable actors on planet earth. When he quotes artists or poets or composers, he's not doing it to show off but because he loves it. Indeed we actually spend more time talking about his childhood pals, or his family, or Shakespeare, than we do about most of his biggest films. Things like 'The Devil's Advocate' (1997) and 'Carlito's Way' (1993) barely get a mention. His famous scene in Michael Mann's 1995 classic 'Heat' (the one where him and DeNiro finally share the screen) gets little more than a paragraph. All of which I found to be a good thing.
Towards the end, we find Pacino in a reflective state of mind (how can you not be when you reach your eighth decade on this earth?) and his thoughts become increasingly stream-of-consciousness, wandering back once again to his childhood and the struggles he went through. Here he continues to show an immense amount of reverence and gratitude for what acting has given him over the years - a portal into the unknown, a way to escape the humdrum, to know the spiritual through the journey of the physical - and while reading I was often reminded of the great piece of advice I was once given in my own life - "people should focus on being interested rather than trying to be interesting". This sums up Pacino's life. He is only ever interested. He has no care for Hollywood or fame or wealth or status. He is an endlessly curious individual who seems to relish all of the mysteries and pathways of life. As a result, his story is all the more interesting for it.
If you're looking for commentary on his process as an actor, or gossip about who was an arsehole during the filming of 'The Godfather' there is honestly not much of that here (although there is some fascinating behind the scenes stories of all of his biggest films). If, however, you're interested in the life of someone who came from absolutely nothing and managed to have a towering career anyway, then this is probably the read for you. For the most part he comes across as a charming, relaxed, funny and honest man. Everything is described in such a disarming tone, you feel like you're sitting by the fire listening to someone tell you the facts of life. During the last couple of chapters there is more of a melancholic feel and things lean, I suppose inevitably, towards something of a swan song but I, for one, certainly hope that is not the case as you can tell that the fire still burns inside him. You just know he's dying to put one more great performance in the ether before it's all over, so fingers crossed that opportunity arises. If it doesn't, this book is a great reminder of what a magnificent body of work he has created and, whether he chooses to acknowledge it or not, his legacy is up there with the very best of them.
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