Say hello to his not so little life!
Al Pacino’s autobiography, SONNY BOY, is something to savour, but you’ll gulp it down anyway. Savour it like a glutton.
Whattayagot!? Here’s the story. A kid growing up the South Bronx, kinda wild, a wild square, anarchic running with a gang, an abandoned mother with mental health issues, loving and caring grandparents, and a teacher who recognised the potential performer. Hooooo-ah!
Lots of bullshit jobs endured and ended, many ignobly, as he pursued his vocation as an actor, triumphs on stage, and then after years of plying his trade, an overnight success at thirty years old, breaks through with a movie, Panic in Needle Park.
A couple of years later, Coppola casts him as Michael Corleone, and the rest is, as they, say, history. But what a history! Nothing dull and dusty that’s for damned sure!
Badabing! After The Godfather he stars in Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, The Godfather II. That’s an ascension. That’s a succession. That’s a cementing of a career. And yet as Al tells it, he had no concept of career, just an appetite to do the work, on screen or stage, the hunger to perform, to channel the character.
SONNY BOY is full of insights into the films he has made, the well known and the less well known. His personal reflections on the controversies of Cruising and Scarface. Some films remain nameless. Some films he did for the right reasons and were a disaster and some he did just for the money that turned out OK.
In later life, movies he made just for the money went against the grain but he was broke. Picture the scene when Diane Keaton takes him to a lawyer when he discovers he is insolvent. That scene, that confession is worth the price of purchase.
If there is a bio pic of Pacino, there should be a scene mimicking his Attica! rave in Dog Day Afternoon. It would go Appetite! Appetite! Appetite!
According to Al, appetite is what moves you to go and do whatever you do. You lose your appetite and you starve. Believe in the story you’re telling as though it were really happening.
At 84 years old, Al writes “I look back and I love it, I love what I see. I love that I existed.”
In SONNY BOY, with its spirit, exuberance, advice, open hearted self deprecation, Al Pacino has made you an offer you can’t refuse.
SONNY BOY by Al Pacino is published by Century
