Music N' More: Sonny Boy by Al Pacino

Thursday, April 3, 2025

Sonny Boy by Al Pacino

This book is written by himself. It's an autobiography about Al Pacino. I thought it was a very good book. He's always been one of my favorite actors. Because he can be funny one moment, intense the next

-Born Alfredo James Pacino on 4/25/1940, he was raised in the South Bronx by his mother Rose and father Sal. His father worked as a military police officer, but disappeared when Al was two, leaving his mother and her relatives and his father's relatives to raise him. He was given his Sicilian grandfather's first name. His mother would often take him to see plays and even films in the theatres, and this would interest the boy. As he got older, he found his mother started suffering from mental health issues and one day, one of his relatives told him to come to her apartment. There, he found his mother deceased. She had ingested a large amount of pills and choked on her own vomit. He found school to be boring, so he left at 16 and found a calling in the theatre. As time went on, he got better and better at acting. Of course, having no job meant no money. He worked a series of odd jobs to keep the money coming in while he went to auditions

-Some of his earliest films would today be considered independent films or "indie" films. Such as The Panic in Needle Park, where he plays a drug addict looking for a fix. The film that really put his name on the map was the 1972 film The Godfather, where he played the youngest Corleone son Michael. Of course, Francis Ford Coppola, the director, wanted Pacino over the other actors auditioning for the role, which included Robert Redford, Robert De Niro, Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty and Ryan O'Neal. Despite his success, Al was constantly worrying about being fired

The Panic in Needle Park

The Godfather

-When he was not filming, he suffered with a bout of alcoholism, and would occasionally pop Valium pills to try and calm himself, since he made a habit of showing explosive bouts of energy. When it came time to film The Godfather Pt. II, he surprised Francis Ford Coppola by showing that he didn't know how to drive (because he grew up in New York, where you could hop in a cab or on a bus), didn't know how to dance the waltz and couldn't speak Italian (despite being of both Sicilian and Italian descent), three things required for the Italian wedding scene where he marries the woman Appollonia during Michael's exile to Sicily. During filming, he became good friends with Diane Keaton, who played Kay

The Godfather Pt. II

Italian wedding scene from The Godfather Pt. II

Al Pacino as Michael Corleone and Diane Keaton as Kay Adams

-After the filming of The Godfather films, he wanted to try something different. The "something different" became the film Serpico, a film based on the true story of an NYPD officer named Frank Serpico, who investigated and even tried to stop corruption in the NYPD. After that, he did more movies, such as Dog Day Afternoon, where he plays a bank robber looking to get money for his partner's gender reassignment surgery. He decided to do the play Richard III in the theaters, and it was around that time he had the realization that he needed help for his alcoholism. He asked for help and it was around the time he filmed the movie Bobby Deerfield that he started going to AA meetings and undergoing therapy to wean himself off of the alcohol, thus getting himself clean and sober

Serpico

Dog Day Afternoon

Bobby Deerfield

-In the early 1980s, came the film that would immediately connect his name to the film world: Scarface. The violent, 1983 film depicting a Cuban refugee turned drug lord directed by Brian DePalma and produced by Oliver Stone. He had to learn how to talk with a proper Cuban accent from both a dialect coach and his co-star, Cuban-born actor Steven Bauer. As a side note, people thought for the longest time that Al was a cocaine addict, because of his manic bouts of energy. He firmly states he has never touched that narcotic. He's never done drugs. He's just always had those manic fits of energy. Unfortunately, after Scarface, he decided to quit acting. He took some time off to simply relax from the stress of filming. Instead, he took to the theater, doing plays because that was what he started out doing and it was something he loved

Scarface

-It was not until he came out of his self-imposed break from acting that he starred in 1989's Sea of Love, where he played a police officer with a hard drinking habit investigating a series of murders. And the woman he's falling for might just be the prime suspect. It was here that he started developing the slightly gravelly voice he now has. This film has a long, drawn out lovemaking scene where Ellen Barkin's character initially gives Al Pacino's character a pat down, and then the two go straight into making love. He said he's normally not one to do love scenes, because he is uncomfortable doing them, especially if he is required to show certain parts of his body. After Sea of Love, he went into making The Godfather Pt. III, which is certainly not as popular with people as the first two installments. He firmly stated the only reason he did the third installment of the film was because he was in financial dire straits. He maintained his friendship with Diane Keaton, and it was actually her that helped him get a good agent to help him get back into good financial standing

Sea of Love

The Godfather Pt. III

-One of the movies he did that he enjoyed was the comic book-turned-movie for Dick Tracy. In the film, he played Alphonse "Big Boy" Caprice. His character got the name "Big Boy" from the fact that he had elephantiasis in random parts of his body. He jokingly said he got to feel up Madonna in the film, but he said it was just "love taps" and nothing more. In October 1989, he became a first time father, to a daughter he named Julie Marie Pacino, with an acting teacher named Jan Tarrant that he was seeing. The 1990s proved to be a successful time for him. He starred in movies that proved to be successful, such as Scent of a Woman, Carlito's Way, Heat, The Devil's Advocate, Donnie Brasco, The Insider and Any Given Sunday.

Al Pacino and Jan Tarrant

"Big Boy" Caprice in Dick Tracy

Scent of a Woman

Carlito's Way

Heat

The Devil's Advocate

The Insider

Any Given Sunday

-As the 1990s gave birth to the 2000s, the new decade would bring Al three new kids, two with wife Beverly D'Angelo, an actress. With her he had two children, a son he named Anton and a daughter they both named Olivia. They divorced in 2001. They simply couldn't make their marriage work only because they were both actors and based on opposite coasts. She was mostly based in Los Angeles, where she lived. And he was from New York, which he considered home. They still remain on good terms and remain good friends. Later on in life, he would have another child, a son he named Roman, with an actress from Argentina he was seeing named Lucila Sola.

Al Pacino and Beverly D'Angelo

Al Pacino and Lucila Sola

-He mentioned that he had strong financial troubles and was suffering from them, trying to get a good agent to help him out. As for films, he would continue to make films in the new decade. They would include 2002's Insomnia, 2003's The Recruit, 2005's Two for the Money, 2007's 88 Minutes, 2007's Ocean's Thirteen, 2008's Righteous Kill and more. As a side note, he still, to this day, maintains a good friendship with former The Godfather actress Diane Keaton. As time went on, he mentioned that he had started noticing his vision was not quite what it once was. He stated this issue started happening when he was 19 and it seemed to happen off and on over the years. He would wake up and his vision would be blurry, but would clear eventually. He said he was diagnosed with Fuch's dystrophy, which gets progressively worse as you age. When the COVID-19 crisis effectively shut down the world down for a time, he ended up getting stricken with the condition. Luckily, he was able to get through it