Sonny Boy: A Memoir

by Al Pacino

Naturally he wanted me to be the star. Naturally I turned it down.

naturally

At a certain point, dealing with fame is a self-centered problem and one should probably keep their mouth shut about it. Here I am talking about it now, so I’m starting to feel I should keep my mouth shut too. Hello.

When I was living with Jill, before I ever went to therapy, I used to just sit in the bathtub alone and talk about things. I cleared my mind to myself.

literally me moment

I can deal with, “Hey, my daughter’s graduating college, I’ll be out for a few days.” But going up a fucking river somewhere, to not be available for, like, six weeks? Come on, my life was capable of going right off the rails in far less time than that.

As for Bobby Deerfield, it is just not a great film. It’s okay. It’s got a good performance in it from Marthe and a relatively good one from me, but I think Pollack missed some opportunities.

siding with the general letterboxd opinion he's real as hell

The studios actually got me my own sports car as a gift, an Alfa Romeo. But it had a manual transmission, and I didn’t know how to drive it. Then Bobby Deerfield was such a failure that they took the car back.

Just as I opened the big iron doors at the front of the building, I could see that the car was gone. It was stolen. Here I am, saying that car isn’t me, then—poof—it disappears. No, I don’t think the universe works that way, and I’m sure we weren’t the first people this had happened to.

During my recuperation, Brian De Palma would film that shoot-out scene from every imaginable angle, over and over, adding more bullets, more bodies, more carnage, inviting other directors to sit in and help make the sequence longer and more outrageous. Even Steven Spielberg came by for a day to oversee a few explosions. Meanwhile, where was I? Home in bed.

We do it for the sake of film. If you’re fighting for the betterment of the film, then you’re not being difficult. You’re not on a film for perks. The size of a trailer, fourteen assistants, lunch breaks every five minutes, demands that bear no relationship to the work you’re doing—that’s being difficult.

exactlyyy

But the film’s director, Arthur Hiller, and I were not what you would call in sync. (You may be sensing a pattern.)

i am indeed sensing a pattern

Of course, there’s the general belief that I’m a cocaine addict or was one. It may surprise you to know I’ve never touched the stuff.

girl idk if i believe u.......

With Tony Montana, what you see is what you get, and fuck you.

The way I played him, the character never has any inner conflict until the moment he kills his best friend, Manny, after finding his sister in his arms. That is the only time you ever saw him puzzled, in self-examination, confused for a bit about what he did.

They agreed that the scene had to be done at the restaurant. But we would lose this day of shooting at a cost of $200,000. And so it became a mark on my reputation. Boom: he’s difficult. Can you believe what he did? He wouldn’t shoot. Even if what I was doing was right for the film and faithful to what was in the script, the studio never forgives you for something like that.

At its opening, Scarface was a flop—not commercially, but critically. Artistically. Spiritually.

spiritual flop is crazy

When I walked in, Liza Minnelli came up to me. She hadn’t even seen the film yet—she was just there for the party—and she said, “These people just saw your movie. What the fuck did you do to them?”

Me, I had never read a newspaper headline in big, black, bold letters that said Pacino Fails Miserably as Scarface, until I got that from a lady who was excited to see me backstage at a performance of American Buffalo. She wanted my autograph, and that’s what she grabbed for me to sign.

On that day, when there were no nominations for my performance or anyone else’s contributions to Scarface, a group of fans came after the matinee performance and made their way past the police to give me a homemade Oscar they had constructed to make up for this perceived oversight. It looked just like a real Oscar, only bigger. It felt like the right kind of award, a trophy from the people, and I have kept it to this day.

-_- thats so cute

They accepted the spirit of the thing, which I knew they would when they saw it with an audience.

The audience was, in a way, their subtitles, providing them with the inner language of the film.

Horses, cows. Fucking geese. But horses and cows.

It seemed like every time I brought something to the public, to the commercial world, I was scrutinized and put down for it. I felt lost in that arena.

I’ve come to realize that when I do my own things, nobody goes. Those avant-garde influences that I was brought up with never left my brain. When I’m left on my own, that’s just what seems to come out. It’s a drawback. People come in with expectations, and they leave angry. The Local Stigmatic is such a specific distillation of me and my take on this subject. It’s 150 proof, which can be a little strong for some people.

The man liked to settle down. He was married five times in all. Me, not even once. I guess we balanced each other out that way.

“Hey, Al!” he said, in a friendly and familiar way. “Where you been?” I tried to look at him and see if this was someone I knew, but I didn’t recognize his face. “On the screen,” he said. “I haven’t seen you in a movie in a long time. We need you up there. We need you, man.”

I had been nominated for five Oscars at this point,

generational 8 year run like omfg

this film became renowned for a long, slow sex scene where Ellen Barkin holds me against a wall and gives me a bit of a pat-down before our two characters start going at it.

aka the femdom pegging scene

I may not have been a Victoria’s Secret model, but I knew how to pose for a camera.

😭

I had the time of my life in that role.

and u can TELL shoutout dick tracy oscar nom

When I was asked to reprise the role of Michael Corleone for the first time in The Godfather: Part II, I struggled with the decision and second-guessed myself constantly. Not so for Part III. The choice could not have been easier. I was broke. Francis was broke. We both needed the bread.

At the film’s conclusion, Michael would get assassinated on the stairs of a church. He rolls down the steps and comes to rest on the ground at the bottom. Kay, his ex-wife, rushes to his side. She looks into his face and asks him, “Michael, are you dying? Are you going to die?” And Michael looks up at her and he says, “No.” And then he dies. Phenomenal ending. A brilliant callback to the first Godfather, as Michael ends his life with one last lie to Kay.

wait thats good..

I had been offered the role of Ricky Roma, the preeminent real estate salesman of David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, when it first came to Broadway in the mid-1980s.

GLENGARRRY MENTION oh he would have killed on stage too... one of if not my fav performance of his ugh

But if you had spotted me in one of those strange, semiconscious patrols, you would not have said, “Look, there goes Al Pacino!” You’d have said, “Who is that troubled man staggering around like that? Does he need help? What is he doing?”

But you know that thing inside you that says, I don’t want to do this? That’s pretty much my calling. I never want to do it. I don’t know why that is.

once again. soooo real for that

And I enjoyed some of the not-so-great films I’d later make, deceiving myself that I would find a way to elevate them from awful to mediocre. I guess I thought there had to be a pony in all that horseshit.

I did go overboard sometimes in that part. I was too big for it at times. I would get too out of control. I could do it better now.

yknow what no one else is willing to go so uniquely batshit on the regular but i appreciate the reflection

I got two Oscar nominations in the same year: for Glengarry Glen Ross, my seventh, and for Scent of a Woman, my eighth.

jfc the way people acted about leo's overdue oscar when it took EIGHT ROUNDS for al im gonnna be sick... also in a just world glengarry wouldve been another year so he couldve deservedly won for it too ugh

And a lot of people watched, and I looked handsome, I must say. They saw that I was a human, and I said things that were human. So that’s pretty good.

This was my first time in eight tries that I’d finally won—having already lost for the seventh time earlier that night—so when I got up onstage, I started my speech with a line that a friend had suggested to me. I said, “Well, you broke my streak.” That got a laugh, but there was truth in it too. It was a truly powerful moment to see that entire audience stand up and applaud me, and the gratitude I felt was real.

When you’ve just won an Oscar, everywhere you go, people know that you’ve accomplished something special, and they treat you that way, for about a week. I guess that’s why we have these holidays like Mother’s Day or Father’s Day. We need to be patted on the back, something worthwhile in all that we go through.

What happens when you win an Oscar after twenty-five years in the business? Not much, to be honest. I’m not really aware of how it changes your status.

25 years 😑 when it shouldve been on that second nom...

In the next few years, I managed to be in movies like Heat, Donnie Brasco, The Devil’s Advocate, Any Given Sunday, and The Insider,

iconic.. also insomnia + frankie and johnny not being mentioned at all in this book .. forgotten

He would look at me at times and say, “Al, you know you are nuts, right? I mean, did you know that you’re certifiable?” I said, “Yeah? You’re not so bad yourself.” If we were in public school and the same age, they wouldn’t have allowed us to be in the same class together.

We shot a scene where I went into a club, and you actually saw my character taking a hit of coke before he enters. For some reason Michael kept that scene out of the film. It did explain a lot of my character’s behavior, and without that explanation, I can see how it made aspects of my performance seem extravagant. If the audience had seen a moment or two when Hanna took a hit, I think they would have been better prepared to see what I did.

srsly they shouldve kept it in

It got to the point where the great theater producer and impresario, Alexander H. Cohen, a guy I liked very much, suggested that Dustin and I get together at Madison Square Garden and fight each other in a boxing match, and he really meant it. But I said to Cohen, “Let me just tell you straight out: Dustin will beat me. He works out. He’ll knock me out.” I thought Alexander would be better off asking Meryl Streep to fight me instead. But then I got a little worried. Shit, what if she wins? Luckily, the fight never got off the ground.

what if she wins 😭😭 and she probably would

Bob was playing a real powerhouse of a character, but I could see that he was giving a performance that was more contained and low-key, intense and lonely. It was beautiful. I knew that I would go in the other direction.

When it came time to shoot the restaurant scene, Bob didn’t want to rehearse it. And I thought: He was right. We got there, and we just started. We didn’t think about it or talk it over or anything—there it was. It was so wise of Bob to do it that way.

GOATEDDD peak scene

The making of Looking for Richard was great for me. I was never happier. I had fulfilled a personal vision. And when it was done, after four years of full immersion, we had to sell it. Oh, there’s the rub. My God, what I was in for. I was in a new world. Was I prepared for the ins and outs of that? No fucking way.

Who did they put in his place? He’ll remain nameless. If he reads this book, he’ll know who he was. I took one look at him, and I actually knew him. He was a stage manager in a play I did once. He still didn’t know what he was doing.

beeffff

If you shot it and it’s on film, it is a film. If it goes from point A to point B, it is a film. If it has something to say, it is a film. I know there is a difference between documentary and fiction. Well, this was a little of both. So sue me. Shoot bullets through me. You can’t do anything different in this town. I learned a little, forgot a little, and moved on. No use in crying over spilt Shakespeare.

he gets it