Sonny Boy: A Memoir

by Al Pacino

Looking for Richard got some recognition, but its failure to thrive hurt me, frankly. It wasn’t just a disappointment. It was a life-affecting thing. You can be in a position in life where you’re doing somewhat well, and then you experience that rejection and it completely overshadows all your past success. I didn’t really address that disappointment at the time, because it’s too much to face when it’s happening.

See what I’m saying? Actors, man—there’s nothing like actors. Back then and right now, they are the greatest of humans. I know they call ’em crazy, self-centered, all that stuff. We even accuse them of narcissism. How foul. Are you saying people who have self-interest are narcissists? Give me a break—we all fit that description. They are what they were two hundred years ago, fucking nuts and joyously crazy. Yes, a few more of the elite have joined the crowd of actors, but just remember, they’re crazy too.

If you censor yourself because you don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings, I could live with that. But when you censor yourself because you don’t want to jeopardize a job or a career, well, there goes the human experience. How are you going to make real friends if you’re faking it?

“Hey, Bertolt, you mind if I steal that one and use it in a book one day?” He said, “Go ahead. It’s not as if you and I actually met. I died in East Berlin while you were still a teenager in the South Bronx.”

I have always had high energy, and it’s a plus. What I lack in intelligence, I make up for in energy.

I was throwing money all over the place because I had it. At least I thought I did. And my accountant kept cheering me on.

uh oh dunkaccino incoming....

We even stayed at the Legoland hotel, where everything is made of Legos. You haven’t lived till you’ve seen the Mona Lisa made out of Legos.

Even though I only had two cars, I was somehow paying for sixteen, along with twenty-three cell phones I didn’t know about. The landscaper was getting $400,000 a year and, mind you, that was for landscaping at a house I didn’t even live in. I don’t exaggerate these things. It just went on and on.

this is insane omfg

There’s almost nothing worse for a famous person—there’s being dead, and then there’s being broke.

Ocean’s Thirteen turned out well. And I did 88 Minutes, which was a disaster. And then I did Righteous Kill with Bob De Niro, which was not good.

😭

Jack and Jill was the first film I made after I lost my money. To be honest, I did it because I didn’t have anything else. Adam Sandler wanted me, and they paid me a lot for it. So I went out and did it, and it helped.

and why did he give it his all like... extremely dedicated performance lowkey

I was doing these films for nothing. Here I am, a person who has lost all his money, doing films for nothing when I should have been doing films for something.

:(

I also ended up doing some really bad films that will go unmentioned, just for the cash, when my funds got low enough. And I sort of knew they were bad, but I convinced myself I could somehow get them up to being mediocre.

unmentioned pls..

If I’m doing a film, let’s at least get it to the level of a C minus, not an F plus. Let’s make sure it’s not something that gets me sent to film jail.

film jail oh he really gets it

Sometimes, when you become reputable, you get looked at as a body of work instead of as the thing you just did last week. You get endowed with things you don’t really have. Your fame and your gifts as an actor are exaggerated.

So about half of my performances were working, about half were not so much, and some were in the toilet. But I’m only human.

I’m saying I’m going to do that great Broadway play in the sky one day. When I was being interviewed on Inside the Actors Studio, James Lipton asked me, “What do you think God will say at the pearly gates?” and I said, “I hope He says rehearsal starts tomorrow at three p.m.”

I’m walking the streets like I’m a polar bear, and it’s getting warmer. I am an endangered species. I am at risk of extinction.

I never got into doing acting for money. Except when I went broke. Then I got into it. You know I’m a man who has more Golden Raspberry nominations than Oscars.

And it could be my age, which is 103.

the laugh count on this book has been thru the roof

You’d think I was good-looking or something to dress this badly.

Of course those sons-of-bitches got a picture of me with a hood on at the stage entrance. I wasn’t even on the curb—I was still in the gutter. I’m bent over and I’m looking up at them, like literally any bagman you’ve seen on the streets. I’ve got these two small shopping bags I’m carrying, and what I’ve got in them, I’ll never remember. People are probably thinking, this fucking guy’s a miser. Is that what he’s turning into? He’s got money in those bags. He cashes those checks and puts dollars in those bags. This is the highest-paid dramatic actor on Broadway. And he looks like that? Equity’s going to throw me out of the union.

tears in my eyes laughing at this

I always wanted to play Napoleon. There was even a time when Stanley Kubrick had me in mind, but that never got off the ground. Then I finally got a script that worked by William Mastrosimone. His script took place in Napoleon’s last years, after he’s been exiled and has lost all his power, but by then I was too old to play the part.

nooo what a loss ugh..

Okay, I’m a man who has limited time left, let’s face it. We all sort of do. But my time is a little more limited. It changes the world for you to have that perspective. You cannot know it at forty-seven. You can try to imagine it, but you can’t feel it. And that’s what’s lonely about it.

I had no sense that if someone dies, you get something. How do you live without that thought in your head? There’s a kind of purity to living that way. Death doesn’t mean that you’re going to get something. All that death means is that you’re going to lose someone, and how you feel is relevant to who has passed on. Some are a grain of salt; others feel like you’re now missing part of your organs.

I look at Tom Cruise, who can jump over the Empire State Building and doesn’t even need a cape. He just goes out there and does it. Wake up, Al: that guy, Tom Cruise, is twenty years younger than you.

TOM CRUISE MENTION

But I believe I experienced death that day. I still think about it and I shudder. Is this where we go? Nowhere? Nothing? “The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns,” as Hamlet put it? Well, I returned, and I can tell you there was nothing out there. It’s over.

I have this recurring fantasy of waking up in my coffin. How about that? It isn’t a dream, it’s a fantasy. I can think about it anytime I want to—I just don’t advise it. Maybe that would be hell: instead of fire and brimstone and seeing people you know who are merely hot, how about hell in a coffin, alone, and you can’t get out? Maybe cremation is the way to go. I haven’t made up my mind.

Is something meaningful only because you can remember it, or is it meaningful because, in a manner of speaking, you are leaving it? Leaving all the memories you had—leaving everything. I guess if you’re lucky, other people will hold on to them for a little while longer, if you have a memorial service or something. But people have to live, they have to go on. One day I’ll be gone, but maybe some of the films I was fortunate to be in will remain—maybe there’s something to say for that.

:(

Some want to be remembered. It’s called immortality. It’s the handprint on the cave, that imprint: they wanted us to know they were there. As I heard it said at someone else’s memorial, “You don’t have to miss me, just remember me.”

Objectively, I never knew what the fuck I was doing. It’s that simple. I went from one thing to another. I’ll never learn, and that’s my problem. Or my gift. I don’t learn things. I’m the first one to raise my hand high and say, “I don’t know.” Who wants to wallow in the pretense of knowing everything? What knowledge? What do I know, that I can sit with a pipe and expound on? I’m not Socrates.

I felt my reach opening up to other realms through the prism of acting. Through this discovery—and it was a discovery—it’s a little bit deeper than I can explain, frankly. I’m trying to get as close to it as I can, because it changed my life. That’s how profound it was. I had this epiphany. It didn’t mean that I was a great actor or anything. I just thought that this is what will keep me alive.

I’d also mention that it may sound simple, but it’s the truth: believe in the story you’re telling as though it were really happening.

Recently, I was tempted to go back to my old neighborhood, but I finally thought, There’s nothing left of it anymore that resembles what I grew up in. The world I’m talking about is not going to happen again. All that survives of that place, that era, that frame of mind are these stories. Maybe that’s the reason I wrote this book. I want to go home. These memories keep bringing me back to a place where I enjoyed being.

I remember I had a huge crush on a cute lesbian girl who worked there. I don’t know whatever happened with her, but I really liked her, though she didn’t seem to have any interest in me.

he's so real been for the girls and gays from day one

That’s why for me work has always been life—something that opens the door and allows the spirit to come out. A world I can visit, where the imagination has switched on and life becomes once again what it was: discovery, delight, ecstasy.

If anyone walked past, they would have thought I was crazy; if animal services drove by they’d have netted me like a stray dog.

a lil too accurate

They have that expression, “You can’t look back.” Well, I look back and I love it. I love what I see. I love that I existed.

this is soo

Another thing that Charlie said to me at the end of his life was “You’re a miracle, Al. You’re a miracle.” Who has that said to them? I didn’t believe that, of course. But I knew what he was saying. My whole life was a moon shot.

This life is a dream, as Shakespeare says. I think the saddest part about dying is that you lose your memories. Memories are like wings: they keep you flying, like a bird on the wind. If I’m lucky enough, if I get to heaven perhaps I’ll get to reunite with my mother there. All I want is the chance to walk up to her, look in her eyes, and simply say, “Hey, Ma, see what happened to me?”

im going to explode

Me with my father and mother. I look like I’ve been kidnapped.

My father and mother in the center. I don’t know those other people.

That was me on my way to being pretty.

This looks like the end of a day on Serpico. I can’t believe how long my arms are. What happened to my legs?

I knew I was destined to be a male model.

When I look at this picture, I actually scare myself.