Al Pacino writes in ‘Sonny Boy’ about life, love, death and the movies

 I met Al Pacino one September afternoon long ago at the wedding of David Mamet and Rebecca Pidgeon at a place called Stillington Hall in Gloucester, Massachusetts, about an hour’s drive northeast of Boston. As the family gathered for pictures under a huge tree on the lawn, Pacino said, “C’mon, let’s get in on the pictures,” to me and to his female companion, who said, “Stop kidding around, will you?”

Now, some 33 years later, I have encountered him again, on the 370 pages of his spirited autobiography “Sonny Boy,” and he is not kidding here when he provides a thoughtfully introspective but also oddly remote journey that begins with his childhood in a South Bronx tenement. His teenage parents split up before he was two and he was raised primarily by his paternal grandmother who, Pacino writes, “was probably the most wonderful person I’ve ever known in my life.” His mother, “fragile and uncontrollable,” had mental health troubles that had her undergoing electroshock treatments, attempting suicide when he was six and dying of a drug overdose when he was 22.

It is her instability and frequent absences that shadowed Pacino as he and his best pals — Cliffy, Bruce and Petey — flirt with antics that spoke of bigger crimes, but his family kept a tight rein, “away from the path that led to delinquency, danger and violence.” He gave up dreams of playing professional baseball and discovered theatre, where being in a school play “made me part of something. ... I actually was whole.” He was still on that path a few years later when “one night, onstage, just like that, it happened. ...I want to do this forever.”
It was a struggle to get started but enjoyable to read of his on-a-shoestring formative years, highlighted by his meeting Charlie Laughton, not the famous actor, but a teacher and actor who would become Pacino’s friend and essential mentor. They met in a bar and these years, as Pacino frankly details, were soaked in joy.

Working odd jobs, rooming with another young unknown named Martin Sheen, acting in all manner of downtown Manhattan spaces, Pacino drank hard, believing that “drinking saved my life. ... Happy drunk. Sad drunk. Always drunk. And that’s the actor’s life. ... I would drink at night and pop pills the next day to calm down.”

This went on for some raucous time, until he stopped in the late 1970s, prodded by Laughton and aided by AA, some therapists and a relationship with actress Marthe Keller.

Many pages later he answers an unasked question, writing, “Of course, there’s the general belief that I’m a cocaine addict, or was one. It may surprise you that I’ve never touched the stuff.” No, he just played one in “Scarface,” a film he made while also starring on stage in David Mamet’s “American Buffalo.”

Pacino does not offer commentary on all of his plays and films and that’s fine.

There have been far too many to mention. But he gives us stories from a lot of them — the “Godfather” trio, “Dog Day Afternoon,” “Serpico,” “Scarface,” Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross,” which earned him Oscar nominations but only one win, an Academy Award for best actor for his over-the-top role in “Scent of a Woman.” Some tales and anecdotes will be familiar to those of you who partake of late-night talk shows on which Pacino has been a frequent and lively guest.

Those coming to “Sonny Boy” seeking the sort of dirt and scandal that pepper so many celebrity books will be disappointed. Pacino is a gentleman throughout and admirable for that. You may not have known that Pacino has never been married but you are right to assume that he has not lacked for female companionship, writing, “I have always liked women, but from the time I was very young, I have been shy around them.” He conquered that shyness with such girlfriends as Jill Clayburgh, Diane Keaton, the aforementioned Keller, some others you’ve never heard of.

You get but the briefest mention of his four children, two with Beverly D’Angelo (Olivia and Anton), about whom he writes “(we) had our issues about where to live” and a bit later, “We were working through the whole gestalt of raising our kids without each other.” That’s it.

Women and kids were never a priority in this life and he has known that for a long time. As he writes, “I could see a pattern already starting in me, some innate understanding that work is work, and romance and life come second.” He has never been a careful man so you may get only a mild shock when he writes, “I was broke. I had fifty million dollars, and then I had nothing. ... The kind of money I was spending and where it was going was just a crazy montage of loss.”

This book was written with what Pacino calls the “commitment and energy ... and considerable help and persistence” of Dave Itzkoff, a former New York Times culture reporter and the author of a fine biography of Robin Williams titled simply “Robin.” (I will tell you that I have never been a fan of audiobooks but listening to Pacino read one this is a joy).

Pacino realizes his good fortune, writing, “I have always needed someone to take care of me,” and knowing he’s been lucky in finding them. And while father figures abound, the shadow of loss hangs heavy, as he eulogizes those pals Cliffy, Bruce and Petey, their lives lost to drugs, with a poem.
Pacino is 84 years old and writes, near the book’s end, “I look in the mirror and I see something looking back at me that looks like and old wolf with a snarl and a mountain of white hair.” And some pages later, “This life is a dream. ... 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.” Were I to ever meet him again, I’d say, “Thanks for sharing.”

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