"Sonny Boy" by Al Pacino -- audio book review

Al Pacino probably sounds better on the stage than he reads on the page. Also, an anecdote about Keith Hernandez.

The last time I listened to an audiobook, I took a cassette tape and placed it in my Walkman. I’d rather listen to music when I’m walking. And until this year, I haven’t been doing too much driving. I haven’t done too much driving this year either, but compared to the last 20 years, I drove a lot this year.

So when Amazon Prime said I was entitled to a free book on Audible (which may be someone’s way of telling me I spend too much money with Amazon Prime), I thought Al Pacino’s new autobiography, Sonny Boy, would be something good to listen to in the car.

It took me a few weeks' worth of driving to finish listening to Pacino read the book. In the middle of that, I read some reviews of the book in the paper. Online. The reviews were lukewarm. Pacino throws no one famous under the bus, doesn’t dish much dirt, offers little new insight into the famous movies he has starred in. Talks about growing up in the South Bronx, very poor, only child, parents getting divorced in the early 1940s. Raised basically by Mom’s parents. “Sonny Boy”, as his mother calls him, gets in and out of trouble in the South Bronx with his crew, some eventually hobbling out of the South Bronx spending a life trying to put the pieces back together. Others dying on the floor, the Needle and the Damage done (my quote, not Al’s). Dropping out of High School of Performing Arts, long time struggling actor saved by a series of lucky breaks. Al has drug problems, he has money problems, he has problems dealing with the movie industry.

Same old same old, the reviewers said.

They must have read the book when they should have been listening to this highly entertaining reading.

Pacino laughs a lot at his own words. Some of the things he says are barely sentences. It is unlikely that those words appear in the written text. He uses pauses and dynamics very effectively. As you might expect from Al Pacino. I really enjoyed it.

I can see how reading the book may not be much of an education. Pacino adds very little to what a basic online search would tell you. One exception is Pacino’s side of the story about what happened when he was nominated for an Oscar for “The Godfather” (the same year that Brando won and sent up Sasheen Littlefeather to collect the Oscar for him).

Pacino has 4 children with 3 different women (he never married). I don’t think he mentions his 1-year-old (Pacino is currently 84).

Pacino doesn’t like “Hollywood”. He criticizes, and names names, in several instances where Pacino implies that a movie got financed mostly because he agreed to star in it. Then, the movie that was shot and about to be released was not really the movie he signed up for. Although everyone agrees with Al’s assessment, he has a hard time getting people, especially the money people, to go back in post-production to fix what everyone agrees is the problem. Because shooting a new scene would involve reassembling everyone, paying them, paying a crew, re-building sets, etc. It’s just too much money.

As you might expect, in Al’s telling, any time the people agreed to “fix” the movie, the movie succeeded. And if not, not. He is candid enough to admit, however, the times where the producers were right – where the movie was beyond saving. Some things – Pacino admits – he just did for the money.

One interesting feature of listening to the book is just when you think you’re out – that the story is done – Al pulls you back in – the last 2 chapters are really postscripts. They offer very interesting peeks into Pacino’s internal workings – one chapter about death (Pacino discloses that COVID nearly killed him) and one chapter speculating about why he made it out of the South Bronx when so many around him did not. Maybe you do learn new things about Al Pacino, after all.

Several times, Pacino begins to talk about the “price of fame” then always cuts it short saying something like “no one wants to hear famous people complaining about fame”. Yeah, but I’m the one who chose to read the book, spend the time with Al, hear what he has to say. About acting and famous movies, of course. But I would have listened to other things, too. By “refusing” to burden you with his problems, Pacino winds up talking a lot about fame, and about getting on-and-off the Hollywood merry-go-round.

I’ve read way too many bios and auto bios of people who are famous, but not important in the final analysis. Another thing I appreciate about this book is the candor Pacino shows admitting how much luck and sex appeal had to do with his success. Compared to say, Kirk Douglas’s autobiography, which is longer and deeper, especially for a Jewish reader. But neither Douglas nor Lauren Bacall (who covers much of the same ground as Douglas from a woman’s point-of-view) seem to acknowledge sex appeal at all, or luck very much, although it screams from their pages. I wonder what their audio books might have sounded like.

Another book I like where luck (explicitly) and sex appeal (at least in his post-baseball life) are acknowledged is Keith Hernandez’s book I’m Keith Hernandez. I’m referring mostly to the half-of-the-book where Hernandez discusses his childhood in San Francisco as the son of a “baseball dad”, a man whose best days as a baseball player were spent playing with other sailors (including Stan Musial) in the Navy during World War II. If I remember the book correctly, Keith’s father also knew Joe DiMaggio, and more importantly, Joe DiMaggio knew John Hernandez, and how John Hernandez might have been a major-leaguer if John had only been a little bit — luckier.

One piece of luck that Keith describes in the book was the time where he was struggling in AA. He was on the verge of being sent down to A-ball when some ex-major leaguer (I think it was Ken Boyer) decided Keith was struggling because he was bored. Keith got promoted to AAA, instead. Then, good things began to happen.

Three “show-biz” autobiographies I especially like, I can’t remember their exact titles, are the ones by James Cagney, Louis Armstrong and Keith Richards.

And “Sonny Boy” by Al Pacino.