Al Pacino, 84, has an autobiography out entitled, Sonny Boy: A Memoir.
As we’ve previously reported, Pacino’s career is littered with roles of particular interest to LGBTQ+ moviegoers. One of these was playing a cop in the 1980 crime thriller Cruising.
The movie was written and directed by William Friedkin (The Exorcist, The French Connection). It was loosely based on a true story about a serial killer targetting gay men who frequented New York’s leather scene in the late 1970s.
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Pacino’s character, Officer Steve Burns, goes deep undercover in an attempt to try and track down the killer. He masquerades as a gay leather man and throws himself into the hedonistic, sex-positive atmosphere of the scene.
The movie was dogged by protests during its making. Some members of the gay community thought the book the movie was based on stigmatized them. They objected to it receiving the big screen treatment.
The resulting film didn’t impress the critics and was only a moderate box-office success. Pacino and Friedkin also reportedly clashed during the production.
Charity donation
In his new memoir, Pacino reveals that he was sensitive to the concerns of protestors. So much so that he decided to give his earnings away to charities.
“I took the money, and it was a lot, and I put it in an irrevocable trust fund,” the actor writes. “I gave it to charities, and with the interest, it was able to last a couple of decades… I don’t know if it eased my conscience, but at least the money did some good.”
At the time, he wanted to avoid it appearing to be a publicity stunt so donated the money, via the trust, anonymously.
“I just wanted one positive thing to come out of that whole experience,” he said.
Pacino says he knew the movie was “pushing the envelope” in terms of subject matter. It arrived just before AIDS, at a time when the gay community was making significant advances. There were concerns a movie centered on the gay bondage scene might set those advances back.
Pacino says the production faced protests on a daily basis. He didn’t feel it was exploitative during filming. However, when he saw the final cut, he could understand the concerns of some gay people. He chose not to do any interviews for the movie and to donate his pay to charity.
“Tough, very hard edged and ambiguous”
In an interview in 2013, to promote his own autobiography, Friedkin told The Wrap, “I never intended the [Cruising] to be critical of gays. I just thought the S&M world would make a good backdrop for a murder mystery, but I did not in any way mean for it to reflect the gay lifestyle.”
He continued, “I understood at the time that people who were trying to achieve gay rights were not going to appreciate such a tough picture. It’s still very tough, very hard edged and ambiguous.”
Pacino has been nominated for nine acting Oscars and won once, for Scent Of A Woman in 1993. His other notable roles include Michael Corleone in the Godfather movies, and a desperate bank robber in Dog Day Afternoon attempting to secure the cash needed for his partner’s gender confirmation surgery.
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