Forget about Al Pacino and Robert De Niro’s history of de facto acting rivalry because they happen to be two Italian Americans who often vie for the same types of (usually damaging to Italian culture) roles. The new unspoken “duel” between them is: Who Can Produce Children at the Oldest Age? Whether or not those children might have some overt genetic mutations is neither here nor there, apparently. And the answer to the question, at this moment, is Al Pacino, who has beaten out De Niro’s recent confirmation of becoming a father at the age of seventy-nine. For, while he might be the patriarch of what is now a whopping seven spawns, it still didn’t usurp Pacino’s news of expecting his fourth child at the age of eighty-three. Mind you, unlike De Niro, Pacino has been “clever” enough to never actually get married.
And so, the baby mama he’s expecting his fourth with is twenty-nine-year-old Noor Alfallah, who will undeniably be left with the task of raising their child (when the nanny isn’t). Not just because Pacino is subject to be one of the reaper’s next victims sooner rather than later, but because, well, men of Pacino’s “era” simply aren’t wont to parent anyway. To them kids are like self-raising Chia pets. Maybe that’s why it seems so easy to have one this late in the game. And Pacino’s is due real soon, with news of the imminent “bundle of joy” announced eight months into Alfallah’s pregnancy. And maybe Pacino should consider “trapping” her (as opposed to the inverse cliché about how women do that to men) with a baby to be a coup. For it’s not as though she’s any stranger to dating high-profile elderly men. This included making Mick Jagger her boyfriend when she was twenty-two and he was seventy-four (circa 2017). Now twenty-nine, her fifty-four-year age difference from Pacino will undeniably reveal some markedly different parenting styles. As for De Niro, his baby mama is slightly more age-appropriate, reported to be somewhere in her forties. Of course, that still leaves a roughly thirty-plus year age difference. But that seems tame compared to what Pacino’s got going on with Alfallah. While someone of Chen’s age is prone to get the same commentary about being with a man in De Niro’s demographic that Enid Frick (Candace Bergen) gave Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) at the party in “Splat!,” Alfallah is more likely to be met with outright contempt from “normal” women and “feminist” women alike who view her as some kind of perverse opportunist in the style of Anna Nicole Smith.
With regard to Enid’s speech about Carrie being in her “wading pool” for dating Aleksandr Petrovsky (Mikhail Baryshnikov) it bears repeating: “He’s my age, and you’ve got him. And I am in no-man’s-land, literally. No man anywhere. Men can date anyone, any age, but let’s be frank, most of them prefer the bimbos. So if you’re a successful fifty-something woman, there’s a very small pool. It’s very small. It’s a wading pool, really. So why are you swimming in my wading pool?” Chen might have had to go up against this type of venom from various Enids at various New York dinner parties before having De Niro’s baby, but now, she’s “legitimate,” “untouchable,” etc. No mere “flash in the pan” taking up space in the wading pool of available men for women over fifty. Alfallah, however, is playing a different game altogether. Not just the one that entails having an Electra complex (though there should be another name for a complex that finds women being more sexually attracted to their grandfather than their father), but also, to be blunt, fucking for clout. Talk about securing a nepo baby, after all. And yes, Alfallah also happens to be a producer in the making, with a movie called Billy Knight starring (who else) Pacino being her first major feature. So yeah, why not get a little bit permanently closer to a movie industry titan? Never mind the incredible risks to the health of their child.
And yet, because our society still reiterates that age only matters for a woman—not just for her looks, but for her ability to “bear healthy children”—old fathers continue to get a pretty big pass for the selfish part they play in procreating at an age when it is very unsafe to do so. Especially actors who have the luxury of always putting their careers first. Barring the “less severe” effects Old Daddy sperm, like telomere (a compound structure at the end of a chromosome, and also a favorite topic of Lana Del Rey’s lately) length inheritance, there’s also an increased risk for both physical and mental health issues in children born to fathers over the age of forty. Never mind over the age of seventy à la De Niro and Pacino. According to a 2019 article in The New York Times, “…fathers older than 45 ha[ve] a 14 percent greater chance than fathers in their 20s and 30s of their babies being born prematurely and at low birth weight. The mothers too faced a 28 percent increased risk of gestational diabetes.” The article continued, “As the fathers’ ages rose, their babies were more likely to need help with breathing and require admission to the neonatal intensive care unit. The risks associated with older fathers go beyond those obvious at birth. An earlier review of studies published by Dr. Eisenberg and Dr. Simon L. Conti, clinical assistant professor of urology at Stanford, linked paternal aging to an increased risk of babies born with congenital diseases like dwarfism or developing psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and developmental ones like autism.”
But maybe that’s a small price to pay for the hard-on a man gives himself from knowing he’s “still got it” well beyond the “healthy” age to procreate. Plus, men in the entertainment industry have never been too much taken to task for being “Late Daddies.” Richard Gere became a father at fifty and seventy; Cary Grant at sixty-two; Steve Martin at sixty-seven; David Letterman at fifty-six; Quentin Tarantino at fifty-seven and fifty-nine. The list wears on. And it’s one that points out a very glaring fact about men: they’re fucking selfish pricks with no business allowing their literal prick to reproduce so late. Not just because women are subjected to such “limiting” (read: natural order-abiding) standards, but because they’re so willing to dismiss the harm it causes to the children they bear. Nevertheless, our culture continues to normalize Old Daddies—especially if they are in positions of power. Take, for example, the plot point on the recently “deceased” series that is Succession. In season three, Logan Roy (Brian Cox), the eighty-something (like Pacino) media magnate that anchors the show, is trying to have a “do-over” baby with his latest “young piece,” Kerry Castellabate (Zoë Winters). This being evidenced, according to his eldest son, Connor (Alan Ruck), by Kerry packing his smoothies with maca root. Known to improve fertility and increase sperm count in men. Because why shouldn’t Logan get a chance to potentially create an heir more suited to running Waystar Royco?
Although the fan speculations about Logan eventually spawning out of spite toward his quartet of other good-for-nothing children didn’t pan out, in the end, the point was that it would have been an entirely plausible plot development. Just like the real life Old Daddy fatherhoods of Pacino and De Niro. And maybe we should all be asking ourselves why this still feels so “huh, that’s kinda gross, isn’t it?” as opposed to “that is fucking foul, selfish and all manner of problematic.”
