Sonny was a composite. He wasn't based on anyone, in particular. As a matter of fact, it's been rumored that, if anything, the Sonny character was based on a guy from the North End of Boston.

I've mentioned this here before. But when Chazz first moved to LA, his roommate was an Italian-American guy from the North End. He later claimed that Chazz lifted much of the basis for the play and the movie from him. Chazz eventually settled out of court for an undisclosed amount of money. Why pay when you have nothing to worry about? Where there's smoke there's fire.

That said, it doesn't diminish what Chazz accomplished with the play, the film, or his life. And even if the movie was largely fictional, it still perfectly captured the SPIRIT of the neighborhood at that time. Chazz is six or seven years older than I am. But we're close enough in age where I remember that time as well as he does.

As an aside (and I've also mentioned this before), but the part about the Black girl was not in the original play. We saw it on the East Side when it first opened back in '89. DeNiro added that for the film. And to his credit, the racial element worked. Chazz had to add it to the one man play years later when he revived it.