30 Before 30

by Marina Shifrin

  23

  WATCH ALL THREE GODFATHER MOVIES

  I can’t remember a time when my parents’ toilet didn’t have a Mario Puzo book resting on the tank. My father has read every one of them—The Fourth K, The Sicilian, The Last Don, Fools Die, and of course, The Godfather. “The Godfather,” my dad says, “is the only movie that’s better than the book.”

  I never understood Russian men’s infatuation with mob movies. According to Vladimir, The Godfather is the greatest story ever told. A story filled with “love, heartache, romance, action, and everything you could ever want to feel, Marina.” Maybe it’s the romanticized corruption, or the unapologetic display of masculinity that’s quickly falling out of vogue in progressive circles, but whatever it is, The Godfather strikes a chord with my dad.

  He used to splice footage from The Godfather into our own family movies. When I say, “family movies,” I mean feature-length films created by my dad and his friends (whom I call my uncles—it’s a Russian thing). They’ve shot a total of five movies and one music video under the umbrella of their “production company,” FimFilm. At FimFilm, my father is the writer/director, my Uncle Fima is the cinematographer, my Uncle Mark is the producer, and the rest of us are extras in their slow descent into madness.

  In one of their later movies, FimFilm rented a horse-drawn carriage for a scene. The families all clambered into our minivans and drove into the city early one winter morning. My aunts, scantily clad in flapper gear (wardrobe was not era-accurate; everyone wore what they felt prettiest in), piled into the carriage and popped bottles of champagne at ten a.m. on a Sunday. The scene required my uncle Mark, who was cast in the role of famed Russian poet Aleksandr Pushkin, to kiss on the women in the carriage. He smooched their necks and cheeks as they poured champagne everywhere. It was the most scandalous thing I’d ever witnessed.

  In another movie my dad and the family dentist, who I call Uncle Sasha, play two Olympic divers preparing for a match. The scene required them to sit in a “hot” tub while drinking wine. I love this scene because in one of the outtakes my dad yells, “Осторожно! Яйца!” which translates to “Be careful! Eggs!” It’s how I learned the Russian slang for balls.

  Sometimes if the shot was too ambitious for FimFilm, they just borrowed scenes from famous movies, one of which was The Godfather. When I finally watched the Godfather movies, I had the peculiar feeling of recognizing scenes that my father had snuck into our own family videos; Vito Corleone seeing Ellis Island for the first time; the expressionless stares of the Italian immigrants on the Moshulu; Sonny being treated like target practice. When I was younger, I had no clue these clips came from The Godfather. I just assumed it was some weird Russian reference I was not getting.

  I began watching The Godfather because of my own strained relationship with my dad at the time. It wasn’t a dramatic strain; I didn’t punch him in the face, beat his sister senseless, or put a hit out on his dad (all of which happens to Michael Corleone in the first movie), but it was a strain nonetheless. We were having political arguments, and for the first time in my twenty-nine years I felt completely disconnected from Vladimir. Our conversations were wrought with mean snipes coming from both sides. We used to teetertotter between our different viewpoints on the same seesaw; fiscal conservatism on one side, social liberalism on the other. Then Trump got elected and my father moved to the swings, as I sank into the mud.

  Uncle Sasha (left) and Dad (right) as Olympic swimmers.

  I began calling home less and less in an attempt to avoid our strenuous discussions, but soon began to miss my dad. I missed his affinity for circumlocution. His stories have these wordy leadups that rival Tolstoy and often take you down four different paths before you even get to the beginning. I missed his wry humor and how quick he was to point out the discrepancies in my dilemmas, or how he asked for my opinion when it came to dealing with my riotous little brother. I missed our rambling conversations about writers, painters, poets, and art in general. When I miss someone, truly miss them, I envelop myself in their interests, so I sat down to watch The Godfather.

  It took me three weeks to watch all eight hours and fifty-seven minutes of The Godfather (I, II, III). Three emotionally taxing weeks, complemented with a lot of killing, rules, delightfully Italian names, and “The Family.” They were long-ass movies created in a time when attention spans were different, more forgiving. It took a lot of self-restraint not to reach for my phone to look up actors, reviews, and quotes during the slower scenes, but at the end I reigned queen over this goal.

  THE GODFATHER I

  Immediately before watching the first movie, I got into a sixty-eight-minute-long political debate with my dad because he was teasing me for going to a Women’s March. “I have problems, Marina, no one’s marching for me,” he told me. “I don’t know why you waste your time with such things.” At one point during the conversation, Sam, sensing the rising tension, scribbled “You’re beautiful and I love you” on a piece of paper. It made me cry.

  I got off the phone, ate my dinner—my jaw tensing with each bite—and watched The Godfather. This is a movie about the importance of respect and fulfilling your roles as required by your gender. “A man who doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real man,” as Vito Corleone puts it. In part one, Vito Corleone, the founder and Don of the Corleone mob family, begins to grow older, his son Michael has to decide whether or not to take over the business of money, murder, and power. At the conclusion of the first movie, Don Vito Corleone ages out of his position as head of the mafia empire and Michael is called upon to fill his role as the Godfather. It is a position Michael promised himself he’d never be in, but at the end of the day, family comes first, regardless of your personal desires.

  Becoming the Don means Michael is now the patriarch, a lion, protecting everyone in the family and the (mob) Family. That’s very much the position my father played in my own life. Except instead of the mafia business, he was in the jewelry business—and it stripped him of his time, sanity, and health. My dad was always exhausted when he came home. He’d walk inside, head straight to the bathroom, and rub bright blue astringent all over his face. His day was so deeply ingrained in his pores that the cotton pad would turn black with layer upon layer of glittery jewelry dust. “See this, Marina?” he’d say, showing off the sparkly pad. “This is all the work I did for you today.”

  My dad hated running his own business. In his fantasy world, he was a painter in some villa near the ocean. During the evenings, he would sit at a table overflowing with alcohol as men came to kiss his pinky-ringed hand and women brought over course after course of carbs. His family and friends would all live in the same neighborhood, and he’d continue using his status as the head of the household to solve problems, protect his children, and eliminate anyone who threatened his kingdom. But at the end of the day, your “in real life” family comes first, so he saved his imagination for the movies and spent most of his time inside of a small office in the Jewelers Row District of Chicago.

  I’ve always been unabashedly thankful for everything my dad did for me. That’s why it was difficult when our conversations turned into these long, laborious debates where no one won and we barely pulled ourselves back together in time to say “I love you” at the end.

  The next week, multiple news stories of horrendous politics broke. Trump fired so-and-so, appointed so-and-so, tweeted this-and-that, none of it good. All that came to my mind as I read each story was, “What does my dad think?” “How could he possibly be okay with this?” “But really, what does my dad think?” After our previously charged conversation, I could sense a fight brewing, so I took a little break to let my emotions cool before calling my dad again. I ordered Thai and watched The Godfather II instead, feeling simultaneously close to and so far away from my own father.

  THE GODFATHER II

  The Godfather II awakened a sort of dormant teenage lust I didn’t even know was in me. If you have never been treated to the
absolute fucking pleasure that is a young Robert De Niro, please take a moment to Google him, then maybe google yourself. He is one hot slice of lasagna.

  This movie is an exciting representation of the American Dream, where you can lie, cheat, and kill your way to the top. Where everyone around you will bow down to your power. It’s unapologetic about its masculinity and reflects a time where the fantasy of America wasn’t as convoluted as it is today. We jump back in time to see the newly orphaned Vito Corleone’s immigration to America and learn that his birth name is Vito Andolini. Corleone was a last name assigned to him by an immigrations officer, poached from the Italian city from which he came. This scene is a reminder that your roots are so deeply imbedded in your person. For Vito, his native city ended up becoming a part of him legally. It’s so poetic that I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s the American Dream with the simultaneous realization that you cannot escape your motherland. If my immigration had gone anything like Vito’s, I would’ve been Marina Moscow—I could’ve gone into pro-wrestling (or amateur porn) with a name like that.

  I watched this movie the day Donald Trump issued an executive order temporarily banning citizens of Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen from entering the U.S. As an immigrant and a refugee (albeit one whose entrance to the U.S. was fairly undramatic), I was devastated because I understand the power and safety American citizenship represents. I also understand the pain of being bureaucratically separated from immediate family. I so desperately wanted to hear what my dad thought about all of this.

  When my father and I argue about politics, both sides come down to what is best for America. To my father, America is a country he fought to live in. He gave up everything to immigrate and molded his entire being to fit into what he thought the country needed. America gave him the space to earn money, buy property, and create home videos that nobody would ever see. He wants to protect this country and his family from the unknown. Tighter restrictions, closing the borders, harsher “vetting” … all that stuff. To me, America is a country I fortuitously ended up in. A country that promised “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Promises of things that I felt everyone should get a chance to have, not just the ones who lucked into it. I want everyone to get a chance at the American Dream, because that’s what makes America, in my opinion, a magnificent country. Both my father and I have America’s best interest at heart, and that’s what makes our disagreements so impossible to navigate.

  Vito Corleone shows the promise of America in The Godfather II, whereas his son Michael shows what happens when you take advantage of that promise. Michael Corleone’s story in this movie is a sad one. As he gains power and strength in his new role as the Don, he begins to grow further and further from his own family, the same family he worked so hard to protect. Unlike his father, Michael is unable to strike a balance between his business and personal life. In the end, Michael’s wife moves out, and their lives become fractured. Everything the first movie showed as impenetrable is gone. We see that families can flex and bend, but that they can also splinter and break. I decided to call my dad.

  THE GODFATHER III

  “Oh, I do have a middle child,” my dad exclaimed when he heard my voice on the other end. He also likes to do this thing where he pretends not to recognize who I am when I’ve waited too long to call him.

  I wanted to talk about the travel ban and to hear my dad’s thoughts as an immigrant, but he quickly cut me off. “I don’t want to have these talks with you, you’re too emotional,” he told me. Which is true, but I promised not to be sensitive. My conservative father is the closest thing I have to a window into the opposing party’s psyche. All the other Republicans in my life were hiding so far up the elephant’s ass that it was impossible to tempt them with civil discourse. Honestly? I wanted to know his thoughts.

  We got to talking and it was what you’d expect: a back and forth of shaky facts, sensational headlines from both sides, confirmation bias, the works. The truth is, my dad is a bigger fan of debate than he is of Donald Trump or the Republican Party.

  Oftentimes, our discussions end with him saying, “I don’t care that much.” But this one was a little different. Toward the end of our call, my dad told me a joke: “What do celebrities hate more than Trump? Finding out that no one cares about their opinion.”

  I was hurt for three reasons. First, although I don’t give a fuck about what celebrities say, a large part of my career is working with them. It is my objective to make a positive statement with my work in the entertainment industry. As is the goal of many in Hollywood. Second, I do all of this to make my father proud. He was the one who taught me about the magic of fantasy. The fact that he was letting his political bias stoke a distaste for the industry I work in sucked. Finally, that is not a joke, it’s something written to make people feel bad. The setup was weak and the punchline was weaker. A joke written in malice is no joke at all.

  Talking with my dad that night opened a repressed part of my malicious brain, and I let my emotions get the best of me. I quickly Googled some tasteless Holocaust jokes because I wanted to prove that just because someone says something is a joke, doesn’t mean you should tell it. I read them off rapid-fire, and the phone went silent. I hurt my dad. Deeply. His hurt was radiating off the receiver. It was buzzing in my ear. I immediately regretted it. Our conversation went from tense but civil to a new level and it was my fault. Then, my dad got on my level.

  He told me that he and my mother messed up by letting me leave the house at such a young age. That I didn’t get the chance to develop into who I should be. That “Liberal Hollywood” had brainwashed me into an anti-Semitic girl. He told me that he never wanted to have this conversation in the first place (true) and I had pushed him into it (also true). He ended with, “I can’t do this anymore, have a nice life.” Which felt very final. Like the end of something. The phone went dead and I cried. So hard, in fact, that Sam threw a jacket on me and forced me to take a walk around the block to calm down. I was ashamed at how out of control the conversation had gotten and even more devastated that I had hurt my dad.

  The next morning I lay on my couch, wrapped in a blanket, intermittently crying while spooning my computer. I pulled up The Godfather III. The final movie in the trilogy is all about seeking forgiveness. Repenting. Michael Corleone is older, and his only daughter, Mary, is helping him run the (now reputable) family business. We follow Michael as he tries to become a legitimate aboveboard leader, to no avail. At the end of the movie, his demons catch up with him, and a hit gone wrong ends up killing Mary, but sparing him. It’s tragic. An innocent daughter dies at the feet of her corrupt father. Corrupt not by choice, but by blood, because no man can escape the deeply ingrained actions of his past.

  Unlike most people, I loved the third movie. Francis Ford Coppola, much like my father, cast his own daughter in his movie, which caused the familial bonds to seep through fiction and into real life. In contrast to Coppola’s movies, my dad’s movies were not for anyone, they weren’t even in English, but they were self-made opportunities for middle-aged Russian immigrants to provide accessible fantasy worlds to their families. My dad’s movies allowed us to tap into the pure ecstasy of working on something we loved with the people we loved. In that regard, The Godfather trilogy, in addition to being a cinematic masterpiece, felt like a reflection of my past.

  It’s no wonder my dad loves The Godfather so much. It shows a world where you can be both the hero and the villain. Corrupt and moral. A world where the rules require shooting anyone who insults your family. It’s much more exciting than clenching your fist and stepping away from someone who tells you to “go back to your own country,” or any of the other anti-immigrant sentiments my dad has experienced over the years.

  Later that night, I decided to call my dad during a burger walk.1 I didn’t want to apologize, but I didn’t want to fight either. Instead, I told him of my recent accomplishments.

  “You know,” I sheepishly said, “I f
inished all three of the Godfather movies.”

  “Oh yeah? What did you think of each one?”

  “Well the first one was obviously amazing…” I waded through my thoughts about each movie and then quietly listened as my dad told me his. It was the first conversation, after the election, where we were back to our old selves. Just a dad and his daughter talking art, like two old friends.

  24

  EAT A MEAL ALONE

  There is something uniquely challenging and liberating about eating a meal by yourself. Not the kind of meal you eat over the sink while watching YouTube videos on your phone, but a proper meal, cooked by a stranger, brought to your table by a stranger and taken away by a stranger.

  There is an unhealthy stigma attached to being by yourself. In my unprofessional opinion, I’d wager it stems from kindergarten-era punishments, timeouts, and groundings—they all require that the culprit sit alone with her thoughts. Just the mention of eating lunch by yourself elicits universal pity. But why is it so bad? I mean, if you don’t spend time with yourself, how will you grow to appreciate who you are?

  So much of my early twenties was filled with people, parties, conversation, kisses, screens—every inch of my schedule was packed with something. I couldn’t go to bed without a podcast droning or even take a shower without music blaring. I spent many years avoiding my own thoughts.

  The constant need for mental stimulation began to cause me anxiety. After all, how are you supposed to have any thoughts in your head if you are always filling it with someone else’s words? I wanted to get to a point where I was comfortable enough with my own thoughts to be left alone with them.

  Living in Taiwan helped; not having a handle on Mandarin or reliable cell phone service forced me to explore a lot of the country by myself, including the culinary world. I eased into the concept of eating alone on park benches and at flimsy tables wedged in alleyways. But in order to truly conquer this goal, I wanted to eat a meal by myself in America, where a meal alone would be chosen and not forced.