MICHAEL
He’s good.
DON CORLEONE
You know he looks more like you every day.
MICHAEL
(smiles)
He’s smarter than I am. Three years old. He can read the funny papers.
DON CORLEONE
(smiles)
Read the funny papers … Yeah, well … I want you to arrange to have a telephone man check all the calls that go in and outta here …
MICHAEL
(overlaps)
I did already, Pop.
DON CORLEONE
(overlaps)
It could be anyone.
MICHAEL
(overlaps)
Pop, I took care a’ that.
DON CORLEONE
Oh, that’s right. I forgot.
MICHAEL reaches toward his father.
MICHAEL
What’s the matter? What’s bothering you?
THE DON doesn’t answer.
MICHAEL
I’ll handle it. I told you I can handle it, I’ll handle it.
“The Godfather is about more than the Mafia; it’s about conflicts in American culture. It’s about a powerful man who builds a dynasty through crime—but he wants his son to be a senator, a governor; it’s about the very nature of power. What it does to you. Who survives. I think it’s a tragedy.”
—Al Pacino, Seventeen magazine
THE DON rises to sit closer to MICHAEL.
DON CORLEONE
I knew that Santino was goin’ to have to go through all this. And Fredo, well, Fredo was … well … But I never—I never wanted this for you. I work my whole life, I don’t apologize, to take care of my family, and I refused to be a fool dancing on a string held by all those big shots. I don’t apologize—that’s my life, but I thought that—that when it was your time, that—that you would be the one to hold the strings. Senator Corleone, Governor Corleone, somethin’.
MICHAEL
Another pezzonovante.
DON CORLEONE
Well, just wasn’t enough time, Michael, wasn’t enough time.
MICHAEL
We’ll get there, Pop. We’ll get there.
THE DON kisses his son.
DON CORLEONE
Well … Now listen, whoever comes to you with this Barzini meeting, he’s the traitor. Don’t forget that.
THE DON rises, and MICHAEL lays back in his chair, thinking.
ANATOMY OF A SCENE:
DANCING ON A STRING
During the time of the Godfather production, Robert Towne had a reputation for being a great script doctor. He eventually became an accomplished screenwriter in his own right, winning the Academy Award® for Best Screenplay for Chinatown (and beating out The Godfather: Part II in the process). In this excerpt of a 2007 interview, he recalls writing the scene that takes place in the garden of the Corleone Mall between Vito and Michael:
“My first recollection of Francis is rowing around in a rowboat in a lake in Belgium around the Gulf Hotel. I saw him briefly in Ireland during the making of Dementia 13, and we had been in touch with each other over the years.
“In June 1971, Fred [Roos] called me and said that Francis had been going over the script and had realized that there were no scenes in the film between father and son. In fact, Mario [Puzo] had not written a scene in which the Don ceded power to Michael. Fred told me that Francis didn’t have time to stop and figure it out, and asked if I would help. As I recall, Francis also called me, and he felt that there should be a scene where the father and son expressed their feelings for each other. I felt that I had to be careful about that—they couldn’t just outwardly declare their love for each other. He suggested that I fly to New York to look at footage.
“I remember speaking to several Paramount executives, Jack Ballard in particular, who said that the movie was ‘a fucking disaster.’ I told him ‘I’m going to contribute to the disaster.’ I was met by Fred, and we went up into the Gulf+Western building at Paramount and looked at close to an hour of assembled footage, to give me an idea of what had been shot.
“I was not prepared for it. I was absolutely stunned by what I’d seen. It may be the best dailies I’d ever seen. I told that to Francis, and I could see a look of alarm on his face, like he had asked for the advice of a friend who was a little crazy—because it wasn’t what he had been hearing from everyone else.
“From there we went and had a couple of meetings. I had one brief meeting with Marlon, and at that meeting I remember him saying: ‘Just once, I would like Vito Corleone not to be inarticulate.’ I responded, ‘In other words, you want him to talk?’
“I had one night to write the scene because they were going to lose Marlon that day, and he either got a scene he wanted to shoot or they weren’t going to have him. Buck Henry had loaned me his apartment and I wrote the scene all that night, finishing it around four in the morning—I had a hard time with it, as you can imagine. I had the book with me, and on the cover was the hand of a puppeteer, with strings dangling from it—that was my inspiration for the scene. In the scene, Don Corleone says ‘I refuse to be a fool dancing on a string.’ I felt that this was a scene that had to be about the transfer of power from older to younger generation, the difficulty of giving up that power, and the guilt of giving it to someone he never thought would have to have such power in the underworld. So I book-ended the scene, paying attention to what Marlon wanted (and, incidentally, what I thought was right)—for him to talk. I started the scene with the Barzini exposition, and all the kinds of concerns of a guy who has been in charge for so long. When the Don says that his hope for Michael was that he would be able to hold the strings, it’s an apology and an expression of love and a passing of the old order. Marlon finishes the scene with ‘Just remember, the one on our side is the guy who’s going to betray you.’ So, in other words, I deliberately kept that plot point so the audience would have to wait for the other shoe to drop, and yet they could have this discursive conversation about their lives.
“Francis came by to pick me up in the morning and drive out to the set. I remember we drove about halfway there without him saying a word to me. After about thirty minutes, he turned and said, ‘Any luck?’ He read the scene, and he nodded and said, ‘Good. Let’s go show it to Al.’ Al liked it. Then Francis said, ‘So you go show it to Marlon.’ Marlon could be kind of prickly. He was getting his makeup done and he looked at me and said, ‘Why don’t you read the scene to me?’ which was very intimidating, of course, because I would be reading his part along with Al’s. I remember feeling an instant flash of anger, thinking ‘son of a bitch!’ I made up my mind that I was not going to act the scene; I was simply going to read it. Marlon stopped, and it caught him, and he looked at me and said, ‘Read it again,’ at which point I knew he was interested. Then he went through an extraordinary dissection, line by line, asking me what I was thinking when I wrote each part. We went through it, and he said, ‘Okay. Would you come out on the set while we do the scene?’ I asked Francis, and he was obviously relieved and consented.
“The scene was written on huge pieces of cardboard and placed around the set so Marlon could see them. After every take, Marlon actually conferred with me. I don’t think I left the garden all that day until the very last shot, and at the end of it, Marlon said something like, ‘Gosh, who are you?’ and I said, ‘I’m a friend of Francis’s.’ He said, ‘I don’t know who you are, but I appreciate that you wrote like crazy to get it done.’ And then I never saw him again.”
DISSOLVE TO:
EXT DAY: DON’S GARDEN
DON CORLEONE is in his garden, in the baggy clothes and fedora, tending the tomato plants. Michael’s little BOY follows him. THE DON shows him how to use an insect sprayer and then sits down. The sun is very hot. He wipes his brow.
“There is a sort of bittersweet irony here; the Don has evolved into a lovable old grandpa in his ‘baggy gray trousers, a faded blue shirt, battered dirty-brown fedora decorated with a stained gr
ay silk hatband.’ He is much heavier now. This scene is evocative of Sicily—a sense of the Don’s roots; a primeval feeling, almost on the verge of a fantasy. The light is almost unreal.”
—Coppola’s notebook, quoting Puzo’s novel
ANTHONY
Can I hold it, please? Yeah, I will take care … .
DON CORLEONE
Come here, come here, come here.
ANTHONY
Can I water these?
DON CORLEONE
Yes, go ahead. Over here, over here. Be careful, you’re spilling it, you’re spilling it. Anthony, come here, come here. Come here.
THE DON motions to the BOY, and then takes the sprayer.
DON CORLEONE
There. That’s it. We’ll put it right there. Aie. Come here. I’ll show you something, come here. Now you stand there …
ANTHONY
Give me a orange.
THE DON cuts an orange and, hiding his face, inserts the peel into his mouth, like fangs. He grunts like a monster. The BOY cries out. THE DON rises, holding the boy.
THE YOUNG ACTOR NATURALLY REACTS TO BRANDO’S ANTICS.
DON CORLEONE
(laughing)
Oh no!
THE DON sets him back down, and they play among the tomato plants.
DON CORLEONE
That’s a new trick.
ANTHONY
See … Where are you? … Get down!
They laugh. Then THE DON starts to cough. He collapses among the plants. The BOY thinks he’s still playing and squirts him with the watering can.
ANTHONY
Uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh ouch!
LONG SHOT of the BOY running away.
BEHIND THE SCENES
According to Coppola, Paramount instructed him to eliminate the scene of the Don’s death, in order to save money. They suggested that the death scene would be extraneous, as the funeral itself would show that the Don had died.
Coppola had planted some tomato vines in a little garden situated in the same location as the wedding scenes—a controversial move, as the plants had to be imported from Chicago at great expense. On a day that the production was shooting wedding scenes, Coppola instructed the crew, “Let’s run real fast and set up Brando sitting by the tomatoes, playing with this little kid.” Coppola attempted to shoot the death scene with just two cameras, but it was very nearly lunchtime, and the production was facing an expensive meal penalty if they didn’t break soon. According to Coppola, when Jack Ballard (the Paramount representative assigned to watch costs) noticed what was happening, he shouted at the crew that they had to break for lunch right then and there—especially since the scene was no longer in the script. Ballard’s histrionics, coupled with an uncooperative child, made for an increasingly pressurized moment.
Camera operator Michael Chapman recalls of the shoot, “I seem to remember that Brando thought up the idea of carving the fangs out of an orange peel.” Coppola concurs, saying that Brando announced he wanted to do something he did with his own children to get the kid to cooperate. Under the gun, Coppola assented without even knowing Brando’s plan. “Brando cut the orange peel, put the score in it, and put it in his mouth and we said, ‘Roll.’ Because the little kid wasn’t on the spot, he was curious about what Brando was doing and then the kid reacted because he was scared of those teeth. Brando hugged him and laughed, and then the kid laughed.” After the scene played out, Coppola said, “Cut!” and Ballard immediately yelled, “Lunch!”
Chapman cites the scene in which Brando “changes from a benign grandfather into a monster who frightens the child, and then dies” as his favorite in the film, and Coppola acknowledges that the scene, “which to some people is one of their favorite scenes, very nearly wasn’t in the movie—had Ballard been there ten minutes before and seen what I was doing, or had Brando not done what he did.”
CAST AND CREW:
THE GREAT MARLON BRANDO
Francis Ford Coppola and casting director Fred Roos had thought a lot about what charismatic actor should play the Godfather. According to Roos, “We made every effort to find an Italian-American Don Corleone, and there just wasn’t. There were a lot of actors in that age category, but the Don is talked about so much—as well as his power and his strength and his leadership—that when he comes on the screen, he better be something pretty great.” Clearly it couldn’t be an unknown—any actor worth his salt couldn’t have reached the age of fifty without being known. They decided that when in doubt, go with the world’s greatest actor—regardless of whether he seemed to fit the part—and trust that, with his talent, he would be able to make the role work. In Coppola’s mind, that meant either Lawrence Olivier or Marlon Brando. (Roos also mentioned George C. Scott as someone they considered). Olivier, although British, was the right age, resembled the Mafia don Vito Genovese, and his recent turn as the premier of Russia showed his ability to completely make himself over. Unfortunately, the actor was quite ill at the time. That left Brando, at forty-seven seemingly too young and handsome for the part, and although he was arguably the greatest actor, he was also rumored to be the world’s biggest headache for studios.
After beginning his career as a true force of stage and screen—most notably in A Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront, Brando had recently appeared in a string of failures. His foray into directing, Paramount’s One-Eyed Jacks, did respectably at the box office, but his production costs doubled the budget. His interloping on the set of Mutiny on the Bounty also made for an exorbitant production. His last film, Burn!, was a huge flop. He was considered box office poison, and Paramount wanted nothing to do with him.
Mario Puzo had thought of Brando for the role two years earlier and sent him the book, along with a note: “Dear Mr. Brando, I wrote a book called The Godfather which has had some success and I think you’re the only actor who can play the part. I know this was presumptuous of me, but the best I can do by the book is try. I really think you’d be tremendous.” At first, Brando wasn’t interested—some reports have suggested that he didn’t consider himself a “Mafia godfather,” and indeed, in his autobiography, Songs My Mother Taught Me, he wrote, “I had never played an Italian before, and I didn’t think I could do it successfully. By then I had learned that one of the biggest mistakes an actor can make is to try to play a role for which he is miscast.” Film writer and friend Budd Schulberg has said that Brando initially refused because of his unwillingness to glorify the Mafia. Brando’s assistant Alice Marchak read the book and tried to talk him into changing his mind. Brando did call Puzo and thanked him for the book and, knowing his own reputation, advised Puzo that he’d have to get a strong director on board before even mentioning the idea of casting Brando to a studio.
“Acting is an empty and useless profession.”
—Marlon Brando, Time magazine
Coppola met with strong resistance from the studio executives on the subject of Brando. Not only did they think that he was too young for the part, but they were convinced he would cost them money. In Robert Evans’s memoir, The Kid Stays in the Picture, he recalls his orders from New York: “Will not finance Brando in title role. Do not respond. Case closed.” Coppola cites the direct refusal he received from Stanley Jaffe: “As president of Paramount Pictures, I assure you Marlon Brando will not appear in this motion picture, and furthermore I order you never to bring the subject up again.” Ruddy’s remembrance is a little more colorful: “As long as I’m president of this fuckin’ company, Marlon Brando will never do this movie!”
Still, Coppola persisted, and the studio finally relented. The catch: three seemingly impossible stipulations:
Brando would basically do the film for free; no money up front, just a share of the back end, with per diem and expenses.
He would have to put up a million-dollar bond that would ensure his behavior would not cost the movie money.
He would have to do a screen test—unheard of for an actor of Brando’s caliber.
Coppola q
uickly agreed, as he felt he had nothing to lose, and was able to work out the first two requirements—and somehow Brando got $50,000 up front, plus $10,000 a week expenses for his six weeks of work. He also was granted a percentage of the film’s gross. Unfortunately for Brando, he sold the points back to the studio for a mere $100,000 in cash—a move that cost him millions. Needless to say, he fired his agent, lawyer, and anyone else remotely involved in the transaction.
As to the third stipulation, Coppola was unsure how to finesse asking the great Marlon Brando for a screen test. He decided to call Brando and suggest that they do some experimentation, to see if he would feel comfortable playing an Italian. He showed up at Brando’s house on Mulholland Drive with a few guys with cameras and some Italian props: provolone cheese, salami, prosciutto, anisette, and cigars. Coppola now says that, in general, in approaching Brando, “my theory was to supply him with the goods, and he’ll know what to do.” After a short while, Brando emerged from his bedroom in a beautiful robe and set about transforming himself. While nibbling on the food and glancing in a mirror, he pinned up his long blond hair and ran black shoe polish through it. He bent the tips of his shirt collars, stuck Kleenex in his cheeks—saying that he should look like a “bulldog”—penciled in a mustache, added some black under his eyes, and began mumbling in husky tones, noting that the character had been wounded in the throat. He even answered a telephone call in character. Coppola filmed him as discreetly and quietly as possible, as he had heard that Brando didn’t like loud noises. Afterward, Coppola hustled his camcorder footage back to New York, straight to the top: the president of Gulf+Western, Charlie Bluhdorn. Bluhdorn, who had been warned by Frank Yablans that casting Brando would actually keep audiences away from the film, loudly protested, “No, no, absolutely not!” as soon as he recognized who was on the tape. But as he watched Brando work his transformation, he abruptly changed his tune, expressing in amazement, “That’s incredible!”
The Annotated Godfather: The Complete Screenplay with Commentary on Every Scene, Interviews, and Little-Known Facts Page 20