Early in the afternoon, word quickly spreads around the set that Italian-American League leader Joe Colombo has been shot in the head four times at the Italian-American Unity Day rally at Columbus Circle, at the foot of the Gulf and Western Building. Colombo was there to protest discrimination against Italian-Americans and especially to deplore the Italian gangster image. (He had invited Al Ruddy to represent The Godfather at the rally. Since his meeting with Colombo, Ruddy has constantly worn on his lapel the pin of the Italian-American Civil Rights League, of which he was made an honorary officer, and often called attention to it jokingly.)
The day’s work over, Coppola watches the seven o’clock news on a color TV set in one of the rooms of the suite. Much of it is devoted to the Colombo shooting. “Would you believe it?” Francis says. “Before we started working on the film we kept saying But these Mafia guys don’t go around shooting each other any more. We thought one of our problems was to make the film relevant.” He falls silent when he seems himself on the screen: they are showing some documentary footage taken by the TV station on the first day of filming. The announcer ironically points out parallels of the shooting of Colombo with incidents in The Godfather.
A few days later an article appeared in The Village Voice, which read in part:
AT THE HOSPITAL: JUST LIKE “THE GODFATHER”?
by Howard Blum
No members of the press are allowed into Roosevelt Hospital. It is rumored that the assassin was wearing a New Jersey Working Press Card. Security is very tight. There are two cops at every entrance. Others patrol the halls. No one says it, but many must suspect another attempt on Colombo’s life, an attack in the hospital to finish him off. Just like in The Godfather.
I enter the hospital. Immediately a policeman stops me and asks where I’m going. I tell him the eighth floor and he is satisfied.
In the elevator, I ask a nurse which floor the operating rooms are on. Following her instructions, I get off on the second floor.
This time I am stopped by a nurse. She says the police won’t allow me to remain on this floor. The police, however, don’t say anything. I walk down the hall to a patient’s TV room. A young doctors’ show is on the screen. Across for me three officers are guarding a door leading to the operating rooms. Through the doors I can see Joe Colombo Jr. His face is distorted into layers of frown.
In the TV room are three other reporters. We just sit there. A police sergeant enters and questions a member of the Colombo family. In that conversation, the sergeant admits that the assailant was not shot by police. Whoever shot him, the sergeant continues, must have been a pretty good shot not to hit anyone else. An officer was pinning the man down when he was shot. The sergeant adds that the assailant was a junkie and had been arrested for rape. He stops his conversation to look at me, but doesn’t ask who I am or what I’m doing here. He just assumes I belong.
A fragile old lady dressed in black enters the TV room to make a phone call. A reporter asks, “Are you a member of the Colombo family?” “Yes,” she softly replies. “How are you related?” The lady becomes tough, forceful. “All you need to know is that I am related.”
An hour passes. Nat Marcone, president of the Italian-American League, is asked about Colombo’s condition. “He’s as well as can be expected. He sacrificed his life for the Italian people.”
“Then is he dead, Nat?” a reporter follows up.
Marcone pauses. “No, it is in God’s hands.
67th DAY OF SHOOTING: TUESDAY JUNE 29
Still at the St. Regis.
Early in the afternoon a scene is filmed which requires Dick Castellano to fire five shotgun blasts repeatedly, take after take, into the elevator. No one bothered to warn the people in the hotel about these noises, which resound every few minutes from the fifth floor and reverberate like the roar of cannon down the stairwell and the elevator shafts, interrupting the conversations in the elegant hotel lobby.
Later, Fred Astaire, who has been sitting in the lobby receiving stares and smiles of recognition for guests and visitors, comes over to watch the filming, now going on at the far end of the long lobby, and asks the sound man to show him how to work the Nagra tape recorder.
69th DAY OF SHOOTING: THURSDAY JULY 1
Exterior location at 60 Center Street, Justice Building, in the Wall Street–City Hall section of Manhattan.
The call today is for 5 A.M. It is a hot, muggy and overcast morning. Mike Chapman, camera operator, Coppola and Ruddy are waiting for the exterior setup of a scene depicting the shooting of Barzini, played by Richard Conte. They are discussing infantile sexuality and Reichian psychology. “I spent 16 months in Reichian analysis and it was the best time of my life,” says Ruddy. “Sex was great during that time. I have a friend in California who has his own orgone box. After 15 minutes he’s ready to take on the world. He gets in it with his wife sometimes.”
When the scene is finally filmed the director calls “freeze” as the stunt man replaces Conte at the moment he is shot. The actor runs out of frame and the camera resumes rolling to catch the elaborate flip and tumble down the stone steps. the scene is repeated in different locations on the stairway, and a large crowd of bystanders has now gathered to watch.
At one point during the filming of the scene, trouble arises out of the sequencing of the gunshots with the reactions of the actors being shot. For about a dozen takes, as often as not, the guns do not go off but the actors fall and recoil on cue anyway. Finally, the director gets a few takes when all goes off in proper sequence.
Meanwhile, Godfather location finders are frantically looking for a place to film two scenes this very afternoon. Finally, just a few hours before wrapping at Center Street, the afternoon location is announced as the steamroom in the YMCA on West 23rd Street.
Since filming in New York is to be completed tomorrow, a wrap party is scheduled this evening at the Cornish Arms Hotel just down the street from the YMCA location.
Coppola is one of the first to arrive at the party and sits alone playing chords on an electric organ in the far corner of the ballroom. As the cast and crew arrive, no one pays any attention to him.
Finally, the director joins the party and pours himself a glass of California Sunshine, a mixture of champagne and orange juice. He the sits at one of the small tables with Fred Caruso and they immediately begin to recap the problems of working on the film. As the director begins to relax he says, “Ruddy and Frederickson are nice guys. They always went to bat for me against the studio, but they don’t know how to produce a film.”
Coppola goes on to describe what he calls “the conspiracy” among Kesten, Avakian and Ballard to get rid of him as director. They badmouthed him to the executives at Paramount in New York and Hollywood. “The process had already started when I returned from casting in Rome last December. I found a note from Mona saying, ‘Don’t quit, let them fire you,’ and I fully expected that to happen, we were having so much conflict with the studio over casting and the script. Gordy was a constant problem, too. He’s ready to direct his own film and he should. I wouldn’t work with him again, although I chose him myself for this picture. He’s very professional, but he does things his own way and he had the loyalty of the crew; he’d worked with them before.” He pours another glass of California Sunshine. “I was turned off before filming began, and being surrounded by people who were not with me made it even worse.”
70th DAY OF SHOOTING: FRIDAY JULY 2
The last day of first unit shooting in New York. The call is for 4 P.M. at 25th Street and Third Avenue at the Imperial Pizza Parlor.
Coppola arrives and explains that the call should have been for 8 P.M. as the shot is a night one. Also, the parlor should have been in an obscure deserted area, not on a main street in Manhattan with Fourth of July weekend traffic going by. He refuses to shoot here, and there are frantic phone calls to Caruso and Ruddy. While members of the crew wait for a decision to be made they consume quantities of Italian ices and pizza, in addition to the u
sual coffee, bagels and cake. Gordy demands, “Get Caruso and Ruddy. Let them see for themselves how impossible it is to shoot here.”
Coppola waits on the sidelines wearing a Mortadella button (the Sophia Loren film also currently being shot on location in New York) and says that he wishes he were making that film instead of The Godfather. Ruddy and Caruso soon arrive and smooth things out with the director and cinematographer. Preparations swiftly begin to shoot the scene on the sidewalk outside the parlor. The decision has been made to film the interior part of the scene in Italy on an exactly matched set to be constructed there. Coppola is unhappy with the inside of the pizza parlor. Dozens of stills are taken of the outside of the restaurant so it can be exactly duplicated in Italy when the company moves there for the Sicilian sequences.
After wrapping at Third Avenue, the next location is outside the intensive-care psychiatric ward of Bellevue to reshoot the scene between Michael and Enzo the baker. When the company arrive they are told there is trouble in getting permission from the hospital authorities to film there again. The first time the filming seriously disrupted hospital procedure. The company wait for more than two hours while Ruddy and Briggs negotiate with the hospital administration, to no avail. They finally give up, and orders are given to proceed to the next location in front of Jack Dempsey’s restaurant on Broadway. it is the shot of Michael being picked up by Sollozzo and McClusky for their meeting. As it is Friday night on Broadway, the crowd of bystanders quickly grows to thousands. Traffic must be stopped for each take, and period cars are again being used for background, in addition to the pickup car for Michael. The mob of bystanders is particularly hard to hold back, and the crew tries to make the shot as quickly as possible and get out of the area.
Coppola sits on top of a step-ladder across the street, waiting for the scene to be set and lit, while the street in front of the restaurant is hosed down. Gallo expertly rehearses the cars and pedestrian movement. At one point, the script supervisor notices that some of the drivers are dressed for the hot summer night in light-colored sport shirts. As the scene occurs at Christmastime, one of the production assistants quickly arranges for the drivers to be given jackets and coats.
The last takes are finally completed, and the crew scurries to pack up all the equipment before the crowds get to any of it. While they work, the company start making their goodbyes. Only a handful are going to Sicily. Frederickson will take over the job of 1st assistant director, replacing Gallo to save expenses. It is now estimated that the film will go more than a million dollars over budget, and the studio is really tightening up.
Some of the production staff sit at the bar in Dempsey’s after the company has finished wrapping that evening. They are unwinding, and the talk centers around what they will be doing next. There is a strange reluctance to leave, and after the last call some of the diehards decide to move on to another bar that is still open. Thos going home say goodbye and all drift out into the hot neon Broadway night.
AFTERWORD
Coppola had succeeded in convincing Paramount that the production needed a two-week hiatus so he could personally supervise the first rough assembly of the film before shooting the Sicilian sequence. The director and his team of editors moved to his own studio, American Zoetrope in San Francisco, set up in an old warehouse-type building that has been converted into a modern film production studio, with the latest equipment. The large airy lobby is painted in brilliant tones of orange, white and blue, and the room is dominated by an antique billiard table and an Italian espresso machine.
On his home ground, the director seems suddenly very different, as he strides about wearing a tee shirt with Warner Brothers stenciled on it. He decisively supervises his three main editors and their battery of assistants and divides up the film among them. The cans of film overflow the editing rooms and must be racked up in the narrow hallway outside the rooms. There is enough footage of the wedding sequence alone to make a documentary.
As the editors work each on his section, Coppola works expertly at a Kem editing machine, experimenting with some of the sequences himself. After about two weeks a three-hour rough assembly of The Godfather is ready for viewing. The result is full of surprises. Pacino comes across very strongly, especially in his rise to become the Godfather. Brando’s performance is too even, and one tends to lose track of his character in the course of the film. Diane Keaton’s impact on the screen is generally disappointing, but strong supporting performances emerge from Caan, Duvall, Castellano and Cazale. The biggest problem seems to be how to build up the title role.
The director left for Rome that Saturday and at last report I heard the Sicilian sequences were excellent.
Robert Evans insisted that the production be completed at Paramount Studios in Hollywood. As editing and mixing were coming to a close, Coppola was still fighting with Evans over artistic control of the film. One of the editing staff commented: “Francis should realize by now that Paramount has the final say and can edit the release print any way they want to.”
But The Godfather might end up being a great film and surprise the hell out of a lot of people!
—New York City, January 1972
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ira Zuckerman has worked mostly as a legitimate theater director. His credits include staging Twelfth Night at The Barter Theater and The Hostage at the Trinity Square Playhouse. He founded and served as producing director on North Carolina’s Festival Theater where he also held the post of dean of drama for The School of Arts.
In summer theaters he has directed Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Marat Sade, and The Threepenny Opera. Off-off Broadway he staged the first American production of Harold Pinter’s A Slight Ache and was associated with The Open Theater.
He is a graduate of Northwestern and New York universities and has taught acting classes at The Hartford Conservatory, New York’s High School of Performing Arts, and Boston University. He hopes to continue directing for both stage and film and is currently planning a series of film documentaries.
The Godfather Journal Page 9