Godfather

by Gene D. Phillips

  In apportioning credit for the shooting script, Coppola explains that, on the one hand, Puzo created the characters and the plot and, on the other hand, Coppola himself chose which episodes from the book would be in the film and which incidents would be bypassed. He also added some elements to the film that moviegoers assumed were in the book but that were not. “The art of adaptation,” he told me, “is when you can do something that wasn’t in the literary source but is so much like the source that it should have been.”

  Coppola added a minor but telling incident early in the film, when one of Don Corleone’s capos, Peter Clemenza (Richard Castellano), is leaving home to arrange the murder of Paulie Gatto, the don’s treacherous bodyguard who is in the pay of another mob. Coppola had Clemenza’s wife say to him, “Don’t forget to bring home some cannoli.” Then in the scene where Clemenza has a hit man liquidate Paulie in a car on a remote country road, Clemenza says to him, “Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.” Clemenza’s thinking about the dessert his wife told him to bring home—immediately after a killing—provides a chilling moment in the film. Edward Rothstein comments that this scene brings into relief that “at the heart of the movie is a forthright assertion of ethnic identity as a source of strength. That is where we find the human side of the mob; the warmth, the loyalty, the love of cannoli. Aside from the nature of the family business, the plot could be about an immigrant family trying to preserve its ethnic traditions.”11

  It is evident that Puzo provided Coppola with a roaring good plot, Pauline Kael writes. He gave Coppola “a storyteller’s outpouring of incidents and details to choose from.” She also observes that Coppola refined the crudities of the novel: “The movie starts with a trash novel,” Kael states, but one that is “gripping and compulsively readable.” From this raw material Coppola “salvaged Puzo’s energy and lent the narrative dignity,” performing a job of alchemy in turning Puzo’s novel into art on the screen. The abundance is from the book, “the quality is from Coppola.”12

  When the screenplay was finished, Ruddy met with Coppola to inform him that Paramount had sustained heavy losses on some recent flops like the Julie Andrews vehicle Darling Lili (1970). The studio was therefore not willing to gamble on a big budget gangster picture. It was generally known that Ruddy had a reputation for bringing B pictures in on budget. Since he was more adept at saving money than making it, Coppola was not surprised that Ruddy had been selected to produce The Godfather on a modest budget.

  More specifically, Evans had declared that The Godfather was to be a low-budget movie, shot at the studio and using the back lot. Moreover, it was to be set in the present, rather than after World War II (which is the time frame of the book) in order to avoid the extra expense of making a period picture. The movie, in brief, was designed to be made on the double and on the cheap for $1 million.

  Coppola balked at these restrictions. To begin with he maintained that the story simply would not work if set in the present. For example, mob members no longer shot each other in the streets like rabbits the way they did during the gang wars in the old days. “I made a big point of saying to the studio that the story was immersed in the postwar period and had to take place there,” he says in his DVD documentary. He insisted that the film be set after World War II like the book, with the feeling of the 1940s. Evans responded that that would add another $1 million to the budget and was out of the question.

  Undaunted, Coppola also lobbied to have the picture shot on authentic locations rather than on the studio back lot, whose “New York” street was familiar to moviegoers from countless Paramount pictures. That petition was likewise rejected as too costly.

  It was while Coppola was negotiating with the studio about the production values of the film that, much to everyone’s surprise, the novel began its steady climb to the top of the bestseller charts. When the book became a runaway hit with the public, Coppola, who was turning out to be a good deal less tractable than the front office had anticipated, strongly urged the studio to upgrade the production to an A picture, as benefitted the movie adaptation of a bestseller.

  He ultimately succeeded in getting the studio to change its tune: The picture was to be set in period and he would be allowed to film the bulk of the picture on location in New York, and even to shoot the scenes set in Sicily on location in Sicily. When the budget was finally increased to $6.5 million, it was evident that Coppola had begun to dominate the decisions made about the production. Recalling the pitched battle he had with Evans and the studio brass, Coppola says that a great deal of the energy that went into the making of the movie was expended on just convincing the people who held the power, whom he referred to as “the suits,” to let him do the film his way. Puzo reflected, “Francis is heavy-set, jolly, and is usually happy-go-lucky. What I didn’t know was that he could be tough about his work.”13

  Once the word got out that Paramount was making a movie about the Mafia, to be shot largely in New York City, the studio was plagued with protests from the New York-based Italian American Civil Rights League, which claimed a movie about the Mafia would be disparaging to all Americans of Italian descent. Ironically, the league was spearheaded by New York Mafia chieftain Joseph Columbo. For all practical purposes the league was a smoke screen to keep the law from prying into Columbo’s underworld activities. Albert Ruddy told me, during a brief conversation after a screening of one of his subsequent movies, that Evans got an anonymous phone call from a mobster who warned him not to make a movie about “the family” in New York City. Otherwise, they would disfigure his “pretty face.” Evans, never one to mince words, responded, “Fuck you, buddy. If you have a problem, you should take it up with Al Ruddy, the producer.”

  After Ruddy’s car was found riddled with bullets, he decided to hold a meeting with the league. He promised to take out all the references to the Mafia in the script and to see to it that the screenplay preserved Italian honor. The league, in turn, pledged its cooperation in the making of the film. Puzo has written, “I must say, Ruddy was a shrewd bargainer, because the word Mafia was never in the script in the first place.”14 Instead of referring to the Mafia or to La Cosa Nostra in the script, the New York mobs were called “the five families.” Ruddy further emphasized to the league that The Godfather was focusing on a group of fictitious Italian criminals and not defaming the entire Italian community.

  Evans learned that some mob members had initially planned to picket the New York locations when Coppola would be shooting in the Italian neighborhoods. He phoned a friend of his, attorney Sidney Korshak. To the FBI, Korshak was “the most important contact that the mob had to legitimate business and labor in Hollywood and Las Vegas.”15 A couple of phone calls from Korshak and all previous threats of picketing the film unit evaporated.

  When the question of casting came up, both Coppola and Puzo agreed that their first choice to play Don Vito Corleone, the sixty-five-year-old godfather, was Marlon Brando. Indeed, Puzo had written the character with the forty-seven-year-old Brando in mind. The part called for an actor who possessed the sort of magnetism and charisma that this pivotal role in the movie required. “The mystique Brando had as an actor amongst other actors would inspire precisely the right kind of awe in working with the legendary Brando and would translate on film into awe for the powerful godfather.”16

  Nevertheless, Evans rejected Brando out of hand since the actor had a reputation for being temperamental and cranky on the set. His recent pictures, including Candy (1968) and The Night of the Following Day (1969), had reportedly gone way over budget because of delays during shooting caused by Brando’s incessant feuds with his directors, and neither film turned a profit. Still Coppola would not consider any other actors, and so he and Evans reached an impasse.

  Evans scheduled a meeting with Coppola, Ruddy, and Stanley Jaffe, the thirty-year-old president of Paramount, to discuss casting. When the issue of casting Brando was raised, Coppola made an eloquent appeal on the actor’s behalf. “I pleaded as if I were a lawyer pleadin
g for someone’s life,” he recalls. Jaffe interjected, “As president of Paramount Pictures, I assure you that Marlon Brando will never appear in this motion picture.” With that, Coppola suddenly clutched his stomach and fell down on the carpet, apparently in a fit of convulsions. Coppola explains that he collapsed on the floor as if to say, “How can I deal with this kind of stubborn attitude?” He continues, “My ‘epileptic fit’ was obviously a gag, but they got the point. Finally they recanted and told me I could consider Brando.”17

  Coppola had employed this gambit of faking a seizure years before, in his student days, to compel a backer to cough up the additional funds he needed to finish Tonight for Sure, and the ploy worked equally well with Jaffe and the other executives. Jaffe relented to the extent that he approved of Brando as a candidate for the role of the don, provided that Brando submit to doing a screen test. This was the joker in the deck, as far as Jaffe was concerned, since it was common knowledge that Brando refused to be tested for any role. So Jaffe assumed that Brando would turn down the part.

  Coppola recalls in his DVD commentary that he diffidently phoned Brando, without mentioning the possibility of a screen test. “I suggested that I do a make-up test at his house,” since Don Vito was an elderly man close to seventy. Much to Coppola’s relief, Brando agreed. Coppola went to Brando’s house accompanied by a photographer with a video camera and Salvatore Corsitto, an Italian barber, whom Coppola had already chosen to play Bonasera, the undertaker who asks the godfather for a favor at the beginning of the film.

  Brando emerged from his bedroom wearing a kimono, Coppola says, and he gradually began to slide into the character. He put on a rumpled shirt and jacket, then he took some shoe polish and dabbed on a moustache. Next he stuffed Kleenex in his jaws, saying “The godfather should have the face of a bulldog.” Then he said, “In the story Don Vito is shot in the throat, so I think he should talk as if it never quite healed.” He added that when Frank Costello appeared at the televised Kefauver hearings he had a raspy voice, which he wanted to imitate. At this point Brando and Corsitto improvised an impromptu scene. As soon as Coppola started filming, he could see Brando slipping into the godfather’s skin, and Coppola marveled at the transformation. Coppola flew to New York and showed the test to Charles Bludhorn, the tough Austrian immigrant who was head of Gulf and Western, Paramount’s parent company. Bludhorn was so impressed, concludes Coppola, that “he allowed us to use Brando on his authority.”

  But Coppola’s casting troubles were just beginning. He went on to campaign, with Puzo’s support, for Al Pacino to play Michael Corleone, the don’s son and heir apparent. (Michael is the most Americanized of the Corleone sons, having gone to college.) Once again Evans objected to what he considered Coppola’s penchant for unorthodox casting: Pacino was too short, looked too scruffy, was too intense—and forgot his lines during the screen test. Besides, he had mostly stage rather than film experience.

  Pacino says in the documentary that he tested poorly because “I didn’t like testing for a part where I knew the studio didn’t want me. It was Francis’s tenacity that got me the part.” In the face of Evans’s opposition, Coppola kept repeating, “A good actor is a good actor,” said Puzo.18 Actually Coppola held out for Pacino because he believed Pacino had the map of Sicily on his face. In reading the book, Coppola explains in his DVD commentary, “it was Pacino’s face that I saw in the scenes where Michael sojourns in Sicily, and that is why I was so persistent.” Finally, after Pacino’s third screen test, Evans told Coppola that he could use the “little dwarf” (!) if he wanted to.

  When Evans cast Coppola’s sister Talia Shire as the don’s only daughter Connie without consulting him, it was Coppola’s turn to object. Aware that some disgruntled studio executives were fed up with fencing with Coppola about production and casting decisions, Coppola sensed that some of them would like to be rid of him. That thought impinged on the casting of Talia Shire. She recalls in the documentary that Coppola said to her, “The last thing you need when you are making a movie and your job is in jeopardy is your sister.” She adds that it was Mario Puzo who said, “Let her have a chance, Francis .” Finally Coppola decided that he had caused so much conflict over the casting of the picture that it was time to make a concession to Evans, who liked her in the part.

  Fortunately Coppola had little difficulty with the studio in casting two veterans of his previous pictures in The Godfather: James Caan (Rain People) was to play Michael’s volatile brother Sonny, and Robert Duvall (Rain People and Conversation) was cast as the don’s adopted Irish son and consigliere (the family’s legal adviser), Tom Hagen.

  Coppola concedes that many of the actors he cast were not stars who were familiar to the public. He explains that he was not interested in marquee names: “I was looking for people like Pacino who would be believable as real Italian-Americans,” so as not to repeat the mistake made with the casting of The Brotherhood.19 Thus Coppola hired Richard Conte, a distinguished actor of Italian origin, to play Don Barzini, a cunning, sadistic rival of Don Corleone. He had in fact played a similar role in the classic film noir The Big Combo (1955). “Barzini is a real snake in the grass,” Conte told me when I encountered him at the London premiere of the film. “Barzini is secretly determined to bring down the Corleone crime family.” Conte said he enjoyed working with Coppola, and Conte played Barzini to perfection. Indeed, critics pointed to Conte as a prime example of how Coppola packed the picture with talented supporting players.

  As mentioned, Coppola suspected that his clashes with the front office might ultimately lead to his being dismissed as director. Furthermore, as the picture evolved into a more elaborate production, Evans and other executives wondered if the young director was too inexperienced to handle such a huge undertaking. In fact, Evans coolly suggested that perhaps Coppola should be replaced by a more established director like Elia Kazan, who had proved adept at handling Brando’s shenanigans on the set of three previous pictures. Coppola heard through the grapevine that Evans had actually made an overture to Kazan about substituting him for Coppola. This bit of news caused Coppola nightmares. Later on Evans told an interviewer that Kazan had urged him to stick with Coppola, but Coppola did not know that at the time.

  After principal photography commenced on March 23,1971, at the old Filmways Studio in New York, Paramount still harbored doubts about continuing with both Coppola and Pacino. When the studio brass saw the rushes of Pacino’s first scenes, “they thought I was dull,” Pacino says in the documentary. Even the camera crew tittered at times when he was on camera.

  “Pacino embarked on his most famous role with such elegant minimalism that it was nearly taken from him,” writes Karen Durbin.20 Watching Pacino’s cool, unreadable young Sicilian in the rushes, “Paramount executives hounded the director to fire him, backing off only after viewing the scene in which Michael avenges his father” and commits his first two murders.

  The scene was shot at the Café Luna in the Bronx, where Michael kills Sollozzo, a mobster who had tried to kill his father, and the rogue cop who is his bodyguard. The studio bosses were much impressed both with Coppola’s direction of the scene and Pacino’s performance. “You look pretty good when you shoot people,” is Pacino’s laconic rendition of their change of heart.21 “This scene certainly saved me,” Coppola notes in his commentary. “And it won a lot of admiration for Al. He really showed his stuff—his concentration and intensity were riveting.”

  But there was still dissonance in the ranks about Coppola’s competency as a director. Gordon Willis, the director of photography, did not cotton up to Coppola from the get-go. The director had what he terms in his commentary “a touch-and-go relationship” with Willis on The Godfather. “To him I was just some kid,” while Willis saw himself as a seasoned veteran, with films like Klute (1971) behind him. Willis assumed quite gratuitously that Coppola, who was, after all, an alumnus of the UCLA graduate program in film, knew little about the technical aspects of moviemaking. Coppola found W
illis “a grumpy guy” to work with.22

  A major bone of contention between them was Coppola’s penchant for encouraging the actors to improvise during rehearsals, with a view to making some last-minute revisions in the script before finally shooting a scene. As Dean Tavoularis, the production designer, quips in the documentary, “For Francis a script is like a newspaper. A new one comes out every day.” Willis grew increasingly impatient waiting around for Coppola to finish lengthy rehearsal periods before he could finally photograph a scene.

  “I like to lay a thing out and make it work with discipline,” Willis explains. Whereas, in his mind, Coppola spent an exorbitant amount of time improvising with the actors on the outside chance that he might improve the scene as written. “You can’t shoot the whole movie, hoping for happy accidents,” he concludes. “[W]hat you get is one big, bad accident.”23

  While conceding that Willis is “a genius and a complicated guy, who has much wisdom,” Coppola states that Willis failed to comprehend that when a director experiments with different ways to play a scene during rehearsals some unpredictable things can emerge that will improve the whole scene, as he found on his previous pictures, particularly Rain People (see chapter 3). “Sometimes you catch lightning in a bottle.”

  When Willis pointed out that the film was falling behind schedule because of the extra time Coppola was spending on improvising during rehearsals, Coppola replied that he had requested an eighty-day shooting schedule and was given fifty-five days by Evans. It was therefore inevitable that he would fall behind schedule. (In point of fact, the shooting period was finished in sixty-two days.)