March 12, 2025 • 35 mins
By 1969, Paramount's efforts to turn "The Godfather" into a feature film were in full swing. But there was one problem: the movie needed a director. Robert Evans and Al Ruddy tried to wrangle Hollywood heavyweights such as Richard Brooks and Otto Preminger, but nobody wanted the job. So, Paramount went after their last-resort option, the little-known Francis Ford Coppola. Like seemingly everyone else working on the movie, and especially Puzo, the Queens-raised director had had a few early brushes with failure, but possessed the hunger to be a great artist. But Coppola, for all his talent and ambition, was hardly handed the job on a silver platter. In Episode Four, Mark and Nathan trace Coppola's career to find out how he went from directing student films at U.C.L.A. to handling some of the richest source material in the history of cinema. They also catch up with Mario Puzo, who in addition to befriending Coppola, has had a makeover of epic proportions and is living out his Hollywood fantasies.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
The day started like any other. It's a Sunday in
nineteen sixty nine and Francis Ford Coppola is sitting in
his home in San Francisco. Three things happen all at once. First,
he sees an ad in the Sunday New York Times
for a new novel entitled The Godfather. Coppola thinks to
(00:24):
himself that the author's name, Mario Puzzo, sounds like an
Italian writer of classic literature. Second, a knock at the door.
Two producers from Paramount, Al Ruddy and Gray Frederickson. They're
in town to film Little Fouls and Big Halsey and
want to meet the up and coming director who fled
(00:46):
Los Angeles for the artistic freedom of San Francisco. Third,
a phone call from Marlon Brando. It comes in before
the Paramount producers are even gone on He's calling to
turn down Coppola's offer to star in his passion project,
The Conversation. Coppola would later remember all of these things
(01:11):
as a celestial alignment of forces, the first ripple of
foreshadowing of the project that would come to define his career.
(01:32):
I'm Mark Seal and I'm Nathan King, and this is
leave the gun, take the Canoli.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Today's episode puts Francis Ford Coppola, the Godfather's enigmatic and
intellectual director, front and center.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
We'll investigate Coppola's creative process, explorer, his relationship with Mario Puzzo,
and maybe even get to the bottom of the Coppola
Coppola debate.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Okay, before we start, we have to address this discrepancy.
I say Copola, You say Coppola. Who's right.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
I don't know. I've heard it both ways.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
I've only ever heard it pronounce Copola. But I think
there's a like a nice Southern charm to your pronunciation.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
I don't know, it just rolls out of my mouth. Kappla.
I could be wrong. I stand corrected.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
That's all right. I think you should keep saying Coppla.
I'll say Copola. We're not going to go back and
re record the podcast. Let's get into it. Mark, over
the course of reporting the Vanity Fair story and writing
your book, you were able to put together quite the
portrait of Copola. What was your process like forgetting to
know him?
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Yeah, well, I did what I always do. I talked
to as many people as I could find. I read
every article, I could find about him every interview. He
had done so many interviews over the years about the
making of The Godfather that he at times said he
was tired of speaking about it, but he was kind
enough to send a lot of answers. I think answers
(03:02):
to forty questions are so via email, and I spoke to,
of course, his sister Taya Shier, his assistant back then,
Mona Skager, and all of the executives at Paramount at
the time, of course, had a lot to say about him.
And we even have some new audio that he was
kind enough to send us, especially for this podcast.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Did you feel intimidated researching him and finding out that
he had talked about The Godfather so much? And did
you worry at all that maybe it was a fool's
errand to try and dig up any new information.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Well, no, not really, because you know, all of the
answers that he had given in the past just added
to the texture of what I was trying to do.
You know, it was a blessing that he had given
so many interviews. He gave an exhaustive, long interview to
Cigar Aficionado that he pointed out to me when I
was writing the book he said, take a look at that,
(04:01):
and it answers a lot of questions. And then I
plunged forward and I sent him a list of I
think forty questions, and he said in the email that
he would answer the ones that interested him, and I
think he answered everyone.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
So when Copola got the offer to direct The Godfather,
he was in pretty dire straits, right.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Yes, indeed, he was twenty nine years old. He was
deeply in debt. He was living in San Francisco trying
to get his production company, American Zootrope, off the ground,
but it wasn't working out very well.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
You wrote in your book that it seemed like Coppola
was heading toward The Godfather his entire life. Can you
tell us a little bit about his upbringing and his background,
because he was Italian, but he wasn't Italian in a
Godfather way.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Necessary well, he was an Italian American. He grew up
in Queens, but he was born in Detroit, and the
family moved around a lot. But obviously they were pretty
far from Italy.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
And it was a pretty creative family exactly.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
His father was a floutist, a composer, a teacher, and
most of all a long suffering artist who felt he
was always looking for his big break. And Francis and
his siblings got moved around a lot as his father
moved between jobs and orchestras.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
And then in nineteen forty nine, he was nine years
old and something really dramatic happened and his life changed
drastically exactly.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
The family was living in Queens and suddenly Francis was
stricken with polio. He was bedridden for nine months, and
these nine months were really the birth of Francis Coppola
the artist. While the other kids played outside, he became
a director of sorts. He would stage puppet shows, he
(05:53):
would devour comic books, and his mom said that every
time she came into his room, he would hold out
his little hands like he was lining up a shot.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
It's really interesting that so many creative people were afflicted
with sicknesses that left them bedridden as children.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yeah, I think it's the isolation of being alone. It's
not easy to be alone, but when you're forced to
be alone, a lot of things come from that. And
I think those nine months were instrumental for him because
he was forced to play with his own imagination.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Is that when he knew he would be a filmmaker.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
I think so he was really young, but as soon
as he was healthy again, he started making movies. I
was able to speak with his sister, Taya, who told
me a wonderful story about raising money for his first film.
She went around the neighborhood and says, my brother's going
to be a director, you know, and everybody, oh, yeah, right,
(06:47):
But she really believed in him and saw something. She
just said, he was an artist from the word go,
and she just felt like he could do anything, and
so she went around trying to help him raise money
for an early film.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
How old was he at this point.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
I think he was still in his teenage years, and
she was obviously younger, so I think she really could
see the future and that he was going to be
a great director one day.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
So it was already clear that he had a sort
of idealistic streak running through him.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Yes, idealistic and talented, and even in his bedroom when
he was all alone, he would do these very creative
like little films and impressions and all of that. So
it became clear early on that he was going to
be an artist of some sort.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
So Talia was really she was right by his side
from the beginning.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Oh yeah, they always supported each other. And of course
she goes on to play Connie Corleone and The Godfather.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
So what's next for Francis.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Well, in nineteen fifty five he enrolled in the theater
arts department at Hofstra University and then he went to
UCLA Graduate Film School, where he rose through the ranks
and became a top screenwriter in his class.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
And that's when Peter Bart discovered him, right.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
That's right. Peter Bart was a New York Times reporter
based in Los Angeles, and here he is.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Young want to be filmmakers at UCLA and USC were
finding unique ways of staying alive and feeding themselves while
they were making student films going to film school and
trying to get some film to show, you know, studios
to get a job. And that one of the ways
(08:29):
that Francis had pursued was to make films that were
called Newdies and udies, which were by today's standards, totally
asexual but had sort of sex scenes, but you know,
fully closed sex scenes. And he directed or edited a
couple of those.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
When did Roger Corman come into the mix? And for
people who don't know the late great Roger Corman was
sort of a godfather in his own right, but the
godfather of the new Hollywood. And he was a great
director of B movies and pop cinema, but also handled
distribution on a lot of foreign films by incredible directors
(09:11):
like Kerasawa and Fellini. And of course he fostered a
lot of young talents and was a mentor to people
like Jack Nicholson and Peter Fonda and Peter Bugdanovich.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Yeah, you know, especially Francis Bord Cooppola, who even featured
Roger in God Bothered Too. He was one of the
senators in the hearings. But they met when Coppola was
finishing up at UCLA in the sixties and Korma was
looking for an editor to cut the anti American propaganda
out of a Russian sci fi film, and here's Roger Korman.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
So I called UCLA and I said, who is your
best graduating senior in editing? So they sent over several people,
and I felt Francis was the brightest and most creative.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Corman hired copple AZ's assistant. And what sort of work
did he do for Corman other than editing Russian sci Fi.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Films, well pretty much everything positioning, the camera, holding the boom,
mic script revisions. He even brought Francis to Europe as
part of a film crew, where he decided to give
him even more responsibility.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
And so I then got the idea that I had
this little crew, I had everything in the microbus. We
paid for everybody to come to Europe, and we could
make another picture and advertise the cost of taking everybody
to Europe. I'll write it off over the first picture
and make a second picture for almost nothing. So I
(10:48):
offered a chance to Francis. I said, I've got thirty
thousand dollars in cash. I can give you the thirty
thousand dollars if you can write a little horror script
and shoot it in Ireland with a skeleton crew.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Coppola jumped at the chance and assembled a ragtag group
of fellow UCLA grads and Irish locals to work around
the clock on the top floor of an old house
outside of Dublin. And the movie was called Dementia thirteen.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
What came of that movie, Well, probably.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
The most significant thing for Francis was his wife and
firstborn child.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
That's right, they met on set, right.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Exactly Eleanor jesse Neil. She was a fellow UCLA grad
recruited by Corman, and the two started a relationship in Ireland,
and soon she became pregnant.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
How did Copola take that?
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Really great? He told Eleanor that he always wanted a family,
and the two got married in Las Vegas and moved
to La to start their lives. As filmmakers.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Tell me about Copola's early career, did he see a
lot of success?
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Well, pretty much like Mario Puzzo, Koppolist struggled early on
early films that weren't exactly a list movies, a bad investment,
and real feelings of despair about his prospects as an artist.
But things turned around when twentieth Century Fox hired him
to co write the screenplay for Patten, which won him
(12:21):
an Academy Award.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Mark, let's talk about Patten for a second. Patten comes
out in nineteen seventy and it's about one of the
most famous generals in American history, if not all of history.
To what extent do you think that prepared Coppola for
not only writing a blockbuster, but writing a movie that's
about a strong figurehead or a charismatic leader.
Speaker 5 (12:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
I think Paton prepared him for a lot, because Patten
was about, you know, a general that was a strong
charismatic leader, much like Don Corleone, but in a very
different way. They weren't a very different war pattern was
World War Two, and The Godfather was a war between
the two rival families going to the mattresses, where Colemensus says,
(13:04):
you know, we have to do this every few years
to weed out the bad blood. But I think that
Francis learned a lot by co writing the script for Patent,
for which he won an Academy Award, as did George C.
Scott for Best Actor that year. And I think that
prepared him for the War of the Godfather which was
soon to come.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
And that was also the first time that Copola had
gone from making a indie film to making an epic.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Yeah, and this is a mainstream Hollywood film for which
he won an Oscar is a co writer of the script,
so it was a pretty big step.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
And then he wrote a movie for Charlie Bludorn right famously.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Yes, it was one of Charlie's early flops, Is Paris Burning,
and Kappla knew it was a bomb so while he
was working on it, he wrote an adaptation of the
novel You're a Big Boy Now, which he then directed
and screened it can That's what really put him on
the map.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
I want to just read a few of the headlines
from that time. From the La Times we have Coppola
breaks the age barrier, which marveled at his success as
a twenty six year old. From The New York Times
offering the Moon to a guy in jeans by film
critic Rex Reid, who called him orson wells at the
handheld camera. That's some pretty staggering praise.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Yeah, I was amazed when I saw all those clippings
with all of those amazing reviews of his work and
who he was. And it wasn't long after that when
he signs a deal with Warner Brothers to direct Finian's Rainbow,
starring no less than Fred Astaire.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
But with all this success, he's growing pretty disillusioned, right.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Yeah, he's fighting to make the kind of movies he
wants to make from inside the Hollywood machine. He makes
The rain People without Warner Brothers full sign off on
certain aspects of the film, which ended up costing him
in the end. He's just sick and tired of.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Hollywood, and he decides to head north.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Yeah, he packs ap family into a VW bus in
a very sixties scene and leaves La for the greener
pastures of San Francisco. He's trailed in a caravan by
his assistant Monas Gager and his sister Talia, and of
course his collaborator, a young George Lucas.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
So they get to San Francisco, what then.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Will they set up shop for a new kind of
production company, American Zootrope, which was modeled in a way
after the studios that Coppola had seen and experienced in Europe.
Monaskeager told me it was in the Wine Country because
it was the neighborhood was filled with winos.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
That's interesting what you say about the foreign production companies
in what way was it modeled on them?
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Well, they were more independent, they were more artistically driven
rather than commercially driven. I think it's best summed up
in an interview he gave to the San Francisco Chronicle
when he gave a tour of their new offices, and
he said the difference is that in La you talk
about deals and here you talk about.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Film sounds, like a dream for director.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Yes, but the dream didn't last. By the time Peter
Bart approached him about The Godfather, American Zootrope was in
a dire position. The sheriff was literally at the door
about to shut down the company for unpaid taxes, and
they were six hundred thousand in hock to Warner Brothers
for overhead and development cost.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
It seems like a no brainer that he'd accept the job.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
You would think, But he really didn't want to make
the movie. He thought the book upon first hearing about it,
sounded like The Carpetbackers. But Peter Bart was persistent. He
mailed him a copy of the book, and apparently Coppola
only got sixty pages into it.
Speaker 6 (16:46):
You know, I did believe he didn't want to do
the picture, and I would call him and remind him
how much money he owed. One time I called him out,
I found out what the tuition of his oldest kids,
the private school tuition was. Sarvents show like.
Speaker 7 (17:00):
To remind you.
Speaker 6 (17:01):
But I was rather unpleasant about pushing him in this
because he didn't want to do it.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Go What convinced him to do it in the end, Well.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
I think it was really debt. American Zootrope was struggling,
and Coppola was at his friend George Lucas's house one
night in Mill Valley, and somehow Peter Bart got the
phone number and called him there, and Lucas apparently told
him what would soon become a famous quote, we are broke, Francis,
We're out of business. We're closed. You have to accept
(17:32):
this job. We have no money, and the sheriff is
coming to chain up the front door.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
And legend has it that Coppola quit trying to read
the book and headed to the Mill Valley Public Library
and read books on the mob instead. What did he
find in those books, Well.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
He found a lot. Beneath all the blood and gore,
he found stories of families and American entrepreneurs all in
the mob. His interest was revived, and he went back
to the book with an open mind. He realized that
there was a profound story to tell in Mario Puzo's novel.
He said, it was the classic story of succession, about
(18:11):
a great king with three sons, each of whom had
a single element of what made the king great. Like
a scene out of the movie. He calls Peter Bart
and says, I'll make the picture under one condition. And
here's how Robert Evans later described it in his memoir.
Speaker 8 (18:29):
Peter comes into my office. Coppola makes the picture on
one condition that it's not a film about organized gangsters.
It's not about organized gangsters. It ain't a musical, Peter.
He wants to make it as a family chronicle, a
metaphor for capitalism in America. Fuck him and the horse
he wrote it on.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
So now Coppola is convinced and he wants to do
the film. But perversely, it seems like he needs to
turn around and convince Paramount that he's the man for
the job.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Yes, even though he's accepted the job himself, he has
to convince Paramount. He flies to La Al. Ruddy picks
him up at the airport and immediately starts giving him
advice on how to land the gig.
Speaker 5 (19:08):
I said, but remember what day, francis.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
There's a low budget movie.
Speaker 5 (19:13):
So when you meet the guys, start figuring out he
is down grade what you were planting.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
He takes him to the Paramount studios and according to Ruddy,
Coppler gives the performance of a lifetime.
Speaker 5 (19:26):
Oh god, he rand it on the philosophically value of
film and the beauty of film and the messages of
this book. He's showing them so many diamonds into so
much flashing. If they say, I don't know what he's
talking about, they loved it. So now Francis is on.
They loved him, Yeah, I know they loved him.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
For a guy who doesn't want the job, he's really
selling himself.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
According to Ruddy, Yes, but I asked Coppola about that
meeting twenty five years later and had no recollection. He
wrote to me in an email, I'm sorry, I have
no idea of how Ruddy described what I may have said. Sorry,
I cannot remember that day at all.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
It sounds like he might be repressing that memory a
little bit.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
I'm not sure, because for Ruddy it was crystal clear.
He says. Francis jumps up on the table and starts
giving the performance of a lifetime. He sounded like Al Ruddy,
as Al Ruddy gave the performance of Hogan's heroes. Remember that.
So this is like Coppola giving his vision of the Godfather.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
So he kills it in La But then his agent,
freddie Field says he needs to go to New York
and convinced Charlie bludorm.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Yes, Coppola's assistant Mona Skager told me Francis took the
Red Eye to New York and kept Charlie up until
three in the morning, pitching him on his vision of
the movie. How do you know he's kept him up
till three in the morning. Francis told you.
Speaker 9 (20:49):
He told us he had a meeting him and then
pitched this idea of how he saw the God saw it.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Because Francis is a chi and he's rusted that whole environment.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Of the story about the family, So he sold Hurricane
Charlie on his vision.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
He sure did. And then he called his assistant Mona
and tells her to tell his wife to pack up
the kids and get on the Red Eyed in New York.
The family would be selling on the SS Michelangelo for
Italy the next day.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
It's so funny that he and Puzzo chose to do
the same exact thing once their ship came in.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Metaphorically speaking, these guys haven't even met yet, but there
are already kindred spirits.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
And he worked on the screenplay on the ship right.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Yes, Mona told me that he tore pages out of
Puzzo's novel and tape them to the windows of the ship,
and she was just typing away like a mad dog.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Do you think that Coppola chose to go to Italy
because he thought that it would inspire him in some
way or was this just a simple family trip?
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Well, I think he was going there because there was
a film festival he wanted to attend in Italy. That's
where he met or that's where he met up with
Martin Scorsese, and so there was a reason for him
going there. It was about film, but at the same
time it was like Mario Puzzo, you know, I get away,
a vacation, a celebration of sorts.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Okay, let's fast forward to September twenty ninth in nineteen seventy.
There's an amazing photo which you have in the book
of Puzzo, Coppola, Evans and Ruddy at a press conference
announcing Copola as the director of the film.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Yes, it was extraordinary because I was able to access
Robert Evans's date book because there was an auction of
his possessions, and I was able to track down the
man who purchased the date book at the auction, and
he kindly sent me photographs from these pages, and on
the one that marked September twenty ninth, nineteen seventy, you
(22:49):
can see in Robert Evans's own green handwriting ten AM
press conference the Godfather. So in the famous picture that
resulted from that press coverage, you can see these four men, Puso, Coppola,
Evans and Ruddy at this famous press conference, and they're
all smiles, but they're about to engage in this epic
(23:11):
battle to get this picture made.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Hereily, it doesn't betray any of the misery that's about
to come.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
No, everybody's all smiles at this point, but those smiles
would not last for long.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Well, let's start with the relationship that did have some smiles,
Copola and Puzso we know Copla extensively rewrites Puso's script.
Did Puso know this going in?
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Yeah, he knew, and honestly he was very relieved. According
to everyone I spoke with, Puso and Copola became fast
friends and had great respect for one another. Here's what
Tallya Schier said about them.
Speaker 10 (23:47):
They loved each other. I mean they were very very
good friends. And France has had tremendous respect for him
as a writer who was also a good writer, and
they were together, and I think that was the the
censure for Francis that he was so loved Mario and
their collaboration was very creative and exciting. Mario really was
(24:10):
in Francis's corner and Francis was seeing it.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
And did they work on the screenplay together?
Speaker 1 (24:16):
Yes, and no. Puso really wanted to collaborate, sit side
by side and rewrite the script and what he envisioned
was a traditional way. But apparently when he asked, Coppola
looked him straight in the eye and said no. And
Puso would later say he liked that. That's how he
knew that Coppola was a real director.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
I guess at this point he is looking for someone
to take over from him exactly.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
So the two agree that they'll collaborate long distance, with
Coppola and San Francisco and Puso in La or in
New York back home, and Coppola sets to work in
a cafe in San Francisco where he arrived each morning
with the novel in a satchel, and his first step
is to create what he calls a prompt book, which
(25:02):
is a tradition from the theater. And here's an interview
from two thousand and one where he describes creating this
tone of a book.
Speaker 7 (25:11):
When I realized that I was actually going to make
a movie out of the novel The Godfather, I sat
down and began to read the book very very carefully.
And I think it's important to put your impressions down
on the first reading, because those are the initial instincts
about what you thought was good or what you didn't
(25:32):
understand or what you.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Thought was bad.
Speaker 7 (25:34):
And having gotten through the book, I pulled my book
apart that I had made those comments on and myself
pasted every page of the novel onto sheets of paper
like this, and I called it the Godfather Notebook and
put a big warning if found return to this address
for reward, because I recognized that it would have every
(25:57):
opinion that I had on the book. And interestingly, I
decided to break down each section with these key criteria.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
He's clearly such a craftsman, and you can start to
see some of the moments that he pulls from the
book as essential or pivotal.
Speaker 7 (26:15):
On page seventy nine of the book, we have the
actual shooting of the Don whenever I felt there was
a really important part of the book that was going
to be in the movie, I would sit there with
my ruler and really underline. So this details the shooting.
My margin notes are the shooting great detail. The Don
(26:37):
is the main character of the movie, so as in Psycho,
we are totally thrown when he is shot.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Okay, I'm afraid to ask. Koppel is hard at work
on the script. What's Poozzo doing with his new found
free time.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
Well, he's having the time of his life in Hollywood.
He's living on Paramount's dime, but the pressure to write
the script is off, so he gets to really enjoy
being a successful author and screenwriter of a much anticipated
Hollywood film. At this time, he has a new assistant,
Linetta Walgren. Linetta calls him the frog Prince because he
(27:14):
dressed very poorly. His pants would drag on the ground,
he had these shirts that were too tight, and of
course he had a prodigious belly. So one day Lynetta
takes him to the Gucci store in Beverly Hills. Well,
of course, nobody knows who he is, so they pretty
much ignored him, and soon Linetta says, don't you know
(27:36):
who this is. This is the writer, the author of
the Godfather, and they went, oh my god. And pretty
much like in the movie Pretty Woman, they're all over him.
And he buys all these new clothes, valure track suits,
all in his favorite color, pink, and he's just transformed.
(27:56):
The frog Prince had turned into a real rents of Hollywood,
and everyone wanted him at their parties and for dinner.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
He must have fit right in at the Beverly Hills
Hotel in his pink tracksuits.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
I think he stood out at the Beverly Hills Hotel
in his pink track suit. But you know, everybody loved
Mario Puzo.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
He's also a man of deeply entrenched habits. He's still
gambling during this time, right, of.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Course, he's gambling. Linetta Walgren said you would pick him
up for work every day, and some days he would
just say get on the freeway, which meant they were
going to the airport to fly to Las Vegas for
the day.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Well, what about work. Isn't he helping Coppola with the script?
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Yes, but according to Coppola, Pouso had done his part
by writing the book, and that was Coppola's turn to
do the heavy lifting on the script. He would send
drafts for Puoso to comment on, and Coppola really respected
his notes. There's a great line in the scene where
Clemenza is teaching Michael how to make spaghetti sauce, and
Coppla had written, first you brown some garlic, and then
(29:03):
you throw in the tomatoes, and Puzzo scribble to note
gangsters don't brown, they fry.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
And this is also when they're working out of casinos.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Right. Yes, France has told me that a casino is
the absolute best place for writers to collaborate.
Speaker 9 (29:20):
One thing about Mario is he loved to gamble. So
I got the idea that we could both go to
a gambling casino in nearby Reno, Nevada. The reason why
it's good to work in a gambling casino is because
they're up for twenty four hours service that people are
gambling all through the night, so that at any time
(29:42):
if you order breakfast or you water, some refreshments or
whatever you want, basically it's available. And we were up
all night writing the script, and then when we get tired,
we would go downstairs and Mario would gamble. And of
course he was a terrible gambler, and he would just
lose all this money on the roulette wheeling. And once
(30:05):
someone said, oh, mister Puzso you're losing so much money. Yeah, well,
we're losing thousands here on the roulette table. But we'll
go upstairs and work on the script that we'll make millions.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
So Copola's version of the script was vastly different than Puzzo's.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
I think it was quite different. Peter bart and Bob
Evans were pretty happy with Puso's script, mostly because it
seemed like he did everything he was told to do.
He changed the setting to modern data to cut costs,
and was even opening with a love scene because already
told him to. But Copolo is up for a fight,
always up for a fight. He insisted on keeping the
film set in the forties, and he had his own
(30:43):
thoughts on an opening scene, I believe in America America
has made my fortune.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
Which is of course one of the greatest openings in
movie history.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
Absolutely because that line I believe in America appears about
halfway into the first chapter of Puzo's book. It could
have been easily overlooked, but Coppola realized what it represented.
He said, the real appeal to the Godfather is that
you could go to someone if you weren't being treated fairly,
and the Godfather would make it right.
Speaker 5 (31:14):
You know.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
One of the things about The Godfather is that it's
an immigration story. It's a story about a family that
comes from this part of Italy that's very remote from America.
So do you think that that sets it up as
being a film about the American dream?
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Yes, of course. I mean you see this space coming
out of the darkness, and the first line he says
is I believe in America. I mean you just think wow.
And then the way it pulls back from the darkness.
You see the hand of Fido Corleone scratching his chin,
and then you see the cat, and then you see
the family there gathered around the table on the day
(31:50):
of his daughter's wedding. So it's telescopic in a way
because it starts with this amazing image of this immigrant
coming to the Godfather for help, and then the story
that he tells about his daughter. I mean, gosh, you
can't get any more dramatic than that.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
And bonas Ara is pleading and desperate, and in contrast,
Don Vito's incredibly composed and stoic.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
It's this opening scene so dramatic. That was the scene
that hooked me in for the get go. You know,
you see the moon faced of this undertaker rising up
out of the darkness, and he says, I believe in America.
And then it cuts to Don Corleone and you wonder
what the hell's going on? And then bonas Sarah asked
the Godfather to commit murder. He wants the young men
(32:37):
who have harmed his daughter dead. He doesn't say it
just like that, because he whispers it in the Don's
ear while Brando is petting that cat. And then Don
Corleone says, you know, you come to my house on
the day of my daughter's wedding and you ask me
to commit murder. That's not a legitimate tip for Tad
or whatever, you know, because your daughter is a lot.
(33:01):
You know. He says, you found success in America and
never needed a friend like me, But now he needs
him pretty badly because the system of America has denied
him justice. That opening scene just grabs you by the throat,
sets up everything to follow, and really doesn't let you
go into the final.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Credits, and Copel is already thinking about casting.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Yes, and unfortunately so were the executives at Paramount. Ruddy
was so besieged with actors seeking roles that he put
out a statement to the Hollywood Reporter, and here's what
it said. The book is the star, not the actors.
I want the audience to see real people, almost as
if they're looking through a window. I just don't feel
(33:42):
I can achieve this if I hire well known actors.
I mean, this is the producer, not the director, saying
this so you can see the panemonium that has ensued.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
Thus begins the casting frenzy of The Godfather.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
Leave the Gun, Take the Canoli. As a production of
Airmail and iHeartMedia.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
The podcast is based on the book of the same name,
written by our very own Mark Seal.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Our producer is Tina Mullen.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
Research assistance by Jack Sullivan.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
Jonathan Dressler was our development producer.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Our music supervisor is Randall Poster. Our executive producers are
Mee Nathan King, Mark Seal, Doan Fagan, and Graydon Carter.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Special thanks to Bridget Arseno and everyone at CDM Studios.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
A comprehensive list of sources and acknowledgments can be found
in Mark Seal's book Leave the Gun, Take the Canoli,
published by Gallery Books. An imprint of Simon and Schuster
The day started like any other. It's a Sunday in
nineteen sixty nine and Francis Ford Coppola is sitting in
his home in San Francisco. Three things happen all at once. First,
he sees an ad in the Sunday New York Times
for a new novel entitled The Godfather. Coppola thinks to
(00:24):
himself that the author's name, Mario Puzzo, sounds like an
Italian writer of classic literature. Second, a knock at the door.
Two producers from Paramount, Al Ruddy and Gray Frederickson. They're
in town to film Little Fouls and Big Halsey and
want to meet the up and coming director who fled
(00:46):
Los Angeles for the artistic freedom of San Francisco. Third,
a phone call from Marlon Brando. It comes in before
the Paramount producers are even gone on He's calling to
turn down Coppola's offer to star in his passion project,
The Conversation. Coppola would later remember all of these things
(01:11):
as a celestial alignment of forces, the first ripple of
foreshadowing of the project that would come to define his career.
(01:32):
I'm Mark Seal and I'm Nathan King, and this is
leave the gun, take the Canoli.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Today's episode puts Francis Ford Coppola, the Godfather's enigmatic and
intellectual director, front and center.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
We'll investigate Coppola's creative process, explorer, his relationship with Mario Puzzo,
and maybe even get to the bottom of the Coppola
Coppola debate.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Okay, before we start, we have to address this discrepancy.
I say Copola, You say Coppola. Who's right.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
I don't know. I've heard it both ways.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
I've only ever heard it pronounce Copola. But I think
there's a like a nice Southern charm to your pronunciation.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
I don't know, it just rolls out of my mouth. Kappla.
I could be wrong. I stand corrected.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
That's all right. I think you should keep saying Coppla.
I'll say Copola. We're not going to go back and
re record the podcast. Let's get into it. Mark, over
the course of reporting the Vanity Fair story and writing
your book, you were able to put together quite the
portrait of Copola. What was your process like forgetting to
know him?
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Yeah, well, I did what I always do. I talked
to as many people as I could find. I read
every article, I could find about him every interview. He
had done so many interviews over the years about the
making of The Godfather that he at times said he
was tired of speaking about it, but he was kind
enough to send a lot of answers. I think answers
(03:02):
to forty questions are so via email, and I spoke to,
of course, his sister Taya Shier, his assistant back then,
Mona Skager, and all of the executives at Paramount at
the time, of course, had a lot to say about him.
And we even have some new audio that he was
kind enough to send us, especially for this podcast.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Did you feel intimidated researching him and finding out that
he had talked about The Godfather so much? And did
you worry at all that maybe it was a fool's
errand to try and dig up any new information.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Well, no, not really, because you know, all of the
answers that he had given in the past just added
to the texture of what I was trying to do.
You know, it was a blessing that he had given
so many interviews. He gave an exhaustive, long interview to
Cigar Aficionado that he pointed out to me when I
was writing the book he said, take a look at that,
(04:01):
and it answers a lot of questions. And then I
plunged forward and I sent him a list of I
think forty questions, and he said in the email that
he would answer the ones that interested him, and I
think he answered everyone.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
So when Copola got the offer to direct The Godfather,
he was in pretty dire straits, right.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Yes, indeed, he was twenty nine years old. He was
deeply in debt. He was living in San Francisco trying
to get his production company, American Zootrope, off the ground,
but it wasn't working out very well.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
You wrote in your book that it seemed like Coppola
was heading toward The Godfather his entire life. Can you
tell us a little bit about his upbringing and his background,
because he was Italian, but he wasn't Italian in a
Godfather way.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Necessary well, he was an Italian American. He grew up
in Queens, but he was born in Detroit, and the
family moved around a lot. But obviously they were pretty
far from Italy.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
And it was a pretty creative family exactly.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
His father was a floutist, a composer, a teacher, and
most of all a long suffering artist who felt he
was always looking for his big break. And Francis and
his siblings got moved around a lot as his father
moved between jobs and orchestras.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
And then in nineteen forty nine, he was nine years
old and something really dramatic happened and his life changed
drastically exactly.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
The family was living in Queens and suddenly Francis was
stricken with polio. He was bedridden for nine months, and
these nine months were really the birth of Francis Coppola
the artist. While the other kids played outside, he became
a director of sorts. He would stage puppet shows, he
(05:53):
would devour comic books, and his mom said that every
time she came into his room, he would hold out
his little hands like he was lining up a shot.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
It's really interesting that so many creative people were afflicted
with sicknesses that left them bedridden as children.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yeah, I think it's the isolation of being alone. It's
not easy to be alone, but when you're forced to
be alone, a lot of things come from that. And
I think those nine months were instrumental for him because
he was forced to play with his own imagination.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Is that when he knew he would be a filmmaker.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
I think so he was really young, but as soon
as he was healthy again, he started making movies. I
was able to speak with his sister, Taya, who told
me a wonderful story about raising money for his first film.
She went around the neighborhood and says, my brother's going
to be a director, you know, and everybody, oh, yeah, right,
(06:47):
But she really believed in him and saw something. She
just said, he was an artist from the word go,
and she just felt like he could do anything, and
so she went around trying to help him raise money
for an early film.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
How old was he at this point.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
I think he was still in his teenage years, and
she was obviously younger, so I think she really could
see the future and that he was going to be
a great director one day.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
So it was already clear that he had a sort
of idealistic streak running through him.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Yes, idealistic and talented, and even in his bedroom when
he was all alone, he would do these very creative
like little films and impressions and all of that. So
it became clear early on that he was going to
be an artist of some sort.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
So Talia was really she was right by his side
from the beginning.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Oh yeah, they always supported each other. And of course
she goes on to play Connie Corleone and The Godfather.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
So what's next for Francis.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Well, in nineteen fifty five he enrolled in the theater
arts department at Hofstra University and then he went to
UCLA Graduate Film School, where he rose through the ranks
and became a top screenwriter in his class.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
And that's when Peter Bart discovered him, right.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
That's right. Peter Bart was a New York Times reporter
based in Los Angeles, and here he is.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Young want to be filmmakers at UCLA and USC were
finding unique ways of staying alive and feeding themselves while
they were making student films going to film school and
trying to get some film to show, you know, studios
to get a job. And that one of the ways
(08:29):
that Francis had pursued was to make films that were
called Newdies and udies, which were by today's standards, totally
asexual but had sort of sex scenes, but you know,
fully closed sex scenes. And he directed or edited a
couple of those.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
When did Roger Corman come into the mix? And for
people who don't know the late great Roger Corman was
sort of a godfather in his own right, but the
godfather of the new Hollywood. And he was a great
director of B movies and pop cinema, but also handled
distribution on a lot of foreign films by incredible directors
(09:11):
like Kerasawa and Fellini. And of course he fostered a
lot of young talents and was a mentor to people
like Jack Nicholson and Peter Fonda and Peter Bugdanovich.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Yeah, you know, especially Francis Bord Cooppola, who even featured
Roger in God Bothered Too. He was one of the
senators in the hearings. But they met when Coppola was
finishing up at UCLA in the sixties and Korma was
looking for an editor to cut the anti American propaganda
out of a Russian sci fi film, and here's Roger Korman.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
So I called UCLA and I said, who is your
best graduating senior in editing? So they sent over several people,
and I felt Francis was the brightest and most creative.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Corman hired copple AZ's assistant. And what sort of work
did he do for Corman other than editing Russian sci Fi.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Films, well pretty much everything positioning, the camera, holding the boom,
mic script revisions. He even brought Francis to Europe as
part of a film crew, where he decided to give
him even more responsibility.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
And so I then got the idea that I had
this little crew, I had everything in the microbus. We
paid for everybody to come to Europe, and we could
make another picture and advertise the cost of taking everybody
to Europe. I'll write it off over the first picture
and make a second picture for almost nothing. So I
(10:48):
offered a chance to Francis. I said, I've got thirty
thousand dollars in cash. I can give you the thirty
thousand dollars if you can write a little horror script
and shoot it in Ireland with a skeleton crew.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Coppola jumped at the chance and assembled a ragtag group
of fellow UCLA grads and Irish locals to work around
the clock on the top floor of an old house
outside of Dublin. And the movie was called Dementia thirteen.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
What came of that movie, Well, probably.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
The most significant thing for Francis was his wife and
firstborn child.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
That's right, they met on set, right.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Exactly Eleanor jesse Neil. She was a fellow UCLA grad
recruited by Corman, and the two started a relationship in Ireland,
and soon she became pregnant.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
How did Copola take that?
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Really great? He told Eleanor that he always wanted a family,
and the two got married in Las Vegas and moved
to La to start their lives. As filmmakers.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Tell me about Copola's early career, did he see a
lot of success?
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Well, pretty much like Mario Puzzo, Koppolist struggled early on
early films that weren't exactly a list movies, a bad investment,
and real feelings of despair about his prospects as an artist.
But things turned around when twentieth Century Fox hired him
to co write the screenplay for Patten, which won him
(12:21):
an Academy Award.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Mark, let's talk about Patten for a second. Patten comes
out in nineteen seventy and it's about one of the
most famous generals in American history, if not all of history.
To what extent do you think that prepared Coppola for
not only writing a blockbuster, but writing a movie that's
about a strong figurehead or a charismatic leader.
Speaker 5 (12:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
I think Paton prepared him for a lot, because Patten
was about, you know, a general that was a strong
charismatic leader, much like Don Corleone, but in a very
different way. They weren't a very different war pattern was
World War Two, and The Godfather was a war between
the two rival families going to the mattresses, where Colemensus says,
(13:04):
you know, we have to do this every few years
to weed out the bad blood. But I think that
Francis learned a lot by co writing the script for Patent,
for which he won an Academy Award, as did George C.
Scott for Best Actor that year. And I think that
prepared him for the War of the Godfather which was
soon to come.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
And that was also the first time that Copola had
gone from making a indie film to making an epic.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Yeah, and this is a mainstream Hollywood film for which
he won an Oscar is a co writer of the script,
so it was a pretty big step.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
And then he wrote a movie for Charlie Bludorn right famously.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Yes, it was one of Charlie's early flops, Is Paris Burning,
and Kappla knew it was a bomb so while he
was working on it, he wrote an adaptation of the
novel You're a Big Boy Now, which he then directed
and screened it can That's what really put him on
the map.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
I want to just read a few of the headlines
from that time. From the La Times we have Coppola
breaks the age barrier, which marveled at his success as
a twenty six year old. From The New York Times
offering the Moon to a guy in jeans by film
critic Rex Reid, who called him orson wells at the
handheld camera. That's some pretty staggering praise.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Yeah, I was amazed when I saw all those clippings
with all of those amazing reviews of his work and
who he was. And it wasn't long after that when
he signs a deal with Warner Brothers to direct Finian's Rainbow,
starring no less than Fred Astaire.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
But with all this success, he's growing pretty disillusioned, right.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Yeah, he's fighting to make the kind of movies he
wants to make from inside the Hollywood machine. He makes
The rain People without Warner Brothers full sign off on
certain aspects of the film, which ended up costing him
in the end. He's just sick and tired of.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Hollywood, and he decides to head north.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Yeah, he packs ap family into a VW bus in
a very sixties scene and leaves La for the greener
pastures of San Francisco. He's trailed in a caravan by
his assistant Monas Gager and his sister Talia, and of
course his collaborator, a young George Lucas.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
So they get to San Francisco, what then.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Will they set up shop for a new kind of
production company, American Zootrope, which was modeled in a way
after the studios that Coppola had seen and experienced in Europe.
Monaskeager told me it was in the Wine Country because
it was the neighborhood was filled with winos.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
That's interesting what you say about the foreign production companies
in what way was it modeled on them?
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Well, they were more independent, they were more artistically driven
rather than commercially driven. I think it's best summed up
in an interview he gave to the San Francisco Chronicle
when he gave a tour of their new offices, and
he said the difference is that in La you talk
about deals and here you talk about.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Film sounds, like a dream for director.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Yes, but the dream didn't last. By the time Peter
Bart approached him about The Godfather, American Zootrope was in
a dire position. The sheriff was literally at the door
about to shut down the company for unpaid taxes, and
they were six hundred thousand in hock to Warner Brothers
for overhead and development cost.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
It seems like a no brainer that he'd accept the job.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
You would think, But he really didn't want to make
the movie. He thought the book upon first hearing about it,
sounded like The Carpetbackers. But Peter Bart was persistent. He
mailed him a copy of the book, and apparently Coppola
only got sixty pages into it.
Speaker 6 (16:46):
You know, I did believe he didn't want to do
the picture, and I would call him and remind him
how much money he owed. One time I called him out,
I found out what the tuition of his oldest kids,
the private school tuition was. Sarvents show like.
Speaker 7 (17:00):
To remind you.
Speaker 6 (17:01):
But I was rather unpleasant about pushing him in this
because he didn't want to do it.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Go What convinced him to do it in the end, Well.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
I think it was really debt. American Zootrope was struggling,
and Coppola was at his friend George Lucas's house one
night in Mill Valley, and somehow Peter Bart got the
phone number and called him there, and Lucas apparently told
him what would soon become a famous quote, we are broke, Francis,
We're out of business. We're closed. You have to accept
(17:32):
this job. We have no money, and the sheriff is
coming to chain up the front door.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
And legend has it that Coppola quit trying to read
the book and headed to the Mill Valley Public Library
and read books on the mob instead. What did he
find in those books, Well.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
He found a lot. Beneath all the blood and gore,
he found stories of families and American entrepreneurs all in
the mob. His interest was revived, and he went back
to the book with an open mind. He realized that
there was a profound story to tell in Mario Puzo's novel.
He said, it was the classic story of succession, about
(18:11):
a great king with three sons, each of whom had
a single element of what made the king great. Like
a scene out of the movie. He calls Peter Bart
and says, I'll make the picture under one condition. And
here's how Robert Evans later described it in his memoir.
Speaker 8 (18:29):
Peter comes into my office. Coppola makes the picture on
one condition that it's not a film about organized gangsters.
It's not about organized gangsters. It ain't a musical, Peter.
He wants to make it as a family chronicle, a
metaphor for capitalism in America. Fuck him and the horse
he wrote it on.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
So now Coppola is convinced and he wants to do
the film. But perversely, it seems like he needs to
turn around and convince Paramount that he's the man for
the job.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Yes, even though he's accepted the job himself, he has
to convince Paramount. He flies to La Al. Ruddy picks
him up at the airport and immediately starts giving him
advice on how to land the gig.
Speaker 5 (19:08):
I said, but remember what day, francis.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
There's a low budget movie.
Speaker 5 (19:13):
So when you meet the guys, start figuring out he
is down grade what you were planting.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
He takes him to the Paramount studios and according to Ruddy,
Coppler gives the performance of a lifetime.
Speaker 5 (19:26):
Oh god, he rand it on the philosophically value of
film and the beauty of film and the messages of
this book. He's showing them so many diamonds into so
much flashing. If they say, I don't know what he's
talking about, they loved it. So now Francis is on.
They loved him, Yeah, I know they loved him.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
For a guy who doesn't want the job, he's really
selling himself.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
According to Ruddy, Yes, but I asked Coppola about that
meeting twenty five years later and had no recollection. He
wrote to me in an email, I'm sorry, I have
no idea of how Ruddy described what I may have said. Sorry,
I cannot remember that day at all.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
It sounds like he might be repressing that memory a
little bit.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
I'm not sure, because for Ruddy it was crystal clear.
He says. Francis jumps up on the table and starts
giving the performance of a lifetime. He sounded like Al Ruddy,
as Al Ruddy gave the performance of Hogan's heroes. Remember that.
So this is like Coppola giving his vision of the Godfather.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
So he kills it in La But then his agent,
freddie Field says he needs to go to New York
and convinced Charlie bludorm.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Yes, Coppola's assistant Mona Skager told me Francis took the
Red Eye to New York and kept Charlie up until
three in the morning, pitching him on his vision of
the movie. How do you know he's kept him up
till three in the morning. Francis told you.
Speaker 9 (20:49):
He told us he had a meeting him and then
pitched this idea of how he saw the God saw it.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Because Francis is a chi and he's rusted that whole environment.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Of the story about the family, So he sold Hurricane
Charlie on his vision.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
He sure did. And then he called his assistant Mona
and tells her to tell his wife to pack up
the kids and get on the Red Eyed in New York.
The family would be selling on the SS Michelangelo for
Italy the next day.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
It's so funny that he and Puzzo chose to do
the same exact thing once their ship came in.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Metaphorically speaking, these guys haven't even met yet, but there
are already kindred spirits.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
And he worked on the screenplay on the ship right.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Yes, Mona told me that he tore pages out of
Puzzo's novel and tape them to the windows of the ship,
and she was just typing away like a mad dog.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Do you think that Coppola chose to go to Italy
because he thought that it would inspire him in some
way or was this just a simple family trip?
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Well, I think he was going there because there was
a film festival he wanted to attend in Italy. That's
where he met or that's where he met up with
Martin Scorsese, and so there was a reason for him
going there. It was about film, but at the same
time it was like Mario Puzzo, you know, I get away,
a vacation, a celebration of sorts.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Okay, let's fast forward to September twenty ninth in nineteen seventy.
There's an amazing photo which you have in the book
of Puzzo, Coppola, Evans and Ruddy at a press conference
announcing Copola as the director of the film.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Yes, it was extraordinary because I was able to access
Robert Evans's date book because there was an auction of
his possessions, and I was able to track down the
man who purchased the date book at the auction, and
he kindly sent me photographs from these pages, and on
the one that marked September twenty ninth, nineteen seventy, you
(22:49):
can see in Robert Evans's own green handwriting ten AM
press conference the Godfather. So in the famous picture that
resulted from that press coverage, you can see these four men, Puso, Coppola,
Evans and Ruddy at this famous press conference, and they're
all smiles, but they're about to engage in this epic
(23:11):
battle to get this picture made.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Hereily, it doesn't betray any of the misery that's about
to come.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
No, everybody's all smiles at this point, but those smiles
would not last for long.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Well, let's start with the relationship that did have some smiles,
Copola and Puzso we know Copla extensively rewrites Puso's script.
Did Puso know this going in?
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Yeah, he knew, and honestly he was very relieved. According
to everyone I spoke with, Puso and Copola became fast
friends and had great respect for one another. Here's what
Tallya Schier said about them.
Speaker 10 (23:47):
They loved each other. I mean they were very very
good friends. And France has had tremendous respect for him
as a writer who was also a good writer, and
they were together, and I think that was the the
censure for Francis that he was so loved Mario and
their collaboration was very creative and exciting. Mario really was
(24:10):
in Francis's corner and Francis was seeing it.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
And did they work on the screenplay together?
Speaker 1 (24:16):
Yes, and no. Puso really wanted to collaborate, sit side
by side and rewrite the script and what he envisioned
was a traditional way. But apparently when he asked, Coppola
looked him straight in the eye and said no. And
Puso would later say he liked that. That's how he
knew that Coppola was a real director.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
I guess at this point he is looking for someone
to take over from him exactly.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
So the two agree that they'll collaborate long distance, with
Coppola and San Francisco and Puso in La or in
New York back home, and Coppola sets to work in
a cafe in San Francisco where he arrived each morning
with the novel in a satchel, and his first step
is to create what he calls a prompt book, which
(25:02):
is a tradition from the theater. And here's an interview
from two thousand and one where he describes creating this
tone of a book.
Speaker 7 (25:11):
When I realized that I was actually going to make
a movie out of the novel The Godfather, I sat
down and began to read the book very very carefully.
And I think it's important to put your impressions down
on the first reading, because those are the initial instincts
about what you thought was good or what you didn't
(25:32):
understand or what you.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Thought was bad.
Speaker 7 (25:34):
And having gotten through the book, I pulled my book
apart that I had made those comments on and myself
pasted every page of the novel onto sheets of paper
like this, and I called it the Godfather Notebook and
put a big warning if found return to this address
for reward, because I recognized that it would have every
(25:57):
opinion that I had on the book. And interestingly, I
decided to break down each section with these key criteria.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
He's clearly such a craftsman, and you can start to
see some of the moments that he pulls from the
book as essential or pivotal.
Speaker 7 (26:15):
On page seventy nine of the book, we have the
actual shooting of the Don whenever I felt there was
a really important part of the book that was going
to be in the movie, I would sit there with
my ruler and really underline. So this details the shooting.
My margin notes are the shooting great detail. The Don
(26:37):
is the main character of the movie, so as in Psycho,
we are totally thrown when he is shot.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Okay, I'm afraid to ask. Koppel is hard at work
on the script. What's Poozzo doing with his new found
free time.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
Well, he's having the time of his life in Hollywood.
He's living on Paramount's dime, but the pressure to write
the script is off, so he gets to really enjoy
being a successful author and screenwriter of a much anticipated
Hollywood film. At this time, he has a new assistant,
Linetta Walgren. Linetta calls him the frog Prince because he
(27:14):
dressed very poorly. His pants would drag on the ground,
he had these shirts that were too tight, and of
course he had a prodigious belly. So one day Lynetta
takes him to the Gucci store in Beverly Hills. Well,
of course, nobody knows who he is, so they pretty
much ignored him, and soon Linetta says, don't you know
(27:36):
who this is. This is the writer, the author of
the Godfather, and they went, oh my god. And pretty
much like in the movie Pretty Woman, they're all over him.
And he buys all these new clothes, valure track suits,
all in his favorite color, pink, and he's just transformed.
(27:56):
The frog Prince had turned into a real rents of Hollywood,
and everyone wanted him at their parties and for dinner.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
He must have fit right in at the Beverly Hills
Hotel in his pink tracksuits.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
I think he stood out at the Beverly Hills Hotel
in his pink track suit. But you know, everybody loved
Mario Puzo.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
He's also a man of deeply entrenched habits. He's still
gambling during this time, right, of.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Course, he's gambling. Linetta Walgren said you would pick him
up for work every day, and some days he would
just say get on the freeway, which meant they were
going to the airport to fly to Las Vegas for
the day.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Well, what about work. Isn't he helping Coppola with the script?
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Yes, but according to Coppola, Pouso had done his part
by writing the book, and that was Coppola's turn to
do the heavy lifting on the script. He would send
drafts for Puoso to comment on, and Coppola really respected
his notes. There's a great line in the scene where
Clemenza is teaching Michael how to make spaghetti sauce, and
Coppla had written, first you brown some garlic, and then
(29:03):
you throw in the tomatoes, and Puzzo scribble to note
gangsters don't brown, they fry.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
And this is also when they're working out of casinos.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Right. Yes, France has told me that a casino is
the absolute best place for writers to collaborate.
Speaker 9 (29:20):
One thing about Mario is he loved to gamble. So
I got the idea that we could both go to
a gambling casino in nearby Reno, Nevada. The reason why
it's good to work in a gambling casino is because
they're up for twenty four hours service that people are
gambling all through the night, so that at any time
(29:42):
if you order breakfast or you water, some refreshments or
whatever you want, basically it's available. And we were up
all night writing the script, and then when we get tired,
we would go downstairs and Mario would gamble. And of
course he was a terrible gambler, and he would just
lose all this money on the roulette wheeling. And once
(30:05):
someone said, oh, mister Puzso you're losing so much money. Yeah, well,
we're losing thousands here on the roulette table. But we'll
go upstairs and work on the script that we'll make millions.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
So Copola's version of the script was vastly different than Puzzo's.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
I think it was quite different. Peter bart and Bob
Evans were pretty happy with Puso's script, mostly because it
seemed like he did everything he was told to do.
He changed the setting to modern data to cut costs,
and was even opening with a love scene because already
told him to. But Copolo is up for a fight,
always up for a fight. He insisted on keeping the
film set in the forties, and he had his own
(30:43):
thoughts on an opening scene, I believe in America America
has made my fortune.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
Which is of course one of the greatest openings in
movie history.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
Absolutely because that line I believe in America appears about
halfway into the first chapter of Puzo's book. It could
have been easily overlooked, but Coppola realized what it represented.
He said, the real appeal to the Godfather is that
you could go to someone if you weren't being treated fairly,
and the Godfather would make it right.
Speaker 5 (31:14):
You know.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
One of the things about The Godfather is that it's
an immigration story. It's a story about a family that
comes from this part of Italy that's very remote from America.
So do you think that that sets it up as
being a film about the American dream?
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Yes, of course. I mean you see this space coming
out of the darkness, and the first line he says
is I believe in America. I mean you just think wow.
And then the way it pulls back from the darkness.
You see the hand of Fido Corleone scratching his chin,
and then you see the cat, and then you see
the family there gathered around the table on the day
(31:50):
of his daughter's wedding. So it's telescopic in a way
because it starts with this amazing image of this immigrant
coming to the Godfather for help, and then the story
that he tells about his daughter. I mean, gosh, you
can't get any more dramatic than that.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
And bonas Ara is pleading and desperate, and in contrast,
Don Vito's incredibly composed and stoic.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
It's this opening scene so dramatic. That was the scene
that hooked me in for the get go. You know,
you see the moon faced of this undertaker rising up
out of the darkness, and he says, I believe in America.
And then it cuts to Don Corleone and you wonder
what the hell's going on? And then bonas Sarah asked
the Godfather to commit murder. He wants the young men
(32:37):
who have harmed his daughter dead. He doesn't say it
just like that, because he whispers it in the Don's
ear while Brando is petting that cat. And then Don
Corleone says, you know, you come to my house on
the day of my daughter's wedding and you ask me
to commit murder. That's not a legitimate tip for Tad
or whatever, you know, because your daughter is a lot.
(33:01):
You know. He says, you found success in America and
never needed a friend like me, But now he needs
him pretty badly because the system of America has denied
him justice. That opening scene just grabs you by the throat,
sets up everything to follow, and really doesn't let you
go into the final.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Credits, and Copel is already thinking about casting.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Yes, and unfortunately so were the executives at Paramount. Ruddy
was so besieged with actors seeking roles that he put
out a statement to the Hollywood Reporter, and here's what
it said. The book is the star, not the actors.
I want the audience to see real people, almost as
if they're looking through a window. I just don't feel
(33:42):
I can achieve this if I hire well known actors.
I mean, this is the producer, not the director, saying
this so you can see the panemonium that has ensued.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
Thus begins the casting frenzy of The Godfather.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
Leave the Gun, Take the Canoli. As a production of
Airmail and iHeartMedia.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
The podcast is based on the book of the same name,
written by our very own Mark Seal.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Our producer is Tina Mullen.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
Research assistance by Jack Sullivan.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
Jonathan Dressler was our development producer.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Our music supervisor is Randall Poster. Our executive producers are
Mee Nathan King, Mark Seal, Doan Fagan, and Graydon Carter.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Special thanks to Bridget Arseno and everyone at CDM Studios.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
A comprehensive list of sources and acknowledgments can be found
in Mark Seal's book Leave the Gun, Take the Canoli,
published by Gallery Books. An imprint of Simon and Schuster
Hosts And Creators
Mark Seal
Nathan King
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