From Chaos to Classic: The Godfather’s (1972) Creation Saga

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Beyond the Big Screen Podcast with your host
Steve Guera. Thank you for listening to Beyond the Big
Screen Podcast, where we talk about great movies and stories
so great they should be movies. Find show notes, links
to subscribe and leave Apple podcast reviews by going to

(00:23):
our website Beyond the Big Screen dot com. And now
let's go Beyond the Big Screen.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Well, welcome back everybody. I'm super excited that today we're
joined by as usual mustache Chris, but we are also
joined where it's turning into as usual by Frank. And
today we're talking about I think we're we're getting into
the thing that everybody when you honestly, when you get

(00:54):
down to the nitty gritty of the mafia, everybody wants
to talk about the Godfather. And we're going to do.
We're beginning a short series here on the background into
the making of the book and the movie of the Godfather.
We'll talk about the real history that was involved in
the Godfather, and then we'll start talking about the movies

(01:17):
of the Godfather. So as we release these, if there's
some questions that you have, or you have any thoughts
or anything, just let us know, because I know this
is one that everybody likes to talk to. Godfather. So
let's get right into it. Chris, here, you ran a
lot with doing the prep for this. Why should we

(01:39):
do a series on the Godfather?

Speaker 3 (01:41):
Well, if you ask anyone about the Mafia, you will
probably get like one pretty consistent answer. It's like, oh, yeah,
it's those guys in the Godfather movie, right, you know
it's something like that, right, Like like virtually what everyone
knows about the Mob, and like popular imagination comes from
the Godfather, like good or bad. Like the saying I'll

(02:04):
make you an offer you you can't refuse is like
so ingrained in our society. I bet many people may
not even realize it's a line from the Godfather movie.
It's not. I don't know if any mobster previously that
used that line. I'm sure there was lots after. Yeah,
the image of the stern but the fair family patriarch
of Vito quarter Leone's a popular image that people have

(02:26):
of the mob. Like if you ask people about you know,
the mob boss, right, it's like, well, it's you know,
he's an older guy, and yeah he's stern and he's
but he's fair, and you know, generally un not He's dangerous,
but not like dangerous in the same in the sense
that people think of like Scarface. Right, He's not crazy,

(02:47):
which is just a lot of the times is not drue.
We've covered in our series on Murdering that a lot
of these guys are legitimately crazy. But to get back
to the point of why I think it's important to
talk about the Godfather, you know, one of the biggest
myths that the god The Godfather presents is like, not

(03:10):
all the Mafia was involved in drug trafficking, and that's
something that persists to this day. And it's not just
the Mafia. You can talk about biker gangs and the
Hell's Angels, and especially up here in Canada. I don't
know about in the States, but I know up here
in Canada everyone seems to have an uncle or distant
cousin that's part of the Hell's Angels and they're totally

(03:30):
not involved in drug trafficking, which is just not true
at all. The Mafia has been involved in drug trafficking
from the very get go. But like to me, it's
kind of what makes the book Slash the movie so
brilliant is because it creates the myth of the mafia

(03:53):
in a lot of ways. That's in popular culture for
good or bad, I mean, and myths. People tend to
associate them with stuff like say King Arthur, you know, like, oh,
that's a positive myth to have, right, Or you know
Teddy Roosevelt, you know, riding in a bull moose, like, oh,
that's just cool, right, Like that's a cool myth, and

(04:13):
it's probably I don't think it's true. Actually, I believe
that popular image is photoshopped or something like that, but
it's not exactly true that he was riding in a
bull moose. But regardless, it's a it's a myth. People
believe it and inspires people like the one with Teddy
Roosevelt inspired me for pretty much my entire life, a
lot of the myths about the Theodore Roosevelt. But myths

(04:37):
can also be used to for bad things, you know.
Give you a look at the mythology that the Soviet
Union presented in terms of world history as almost entirely
class struggle. You know, you don't have to read too
far into the Soviet Union to realize how that was
a damaging myth. The Nazis had a mythology of their own,

(05:01):
untrue obviously, and that was extremely damaging for the entire world.
That is extremely damaging for the people that believed in
the myth right And if you look at something like
The Godfather, the myth of the Benevolent Dawn, the the

(05:22):
mafia is being, you know, relatively harmless. So all they're
only involved in gambling and selling you know, olive oil,
and it's family first, and they're totally not involved in
drug trafficking, and they only murder when they when they
have to. This is a myth that permeates popular culture now.
I mean you talk to people about the Mafia now,

(05:46):
a lot of the cliches that are in The Godfather,
this is their understanding of how the mafia works.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
Rick, I wonder coming into it, I'm sure that you,
like the rest of us, have seen The Godfather a
million times, probably read the Banah all at least once.
Coming into this and taking a more critical look at
the movie, what what do you think about it? The
whole mythology of the movie and the film.

Speaker 4 (06:12):
I think Chris hit on it really well. They are
they are mythologized, and and Francis Ford Coppola as the
filmmaker and Mary Opuso as the author really planted the
seeds for that mythology. You know, we did an episode
on on Jimmy Galante and the dan Berry Trashers a

(06:35):
while back, and one of the things that came up
in that was how Jimmy Galanti, despite all the bad
things he you know, was accused of doing and things
he but guilty to doing that were pretty bad, he
was kind of a folk hero around Danbury and in
that area. And here we have the corale Oonne family

(06:55):
and and then and beginning with that dawn that Chris
described on Corleone, they're like the og folk heroes, you know,
I mean, Don Corleone, I don't get involved in drugs,
you know that, you know that, Let's make him into
a folk hero. And that's really really what happened. And
I mean that movie came out in the early seventies.

(07:18):
I think it was seventy two and seventy four or
seventy three and seventy four, I can't remember what it was,
something like that, right, And movies in the seventies were
very bleak. I mean, the anti hero and bad endings
and the you know, Butch and Butch Cassidy and the
Sundance kid type of film, Bonnie and Clyde type of film,

(07:39):
you know, where the anti hero is the protagonist and
the ending is bleak. They were super popular then, even
the best cop movies were.

Speaker 2 (07:47):
You know.

Speaker 4 (07:47):
We've talked about the French connection on other episodes, and
that's a good example of bleak nineteen seventies filmmaking. And
so I think the combination of the myth making that
they did, coupled with that trend in cinema at the time,
made it just really fertile ground to plant those seeds,
and they have certainly borne fruit. You know, as Chris said,

(08:11):
it is very much ingrained in you know, North American culture.
Actually probably even extens further than that, I would guess.

Speaker 2 (08:20):
I got back into I'm reading the novel again for
the first time in probably twenty years, so looking at
it through a very different perspective, and I'd love to
before we really dive into the background of the writing
and the people involved in the film, which is what
we're going to really focus in today. So Frank, for
the people who are new to the program, was a

(08:41):
twenty year cop and then he's now a professional writer.
And I was looking at the book maybe through more
of a lens of the creation of it. And I
found that if you strip everything away with the mafia,
it really is the mafia is laid on top of

(09:03):
this morality tale around a family, based around characters, that's
essentially a fairy tale. And I wonder as a as
a writer, and you know, having that, I mean, I'm
not a writer, and so that's just my completely novice
opinion of critical literature, but as somebody who writes stories,

(09:27):
what do you think about how that how the novel
was crafted?

Speaker 4 (09:32):
That's a really juicy question on in general, I think
it was very well crafted and it's a great story.
There are pieces to it that I thought were extraneous
that we're thankfully left out of the film that I
don't think had a lot of purchase and making you know,
a lot of a lot of traction and making the

(09:55):
book better. But at its core, the story, really what
is it really about? I mean, it's about a son
who wants nothing more than to not become his father,
to prove he is not his father, and who ultimately
does exactly that he becomes his father. And all of

(10:15):
this takes place in a culture of lies and pantomime,
right it's very I mean, I know it's Italian, right,
obviously it's Sicilian the Corleones, but it's very Greek tragedy
in a way you think about it.

Speaker 2 (10:32):
Now, what we're going to set out, at least in
this episode is speaking of characters. We're going to lay
out some of the main historical characters, the actual people
who are behind the novel and then ultimately the creation
of the movie, and we're going to work through little
discussions of each one. So this I think will help

(10:53):
people if you go back and watch the movie, but
especially the new, relatively new a series that came out
called The Offer, which is based around the background of
creating the movie. So I guess the very first person
Chris to talk about is Mario Puzzo, the author of

(11:15):
the book.

Speaker 3 (11:17):
Yeah, Mario was born in the Hell's Kitchen, New York,
which during the course of this podcast we're going to
end up talking a lot about Hell's Kitchen because it
was grand central for Irish organized crime, but also a
lot of Italian organized crime, and Mario's parents were Italian
immigrants from the Campagna area southern Italy. His father worked

(11:41):
as a track man for New York Central Railroad, but
unfortunately would be committed to Pilgrim State Hospital because he
suffered from schizophrenia. And this was a very pivotal moment
in Mario's life because he was essentially raised by a
single mother. His mother would be left to take care

(12:03):
of like this. You know, it was a big family
of seven, right, which is at the time that was
very common. Actually seven six, five big families. That was
I mean, nowadays, you know, having three kids is like,
oh god, that's huge, But back then it wasn't all
that uncommon. But you know, given the time here that
they grew up, especially her being a single mom, it

(12:25):
must have been very, very difficult. Mario would end up
actually serving in the United States Air Force in Germany
during World War Two, and this experience would serve them well,
as he would later write many pulp stories set during
World War Two, and one of his later novels is

(12:47):
actually his first real novel, is actually set during World
War Two. And he would end up graduating from a
City College of New York. If you've probably feel is
that like a really good college or.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
It especially for World War Two graduates and people of
that era. The City College of New York was sort
of a I think you could compare it to like
a really top tier state school. You know, you had
people who were off the charge geniuses going to the
City College of New York on the GI bill because

(13:26):
it was pretty inexpensive. You could still be right in
the middle of the city and still, you know, especially
for people who are trying to make it in the
big Apple, like that was the place to be as
city college, and it still is to a certain degree.
It was like a it's honestly like what community colleges
and local colleges should be. I think now even a

(13:49):
lot of state schools are starting to get beyond the
average person's budget. But that was like where you went.
If you were in New York City, you GI bill
money and you wanted to go to college and get
a top tier education without paying Columbia or NYU money,
you went there.

Speaker 4 (14:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (14:12):
Well, and growing up, Mario Puzo was kind of he
was always kind of like a loaner so and I
mean one of the ways that he was able to
stay out of trouble in Hell's Kitchen was he just
devoted himself to books, right, So he would spend hours
and hours at the public library, checking out books. He
was a big fan of dystoviesky and I forgot to
mention that, right. So this is where his love of

(14:34):
literature and art came from. Mario always kind of saw
himself as like a serious artist and wanted to be
viewed as such. I mean, anybody who kind of gets
into writing novels or film or I don't think many
people go in there and be like, I want to
write the best, you know, Paul, you know, I think
they go in there and they want to be viewed
as you know, legitimate, like serious artists. I mean, maybe

(14:57):
it's a little bit different now, but that's always been
my impression. If I ever tried to like create something,
I wanted people to somewhat take it seriously and not
laugh about it or not take it seriously. His first novel,
The Dark Arena, which was published in nineteen fifty five,
follows a character named by Walter, world War two veteran

(15:21):
that struggles to adjust to civilian life back in the USA.
Walter decides to go back to post war Germany to
find a girl he fell in love with, and the
novel generally explores the disaster that was the post war
Germany and I haven't read the book personally, but I

(15:42):
find the premise very intriguing because the hardship of post
Nazi Germany's hardly ever talked about, you know, like artistically
or academically, no one just no one talks about it.
And kind of a ballsy move on his half, you know,
talk about the struggles in post war Nazi Germany.

Speaker 2 (16:04):
Yeah, I think, Frank, you're probably going to be wearing
your writer's hat today more than your cop hat and
really getting into the craft of writing.

Speaker 3 (16:14):
Maybe.

Speaker 2 (16:14):
How has something like that changed between writing in the
past to writing nowadays. You know, somebody like Mario Puzo.
You write a book and back then, if a publisher
didn't pick it up, you're pretty much then you might
as well just, you know, put all your typewritten pages
on a shelf. Is that would that be accurate?

Speaker 4 (16:35):
To say? Absolutely? Absolutely? Up until about twenty ten, I
would say that, we're true.

Speaker 3 (16:43):
Yeah, Amazon and self publishing really changed the game on
all of that, really. I know. I remember reading stories
about novelists struggling to get their stories written because they
would complain like all the cat ladies control the publishing
companies or something like that. They would only publish certain

(17:05):
stories and then if you didn't get before self publishing,
you yeah, that was it. You might as well just
stick it on a shelf and you know, show it
to people and hopefully somebody likes it. It's crazy to
think how'll beholden an artist was to publishing company just
to be able to get their workout. I mean it's

(17:26):
the same now with film though, right, like you're going
to beholding to the studios. I mean you're having a
little bit more leeway now with the different types of
streaming services, but I mean you're still really dependent on
whether somebody's willing to produce the work or not.

Speaker 2 (17:41):
Right, I'd have to say too, like with the with
the explosion of just like with podcasts with independent authors
like our very own Frank Frank Scalise sitting here at
writing as. Frank's is a theiro, So you should definitely
go check out his books. The links will be into script.
But I read a lot of other science fiction and

(18:03):
other books that are independently produced, and they're doing and
Frank and others are doing such creative things that if
they had to go through the bottleneck, it probably wouldn't
be able to get to do those.

Speaker 4 (18:16):
Yeah, I think that I think that both publishing and
I'm not as privy to the music world, but I
think there's some some element element of it there as well.
It used to be that there are gatekeepers, you know,
and the gatekeepers for publishing were the agents would be
at the front gate there and then once you got

(18:39):
past that, then you still had to get past the
main gates, and that was the publishers. And if you know,
if you couldn't, if your work didn't get past them,
you know, it didn't get published. And there are people
out there who would say, well, then it must not
be any good. But essentially every good or great book
you ever heard of out there, from B. Dick to

(19:01):
you know, the old Man in the Sea to you know,
take your pick to carry, you know, I mean, any
any of these popular books that the people would all
agree or good books were rejected soundly by dozens and
dozens and dozens of these gatekeepers. It's all subjective. I
mean that, it really truly is. I mean, some things

(19:23):
are objectively bad, I mean type, you know, typos and
you know, just bad writing. That's fine, but at some point,
when your rise to a certain level of quality, it
becomes more subjective than anything. And I'm going to accept
this because I think it's going to sell with the
way the market is now, or how I think it's
going to be blah blah blah. And so now the

(19:44):
problem is kind of the opposite. Now, you know, the
outer castle walls have been broken down, and the real
problem is that there's way too many people milling around
the courtyard yelling about their books. And so now obscurity
as a published author is the issue as opposed to
being unpublished. But it's much the same problem in some ways.

(20:05):
It was very different in Puzo's time there, and I
don't know what his publication story is. I know The
Godfather was not his first novel, as Chris said. In fact,
I think it was like as fourth or something. Chris
is at am I anywhere near near landing on that.

Speaker 2 (20:23):
Steve here. We are a member of the Parthonon podcast
network featuring great shows like Richard Limbs, This American President
and other great shows. Go to parthanon podcast dot com
to learn more. And here is a quick word from
our sponsors.

Speaker 3 (20:44):
It was his well, he did Dark Arena and then
I guess I got into the next novel like Dark
Arena was well reviewed actually, but it didn't make any money.
There was a couple of people who that said, you know,
this guy's got serious talent, but honestly, it'd probably be
a tough book to sell, you know, like a like

(21:04):
a guy going to find his love and post war
Nazi Germany and it's not that far removed from the war.
I mean, I don't know. To me that would be
a I would I would have a hard time selling
that book.

Speaker 4 (21:16):
You know, the.

Speaker 3 (21:17):
Publishers probably had a hard time selling that book too.

Speaker 2 (21:19):
Right, getting down the line, he writes a series of
novels like you and Frank were saying, but he's living
a pretty rough lifestyle. He's racking up debts and he's
through going to loan sharks. Can you maybe get into

(21:40):
which will get us into our next step of the
conversation of how Maria Puzza winds up landing the Godfather.

Speaker 3 (21:49):
In a lot of ways, Maria Poosa kind of lived
the life of a if you were to think of
like kind of a stereotype of an Italian. It sounds
doesn't sound, but it's the truth though, right Like he
I think, as he described it, he lived like he
was first class even though they were fourth class citizens

(22:10):
because he was married and he had kids. And but
he joined the finer things in life right. He liked
Gambling was his number one vice, and that's what always
would get him in trouble. But he enjoyed eating at
fancy restaurants, He enjoyed having nice cigars, he had nice clothes.
So the debt would start racking up and he ended up.

(22:30):
He wrote a book called The Fortunate Program, and I
only bring this up just because it's based on his
h It's an Italian family that comes to the United States,
and the whole theme of the book is about how
these Italians are struggling to adjust to you know, are
we gonna adopt our Italian heritage or are we gonna

(22:52):
adopt our American heritage? And the main characters is his
based on his mother, who he would later say was
very influential on the on the Don Vito Corleone character
and the Godfather. He would say that a munch of
that character is based on how he viewed his mother

(23:14):
as a and as I guess, it would be the
stern matriarch in their case, as opposed to the stern
patriarch that's in the Godfather.

Speaker 2 (23:24):
So he's just kind of bumping along the road. He's
living a lifestyle that doesn't necessarily match his pocket buck.
We know, the end of the story, he gets this
huge success. How does that happen?

Speaker 3 (23:39):
And he actually he talks about it. He had to
drive them. He wanted to write something that would actually
be popular, right that, something that would be a hit,
and you know, through prodding from friends and family, decided
that he was going to tackleally pack of the mafia,
thinking like, oh, this is going to be a you know,
this is going to be my ticket. You know. People

(24:01):
have this belief that Mario like drew largely upon his
own personal experiences with the mafia because he grew up
in the neighborhoods and you know, him being Italian himself.
But I'm sad to say that simply isn't true. Mario
had some contact with mob guys just because of his gambling,
but you know growing up and also like kind of

(24:24):
you knew a couple of them, like from growing up.
But Mario decided that he was just going to devote
himself to researching mafia history and especially the Five Families
of New York and he devoured history books, newspaper articles,
academic papers, and he ended up writing like a ten

(24:45):
page outline for The Godfather that he would take to
Putnam and Sons, and Mario would make a pitch for
an hour describing his vision of The Godfather's story, and
the editors told him, you know what, go ahead and
we're sold, and they ended up gett him five thousand
dollars advance and he would start the real work of

(25:06):
creating The Godfather. He would have finally finished the book
in nineteen sixty eight, with the motivation being that he
needed the final installment on his payment so he could
take his family on a trip to Europe because his
wife wanted to go back to Germany and he promised her.
And he's like, okay, well, this is good enough motivation

(25:28):
to finally get this done. This is something like as
we go through this series that Mario Buzzo is pretty
famous for. Is phenomenal writer, but the work ethic is
not always there.

Speaker 4 (25:41):
Five thousand bucks in nineteen sixty why was it sixty eight?
I got to go do some math. But that's pretty
hefty mountain sixty eight, right, so nothing to sneeze that
when people would make ten thousand bucks a year and
feel like they're doing pretty good.

Speaker 3 (26:00):
It's a good chunk of change. It's uh when we
get into like, uh this part here, when when like
when Mario returned from his family vacation, he had lunch
with his editor, Bill Targ, who informed him the publisher
sold the paperback right to the book for four hundred
k uh, which translated into nowaday money from what I

(26:23):
read is three million dollars. So you have a guy
who's you know, he's down in the he can barely uh,
he can't pay for anything. He's never written a hit,
so he's going from job to job, and he comes
back from this vacation and it's like, all of a sudden,
he's written this massive hit out of I don't even
think I think he thought he was going to write
a hit. I don't think he thought it was going

(26:43):
to be this big hit because even at first, like
he couldn't believe it. But because he didn't even really
want to write this book. Like the way he viewed
it was like this was him selling out. You know.
It's like I don't know, you're in a punk rock
band and the producers just like, oh, if we clean
up the sound a little bit here and we do

(27:04):
a little bit of this and that, you know, you'll
get a hit on your hand. It's like, you know what,
all right, we'll do it. You're whatever the hit and
it worked right, and yeah, so he even ended up.
I think they gave him like one hundred thousand dollars
and then he came back like a week later saying

(27:26):
I need a hundred another one hundred thousand dollars because
the first hundred thousand dollars was to pay off the
loan chart and all the debt that he paid. The
publishers like, well, what did you do with the first
hundred thousand. It's like, oh, it doesn't last forever like this,
just to give you an idea of how much trouble
this guy actually was in and the Godfather was it was.
When it was released, it was released to blowing reviews

(27:47):
and everyone thought it was going to be it was
going to be a big hit. Readers were blown away
by just how authentic the book felt, with many people
speculating that Puzzo had connections to organize crime himself, which
he actually we took offense to the term perfect timing
kind of gets thrown around a lot. In the case
of The Godfather, I think the timing was kind of

(28:09):
perfect because the gangster genre as a whole kind of
goes through ups and downs where it's you know, it's
really popular for a couple of years, and then it
kind of goes away. But you know, the Godfather was released,
and the key off for hearings that had just happened
Joe Volacci, the Joe Vallacci hearings were going on. Not

(28:33):
I believe it was right around this time, right right
in there, right in there, so like the interests in
the mafia had just peaked again, and here comes this
Godfather book and seems authentic. You know, it seems like
this guy knows what he's talking about. And that's the
craziest thing is that I don't know. Man Samuel bol Gravano,

(28:55):
he talked about this. He was pretty convinced that Mario
Puzo was talking to somebody in the mob because he's
he's like, he gets so many of the details right, Like,
how does he got it so perfect? There's no way
that he just he didn't talk to anybody. I don't know,
you know, Mario denies it. He says, he just researched everything.
I mean, to each his own. I mean it comes

(29:15):
across is really like a guy, that really authentic. It
really does in a lot of ways, and.

Speaker 4 (29:23):
You know.

Speaker 3 (29:25):
Whatever. You know that the rest is history was a
massive hidden and it ended up becoming a movie.

Speaker 4 (29:32):
I'm a little dubious that he didn't at least have
some interactions with some mob adjacent to people, because either
that or the mob has started to change themselves to
be more like the Godfather or whatever. But it just
seems to be too close.

Speaker 3 (29:51):
I don't know, what do you think, Steve, Like, I'm
pretty sure, I'm I'm pretty sure he must have been
talking to somebody.

Speaker 2 (29:58):
I think for the book too, that it seems very
unlikely that he didn't. Yeah, you can read academic articles,
and you can read the newspaper, but I think to
get to get as much of the feeling that he did,
he must have been talking to somebody.

Speaker 4 (30:15):
Yeah. Well, i'll tell you. I'll tell you. From a
writer's perspective, you can make a lot of stuff up,
and a writer's imagination is rich and fertile and can
run with a concept and really fill it in and
make it seem very very real. But if you don't

(30:36):
know what you're talking about, you're going to trip over
something and make a fool out of yourself. I see
it all the time when people write these procedurals and
they've seen a lot of cop shows or whatever, maybe
they've read some textbooks or whatever, and they'll write a
scene where a cop pulls up on a hot call
in front of a building or whatever and jumps out

(30:58):
of the car, pulls out his gun and then rass
slide because it's dramatic, and they saw it on TV. Well,
that's right there, that's ridiculous. It's absolutely ludicrous. And if
they had talked to any cops and worth their salt,
a brand new rookie would be smart enough to be
able to tell them that that's wrong. You got to

(31:18):
fix that. I don't care how cool you think it
looks that it's more stupid than it is cool looking.
And I don't think that Mario Puzza could have written
this extremely layered and very involved mob interactions, you know,
without having had some sort of interactions something to draw them,

(31:42):
or he would have stepped on one of those same
land mines and be like, oh, there's no way anybody
would have That's the exact opposite of what we would
have done. And it's some big deal that makes, you know,
we totally destroy his credibility, But instead we get like
everybody loves the show, even gangsters.

Speaker 3 (31:57):
Yeah, like Corleellen the cooler own character, or he reminds me,
I don't know, Steve, I don't know, give me opinion,
give me your opinion after the but like he reminds
me of he's like a mix of Joe Perfacci and
Joe Binano. And from my understanding, the whole wedding scene
in the book and then famously in the movie was

(32:18):
literally inspired by the wedding scene between Joe Prafacci's I
believe it was his niece and Joe Bernano's son or whatever,
we're getting married, and it was like a connection of
the Perfacci and the Banano family. And if you listen
to Joe Binano talk and his book, his autobiography, which

(32:38):
the rest of them all was not very happy about.
But Joe Banano was just that type of guy. He
talks about himself like you would think Don Corleone would
talk about himself. You know, he denies that he was
ever involved in drug trafficking, which is just ludicrous. You know.
Joe Prafacci, you know, thought he was like this about

(33:00):
Catholic and you know, had his own uh, had his
own altar in his house and donated to the church
and did this and that and and you listen to
these guys and the way they viewed themselves or is
very much exactly how Corleone is presented in the Godfather.

Speaker 2 (33:19):
He really seems like he created Don Corleone. Vito is
who Joe Prafacci wishes. He was, like the archetype of
he probably hung I mean, and there is some evidence
correct that he hung out with Joe Prafacci or that
in some way was he connected in any way Puzzo

(33:40):
and Joe Prafacci.

Speaker 3 (33:42):
No, not at all.

Speaker 2 (33:43):
That's interesting because that's what I was thinking, like off
the bat, is that it's an archetype of somebody like
Joe Prafacci with the the the legitimate businesses and you know,
and then obviously Joe Prafacci was a man of many
a four ball uh. None of that had existed in

(34:03):
Vito Corleone. It was like a a Joe Prafacci scrubbed
of all of his rough edges and everything filled in
to make like the classic fairy tale, Don the guy
who's standing up for the for the little guy, and uh,
he's going to give justice where the system, the legitimate system,

(34:24):
won't give the justice. I have to imagine what I
always thought it was is what Joe Prafacci looking in
the mirror saw.

Speaker 3 (34:33):
Yeah, that's exactly it. I mean, I suggest anybody read
the General Joe Bernhanal book too, just because it's an
interesting read. If you read joeb on his book, you
would think he would never he had never done anything
wrong in his life. You know, it's it which is
just wild, right, And then you listen to Like the
Dawn when he's talking about himself and you get that

(34:56):
impression where it's just like, oh, I'm involved in a
little bit of gambling, and you know, I'm just hoping
out my friends and family, like what you know is
not what a father's supposed to do. And you know,
like the Godfather kind of.

Speaker 4 (35:09):
Are gonna gamble. People are gonna gamble, they're gonna drink,
they're gonna they want a little company, they want some
female company. All I do is provide a service, and
I just take care of my family. I mean, it's
such total rationality. But doesn't that description that you gave Steve,
doesn't that sound exactly what a writer would do. Yeah. Yeah,
take take a real life person and brush off the

(35:31):
the the dirt and the smudges and the and the
acne and the and and you know, add two inches
to their height and a little bit of of of
definition of the shoulders in the arms and make them
more eloquent, eloquent than they than they really are, and boom,
now you've got a movie version of of somebody. I
think it's very probable that's exactly what happened.

Speaker 2 (35:53):
Now there's a couple of people that we're going We're
going to lead up to talking about Francis for a
couple and now that we're I'm going to move into
the making of the first film that there's a couple
of key characters, Albert Ruddy and Robert Evans, who are
really key in making the movie. Maybe you can tell
us a little bit about Albert Ruddy first as we

(36:15):
move along.

Speaker 3 (36:17):
Yeah, Albert Ruddy, he was born to two Jewish parents
in Montreal, Canada, but was actually raised in New York
and New York and Miami, Beach. I think he moved
around a lot. He would attend a technical school in
Brooklyn before earning a scholarship that led him to studying
chemical engineering and City College, New York. There's another another

(36:41):
person or the story. They went to that college and
by nineteen fifty six yeard a degree in architectural engineering
from the University of Southern California. They get an idea,
like really early on on that Albert Ruddy was a
pretty remarkable individual, right, like obviously very intelligent, not you're

(37:04):
just you know, run of the mole, you know, Joe
Schmo type. And when he was done school, he actually
he worked for a construction company for a bit. He
was helping with designing the houses, and he got bored
with that quick and wanted to get into show business.
He worked for Warner Bros. For a bit, quit that

(37:25):
ended up working for the Rand Corporation, which is the
more kind of conspiracy minded members of the of the
of our audience. There's a lot of conspiracies about the
Rand Corporation. And I believe he was helping design computers
and stuff like that, the very early computers at that job.

(37:48):
But he got bored of that pretty quickly too, and
had a pull to get back into entertainment, and he
actually would get hired by Marlon Brando's father, believe it
or not, to help produce a movie called Wild Seed,
which I believe they were trying to get made for
a while and apparently Brando was at one point was

(38:09):
supposed to start in it, but then he was too
old for the role. And I haven't watched the film.
I think he was a relatively well reviewed, but it
was really small budgets. And after producing that, he would
actually pitch the TV show Hogan's Heroes, which I'm pretty
sure many people in the audience is probably a lot

(38:31):
more familiar with I Know Nothing, And yeah, I was
a massive hit that show, right, brand for six years.
Really crazy promise for the show when you think about it, right,
you know, it's like a comedy show that takes place
in a nazz epo W camp. Like it's just apparently

(38:54):
like when they sold it initially they were like what
are you taught? Like what you're gonna make? Nazi's funny?
Like how can you do that? You know? And he's
in Hollywood sayings, right, so you can imagine you can
imagine that took some serious balls to try to to
uh push that show, and uh that eventually let into
getting back into film, and he ended up producing a

(39:25):
movie called I Believe It's Little Haas and Halsey, the
one that stars Robert Rudford, and it was it was
a low it was like a pretty low budget film,
right and the movie the TV show the Offer actually

(39:47):
does a pretty good depiction of this where he wouldn't
take no for an answer. So he ends up like
going to Mexico where they were filming Bush, Cassie and
the Sundance Kid and basically promises Robert Redford because apparently
he was having legal troubles with Paramount at the time.
He's like, I can get rid of all these lawsuits,
but you've got to do this movie for me, And

(40:09):
he gets Paramount to drop a bunch of the lawsuits
and he does this movie and not only does is
the movie a success, actually he ends up getting in
under budget, which will be pretty influential in him getting
the job to produce The Godfather because he was known

(40:30):
as the guy that could get the job done quick
and under budget.

Speaker 2 (40:36):
Steve here with a quick word from our sponsors and
then moving on we have this other person, Robert Evans,
who just to set the table a little bit that
he was instrumental in getting this movie going.

Speaker 3 (40:54):
Yeah, Robert Evans's he's quite famous. Like he's done like
a lot of sof already people probably wouldn't be as
familiar with. But if you're familiar with especially film at
this around this time period, like we had been talking earlier,
around the seventies and stuff like that, Robert Evans is
pretty famous. Robert was born in New York City to

(41:17):
what he described as second generation Jewish immigrants. Both his
parents were pretty well off, so it wasn't as they
weren't as head as hard by the depression as many were.
He would work for his brother's fashion company during his
time in school, and when he was done in high school,
he did a ton of voice acting, and given his

(41:40):
he had a very distinctive voice, and he had the
ability to build a copy accents really well, so it
lend itself to radio and yeah, and then he he
did that for a bit and he would end up
him and his brother end up building a pretty impressive
women's clothing empire. And actually he was by chance he

(42:01):
was spotted by Norma Shira, who thought he would play
thought he would be perfect to play the role of
her late husband in a movie called A Man of
a Thousand Faces, and yeah, and Evans would go on
to act in a few other movies, but he decided
that his calling wasn't producing. And he was never a

(42:22):
big believer in his own personal acting. You always thought
he was not very good at it. And yeah, and
he got into producing. And he ended up producing a movie,
The Detective, which starred Frank Sinatra and ended up getting
mentioned in a news article by the New York Times.

(42:42):
And Charles Bluehorn, who owned Golf and Western, which ended
up buying Paramount, read the article and took a liking
to him right off the back because he had a
reputation of not doing things the regular way. He kind
of had like a punk rock aesthetic to it to himself,

(43:02):
where he was like a rebel right and Charles Bluehorn,
we'll get into him later, but he seemed to like
that quality in people. And like I pointed out earlier,
Evans he was a pretty famous producer. Actually. He would
go on to produce like The Godfather, of course, but
also Chinatown, Rosemary's Baby and Godfather too. So many of

(43:27):
the beloved films from in and around that time period
where you know, directors seemed to have a lot of
control over their works. Evans was involved in.

Speaker 4 (43:39):
He had a weird nineteen eighty though. You know, in
nineteen eighty according to Wikipedia anyway, he produced both Urban
Cowboy and Popeye. That's about as far from Chinatown as
you can get.

Speaker 3 (43:53):
Yeah, he would go on to produce The Cotton Club too,
which was a huge I personally really liked the film,
but it was a big financial disaster. It cost a
ton of money. He ended he would end up actually
getting caught up in drug trafficking charges himself because he
ended up getting he ended up getting a taste of

(44:14):
the nose candy. He denies to this day that he
was trapped while he's dead now, but he denied forever
that he was actually trafficking drugs. But I mean he
was a full blown drug addict later on in his life.

Speaker 2 (44:28):
Yeah, we've talked about these two kind of inside baseball guys,
but now we're getting into the the actual like the
man who when you think of The Godfather, you think
of Francis Ford Copla, and I think the Four We
even start I'd be interested to think with each of you,
and we'll start with Frank, what do you think of

(44:49):
Francis Ford Copla, Because he's one of those people I
come to and I just instantly think Godfather, and I
never really think much about his other work. Frank, what
is your general overview on Francis Ford Coppola.

Speaker 4 (45:06):
Well, I'm with you. I think everybody thinks of The
Godfather and maybe Apocalypse Now, which were probably his two
biggest movies. But you know, he made a lot of
movies that I really liked, some of which didn't do
so well, some of which which were pretty commercial. I mean,
off the top of my head. He did Peggy Sue

(45:28):
Got Married with Kathleen Turner and Nicholas Cage and that
actually did pretty well as a, you know, kind of
a teen comedy. And he made a movie reuniting with
James Kahn called Gardens of Stone, who was based on
a novel of the same name that took place during
the Vietnam era, and James conn played a grizzled sergeant

(45:51):
who was at the time in charge of burial details
at Arlington. There that's what they meant by Gardens of Stone.
The Headstones in Arlington, and it was just a really
good movie. I think he's a good filmmaker and pretty
good at making a rather diverse set of films. I mean,
he did The Outsiders, which you know was a bunch

(46:15):
of kids. Basically he's directing and then he you know,
turns around and he's directing you know, huge names. And
I don't think James conn was very easy to direct,
and he did that on more than one occasion. So
I think Copla is pretty masterful personally. Yeah, Chris, what
do you think of Coppola? Just in your first you know,

(46:36):
as we're starting to dip our toe in his story.

Speaker 3 (46:42):
Well, yeah, The Godfather, I love Apocalypse Now, Cotton Club, Yeah,
it was a big bust at the box office, but
I actually quite enjoy that movie. I'm trying to think
he directed that movie. I'm blanking on it right now.
But it's the one where Robin Williams is playing a kid,

(47:03):
but he's actually like an adult. Uh do you know, Jack,
He directed that one, believe it or not. And it
seems it's actually quite moving movie for family, you know,
family entertainment type stuff. And that's one thing I kind
of like about Francis though, is he he was not

(47:25):
afraid to take risks like he did a bunch of
different stuff, right, you know, he did, like a war
movie and Apocalypse Now. He does like the Mafia Godfather movie,
which was kind of was a bit of a throwback
movie if you really think about it, the way it
was filmed and told, and like Apocalypse Now was not

(47:47):
any of that. Right in a lot of ways, it
was like the heavy metal of cinema, cinema really right,
like roundbreaking and very different than a lot of the
stuff that I came beforehand, especially in terms of war movies.
And then you know, you take you look at the
Cotton Club and yeah, maybe it was a little misdirected
in some places, but he took a risk doing that

(48:09):
one too, especially working with Bob Evans again because at
that point they both hated each other. But it was
like one of those types of things like, oh, we've
done this once before, we might as well do it again.
We'll get a hit. And they didn't get a hit,
and I don't think their relationship ever got better after that.
And then Jack is another one. Yeah, I mean he's

(48:33):
a true artist, right, you know, And there's a lot
of I can't say that about a lot of directors
in Hollywood right where you can look at Francis Orcoppola's
work and I can say, I can honestly say that, Yeah,
this guy's a real artist. And because of the risks
that he was willing to take and he didn't play
it safe and arguably created two of the greatest masterpieces

(48:55):
in American cinema cinema history, right in the Apocalypse and
The Godfather, not just The Godfather but The Godfather too,
And people have different opinions and Godfather three, but you know,
down the road, we'll talk about that.

Speaker 2 (49:09):
Yeah, So tell us a little bit about Francis Ford
Coppola's background.

Speaker 3 (49:14):
Yeah, Francis was born in Detroit, Michigan. Uh, his father
was actually a flutis. His maternal grandmother was a was
the it was a composer to sor. His maternal grandfather
was a composer too. So like right off the bat,
like Francis is, He's coming from a family of artists, right.

(49:36):
It wasn't like this kid, you know, just kind of
did it on his own type thing. Uh, the the
jeans were there to use a cliche, but it's the
truth right, he was raised around it.

Speaker 4 (49:46):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (49:47):
When his when his father was named the head of
head flutis of the NBC Symphony Orchestra, they moved to Queens,
New York. Copola unfortunately would uh would end up getting
polio as a child, which would lead to him bedridden
for large portions of his young life. But he didn't
waste his time though. You would apparently create like puppet

(50:10):
theater productions, you know, just sitting in bed or what
have you, when the outbreaks would get too much room
to bear and he and when he could you know,
have the strength to walk around, Apparently he used to
steal his family's eight millimeter camera and just like film

(50:30):
family get togethers and film stuff with his with his friends.
And apparently after reading a street car named Desire at fifteen,
that's when Coppola decided that this is what I want
to do for the rest of my life. At that
time would have been theater director, but I want to
be an artist. And apparently when he was at school

(50:53):
he had the nickname of the Scientists because apparently he
was always really good with like engineering and architecture, real
stuff kind of building stuff, which is I mean, is
a helpful skill to have when you're a director because
a lot of it requires building sets and not getting
ripped off by you know, outside contractors. It helps when

(51:15):
you know yourself a little bit what you know, what
it actually costs and what it actually takes to build. Yeah,
his father didn't really prove the direction his son was
going and want Francis to become an engineer. I mean
it's understandable, like what father obviously, any father would probably
push for. Yeah, I go for the steady job, you know,

(51:37):
don't be an artist like myself. You know, I'm like
one in a million, right. I was working for the NBC.
Just as a side note, How crazy was that? Like,
you know, NBC was had like a symphony orchestra that
they played on TV that was for popular audiences to
listen to, and they spent a lot of money on that.
And people were listening to the orchestra as popular entertainment

(52:01):
not that long ago, and you the comparison is so
stark compared to what people watch as popular entertainment now,
like stuff like TikTok and there are stuff on YouTube.
I just thought that it's easy to forget that the
studios were doing stuff like that.

Speaker 4 (52:21):
It sounds like it was a bit of a holdover
from the radio days.

Speaker 3 (52:25):
The studio spent a lot of you know, the TV
studios and stuff like that, spent a lot of money
to make sure they they wouldn't spend all that money
if they didn't think if they weren't getting like a profit.
So obviously people were watching it, right, So it was
actually choices. Yeah, yeah, it's the truth, right. It was

(52:47):
actually upon seeing the film The Ten Days that Shook
the World by Sergio Eisenstein, and Kochla became convinced that
he wanted to be a film director. And people aren't
familiar with film. It's kind of like a recreation of
the Russian Revolution. It was a Soviet propaganda film, but

(53:10):
it's generally I haven't personally seen it, but I've seen
some of Eisenstein's stuff, and he's generally considered like Stanley
Kubrick before the Stanley Kuberk like, he's generally considered like
one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, regardless of
whether it was used for propaganda purposes. And once graduating

(53:34):
from an art school, he would end up in attending
UCLA Film School, and he would end up directing like
short horror films to make a little extra money, and
France is looking at how much he was actually bringing in,
and obviously it wasn't enough money, decided to start directing

(53:58):
what time was called skin flig. And you know, as
a side note, this might sound a little odd to people,
but that was fairly common. There was a lot of
famous Hollywood directors that did like Newdie films early in
their career. Wes Craven is the one that comes to
my mind right off the bat, just because I'm a
big Nightmare and Elm Street fan, and I've read a

(54:19):
lot about Wes Craven. There's a couple others I know.
Stanley Kubrick thought about getting involved in it himself just
because of the creative freedom he could have. And yeah,
it wasn't that uncommon.

Speaker 4 (54:33):
It wasn't uncommon among writers either. One of my favorite
mystery writers, Lawrence Block, he writes the Matt Scudder Feel
Matt Scudder detective novels, the Bertie Bernie Roadenauer like you know,
Burglar in the Closet, those books, and he's written I
don't know how many, at least a doesen't erotic thrillers,

(54:58):
and some of them are just flat out just a row.
They're not even mysteries. And it was pretty common for
writers in that same time period to do that under
a pen name, and it was usually what paid the
bills while they were working on the you know, stuff
that eventually became known for.

Speaker 3 (55:16):
You needed like an actual filmmaker to like actually film
some of the stuff, right, Like somebody knew stuff the
bell camera and actually how film worked. Now it's all digitally,
you don't need any of that. You just need like
a phone or whatever. But you know, you know you
wanted to do a newdie film, you actually needed somebody
with a bit of talent to actually film it. Francis

(55:38):
first real movie actually though, was Dementia thirteen, which was
produced I guess by depending on how you look at it,
the infamous Roger Corman. Roger Korman. I don't know if
anybody's familiar with him. He's he's famous for doing like
B movies and it just kind of spazy, the king
of the B movies, right, And the film was a

(56:00):
little budget horror film that would actually go on to
become a cult classic later on, and Coppola would be
actually considered part of the what's called the New Hollywood
with the likes of like William Freaking Rolling, Robert Altman,
Martin Scarcese, Brian de Palmer, George Lucas, and a couple

(56:23):
of others. Where those are filmmakers, they're all very different
in what they do, but in terms of like how
to make movies and the stories that they were telling
were actually very different than what had come before, and
hence the New Hollywood. It makes sense. We had talked
about it just earlier, not that long ago, about how

(56:45):
Apocalypse Now was a very groundbreaking war movie just because
it was totally different than all the war movies that
had come beforehand. Yeah, and Coppola would actually end up
he would end up writing the script for the Austin
or winning film Hadden. It's interesting because apparently apparently at

(57:06):
first the script that Francis wrote they just disregarded, and
George C. Scott, who would end up starring the movie
Patton and winning the Oscar, found Francis for a copealist
script and he read it and said, well, I'm not
going to do the movie if we don't use France's script,
And I mean the rest is history. I don't think

(57:28):
that's something a lot of people know. Is Francis won
an Academy Award for that script.

Speaker 4 (57:34):
I didn't know that now.

Speaker 3 (57:36):
It's funny how things just kind of happened by accident,
like George C. Scott hadn't found that script and it
wasn't firm, you know. Or maybe Patten doesn't win an Oscar.
Maybe Patten doesn't even get made, Francis doesn't win an Oscar.
Maybe Francis doesn't end up directing The Godfather. It's just
weird how, like, you know, stuff kind of happens by
accident sometimes, and to get it now, to get into

(57:58):
like the actual Godfather part, the apparently paramount and initially
didn't want Francis for the job at directing The Godfather,
believe it or not, they wanted the Sergio Leoni. And
for all those that don't know who Leone is, he's
famous for the spaghetti westerns starring Clint Eastwood, Good Bad

(58:18):
and The Ugly, probably being the most famous, the best
made one in my opinion. Sergi Leoni would actually go
on to direct his own gangster epic and what is
probably my favorite movie, or close to it of all time.
Once Upon a time in America, and I just thought, yeah,

(58:42):
I go a little pause here to think, like what
a totally different movie would have been though if he
ended up directing The Godfather though, right, Like, they're both brilliants,
they're both brilliant directors, but they're very they're very different.
Right where Serge is. He He's the type of director

(59:04):
where if you watch a lot of his movies, literally
nothing's being sad yet there's all this emotion pouring through
and it's done completely through just using the music and
close ups and the lighting, which in a lot of
ways is those are the three things that make film unique,
is the fact that you have this music, you can

(59:24):
zoom in on an actor's face, and then you have
like the lighting that you were totally in control of.
I don't know, I was thinking, I don't know, what
do you think Steve, like like surgery one directing The Godfather?
This would be one of the ones where I would
love to have seen both of them do it. I
think we're getting to see that with the New Dune movies,

(59:46):
where you have David Lynch's version and now you're seeing
Denise Villeneuve I believe is his name. I believe that's
how you pronounce it. But you're getting to see enough. Yeah,
it's close enough.

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
You're getting to see these two different takes on this
same thing, and just they're very drastically different. Wouldn't you
love to see that more where different? And I think
that that could be popular, where different directors take the
same concept or the same novel and both run with it.

Speaker 3 (01:00:18):
What do you think, Frank.

Speaker 2 (01:00:22):
Steve here again with a quick word from our sponsors.

Speaker 4 (01:00:26):
Well, we have a few examples in recent history. I
mean we've talked about the movie Manhunter, the Michael Mann
film from nineteen eighty six that was adapted from Thomas
Harris's book Red Dragon, which is a phenomenal look. More
people are probably familiar with Silence of the Lambs, which

(01:00:48):
he also wrote, but I think Read Dragon's a superior book.
And a few years later, maybe the early nineties, I'd
have to go look and see, but they did another
version of adapting that book and they just called it
Red Dragon that had Edward Norton in it, and it
had I think Ray Fines was played the the Francis

(01:01:12):
dollar Hyde. I mean, those two takes were very different,
the Michael Mann version and who directed the other one
I forget off the top of my head, But whoever
it was, it was a very different, different approach. Brent Rattner,
I believe his name was. He's the guy I'm not mistaking.
He was famous for the Rush Hour movies.

Speaker 3 (01:01:35):
So a very very very different type of director and
it shows in the film. But surgically only wasn't the
only guy they approached. Apparently they approached Peter Brogodanovich. They approached, Yeah,
he turned it down. He said he didn't want to
do anything with the mafia. Another interesting guy apparently they

(01:01:58):
approached and who actually really wanted to do the film,
but then they ended up changing their minds with Sam Peckham.
Pom was apparently very interested in doing The Godfather, and
I was thinking to myself, like that would have been
a very very very different movie where there are some
similarities between Francis Procoppola and Sergio Leoni. Uh and you

(01:02:21):
can see it if you watch Once upon a Time
in America that a lot of similarities between that and
The Godfather. In some ways it's a very different film,
but you can see some similarities in between the two
of them, and kind of how the story is told
where Sam peckham palm. It would have been much more visceral,

(01:02:41):
that's true, and I think it would have made it
like a really different movie.

Speaker 4 (01:02:46):
It would have been the sunny at the toll booth
scene throughout the entire movie if it was.

Speaker 3 (01:02:53):
Film, which is the producers, and I think that from
what I read, that's ended up what they changed their
mind because they when they were talking to Sam Peckabam
is like, oh, the only pression I get off of
him is like, well, haha is the body you know, Like,
it would have been a lot more violence, which it
would have made a fun movie. I don't know if
it would have been ended up being considered one of

(01:03:15):
the greatest of not the greatest movie ever made.

Speaker 4 (01:03:17):
But I think some of the qualities of the movie
that make the violent scenes stand out is they are
very visceral and very brutal and very you know, they're
not cinematically done like in a lush and beautiful way
to dramatize or or or romanticize somebody getting shot. That's

(01:03:40):
very it's very peck and pot esque actually the way
that they die. But the fact that there isn't a
lot of actual violence in the movie. Actually, I think
makes the violence that it's like profanity. Right, If everyone
walks around dropping F bombs constantly, then when you hear
an F bomb, it doesn't have any real impact. But

(01:04:02):
if they're walking around speaking the Queen's English for an
hour and a half and then somebody walks in and
drops a big old F bomb, man, that kicks you
right in the gut and you notice it. And I
think it's that way with the violence in this movie.
So I don't I mean, Peck and Paul, You're right,
it would have been a much different movie, and it
might have been a very fun movie, but I don't
think it would have been the absolute classic that it

(01:04:24):
was under Opala's hand.

Speaker 3 (01:04:26):
It was actually Peter Bart who was Evans's main assistant.
He suggested Francis Worcoppola because of I mean, he was
Italian American and his previous movie, The Rain People. It
may have done early at the box office, but it

(01:04:48):
was well reviewed and it was made cheaply, So I
mean those were all good things at the time, you know,
the big elephant in the room. We'll get into this
a little bit more later, when we actually get into
the actual making the gut Father. Paramount was we think
of Paramount now it's like, oh, he's a big movie studio,
and you know, they got all types of money. At
this time, it was very easily could have gone in

(01:05:09):
a business. It was not doing well at all, and
there was you know, Evans is one of the main
reasons why it turned around, right, because he produced a
bunch of hits, you know, Love Story and then The
Godfather and a couple of others. Francis Initially they approached Francis,
and Francis initially didn't want anything to do with the

(01:05:33):
movie because he thought, like Mario's Bozo's book was like
kind of sleazy trash, which is I think it's kind
of funny coming from a guy that was directing new
dy flicks to just pay the bills.

Speaker 4 (01:05:44):
Uh, But that means he was pretty good at knowing
what sleezy trash looks.

Speaker 3 (01:05:50):
Like, right, But that's neither here nor there. A Cople
had opened up his own studio at one point because
he was gonna he was going to produce his own
movies and he was going to be like a real
artist and he wasn't going to need the studios. But

(01:06:10):
he owned Warner Brothers half a million dollars uh for
the budget for this. I guess it's Star Wars fans
would probably be familiar with it. T HX one three eight.
It was actually I believe George Lucas's first or second film,
and Coppola was had been producing it in his studio

(01:06:33):
was obviously going bankruh, so he found it.

Speaker 4 (01:06:38):
Would produce American Graffiti too.

Speaker 3 (01:06:41):
I believe he produced it too. I was That's why
was George Lucas's first film? Was it American Graffiti? It
was American Graffiti, right?

Speaker 4 (01:06:50):
It was eleven thirty eight was his This was before that,
and that was more of a concept film and it's
kind of cult classic. But then American Graffiti was this
big breakout and I'd have to jump online to double check,
but I'm I'm ninety nine point nine percent certain that
Copola produced produced that, because I'm pretty sure they became

(01:07:14):
friends and state friends for quite some time. Lucas and
Copola did yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:07:20):
And it's funny because it's like two totally different types
of filmmakers. You know, Copola is coming from this tradition
where film was like really director focused and kind of
more artistic and George Lucas comes from well, I guess
he came out of that same group, and he's got
the reputation of as the guy that kind of destroyed
all of that really right with Star Wars. I don't

(01:07:41):
think that was really his intention, but that's what ended
up happening. And so Copola, you know, realizing that, plus
prodding from as a friends and family, you know, don't
be dummy, take the job. You're half a million dollars
yet and go make a big hit. And so cople

(01:08:05):
ended up, you know, he found it within himself to
take the job, and I guess the rest is history. Yeah,
there we have with folks, we've pretty much covered the
all the backgrounds and the major players leading up to
the actual making The Godfather. So stay tuned for next
week as we cover the actual making of the film,

(01:08:26):
which are ensure you was a wild story that you're
going to want to hear about.

Speaker 4 (01:08:30):
Yeah, for sure, I mean so far.

Speaker 2 (01:08:32):
I mean I would have to imagine that most movies
go through a rocky start, but I think knowing the
end that this is an absolute classic that's using that
it's a lot of people who are new faces. They're
doing things and I think it's not maybe the Gorilla style,

(01:08:56):
but they're doing things in a very different way in Mafia.
For a gangster movie that we would probably want to
call it at this point, they're doing it all in
a very different way, and it's interesting to see how
all that comes together.

Speaker 4 (01:09:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:09:12):
One of the more remarkable things as we get into
the details of the actual making of the film is
that I walked away from And I've always kind of
known this because I've always been a film nerd in
my entire life, but in particular this how not so
much that takes like artistic will in terms of like
Francis work Coppola sticking to his vision and having good

(01:09:34):
producer that I understands are like somebody like Evans and already.
But a lot of it is is dumb luck, like
how things it's just kind of like by accident, you know,
Like we'll get into it a little bit later, but
like the character Luca Rosey in the movie was he
just kind of walked on set and Francis work Coppola

(01:09:56):
saw him and He's like, oh, that's Luca Brozi right there,
and then people thought he was crazy because he was
struggling to read his lines, and that's actually true, and
I mean, he's probably one of the most memorable characters
in cinema history, you know. And we'll get into a
little bit about, you know, how much people did not

(01:10:17):
want Albacino to play the role of the Dawn Sun
Mike Corleone. It's crazy to think, Yeah, it really is,
you know. And we'll get into the details of the
people that they actually wanted to play the role, which
will blow your mind. And Unlike I could say, well,

(01:10:38):
I guess you because you write books, Brank, So it's
like you don't. You just write what you want right, really,
and you don't really have to like you don't have
to have like all these other things kind of fall
into place to you just write it right. With film,
it's not that like the producer has to kind of
understand your vision and then certain things have to kind

(01:10:58):
of happen by accident, and do you know what I mean, Like,
there's so many other intangibles in terms of creating like
a great film, and a lot of it is like
kind of just dumblock. It reminds me of wrestling in
some ways, where you know some things, you know, you
plan it out, and that just falls flat. And then

(01:11:19):
you have a guy like Razor Ramone that just shows
up to Vince's office with a toothpick in his mouth,
and Vince is like, you know what, I don't know
what else to do with you. I think this is
really stupid, but you know, and then he goes out
and plays the character, and I mean it was a
massive hit. Right So.

Speaker 4 (01:11:37):
In Hollywood's such a strange place. I'll tell you a
quick story. H one of my best friends I went
through the Academy with his brother is a producer. He
produced a show called Scare Tactics was part one of
the bigger ones. I don't know if you ever saw
that as when one of those sci fi channels or
one of those cable channels where they set up since

(01:11:59):
you it's almost like a get like a gotcha sort
of thing, Like me and Chris would set up Steve
and with the situation and then like zombies would break
into the house and we'd freak out like it was
real and the you know, it's kind of a punk
sort of thing, and we would, you know, to see
what Steve's reaction would be. Anyway, he did that and
a few other ones and saw my friend, Brad. I

(01:12:19):
was like, Brad, dude, my my River City series is
perfect for television man. I mean it's it's an ensemble cast,
do a book a season, and it's got multiple plotlines
and movie. He'd be perfect for TV. And he's like, yeah,
I think it would be. It would be awesome. We'll
send it to your brother, man and see if he
can pitch it. And he's like, uh no, I'm like

(01:12:41):
why not. He's like, look, if I send it to
my brother, I've already talked to him about this kind
of stuff. Then if I send it to my brother,
what ends up happening is him and his partner will
walk into a big wigs office and they'll sit down
and let's say they're pitching your book. And they'd sit
down and they'd say, hey, we got this series, multiple
multiple books, tons of storylines, ensemble cast. Perfect. You know,

(01:13:03):
eight to twelve seasons. Episode seasons takes place in Okay,
in Washington, great tax breaks if we film there. Guy's
a cop with the city there, so they probably get
good cop cooperation with the locals. Blah blah blah. Just
make a killer presentation and the guy'd sit behind his
desk and he'd be like yeah, listening and nodding and everything,

(01:13:23):
and then when they'd finish, he'd say, Okay, well that's great,
that's really great. But do you think we could do
it with monkeys, and like, could the monkeys drive the
cop cars and like all the bad guys are clowns
and they have to chase them on a skateboard? Wouldn't
that be cool? Could we do that? And I'm like, no,
it's not. Like Brad's like, yeah, that's how it is.

(01:13:45):
And if they want to make a movie, they're making
that monkey cops chasing clowns on skateboards movie or TV
show or they're not working, so that's the works. And
another buddy of mine who edits down there, confirmed this
when I told him this story, and he said, basically,
in Hollywood, everybody has an idea and they all think
they're writers. So for something to get made and to

(01:14:08):
like come through somewhat unscathed is a pretty big deal.
Like your story with the patent script, I think that's
a perfect example. Like that script was rescued from you know,
from other people's notes, basically is what I have no
doubt happened to it. And if it wasn't for Jersey Scott,
you would have got the movie that you would have got.

(01:14:28):
So for this movie to get to the point where
it got made, what the people that were involved in
it is pretty miraculous.

Speaker 3 (01:14:35):
Top of the two we're going to get into it is,
you know, you have the actual mafia trying to stop
this movie from being made too. You know, like there's
some really funny stories of Joe Colombo and legitimate Baffia
guys that are, you know, threatening people to not make
this movie, you know, and you have people with serious
way like Frank Sinatra did not want this movie made

(01:14:56):
at all.

Speaker 4 (01:14:58):
Yeah, I wonder why. You wonder why Johnny Fontaine.

Speaker 3 (01:15:04):
So yeah, well we'll save that for especially looking forward
to some of the Some of the Joe Columbo's stories
are pretty pretty funny. I mean, I've taken a somewhat
of a liking to Joe Columbo. I'm not gonna lie.
We talked about him previously in our Crazy Joe series,
in our Italian Civil Rights series. Initially I thought he

(01:15:26):
was When you first read about Joe Columbo, you think, oh,
this guy's just you know, he did this Italian Civil
Rights League. This guy's just you know, he's crazy, he's dumb,
he's but I don't think he's that at all. I
think he's an utterly fascinating guy in the mafia.

Speaker 2 (01:15:46):
We're going to leave it there for today, but if
you have questions, comments, we would love to hear them.
And the best thing you can do to help us
out is if you like what you're hearing, tell a
friend about it so that they can be i'm friends
of ours.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Dateline NBC

Stuff You Should Know

My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}From Chaos to Classic: The Godfather’s (1972) Creation Saga