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Cover: The Godfather Speaks, Page 3

By Marvin R. Shanken

(Continued)

Coppola: Well, directors could be replaced, especially when they're unemployed directors, as I was before the film started, and especially since I was such a kid.

CA: How old were you?

Coppola: I was 30. The last day on that first week, Friday, Pacino twists his ankle and they had to take him to the hospital and I didn't finish the scene. Now they're saying, "He's falling behind schedule." I said, "What does that have to do with whether they take the actor away with a twisted ankle?" They really were pushing to get rid of me.

I would go home on the weekend and I had to rewrite scenes and I was in a cold sweat. I couldn't sleep at night. I'm in this horrible little apartment, with all the painting, my little boys. The second week was coming up and there were a few days when Brando was gonna have his first day on set and we're shooting downtown. They're all very anxious to see the Brando stuff.

CA: So, by that point, you're saying they were high on the idea of Brando in the film?

Coppola: Well, they kept him. They're not high on him, because I had done that trick of going straight to Bluhdorn. The first Brando stuff comes in and they hate it. They hate it. They said, "Oh, he mumbles. You can't understand him. It's too dark." Even Bluhdorn hates it. It was the scene when they're in the olive oil factory and Sollozzo comes in and they all are in a room. They just hated Brando. Now they're really serious about getting rid of me. We get through the second week and now the third week comes up and we're shooting Brando with the oranges and stuff.

We're all right outside the scene. I said to them, "Listen, it was Brando's first day. The actor's first day. First of all, I didn't think it was so bad, but Brando was a little nervous and stuff." I say, "Let me go again," I said to them, because I was right. It was right there in Chinatown and Little Italy. I was out in the street by the vegetables, and where we were shooting we'd also shot the scene they didn't like. "I'll reshoot it in a day." They said, "No." I said that's odd.

Gray Frederickson says, "Listen, this weekend they're gonna fire you." I won't get into the politics, but it was a lot of politics. My editor had sold them a bill of goods that the film wouldn't cut together and that he had directed a picture and that maybe he would be a better director. And he has a friend who was his producer, and he asked them to give this guy an assistant director's job.

Now I had a group in my own movie that was conspiring to get rid of me. My own friends! They figured I was lost. But I remember this guy, a friend that I looked up to, had a meeting with me, and he said, "Francis, face it. The acting is terrible. It's not gonna cut together. I don't know what to do. I can't put the footage together."

But I've been told that film studios never fire a director on a weekday, because if a director gets fired on a weekday, then the studio loses two days in the transition. They'll always wait till the weekend. They'll fire him after Friday, then the new director comes in and he'll be ready for Monday. So I took a real chance. I went in—and I knew who all the conspirators were; there were about 16 of them—I fired them all on Wednesday.

They were like, "What do you mean we're fired?" I said, "I'm the director. Fired. You're out." And I took my crew and I went and I reshot the Brando scene. Personally, I didn't really have to. It would be interesting today to look for the two versions, but I'm not even sure which one is in the movie.

Evans had a fit. "What are you doin'? You fired the so-and-so." I startled them, so that by the time the weekend had come, I had reshot the scene. I said, "Well, let's wait and see how it looks." So, they look at it and they say, "Well, it's much better and we don't need all the bad publicity." But I had already fired everyone anyway, and there was nothing they could do. Then I get a call from Charlie Bluhdorn, and he says, "I saw the movie scenes, and it's terrific." He said, "I want you to come to dinner with me tonight." I brought my father. And Charlie Bluhdorn takes me to the Palm Restaurant and he buys steaks and lobsters. I got his arm around me. "Ah, you're great," he says to me.

And from that moment on, he figures we're stuck with this loser. Let's at least build him up a little. They knew what they had been doing to me. They had been punishing me. We had this big dinner at the Palm steak house and suddenly, Charlie Bluhdorn is my best friend.

We continued shooting. Their guy, the minder, was still on me and we went a little over budget and they were very tough on me. For example, we're shooting the wedding scene in Staten Island. There was a scene in the script in which The Godfather is sitting in his tomatoes with his grandchild where he dies.

CA: That's a classic scene.

Coppola: Well, funny story. They cut it out. They said, "You can't shoot that scene." I said, "Look, we'll do it right where the wedding is so no one will know and I can do it in fifteen minutes." "You don't need to show him die, you just cut to the funeral and we'll know he died." I said, "But, this could be nice with the little kid. I wanna shoot it." They said, "Well, we gotta break for lunch in a half an hour; if you can get it done in a half an hour, then get it."

We had the tomatoes and they made a big stink about it because the art director had flown the tomatoes in from Chicago at a cost of $3,000 or so much a tomato. We made the tomato patch and the little kid comes on with Brando, and the little kid is scared. He doesn't want to do anything. I said, "All right, we'll just do a shot. He's a little kid, he's playing and then he goes to The Godfather, but he's afraid of The Godfather." We do two takes. We have two cameras set up, which is to say we shoot it all at once. Brando says to me, "I got an idea." So, he takes an orange and he said, "We'll just shoot because we have twelve minutes."

In the movies, if you don't break at the right time for lunch, all the crew gets a fine. So, if you miss the break, it could cost like $10,000. They were there ready with the stopwatch. They would have cut me off. Brando takes an orange in the scene and he cuts it and puts it in his mouth and he smiles at them and the little kid goes, "Ahhhh [Coppola makes a whining sound]." You know…and he goes like that, and they say, "Meal break." So, it was that close that the scene wasn't gonna get shot. But we had it. Later on, we went and we did the part where he keeled over, and I was able to piece it in. Making the movie was like that.

I hated it. I hated it, I wanted to be done with it. It was the most miserable time of my life.

CA: In retrospect, you must be greatly satisfied, like a great chef who takes different food items and blends them together into great food, or a winemaker who makes great wine. You took unknown actors, a washed-out has-been, and on top of all the battles you had to fight, created something special. How does that make you feel?

Coppola: The key thing was that book I showed you. In that preparation with all those notes, I had outlined what the movie was going to be. And I had a cast of my friends who remained a really tight little group that supported me. Even though I had all this pressure from without, and nobody liked what we were doing, I had these wonderful actors who were on my side. And, I had this concept from Mario Puzo's wonderful book. That's what guided us, too.

But I had no idea, until the movie was long finished, what had happened. The struggles went on right through the editing. They pulled the music out and said how they hated the music, or how they told me to take a half an hour out or they were gonna fire me, and that when I took the half hour out, they said, "You ruined the picture." Or they said, "We ordered a movie and you brought us a trailer," so they put the half hour back in and then they said, "Look how brilliant we are, we put that in."

To me, it was just a horrible experience. I hated it. I still hate the memory of it. I didn't even know the picture was any good until a friend of mine that I called to give me some advice looked at it and said, "This is terrific." That was Bob Towne, the writer. But at the time, I had nothing positive happening.

CA: Did any of the Paramount executives ever say anything to you in the years following the movie's success?

Coppola: They desperately tried to go back and show how really it was to their credit. Evans claimed he had saved the picture because he asked me to put back the half hour that he had told me to take out.

CA: What about Pacino, De Niro, Brando?

Coppola: Yeah, we remained close and we worked together. They went on to become movie stars. But they had never been the doubters. They were just these kids I brought in and they were hoping I wasn't gonna get fired. The group was tight and remained tight. Of course, when I made the second film, which I didn't wanna make, the rules were different. Paramount had nothing to do with it. They didn't even see the script or anything.

CA: Tell me how the rules differed between Godfather I and Godfather II.

Coppola: Godfather I was done. I vowed I wanted nothing more to do with it. I didn't ever want to see anything about the Mafia or anything about the film. Charlie Bluhdorn says, "Francis, you have the formula of Coca-Cola. You should make another Godfather." I said, "Charlie, I don't even want to hear about that. I hate The Godfather. I don't want to know anything about…." He said, "But that's Coca-Cola." So, then he asked me to make a second film and I said, "Lookit, the movie doesn't need a second film. It ends at the end. It's not like Andy Hardy or something. You could make five of them. It's a drama, and it's done." "You gotta make another Godfather," and I said, "I absolutely will not make another one."

CA: What had the movie grossed up to this point?

Coppola: I have no idea, but it was the biggest grossing picture in history at that time. It changed the way movies were shown. In the old days, a movie would come out in one theater and play. In Godfather, they brought it out in six, seven theaters and that was like, Wow! It was huge. It was the big success, bigger than Gone with the Wind—at the time. So, then they started again, but I wanted nothing to do with Evans. He had made me miserable. I was so glad that I could just be free and I wanted to make my movie The Conversation, which I was gonna make before anything else.

When The Godfather came up for the Oscars, it won Best Picture, but didn't win Best Director. I was Best Director for the Directors Guild of America, but when they announced Best Director at the Oscars, Bob Fosse won it for Cabaret, so I was a little depressed, because every young guy wants to win an Oscar. Charlie said, "Francis, you won The Bank of America award." All of a sudden, my little six percent was gonna be worth $6, $7, $8 million. I had never had two dimes to rub together in my life. Suddenly—how else can you say it—I was rich just from having that little piece.

Charlie started working on me to make another Godfather picture and I absolutely refused. He kept coming and coming. Finally I said, "I will find a young director that I think is really talented, that is every bit as good as me, and we'll have him do it, and I'll help. I'll be like a producer. But, I won't do it. I don't want to be involved with Paramount." I hated those guys. He said, "OK."

You know, a lot of business guys realize like I did that even with the terms that you agree to initially, it will all change. Four months went by and I was thinking about it, so I finally go back and I said, "I'm ready. We got an idea and I would like to suggest
a director."

CA: Who is doing the screenplay for this? Who's going to write it?

Coppola: I was going to help. Me and Mario were going to help. There was no screenplay yet. There was only "What was it gonna be?" You know, the guy's dead. I go back and Evans was there and they go, "Who do you want to direct it?" I said, "Well, the guy I think who'd really do a great job is a guy named Marty Scorsese." And Evans said, "Absolutely not. He will never direct The Godfather. That is the worst idea I ever heard." I said, "Well, I can't deal with this," and so, I leave. Then, Bluhdorn says to me, "Look, you gotta do it. You're the only one who can do it. What do you want?'

And I said, "OK, first of all, I want to make my movie The Conversation, that I'm gonna do now." By then, I had gotten Gene Hackman to do it. "Second of all, I will do The Godfather—the second Godfather—but I have some conditions. One, is I want a million dollars." Some stupid amount of money that I figured they'd say, Forget about it. I didn't want to do it. I didn't know how to do it. "And, number three, Bob Evans can have nothing to do with it. He cannot…he cannot see the budget. I do it alone. I will do the whole thing, but no executives can be around. Nobody can be on the set. He cannot even see the script or see the movie until it's done. And the fourth thing I want is, I don't want to call it The Return of Michael Corleone, the way they always did it. I want to call it The Godfather: Part II.

They said, "Well, the million dollars is no problem. We can work it out with Evans, but we can't agree to calling it The Godfather: Part II." I said, "Why not?" He said, "Well, because everyone's gonna think that it's the second half of the movie they already saw. They're gonna think, "Godfather: Part II, oh, we gotta go in and go see the second half." I said, "Well, that's all right. We'll use the scene."

I didn't mention this earlier, by the way, that they had all these terrible ads for the movie, and I was the one who said, "No. I just want to use the same logo from the book, with the hands and the string." Then they had to go buy that. And, I said, "Well, we'll make it in red this time, so they'll know it's our movie." So, the big sticking point was calling it The Godfather: Part II in the ad. I was the first one ever to call a movie Part II.

CA: Did they give you a bigger percentage of the second film?

Coppola: I think I got a piece of the gross, as opposed to the net. And they told me they would let me do anything I wanted. I didn't have to show them the script. I didn't have to have any permission, and it was going to be called The Godfather: Part II. And then, I sat down and I wrote a script and I brought the script to Mario and then Mario helped me and we worked together and then we put together that movie.

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