Death by a Thousand Cuts

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It's July of 1971.

A car rolls down the ancient roads outside of the sprawling city of Palermo.

Inside the car are a local driver and three American filmmakers.

The Godfather has arrived in Sicily.

Francis Ford Coppola, his production designer Dean Tavalares, and producer Gray Frederickson are scouting locations near Corleone,

the town whose name Mario Puzzo appropriated for his American mafia family.

Dean Tavalares takes his camera out of his bag and starts taking photos from the back window of the car.

The driver goes berserk.

No camera.

No photos.

Someone will see, he says.

On this summer's day in 1971, many mobsters still live here, which causes the fur over Tavaleris' camera.

Tensions are high.

A judge was recently assassinated, and the authorities think the culprit is hiding out in Corleone.

But Corleone is too urban, dirty, and crowded to capture Coppola's vision.

The group travels on.

They finally reach the tiny villages in the hills, just a few miles away from the coastal resort town of Taramina.

Here is Coppola's land of ghosts, where Michael comes to live in exile.

I'm Mark Seal and I'm Nathan King.

And this is Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli.

In today's episode, we're making our way from the Sicilian light to the darkness of Hollywood editing studios and the tumultuous season of post-production.

From drug-induced obsession to compulsive defiance, the war behind the making of the Godfather rages on.

So we escaped grim New York for the hot, bright light of Sicily in July of 1971.

Yes, and it comes as a relief for Coppola and our beleaguered crew.

The slim-down casting crew went to Sicily for two weeks, which was yet another fight that Coppola had with the studio.

The studio brass, of course, thought it would be a lot simpler and a lot less expensive to shoot on the back lot of the studio than to travel all the way to Sicily with a crew and shoot there.

Can you imagine how different that would have looked?

Yeah, I think it would have made a big difference.

I mean, you can feel these scenes when Michael's walking through these back rows of Sicily with his bodyguards, and then he meets Apollonia by chance and is hit by what he calls the Thunderbolt.

Even Gordon Willis, the Prince of Darkness, embraced the Sicilian light.

Here he is in a 2002 interview on NPR.

So I figured at that point, Sicily should look,

you know, mythical and sunny and it's kind of storybook feeling.

So there was a juxtaposition between

these two places, New York and Sicily, and there was a counterpoint when we went back and forth.

Willis and Coppola were finally getting along once they got to Sicily.

Why the sudden congeniality?

Were they just happy to be in Italy?

Well, I think the pressure was a little turned down.

Filming was almost over, and crucially, Jack Ballard was an ocean away, no longer breathing down their necks.

If Jack Ballard is gone, how is Robert Evans keeping tabs on filming?

Well, he's really not.

Jack Ballard had this idea that dailies could be overnighted to him every day, but that didn't really work out.

I have a feeling they got lost in the mail.

It wasn't the best plan.

Listen to this memo.

TWA Flight 845, leaving Rome 2 p.m.

every day and arrives in Los Angeles 1.05 a.m.

the next day.

This means Monday's dailies would be sent on Tuesday, arrived Hollywood Wednesday, run in Beverly Hills the same day, and we in turn would ship Thursday morning.

Well, no wonder wonder Coppola was happy.

By the time he gets notes on the first day of shooting, four days have gone by.

Yeah, exactly.

And it didn't work out the way Jack Ballard wanted.

According to Al Ruddy, the shooting in Sicily just went smoothly.

They got in, did their work, and got out with very little fanfare.

So tell me about casting the Sicilians.

I know the casting of Apollonia was so important to Coppola.

It was, and Coppola gave an interview in 2001 that we've mentioned before, where he takes us through his prompt book.

I'm in the Sicilian section.

I see it says the core to show how Michael meets and falls in love with Apollonia and demonstrate that he intends to marry her and indicate Fabrizio's desire to go to America.

And even in this stage of early planning, Coppola knew that Apollonia had to be a true beauty.

5.

Pitfalls.

If Apollonia doesn't make your heart stop just to look at her.

How did Coppola end up finding the woman who would play Apollonia, Simoneetta Staffanelli?

Well, there were a list of 22 frontrunners.

They were looking at really more well-known young Italian actresses, but ultimately they still weren't quite there with the casting of Apollonia.

And a casting director sent Coppola a photo, and he said, let's meet her.

And so he met her for an audition, and she apparently was perfect.

And for such a short-lived character, she delivers an incredible performance.

And her and Pacino have an incredible chemistry as well.

Yes, and she spoke no English, but she later said in an interview that she could tell Pacino wanted to talk to her, but they mostly spoke with their eyes.

And Sicily was a bit of a homecoming for Pacino, right?

His grandparents were from there, if I'm not mistaken.

Yes, and I think he felt so at home there, freed up from the pressures that he had in New York, where he felt like he was going to be fired.

And in Sicily, he knew the role was his and he was able to relax a little bit.

You know, I was able to interview Pacino by email for the book, and I can read you a bit of what he said about filming in Sicily.

And I quote: The Sicilian people embraced us.

I loved their honesty, openness, and hospitality.

I had not become well known, so I had the luxury of just being another person.

And that very much mirrors his character in the movie, Michael, who sort of escapes New York and lives in relative anonymity in Sicily.

There are people who pay a lot of money for that information.

But then your daughter would lose a father

instead of gaining a husband.

I think Pacino felt freed up from the pressures that he had in New York, where he felt like he was going to be fired.

And in Sicily, he knew the role was his and he was able to relax a little bit.

And you can kind of see it.

You know, you see him in the villages, drinking at that bar, meeting Apollonius' father and walking down those ancient roads.

I mean, you feel he's more relaxed.

So, filming in Sicily ends with the literal bang of Apollonius' untimely death.

As Simonetta Stefanelli so simply put it in that interview, I met him, I married him, I died.

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When it came time to leave Sicily, the production moves back to Los Angeles, where the mood is quite different.

Now the fight over post-production begins.

But for this fight, Coppola has a slightly different Robert Evans to contend with.

That's right.

During the height of filming, when Evans was watching dailies and absolutely obsessed with the movie, he injured his his back, supposedly playing tennis.

Here's what his then wife, Allie McGraw, told me.

He played very good, but very

unbeautiful tennis, and he just, you know, it was just a freak thing.

He just swung back and tripped and torqued his back severely.

He was in immense pain, completely drugged up with painkillers and cocaine.

and literally being wheeled between the Paramount editing rooms in West Hollywood on a gurney.

Here's Peter Bart.

But he was in such terrible shape then.

He was physically a mess and

he looked like a ghost.

I feel like this whole episode goes to show how dedicated Evans was.

Nothing was going to stop him from leaving his mark on the film.

Certainly not, but as he wrote in his memoir several years later, the drugs really took a toll on him.

So Evans is running his empire from a gurney.

Where's Coppola?

Coppola basically recuses himself back to San Francisco to take a first pass at the edit.

He and his wife Eleanor had just bought a huge Victorian mansion in San Francisco's Pacific Heights neighborhood.

That's a step up from the borrowed apartment in New York.

It was a step up, but according to Eleanor, these previous owners had a lot of dogs, and so they woke up in the middle of the night scratching, and they had been bitten by fleas.

But at least he's not in L.A.

Coppola had had insisted from the beginning that The Godfather was not and should never be an LA production.

I think it was a technicality.

Coppola is in San Francisco, but Robert Evans' presence had followed him there.

Coppola later said that Evans threatened to take the edit away from him if he delivered a movie longer than two hours and 15 minutes.

So where does he begin?

Well, Coppola hires two editors, Bill Reynolds and Peter Zinner, and the trio start the editing process right in that flea-ridden Victorian home where they screen almost 90 hours of footage.

It was so much to get through that the two editors flipped a coin.

Reynolds would take the first half and Zenner the second, and somehow the three of them got a cut together that was

two hours and 53 minutes long.

Well, that's it.

Coppola loses the edit if Evans' rule is to be believed.

Yes, in his characteristic defiance, Coppola delivers a cut that he knows is too long.

He showed it first to his colleagues in American Zoatrope in a San Francisco screening room, and then to the suits at Paramount at the Gulf and Western building in New York.

How does Robert Evans make it to New York with his bad back?

I have no clue.

Maybe with the help of some drugs.

Maybe.

So what are the reactions to the screening?

Well, Coppola remembers the San Francisco reaction being just so-so.

Walter Murch remembered it being incredible, but the New York screening was a different story.

Here's Peter Bart.

And the person in charge of Italy, the territory, said that the picture would never play in Italy.

He said, I'm not sure it's even worth.

advertising it overseas.

It's just not a good movie.

So it was very negative at that point.

Apparently, Evans was in a feud with Paramount's new president, Frank Yablonz, who were both buying for the approval of Charlie Blue Dorn.

Frank said, too long,

won't play it often enough.

And he didn't like the picture that much.

So word gets back to San Francisco that Coppola has to cut 40 minutes from his masterpiece.

Oh, no.

It gets worse.

Not only does he have to cut 40 minutes, he has to take the new cut down to L.A.

to screen it in the pool house at Woodland for an adult Robert Evans.

And how does Evans feel about the new cut?

Robert Evans groans.

He says the shorter version, which by the way is still two hours and 15 minutes, feels even longer.

Here's Evans sparing no words about how he felt in his memoir.

The picture stinks, Francis got it.

The untouchables is better.

You shot a great film.

Where the fuck is it?

In your kitchen with your spaghetti?

It sure ain't on the screen.

Where's the family, the heart, the feeling?

Is that left to the kitchen too?

He immediately calls New York and tells Al Ruddy that if they leave it at 2.15, that he's walking and they can close the fucking studio.

Nami a studio head that tells a director to make a picture longer.

Only a nook like me would.

Sounds about right.

The movie consumed him.

And keep in mind, he's still being rolled around on this gurney and insists that Coppola stay in LA so they can edit the movie together.

This guy can't escape.

No, he really can't.

And to make it worse, Coppola is strapped for cash at this time.

He's waiting on his next paycheck, so he's staying in James Kahn's guest room.

And how long does it take?

About two weeks, but the facts are fuzzy.

Partially, I think, because Evans later would recall it like something out of a bad acid trip.

Here's Evans again, reading from his memoir.

I was feeling like a fucking cartoon character, having various hands turn me over from one orthopedic bed to another, from bedroom to home screening room to paramount screening rooms to bed on wheels going from sound state to sound stage.

He was completely consumed by the Godfather and I think he went a little nuts.

My priorities were so fucked up that nothing bothered me.

Nothing got in my way.

Including my health, my wife, my kid, my finances.

My obsession was the Godfather.

And how did that obsession show up in the edit?

Well, according to Evans, he made the radical decision to make the film longer, and he painstakingly extended shots and found new scenes.

But Coppola wanted it longer from the beginning.

Exactly.

I was able to communicate with Coppola over email when I was writing the book, and I sent him a list of questions.

Next to the question,

what were Robert Evans' contributions to the final edit of the film?

He just left a blank.

So no contribution.

Apparently.

And it makes sense that they have different recollections of this time.

According to Peter Bart, they weren't even speaking.

They just spoke through him.

Here's what Peter told me.

Now, Bob feels that he found scenes that Francis had left out and nuances.

scenes that had great nuance about character and restored those.

I do not know who is right.

I suspect that A, that Francis is correct, that B, that Bob also had a brilliant take on the picture and did let scenes run long

that had been cut too abruptly.

And it wasn't just a behind-the-scenes battle.

There was a public press war going on, too.

Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Yes, the press caught wind that the premiere was being pushed from Christmas to March, which according to Evans spells disaster for a movie.

And it was exacerbated by Bob then foolishly confiding in Joyce Haber the calmness that he had saved the movie, that he would recut it and save the Godfather.

That's a pretty brazen insult.

Why do you think he did this?

It can't be good press that a director and studio executive are warring over the edit.

Well, it certainly drummed up excitement for the movie, but according to Bart, Evans and Joyce Haber were friends, and it might not have been premeditated.

So in a moment of weakness, Bob says this, and it gets in the paper, and Francis, rightly,

as fragile as their relationship had been, it became more fragile.

Because in Francis Coppola's opinion, the movie didn't need to be saved.

90% of it could have been done by restoring the cut that Yablonz had seen and rejected.

Well, whatever happened, Evans and Copla must have done something right.

Yep, and everybody wants credit, right?

Al Ruddy put a Hollywood spin on the famous quote: A bad movie is like an orphan, but a great movie has 28 fathers.

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At the height of the post-production battle, things came to a head between Coppola and Evans with the film's iconic score.

Tell us about this final battle, Mark.

Well, if you can believe it, this was a bigger knockdown drag out fight than the editing.

Oh, I can believe it with these guys.

Apparently, while in Sicily, Coppola could hear the haunting score of the Godfather in his head.

He knew exactly what he wanted.

But the problem was that Evans knew exactly what he wanted as well, and they were polar opposites.

In fact, Evans had already commissioned a composer to do the score.

Yes, and get ready for this.

It was Henry Mancini who had done breakfast breakfast at Tiffany's.

And Coppola, on the other hand, felt that the film needed something a little bit darker, and he wanted Nino Rotta, who was called the Italian Mozart.

Rota was an elusive Italian who had composed the score for Franco Zaffarelli's Romeo and Juliet.

Only problem was Nino Rotta lived in Rome and he wasn't easy to find.

His nephew had told me that he was like a phantom, you know, when he didn't want to be found, he simply disappeared.

So how did Coppola find him?

So Coppola had to hunt down a phantom of sorts, right?

But he found a connection.

It was an Italian actress and screenwriter, Susso Cecchi Diamoco, who arranged a meeting at Nino Rotto's apartment in Rome, where Coppola screened screened an early cut of the film.

Dare I ask how long it was?

It was five hours.

He showed him a five-hour cut of the movie.

Can you imagine?

What did Rhoda think?

Well, apparently, Rhoda loved it.

There was an immediate connection between these two artists, and Coppola left Rhoda with the cut and instructions for each piece of music that he felt was needed.

By the time Coppola went back to Rome for his second visit with Rhoda, he had an edited version of the film, and Rhoda had a surprise for him.

What was it?

He picked up Coppola at the airport and he was humming a song.

That's it.

And Evans hated it.

You're kidding.

Six weeks before the release, which would be March of 1972,

Robert Evans called an emergency meeting at Woodland.

It was a hot dog lunch, served by his wife, Allie McGraw.

And in this meeting, he makes his case for using Henry Mancini's music for the film.

He says the dark movie needs some bright American music to counter all of the blood and all of the bodies.

How did Coppola react to this?

Not well.

He goes on one of his signature diatribes and says if they want to change the music, they can fire him, hire another director, and make them take out the music.

Evans says he wants to screen two versions of the film to test audiences and let the audiences choose.

Isn't it a little late for that?

Of course.

And luckily, just as he's making this argument, Allie McGraw walks into the room with more hot dogs and reminds Evans that they have plans to go to Acapulco.

Saved by the Belle.

Finally, Evans and Coppola strike a deal.

They'll screen just the latest cut with Coppola's music to a small audience, and if they don't like the music, Coppola will take it out.

What did the audience think?

Of course, they loved it.

And did Evans ever come around to the music?

Yes, and Walter Merch tells a fantastic story about Coppola leaving him in LA to finish the music with Evans.

Here's Walter Merch.

What is it about this music that Bughead's great music?

Why doesn't he like it?

And for some reason, they were thought, well, wait a minute.

He's the head of a studio, and there's this scene with the head of a studio, studio, Waltz Studios, and that guy finds a horse's head in his bed and there's music.

And it is a little soft, that music.

Maybe is there something that I can do in music editing to make it a little more edgy than it is?

And so I did things that I had done on

GHX 1138,

which was to take two copies of the music and slide one part of the music against the other one so that there's a sort of dissonance going on.

So

I called Evans up and said, we have something to show you.

And he came in and he lay down on

the bed and we pushed the button, we played it.

And when the scene finished, he jumped off of the bed and said, it's great, it's great.

Do you think he knew that he had lost the battle and wanted to be on the right side of the story?

It's possible.

I also think this was an incredible moment in the movie, and that small change must have swayed him.

And I have to ask, what happened with Jack Ballard?

Well, in an almost surreal moment of karma, Jack Ballard took his last stand and was properly cut down to size.

We were

at the Paramount Lock screening the sound effects for the real right after Don Carliane leaves the hospital.

Jack Ballard walked into the room and listened to a few minutes of sound effects.

And then he stood up and said, These are the worst sound effects I've ever heard in my life.

And if the final film is going to sound like this, you're never going to work in this town again.

The 28-year-old Walter Merch spoke up.

I said, Jack, you don't know what you're talking about.

There was a long silence.

And he was swaying slightly.

And I said, on top of everything else, you're drunk.

And he looked at everyone and he said, you're right.

I am drunk.

And I don't know what the hell I'm talking about.

Keep up the good work.

And with that, he turned and left the room.

So Copla and his team won every battle.

casting, location, filming, editing, and music.

He vanquished his enemies and got to make exactly the movie he wanted.

And after all of that, he still thought he'd made a long, boring movie.

Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli is a production of Air Mail and iHeart Media.

The podcast is based on the book of the same name written by our very own Mark Seale.

Our producer is Tina Mullen.

Research assistants by Jack Sullivan.

Jonathan Dressler was our development producer.

Our music supervisor is Randall Poster.

Our executive producers are me, Nathan King, Mark Seal, Dylan Fagan, and Graydon Carter.

Special thanks to Bridget Arseneau and everyone at CDM Studios.

A comprehensive list of sources and acknowledgments can be found in Mark Seal's book, Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli, published by Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon Schuster.

This is an iHeart podcast.