The Cast that Dreams Are Made Of

Welcome to Pod of Rebellion, our new Star Wars Rebels Rewatch Podcast. I'm Vanessa Marshall, voice of Harrison Dula Specter 2.
I'm Tia Zerkar, Sabine Wren, Specter 5. I'm Taylor Gray, Ezra Bridger, Specter 6.
And I'm John Librody, the Ghost Crew Stowaway Moderator. Each week, we're going to rewatch and discuss an episode from the series and share some fun behind-the-scenes stories.
Sometimes we'll be visited by special guests like Steve Bloom, voice of Zabarelio Spectre 4, or Dante Bosco, voice of Jai Kel, and many others. So hang on, because it's going to be a fun ride.
Cue the music! Listen to Potter Rebellion on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 45 years ago, a Virginia soul band called The Edge of Daybreak recorded their debut album, Behind Bars.
Record collectors consider it a masterpiece. The band's surviving members are long out of prison, but they say they have some unfinished business.
The Edge of Daybreak, Eyes of Love, was supposed to have been fouling up by another Apple. Listen to Soul Incarcerated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Ever wonder what it would be like to be mentored by today's top business leaders? My podcast, This Is Working, can help with that. Here's some advice from Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, on standing out from the leadership crowd.
Develop your EQ. A lot of people have plenty of brains, but EQ is, do you trust me? Do I communicate well? Develop the team, develop the people, create a system of trust, and it works over time.
I'm Dan Roth, LinkedIn's editor-in-chief. On my podcast, This Is Working, leaders share strategies for success.
Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Did you know that 70% of people get hired at companies where they already have a connection? I'm Andrew Seaman, LinkedIn's editor-at-large for jobs and career development.
And on my podcast, Get Hired, I bring you all the information you need to, well, get hired. Landing a job may be tough, but Get Hired is here for you every step of the way with advice on resumes, networking, negotiation, and so much more.
Listen to Get Hired with Andrew Seaman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. Al Ruddy is besieged with phone calls from actors, agents, shop clerks, and Hollywood extras.
Big names and unknowns alike are vying for roles in The Godfather. Everyone who had read the book had their own opinion.
Who should be the boss? People not in the business. People stop me up in the street.
You know, I have an idea for Michael. He only is a only is that that's gave Jimmy.
Everyone had an opinion. He did it to himself.
He told the Hollywood reporter that no part will be played by any actor who has an instantly recognizable face. Well, of course, a producer always has an ulterior motive, and that motive is usually money.
Unknowns are cheaper than stars, and The Godfather,

of course, is on a shoestring budget. Robert Evans poured gas on the flames when he announced

in a press conference that there was, quote, a good chance that they would cast Italian-American

actors. Paramount starts getting letters from across the country.
Italian-Americans with

Hollywood dreams feel that

they're owed a part. I mean, everybody was reading The Godfather, and of course everybody wanted to

know who was going to play which role. And so it became a really big deal, the casting of The

Godfather. Things reach a fevered pitch when picketers assemble outside of the gates of

Paramount. Determined to ensure that Paramount made good on their commitment, their signs read,

All right. Things reach a fevered pitch when picketers assemble outside of the gates of Paramount.
Determined to ensure that Paramount made good on their commitment,

their signs read,

Italian actors for Italian roles.

And worlds collide as shady characters make their Hollywood dreams known.

It was brought to my attention that he should be in the picture.

It's important to you.

Important to who?

It's important to friends downtown.

To friends downtown?

Yeah.

And so the circus begins,

bringing together one of the most iconic casts in Hollywood history. I I'm Mark Seal.

And I'm Nathan King.

And this is Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli.

This episode, we're casting The Godfather with the mob family we know and love.

From New York to L.A. and up to San Francisco, the excruciating casting process somehow produces a perfect ensemble.
Mark, casting The Godfather with all the stars we now know and love seems like an impossible feat. Yes, it seems impossible now, doesn't it? But remember, stars were born from the Godfather.
Most of them weren't even known before. So casting begins rather chaotically, with big names, unknowns, and even mobsters all vying for parts in the movie.
And people are taking every possible avenue to gain audience with anyone connected to the film. That's right, Nathan.
Even poor Mario Puzo, who had next to no say on casting, was getting besieged with phone calls and telegrams. And shockingly, three men dressed in 1940s mob attire show up at his office one day asking for Puzo.
Al Ruddy's assistant had to scare them off with a prop gun. And isn't there a story about a casting director getting sent to Dead Fish? I think that was in New York.
Lou Giaimo, who told me that he would interview all the extras, and there were so many people that wanted to be in the movie that someone sent a Dead Fish, which was like a scene out of the book and later in the movie, to impress upon the studio that they knew the way things worked. So if all this is happening behind the scenes, when does the official casting process begin? Things really got going when Coppola joined the film.
He was so determined to assert control over the casting process, just as he had over the script. So he hires Fred Ruse as casting director.
The two had never met in person, but Coppola liked his reputation and frequently called him up to chat about actors. Before I ever met him, a person would call me up from time to time on the phone, just cold call me.
I just wanted to schmooze about actors. What do I think of so-and-so? These were just long kind of phone conversations that didn't have any end result or any point to them other than two guys schmoozing.
Fred Ruse is now a Hollywood legend, of course, but back then he had fewer credits to his name. However, he had worked with Jack Nicholson on the classic film Five Easy Pieces, and he had cast Tulane Blacktop, starring James Taylor and the Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson.
I think, you know, I could do something with it. And would you like to cast it for me and with me?

Right.

I said, yeah, you know, great.

So we'll get over here and, you know, make your deal and let's go to work.

Copley gave Ruse a mandate as many Italian-Americans in Italian-American roles as possible.

His theory was that if you grew up in an Italian household, Italian-American,

there are certain behavioral characteristics that are just ingrained in you. Ruse and Coppola kicked off casting in the Gulf and Western Building on November 20, 1970.
They saw 600 actors and then moved on to L.A. to see 500 more.
He was willing to go deep into the casting process, not try to do shortcuts or do it quickly or whatever. So that was cool with me because that's how you get quality.
So Coppola and Fred Russo are going deep. Is that how they found the legendary Gianni Russo? Well, not at all.
Gianni Russo played the godfather's fiery son-in-law, Carlo Ritzi, and probably has the best casting story. He was also one of my favorite people to interview.
No, I'm saying when you heard the terminology crime don't pay, crime pays. We met at St.
Patrick's Cathedral, and from there we went all around New York, we shopped for suits, we went to lunch, and somewhere along the way, somebody was serving champagne. Gina, have some more champagne, sweetheart.
I know. I want to grab mine.
Grab some cheese. That's a plate.
What are we doing? Gianni is one of those people who just jumps out at you as a true character. What's his story? Where did he come from? Russo survived polio as a child.
And he told me that like everything else, he used it to his advantage. He had, as he described it, a gimp arm.
And as a 12-year-old, he started selling ballpoint pins outside of the Sherry Netherland Hotel on Fifth Avenue in New York City. I picked the best corner.
Selling pins. You know, plaza across the street, Sherry Netherland, the PA, I'm right there on that corner with my gimp bomb.
And I used to even make it a little worse. And I had a cigar box selling these new ballpoint pants.
And somebody would give me 50 cents. They were 15 cents.
And that's how I met Costello. Every day, my boss, Frank Costello, would walk by and give Gianni a $5 bill.
And one day, he stopped by to talk to Gianni. He says to him, what's your name? I said, Gianni.
He says, but what's your list? What's your heritage? I said, Mattia. He says, here's $100.
Tomorrow, meet me at the Waldox at 11 o'clock in the morning. It's okay.
Where? He's just being in the lobby. And from that day on, I was with him him every day do you have any sense of what he was doing for frank costello everything apparently he told me that he was a messenger delivering duffel bags and shoe boxes which might have contained cash around the world they trusted me they said you take this there i take it no matter how where it got there.
I used to go to Switzerland once a month with a nine-and-a-half Gucci shoebox. And I'd take the plane out of here, land, and most of the time I was on the same plane going back.
I'd get off, go to the bank, put the money in, go back, and go to sleep. I'd love my money.
I guess. How did Russo hear about the film in the first place? Well, he'd heard of the book, of course, and then, of course, because of Al Ruddy and Bob Evans' press antics, he heard they were casting unknowns.
So Gianni, who apparently had always wanted to be an actor, set about making a 37-minute screen test. And in the beginning of it, it was me, natural.
I said, hi, I'm Johnny Russo, I know you don't know me, but I know you're making the movie The Godfather, and he is the characters I can play. He made up his own lines and commissioned a film crew to film and edit him auditioning for three roles, Michael, Sonny, and of course Carlo.
Did you do it in costume? I did. I mean, I did all the makeup.
I didn't know what a screen test was. I played the scene for Michael when he was upstairs in the room with Kay, and he goes down to get the newspaper.
You know, I'd improvise. He could have carried all three of those roles at the same time with the amount of personality he has.
Yeah, I think so. He's one of a kind.
Gianni Russo is one of a kind, that's for sure. And he just, he was great as Carlo.
So how does he get his screen tests in front of the right people? Well, he found out that Al Ruddy, apparently, liked flashy cars and, of course, beautiful women. So he hired a showgirl from the chorus of the Tropicana, put her behind the wheel of his Bentley, and sent her to deliver his screen test to Al Ruddy personally.
I told the girl, you've got to give this to Al Ruddy. Nobody else.
Nobody. Al Ruddy.
Hand delivered. I want a note back.
It's okay. So what happened to the tape? Apparently, it sat there for a few days, and Russo got a rejection letter that read, the budget for this movie necessitates that we get proven talent for the major roles as a draw.
Now my balls are in an uproar because I spent thousands of dollars on the show. Now your balls are in an uproar.
I like that. Well, we know he ends up being in the movie, so what did he do to get the part? Apparently he was able to work some connections to get an audition for the plum role of Carlo.

Charlie Bulldog had a lot

of good friends, so I had some people call

him and say, you know, this guy's a very close

friend of a lot. And here's how

Robert Evans described it.

It was brought to my attention

that he should be in the picture. It's important

to you. Important to who?

It's important to

friends downtown. To friends downtown.
Yeah. And according to Gianni, he gets invited to audition for a group of Paramount execs at the Gulf and Western Building, and lo and behold, he lands a gig.
So what happened? I went right to the union and got signed. That's Carlo, the character.
$17,500 for the movie. What happened in the audition? You know, he plays a pivotal scene, and he just acts it out so perfectly and so compelling that I think Bob Evans says, stop, stop, you got the job.
You know, he was born to play this guy. He was born to play this errant son-in-law, Carlo.
That was it. It was in the movie, obviously.
And he gives an amazing performance. He does.
His role as Carlo is a barn burner. Welcome to Pod of Rebellion, our new Star Wars Rebels rewatch podcast.
I'm Vanessa Marshall. Hi, I'm Tia Sercar.
I'm Taylor Gray. And I'm John Lee Brody.
But you may also know us as Harrison Dula, Spectre 2. Sabine Wren, Spectre 5.
And Ezra Bridger, Spectre 6 from Star Wars Rebels. Wait, uh, I wasn't on Star Wars Rebels.
Am I in the right place? Absolutely. Each week, we're going to rewatch and discuss an episode from the series.
And share some fun behind-the-scenes stories. Sometimes we'll be visited by special guests like Steve Bloom, voice of Zabarelio Spect or Dante Bosco voices Jai Kel and many others.
Sometimes we'll even have a lively debate. And we'll have plenty of other fun surprises and trivia too.
Oh, and me? Well, I'm the lucky ghost crew Stowaway who gets to help moderate and guide the discussion each week. Kind of like how Kanan guided Ezra in the ways of the Force.
You see what I did there? Nicely done, John. Thanks, Tia.
So, hang on, because it's going to be a fun ride. Cue the music! Listen to Potter Rebellion on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, I'm Bob Pittman, Chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia. I'm excited to introduce a brand new season of my podcast, Math & Magic, Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing.
I'm having conversations with some interesting folks across a wide range of industries to hear how they reach the top of their fields and the lessons they learned along the way that everyone can use. I'll be joined by innovative leaders like Chairman and CEO of Health Beauty, Durang Amin.
The way I approach risk is constantly try things and actually make it okay to fail. I'm sitting down with legendary singer-songwriter and philanthropist, Jewel.
I wanted a way to do something that I loved for the rest of my life. We're also hearing how leaders brought their businesses out of unprecedented times, like Stéphane Boncel, CEO of Moderna.
It becomes a human decision to decide to throw by the window your business strategy and to do what you think is the right thing for the world. Join me as we uncover innovations in data and analytics, the math, and the ever-important creative spark, the magic.
Listen to Math & Magic, stories from the frontiers of marketing,

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

September 1979.

Virginia's top prison band, Edge of Daybreak,

is about to record their debut album behind bars.

In just five hours.

Okay, we're rolling. One, two, three, four.
I'm Jamie Petras, music and culture writer. For the past five years, I've been talking to the band's three surviving members.
They're out of prison now and in their 70s. Their past behind them.
But they also have some unfinished business.

The end of daybreak, Eyes

of Love was supposed to have been

followed up by another album.

It's a story about

the liberating power of music,

the American justice system,

and ultimately, second chances.

Listen to

Soul Incarcerated on the iHeartRadio

app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. love that I never had before.
I mean, he's not only my parent, like he's like my best friend. At the end of the day, it's all been worth it.
I wouldn't change a thing about our lives. Learn about adopting a teen from foster care.
Visit AdoptUSKids.org to learn more. Brought to you by AdoptUSKids, the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services, and the Ad Council. Gianni wasn't the only cast member who had some underworld connections, right?

That's right.

Al Letiri, who played Virgil the Turk Salazzo,

was a brother-in-law of a member

of the Genovese crime family.

And Al Martino, who played the Sinatra-inspired singer

Johnny Fontaine, apparently used a connection

to crime boss Russ Buffalino to snag the part. Which is the same thing his character, Johnny Fontaine, does in the movie, another instance of life imitating Art in The Godfather.
Exactly. He was a fantastic choice.
They wanted Vic Damone first, and apparently there's some controversy on what happened. Nobody seems to agree on why Vic Damone didn't want the role or turn down the role if he did turn down the role, which left the door open for Al Martino.
Yeah. What was Al Martino's background? He was a very popular nightclub singer in those days.
And at the time, many nightclubs where Al Martino performed had connections to the mob. He told me this.

I interviewed him at Nate and Al's Delicatessen in Beverly Hills in 2007.

And he told me how well he knew this world and how well he knew these people from Vegas all the way to New York City.

And Martino had an excellent singing voice and speaking voice.

And he really knew how to carry himself, which made him so believable as Johnny Fontaine. I'm not sure.

I'm not sure.

I'm not sure.

I'm not sure.

I'm not sure.

I'm not sure.

I'm not sure.

I'm not sure.

I'm not sure.

I'm not sure.

I'm not sure.

I'm not sure.

I'm not sure.

I'm not sure.

I'm not sure.

I'm not sure.

I'm not sure.

I'm not sure.

I'm not sure.

I'm not sure.

I'm not sure.

I'm not sure.

I'm not sure.

I'm not sure.

I'm not sure. I'm not sure Brando slaps him.
I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do.
You can act like a man! What's the matter with you? Is this how you turn down a Hollywood Pinocchio that cries like a woman? That slap wasn't scripted, and according to the folklore of the movie, that slap really rattled Al Martino because nobody hits Al Martino. He was a really, really nice man when I interviewed him, but also I can imagine that he was a pretty tough man at the same time.
So many of the smaller parts were taken by these relative unknowns, but Coppola knew who he wanted for the bigger parts in the film. Exactly.
He had his list written on lined yellow paper with asterisks next to his top choices. Al Pacino as Michael, James Cahn as Sonny, and Robert Duvall as Tom Hagen.
And of course, Marlon Brando as the godfather. Well, it was originally Puzo who wanted Brando.
He even wrote him a letter before Coppola came on board asking him to play the role. But the execs were so opposed that he basically dropped it.
This is how Betty McCart, Al Ruddy's assistant, remembers it. Stanley Jaffe was the president of Paramount, and he said, as long as I'm president of Paramount, there's no way that Marlon Brando will play this role.
But Coppola got on board with Brando when he joined. Yes, he was torn between Brando and Laurence Olivier, but ultimately decided that Brando was the right choice.
Well, we know the executives are against it. What does Brando think? Well, Brando was in bad shape at the time.
He was deep in debt, supposedly addicted to Valium, headed toward his third divorce, and determined never to work as an actor again. It was his assistant, Alice Marshak, who convinced him to even consider acting again so that he could pay off some of his debts.
Wow, so I guess we can assume that Coppola pursued Brando despite the studio being against it. Yes, in traditional Coppola fashion, he moved forward defiantly.
Coppola described in an interview a meeting he had with a Paramount exec basically ganged up on him. I remember in one meeting I was told by the then president of Paramount, said to me, as president of Paramount Pictures, I am telling you that Marlon Brando will not appear in this motion picture.
How'd he take that? Well, apparently not well. He stared down Stanley Jaffe, then the president of Paramount, and said, I give up.
You guys hired me. I'm supposed to be the director.
Every idea you have, you don't want me to talk about. now you, and finally, they agreed to let me discuss the idea of Marlon Brando being in the movie if I honored three stipulations.
A, he would do a screen test. B, he would do the film for free.
And C, he would put up a bond so that if any of his shenanigans or any trouble came from him being on the set, that it would guarantee the losses. So Coppola presses on.
What's his next order of business? Well, he has to somehow do a screen test with the great Marlon Brando without calling it that. Here's Fred Ruse.
The word screen test was never mentioned to Marlon. He was Marlon Brando.
I mean, he is in a dip in his career at that point, but he was still the iconic actor.

So you don't just audition him.

So Francis did it under the guise of, let's experiment for your own sake,

not just for me, for your own sake, on how you would change yourself over

to become this older man that, you know, quite a bit older than you are.

And did it work? It worked great. Coppola had no idea, but Brando had been preparing.
He got to his house up in Mulholland Drive, and right there in front of his eyes, Marlon Brando transformed into Vito Corleone. He walked out, he put on a jacket, and he picked up a cigar, and he started to gesture with it and use it as a prop.
And he rolled up the ponytail, and he kind of pinned it up, and he took some shoe polish, and he darkened it. And while he's doing this, we're photographing.
Then he took some tissue paper, and he said he should have the face of a bulldog. He said he stuffed the tissue paper in his jaw, and then he said, well, if he's shot in the throat, he ought to talk like that a little bit.
He became Don Vito Corleone right there in that room and Coppola was amazed and astonished. So the screen test, or not a screen test, is a success.
What's next? Well, Coppola decides he's going to take the tape, not to Evans and Jaffe, the executives in L.A. He's going to go straight to the top and take it to Hurricane Charlie Bluedorn, who, by the way, was just as opposed to Brando as everybody else.
So Coppola flies to New York and sets up in an office in the Gulf and Western building with the tape playing on a monitor and waits for Bluedorn to walk by. And here's how Dean Tavalaris remembers it.
Mr. Bluedorn, walking down the corridor, could kind of look into offices.
And that's when he saw Marlon on the monitor. He said, who is that? He said, this is the Godfather.
Who is that actor? Who is that man? And Francis said, the man I'm not supposed to mention, Marlon Brando. And that worked? It sure did.
Charlie was as amazed by Brando's transformation as Coppola. And Charlie just looks astounded, and he says, that's incredible.
That's incredible. And soon everybody else, of course, agreed.
Evans, Bart, Jaffe, they offered Brando the role, and the rest is history. What happened to that tape? No one knows.
It's lost to history. You know, it's like something out of the Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Maybe it's in a warehouse somewhere. Nobody seems to know where it is, but I really hope it surfaces one day because it's one piece of film I would love to see.
So let's get into the rest of the Corleone family. We know Coppola is pretty set on who he wants, but Evans is not sold on Pacino, is he? Not at all.
Early on, Evans and the other executives met with Coppola to discuss casting, and they all had very, very different ideas. And who did they suggest as Michael? The blonde-haired, blue-eyed Robert Redford.
Robert Redford is about as un-Italian as it gets. What happened to Italian actors for Italian roles?

They said Sicilians can be blonde, so let's get Redford.

And what was their reaction to Pacino?

They'd never heard of him.

Coppola knew him from plays in New York,

but to Evans, he was a 5'7", runt, to use this term.

A runt?

That's what Evans called him.

He said Michael Corleone will not be played by Al Pacino.

So what did Coppola do?

Well, he stalled. He said he would go out looking for more young actors to come back with, but he already had a plan in place.
Coppola had summoned Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, and Diane Keaton to the American Zoetrope Studios in San Francisco. His dream cast from his original list.
Yes, his plan was to shoot tests of the four actors in absolute secrecy, and then use the test to convince the suits at Paramount that he knew best on who to cast for his movie. And here's James Kahn talking about that.
And we flew up to Zoetrope in San Francisco. His wife, Eleanor, gave us a haircut with a ball on her head.
Like, you know, just put the ball on her head and clipped our hair. And we did on 16 millimeters.
And what was that like? Well, the tests are just great. You can clearly see them now, and you can see the burgeoning stardom in each person.
Al Pacino is the scruffy and struggling theater actor who comes to life as Michael, the college boy. James Kahn, who is Coppola's friend from the Hofstra University Theater Department, is the powerfully built, hair-triggered Sonny.
Robert Duvall, the perpetually calm Irish Catholic lawyer. Tom Hagen.
And perhaps strangest of all, the somewhat kooky, as they called her back then, Diane Keaton, as Michael's upper-crust girlfriend, Kay Adams. So basically what I'm saying is for the price of four corn-deaf sandwiches, we had lunch, you know, and we shot the 16-millimeter improvisation and just screwing around.
We're home, and that was it. That was the cast.
And did it work? What did the executives think of the screen tests? Well, they hated him. They didn't like them at all.
They thought, well, Charlie Blunorm summed it up when he said, they can't all be bad actors. It must be bad directing.
And to make matters worse, they were upset that Coppola had spent money on this, which turned out to be, as James Caan said, the price of four corned beef sandwiches for lunch. Coppola was sure they were going to fire him, which would become a theme for his time on The Godfather.
He was so discouraged that he basically fell in line and agrees to test everyone. Paramount wants to test people like Martin Sheen, Dean Stockwell, and Ryan O'Neill for Michael.
They spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on these screen tests. Wow, that must have been so demoralizing for Coppola.
He had his stars. Exactly.
It was a real disaster. Not long after, Coppola moved his entire operation, including his family, to New York to continue the screen test frenzy and to make matters worse, he's broke.
Didn't he get paid by Paramount? Well, his $175,000 upfront fee went toward his debts, but the bills for American Zoetrope were piling up. And his wife is pregnant, of course, with their daughter, Sofia Coppola.
Not an ideal time to move to New York City. No, but luckily his brother-in-law has a vacant studio apartment on the Upper West Side where the family can live.
It was cramped, and Coppola said it was like living like an impoverished Italian-American family, which I'm sure gave him some inspiration for the film. All while screen testing everyone under the sun.
Yes, he's got his team by his side, which in addition to Fred Roos now includes Lou DiGiimo, who cast the extras, and Paramount's casting director, Andrea Eastman. Here's Andrea.
You know, at first, Francis had so many problems with Paramount. I don't think I was really trusted right away because I worked for Paramount, but I never repeated anything that was ever said, and so they learned to trust me, and we all kind of became a big family.
The team works seven days a week doing these screen tests. So it just, it was endless.
It went on and on and on. The casting process was forever.
And everyone knew it was a sham. Coppola begrudgingly running these screen tests with no intention of pushing for anyone other than who he already wanted.
And Evans watching the tapes the next day from the Gulf and Western building or back in his office in Los Angeles. Like a puppet master pulling the strings.
And it would soon be full-out war. Coppola and Evans each had their own vision for the movie, but neither really had ultimate authority.
That is, until Evans decided to take control. In what way? He goes to the press with somewhat of a manifesto of taking control from directors as a variety headline from those days read,

Cut Directors Down to Size.

Ouch.

Coppola was furious, of course.

He dug in his heels and kept going with the endless screen test with the role of Michael being the most hotly contested.

Al Pacino wasn't known then, and he wasn't very good. We decided to test Jimmy Conn for Michael.
So the tests were in New York, and I remember it was a scene at the wedding, which is, you know, it's a very talky scene. There's not a lot of action.
And again, Al just wasn't good in the test. He just was not.
You didn't imagine him as Michael Corleone. But Jimmy Kahn was fabulous.
Does Coppola ever sway from Pacino? No, he really doesn't. But there does come a point where he just wants it finished.
So this is going on and on and on. And Francis just got so sick of everything.
He goes, I'm going to Sicily. Just cast my fucking movie.
Excuse my language. At this point, Pacino is tested for the part a dozen times.
So Coppola takes off with the role of Michael being left uncast. What decisions are being made in the meantime? Well, Diane Keaton finally gets cast as Kay Adams after about 100 screen tests.
Richard Castellano is a slam dunk as Clemenza. And Salvatore Tessio goes to Abe Vigoda, who's discovered during an open casting call.
And don't forget about Fredo. Fred Roos discovered the great John Casale,

the actor who would so memorably play Fredo. I got invited by an old friend of mine,

Richard Dreyfuss, to come see him in a play. I went to this play.
And Richard, of course,

was good and all that. But there was this guy in it, John Casale, who I didn't know.
I mean, I hadn't even heard of him before. But I could see he was wonderful, and he had all the qualities of a Fredo.
And he was Italian-American. And I remember the next day, Francis, I found Fredo.
What about Talia Shire, Francis's sister, who ends up playing Connie? Well, it was a controversial pick with some of the cast crying nepotism, but at this point, Francis thought he was getting fired anyway, so he got his sister an audition. I didn't know about the politics of, you know, what I'm going to say, filmmaking and how it could be that dicey.
I honestly didn't know that much about it. I simply just wanted an audition.
I had been more of a theater person. I didn't know how to hit a mark.
I didn't know what a mark was. So I was the last person you should want on your movie.
But I just thought, hey, can I have an audition? And Evans liked her? He did. He saw something in her that I think Coppola didn't even see himself.
Michael, you lousy bastard. You killed my husband.
You waited until Papa died so nobody could stop you, and then you killed him. You blamed him for Sonny.
You always did. Everybody did.
But you never thought about me. You never gave a damn about me.
Okay, how far are we from shooting now with no Michael? We're only a month away, and Paramount finally makes the decision. They land on Coppola's friend, James Kahn, as Michael, and the six-foot-four Carmine Caridi as Sonny.
That doesn't sound right. No, but after being told that he'd landed the part of Sonny, Caridi was already partying.
He was running around with some guys, some friends of mine, and he was celebrating, you know, and I said, hey, don't do this. You know, they're very shaky up there.
You're going to have a hard fall if it doesn't work out. So what happened? Coppola takes off again to meet with Marlon Brando in London.
And at that point, he felt the decision had been made to cast James Conn as Michael. But while he's gone, everything changes.
So I have my stuff clipped out for Jimmy. Then we ran Panic in Needle Park and Al Pacino like jumped off the screen.
He was fantastic. I mean he was great which is how he wound up getting Michael.
And Paramount's casting director Andrea Eastman saw it as an opening to push for Coppola's original vision. So we're sitting there in the screening room, and so now it's going to be Al Pacino as Michael, Jimmy Kahn is not in the movie, and Carmine Caridi, which was ludicrous, because you met Carmine Caridi, he was about 6'6".
He kind of was like a St. Bernard.
And Charlie, for the first time ever, had yelled at me before this conversation. He goes, we have this little pipsqueak playing Michael and this big guy, you know, Carmine Caridi.
It doesn't work. And he's right.
It didn't work. So I said, well, you know, why don't we go back the way Francis wanted it? Al Pacino as Michael, Jimmy Cahn as Sonny.
And Bob said, no, actually, she's right. That's because you believe that they could be brothers.
And so the deal was made that Coppola could have Pacino as Michael if he would move James Cahn over to play Sonny. And that's what Coppola wanted all along.
So the cast was set and he had the actors that he wanted from the beginning. So we end up with the exact cast that Coppola did those secret screen tests with in San Francisco for $500 eight months earlier.
Yes, but for the cool price of $420,000. So smooth sailing from here,

right, Mark? Yeah, right. Next episode, we're heading to New York where the real war begins.
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 Seal.
Our producer is Tina Mullen. Research assistance 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 Arsenault and everyone at CDM Studios.
Excerpts from Francis Ford Coppola's 2001 DVD commentary on The Godfather were featured in this episode.

A comprehensive list of sources and acknowledgments can be found in Mark Seale's book,