The Godfather - Part 1 (Part 2)

And action.

Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to another episode of What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast, Full Stop, that just so happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone a great one about organized crime in America.

As always, I'm Chris Winterbauer, joined by our guide today, Lizzie Bassett.

Lizzie, how are you doing tonight?

I'm doing great.

I've been steeped in the tea that is the Godfather, which is, yes, full of organized crime, both on screen and off-screen.

Very exciting.

And I'm excited to tell you how it wraps up today.

I can't wait to hear about it.

But before we get into this episode, guys, we have to say thank you.

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Thank you to everybody who's reached out.

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They make men's clothing, of which I had none after the wildfire.

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All right, Lizzie, back to The Godfather.

Last we heard, we had just witnessed our first whack, so to speak, of this production.

That's right.

Al Reddy, fearless producer of The Godfather, had just been swiftly fired by Charlie Bluedorn, who's the head of Golf and Western and the Paramount Board for the deal that he made with the Italian American Civil Rights League, aka Chris.

The mafia.

The actual mafia, that's correct.

But here's the thing.

This was late March of 1971, and Coppola had just started filming across town.

And it turns out that the deal that got Al Reddy fired is what got him immediately rehired.

Okay.

There we go.

Yes.

Joe Colombo is a loyal man.

And if he's not working with Al Reddy, he's just going to shut down all the locations all over again.

That's amazing.

He's like, why don't you bring back the guy I dealt with before?

And we can continue this thing of ours.

Exactly.

He was like, I'm not doing this if it's not the man I just made a good deal with.

And what have we learned?

Organized crime, more ethical and deeper integrity than Hollywood.

That's right.

Maybe the point of the movie, to be honest.

So, Coppola begs Bluthorn to reinstate Al Ruddy, and Bluthorn does it, but with a caveat.

He says,

One more line to the press, and I will personally choke you to death.

All right, so we're just going full mob, full mob.

I remember he also had connections.

the mob.

I know.

Exactly.

Seems like everyone in the 70s either did a bunch of cocaine and or had connections to the mob.

The Colombo connection did continue to come in handy throughout filming, especially as they were trying to secure the Staten Island compound for shooting where his house is.

They had sign off from most of the people they needed in order to film, but there was one poor guy who was holding out.

He didn't want to do it because he said he'd worked his whole life to afford the house and he didn't want it portrayed as the house of a gangster.

And

Al Ruddy was like, oh, I'm so sorry.

I'm calling Joe Columbo.

So he calls Joe Colombo.

Columbo holds a meeting with the three of them and the guy says that about not wanting to have his house portrayed that way.

And Columbo just goes, give me the pen, jams the pen in the guy's hand.

And the guy's hand is just shaking as he's signing on the dotted line.

Al Ruddy was like, I felt a little bad.

Yes, Al.

Yes.

Not the best.

And as always, the little guy does get squeezed eventually.

Oh, well, also, all of these filming locations that they were getting through Joe Columbo, they were just passing most of the money that they made off of the Godfather back to the mob.

Like, that's 100%.

They were, they were tithing.

Yeah.

So with Ruddy Reinstated, they were off to the races and the godfather would end up being shot at 120 New York locations over 67 days.

How packed is that?

That's insanely packed.

I mean, it may just be because I was just knee-deep in Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, in which they shot seven locations for 400 days.

Oh, my God.

But that's 120 and 67.

67 days for a three-hour movie.

That's, that seems very, very fast.

Well, it's actually more because they shot more in Sicily.

I think it's a total of 77-ish.

That's not, but only 10 days in Sicily.

That's not that much considering everything they did in Sicily, including blowing up a car and he gets married.

He spends half his life there.

Yeah.

It's only 10 days.

Yeah, they pack it in.

Yeah.

So, as with Ghostbusters, closing down New York City streets caused a lot of confusion and pissed local residents off quite a bit.

Angry New Yorkers would shout at the crew, and the sounds of honking and screaming from the traffic messed up a ton of takes that they had to dub over in post.

It was just people saying,

Hey, Godfather, fuck you.

Look at the answer around.

So let's talk about the production, which Coppola said was, quote, the most miserable time of his life.

And he is including Apocalypse now.

Oh, because I was about to say, the most miserable pine of your life so far.

No, he is including Apocalypse Now.

Wow.

The studio did not have a lot of faith in Coppola, and they definitely didn't have a lot of faith in Al Pacino.

Right from the beginning, Chris, there was a pretty bad omen for Al.

So he was like scruffy looking at the time of the shoot.

So the studio sent him to get a haircut and a shave before starting his part as young, clean-cut Michael.

Yeah, fresh out of the military.

Right.

But when the barber heard he was cutting the hair of the guy who was going to play Michael Corleone, he had an actual heart attack and had to be carried away on a stretcher to the hospital.

Oh my God.

And this like 5'7 little guy walks in and he just clutches his chest.

Pacino was not on steady footing footing at all early in the shoot.

He was shown some footage of himself and he felt certain that the studio was going to fire him.

You know, he was right.

Paramount was not impressed.

Surprisingly, Coppola also seemed non-plussed.

What's weird is that the footage they were seeing was early scenes with him and Kay where he is more subdued.

Like, and the way that he described this is he was like, I don't necessarily think, like, I'm not jumping off the screen, but I'm not supposed to.

Like, he's supposed to kind of.

It's almost a misdirect.

So he, I mean, that was what he was going in with, and he's right, but I think they were all so nervous about him already that they were looking at this being like, he's terrible.

Yeah, it's interesting because, you know, in a traditional, like, or let's say current Hollywood film, you would think he needs to start to change and show that he can be the boss at the turn.

at the end of act one, right?

So 25, 30 minutes into the film.

Right, but it takes a long time.

It doesn't happen for an hour in this movie.

In fact, he's, he's hardly in the first hour of this movie.

It just goes at its own rhythm.

Yeah, it's like the first, it's really not until Vito is shot while Fredo's driving him that Michael steps back into the picture.

Yeah, Sonny honestly is in it more than Michael is early on.

Absolutely.

So it wasn't until the scene at Louis's restaurant where he really lit up.

But even this scene was an absolute slog to film.

It took hours to reset because they had to clean up all the blood, reset the squibs every time.

Apparently, it was taking so long that Sterling Hayden, who plays the crooked cop.

McCluskey.

Yes, went for a walk and then disappeared and no one could find him for like hours.

But it turns out he just fell asleep on a park bench and was woken up by children throwing rocks at him.

What?

Children?

Welcome to

children.

Yeah, awful New York 1970s children.

I love it.

Yeah, just chucking rocks at him.

And he was like, I guess I got to get back to set.

And the point on those squibs, too, is those squibs are, they have to be applied with makeup.

It's not just resetting the outfit, right?

Where the squibs underneath the shirt.

McCluskey, he's got a squib in his throat and then on his forehead as well.

So you have to do effectively like prosthetic makeup as well.

Yeah, the makeup in this movie is insane.

We're going to get into it a little bit.

A lot of squibs.

And also they were using a very fine powder for the explosions, I think, behind his head.

So again, just like tons of cleanup.

Pacino definitely knew that his job was on the line and he took the scene very seriously.

He got coaching from Al Letieri on how to handle the the gun.

Remember, Al has some personal family experience with that.

And Letieri also spoke fluent Italian and was trying to help Pacino with it in the scene.

Pacino was not fluent,

but Al kept stumbling, couldn't get the lines right, which is why you see him switch from Italian to English in the scene.

That was completely ad-libbed.

That was Pacino just being fed up and switching.

And it works so well.

I love that moment.

Yeah.

I also think it's more accurate to, I guess, my understanding, second-generation generation

Italian American would not be fluent.

And it's a lot of these guys were not fluent in Italian, you know, by the time they had been raised, those that had been raised entirely in the United States.

Right.

I mean, he understood enough, but it was at a point where he was like, I need to be able to clearly get my point across.

This is not doing it.

Yeah.

They shot the scene so many times that at one point Pacino asked Coppola what his motivation was.

And I think it was Coppola's AD said, your motivation is you've been working for 16 hours and the sun is coming up and everybody wants to get the hell out of here.

It's great.

Yeah.

It's a George Lucas answer.

So now they really had to rap, but there was one thing left to capture, which was Michael's getaway from the restaurant.

Because they were short on time, they hadn't done an actual rehearsal of this sequence.

They were just like,

just go.

So the car pulled up outside the restaurant, but apparently had not been told to fully stop.

So Al Pacino just threw himself at the car to try to jump on, you know, how in 1940s cars they have those little running boards so he was trying to like land that and catch on it but he missed completely landed in the street badly hurt his ankle and was just laying there and on conan o'brien brings a friend recently he said he was actually really relieved as he was lying on the ground because he was like i think this might get me fired and i'm so exhausted i'm so done with this movie so done that like that he was like thank god great this is this should take care of it but unfortunately paramount really loved the performance that he had just given So they shot him in the ankle with some painkillers and had him finish the day.

We'll just numb it up.

You're not going to feel this leg anymore, but let's just keep going.

You don't need it.

Pacino was not the only one who thought he was going to get fired the entire time.

So did Francis Ford Coppola.

Coppola had assembled an extremely experienced team for the film, including cinematographer Gordon Willis, who had just come off of Clute.

Which looks, if you guys, sorry, if you guys haven't seen Clute, it's great.

It looks amazing, too.

Yes.

It's so all of his movies do.

All of his movies do.

He is a legend.

He would go on to shoot The Parallax View, Godfather Part 2, All the President's Men, Annie Hall, Manhattan, and one of my all-time favorite over-the-top 90s thrillers, Malice.

I love Malice.

I love Malice.

What you might notice about all those movies is that they're very dark, physically dark, and that is because he is known as the Prince of Darkness because of his propensity to play with shadows.

The costume designer was Anna Hill Johnny Johnston, also a legend who had literally outfitted Brando on On the Waterfront.

And the production designer was Dean Tavalares, who had previously worked on Little Big Man.

So Coppola was by far the youngest and realistically the least experienced on set.

Initially, it doesn't seem like this was an issue.

He was very welcoming to ideas during the team's pre-production brainstorms, but it started to become clear that he maybe didn't understand sort of the like practical application of things in the way that the rest of the team did.

I mean, he was coming from indie film effectively, and these are studio veterans.

Exactly.

He was a huge stickler for time period authenticity, but the rest of the team sometimes had to like give him a little help to understand that certain elements need to give a bit to make it a more cohesive picture.

Sure.

Like he was concerned about the color of the women's lipstick not being exactly accurate.

And they were like, yeah, but like you don't actually see women that often in this movie and like it's going to be okay.

Right.

Yeah.

And like I said, he was absolutely miserable.

He was stuck in a tiny apartment with his very, very pregnant wife and two kids, and he couldn't sleep.

And before cameras even started rolling, especially Robert Evans did not trust Coppola.

They were immediately concerned that the script at over 170 pages was way too long.

It's really long.

It's really long.

It's a really long script.

You know, rough maths for any folks out there who haven't heard it on this podcast, you assume on average, one minute per page.

So that means they're staring down a two-hour and 50-minute film without credits, which would push it over three.

It's almost exactly what the film ends up being.

So that's a very long movie post, you know, the musical roadshows of Hollywood that had kind of dominated 15, 20 years prior.

Well, he also kept hearing rumors that the studio had sent a spy to the set.

to keep eyes and ears on the production.

And the rumors, Chris, were true.

Oh, yeah.

Jack Ballard was described by Walter Murch, the film's sound effects supervisor, as Bob Evans Luca Brazzi.

He's an enforcea.

And we killed him.

Well, he does have a dramatic exit that we'll get to later.

He cared about the bottom line and he was there to enforce it no matter what.

Not a particularly creative guy, it doesn't sound like.

Do we need women at all?

Could we,

who cares about the lipstick?

Could we do without their lips?

His His reports back to Paramount and Evans got more and more negative every day, and it didn't help that Coppola was almost immediately running behind.

Yeah.

So Ballard would send all the dailies back with a specific list of every single time he felt that Coppola or one of the actors had messed up.

I mean, this is horrible.

Like, this is not.

If your job exists to find problems, you will find problems.

You will find problems, and that's his whole job.

It's so stupid.

He has to justify his existence by sending everything that's wrong.

That's exactly right.

And Coppola's insecurities were getting to the crew who were starting to think that maybe the godfather wasn't going to be so great after all.

Apparently, one time Coppola went to the bathroom and while he was in there in the stall, two crew members came in and started calling him and the film a, quote, load of shit.

And he heard the whole thing and he just picked his feet up and listened.

It's like high school and the mean girls come in.

Terrible.

I'm sure he felt like everyone was out to get him.

And at a certain point in the production, they actually were.

So Coppola's editor initially was a guy named Aram Avakian,

who he had worked with previously on You're a Big Boy Now, and Coppola trusted him.

But Aram was also a director.

At the beginning of the film, Aram had asked Coppola to staff up the production team with a bunch of his buddies, including cinematographer Gordon Willis.

Unbeknownst to Coppola, he had basically staffed Aram's team and not his.

It started to become clear that Aram wanted Coppola's job for himself.

And as the editor, he has actually like a unique position to have a lot of influence because he kind of sits between Coppola and the studio in an interesting way.

Well, he's also in control of a lot of the footage that's going back to the studio.

Exactly.

I mean, the editor can make something terrible look great and something great look terrible.

One night at dinner with Coppola and his wife, Aram waited for Francis to leave the table and then started talking to Eleanor Coppola about how the movie wasn't coming together.

She said she got the distinct impression that he was trying to use her to convince Francis to quit.

Fortunately, this lady was absolutely not having it.

No, she,

God bless her, will follow Coppola into the sun.

Like if you watch her in Heart of Darkness, it's pretty incredible.

Yeah, she's not the one to try that with.

So Al Ruddy had gotten wind of what Aaron was up to and he had warned Peter Bart, but Bart was still shocked when Jack Ballard announced on a conference call that Coppola was sucking big time and Aram Avakian was to be the new director.

So Jack, sorry, Jack's making that call.

He is, he's saying this is what we should do.

He doesn't actually have the authority to do that.

Yes.

He's making the suggestion.

Got it, got it, got it.

So in mid-April, Robert Evans's red emergency phone.

Yes, he has a phone like the president has.

Great.

The nuclear football

rang in the middle of the night.

And Jack Ballard told him the movie doesn't cut together.

And so Bob Evans is is like, put Aram on.

And Aram told him that individually the shots looked great, but that referring to Coppola, quote, the fucker doesn't understand continuity.

Right.

What's interesting to me is that Evans, despite all of the issues that he had had with Coppola, and as we will see, will continue to have, does not really seem to buy this.

I do think, like, say what you will about Bob Evans, he is a nut, but like, he has taste.

And I think he knows when he sees something special, even if he hates him.

I also think he knows people and their machinations.

And he can smell a snake a mile away.

And the way that Aaron has worded it is so specific to not put any blame at the feet of his friend, the cinematographer, Gordon Willis, right?

Yes.

Individual shots look great.

By the way, he was lighting stuff way too dark at one point, and they did have to pull him back a little bit.

I mean, he's amazing.

Yeah.

But yeah, that's a really good point.

Since Evans didn't immediately fire Coppola, Francis made a wild decision.

He picked six people, including Ivakian, who he believed were part of the coup, and he fired them all.

I mean, good for Coppola.

Like, you got to do it.

You got to pull the plug.

Yeah, and he timed it right too.

He did it like midweek when there was a holiday on the Monday or something so that they couldn't get anything done.

And yeah, he just said, I'm the director and you don't have a job anymore.

It sounds like there's a chance Ivakian wasn't leading the coup.

That may have actually been Coppola's first AD, but regardless, they all had to go because clearly they were up to something.

Back in LA, Bob Evans was furious to find out that the AD had made actual offers to other directors, including Aaliyah Kazan.

Yeah, and that's a huge, enormous overstep of the first AD because it's also an inter-guild overstep.

And unless first ADs were not part of the director's guild at this point in time, I'm not 100% sure.

It would be the equivalent of your first mate

attempting to subvert the captain, you know, on a ship.

It's a crazy move.

Yeah, it's a crazy move.

It really is.

That's bold.

Well, it didn't work.

And fortunately, Evans backed Coppola, and Coppola's little midnight murder spree among his own crew paid off.

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One of Aramavakian's friends that Coppola didn't fire was cinematographer Gordon Willis.

Now, Willis was kind of a grouch in general, although an incredibly talented one, who would get extremely pissed off if actors even slightly missed their mark.

Why is that, Chris?

Because he has not enough light to cover them if they step anywhere besides besides their mark.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Because he's lighting it so tightly that even a little bit of a deviation from their mark would ruin the shot.

Sorry, I really, I will say one of the reasons I think this movie looks as timeless as it does is it's not overlit.

It looks amazing.

Great contrast, deep shadows.

It doesn't have that kind of studio light feel or even kind of like the overlit action movie of the 80s, for example.

It really feels natural in a way that I think a lot of films, especially a lot of earlier, you know, color films from, let's say, like the late 50s and 60s did.

Oh, it looked very different.

It looks incredible.

Yeah.

But also thinking about this as an actor, it's like you have, you're so constrained in terms of your movements, which would be really hard.

He had a sign on his camera that said, actors think marks are German currency, which is like, it's funny, but it's also a little hostile.

Yeah, exactly.

Like, look at this while I record you do your job.

Right.

Yeah.

So this obviously requires a lot of careful preparation on Willis's part, but Coppola was very partial to changing things on a whim.

So they really did not get along at first.

While shooting the family dinner scene after Don Corleone has been shot, Coppola decided to change everything.

And Willis is like, that's fine, but I need to redo all of the lighting now.

And Coppola is like, nah, it's fine.

Let's just go.

Let's go now.

They end up screaming at each other.

with Willis saying you don't know how to do anything right and storming off of the set.

And Coppola immediately calls for another one of the cameramen, Michael Chapman, to go ahead and shoot the scene.

And this guy literally runs away and locks himself in the bathroom because he does not want to get involved.

Well, yeah, because he's probably concerned that he's going to get fired by his boss, who is Gordon Willis.

By either of them.

Yes, totally.

Exactly.

So Coppola just absolutely explodes, runs off to his office, and literally punches down his door, like breaks his door into tatters.

It has to be replaced by Carpenter's the next day.

Anyway, they were fine.

They resolved it.

They got back.

They're best friends by the end of the week.

One person who did back Coppola majorly was Brando, and he said that he would walk if Coppola were fired.

So that must have carried some weight.

And I think it's probably a pretty big reason that Coppola kept his job through a lot of this.

Now, to top everything off, as I said, Coppola's wife was super duper pregnant when this started.

And immediately after filming the sex scene between Sonny and the random bridesmaid, Coppola was informed that Eleanor was in labor.

So he ran and grabbed a camera and headed to the hospital.

It turns out they were actually waiting to tell him until the scene had wrapped.

I would have been so mad.

I'll jump in briefly, if I may, one story really quickly, even worse than this that's related.

I believe on the shoot of Full Metal Jacket, I think it was Matthew Modine's wife went into labor and it was going to be a C-section.

And Kubrick told Modine he shouldn't go because he needed to finish the shoot.

And he basically said, you'll just get in the way of the doctors, get queasy and throw up.

You're more useful here.

And Modine said, if you don't let me go, I will like break my own hand.

So they have to take me to the hospital.

And Kubrick said, fine, but you have to be back here tomorrow, 8 a.m.

First thing to finish your scene.

Jesus.

Because we need 100 more takes.

That's terrible.

Well, Chris, the baby was a girl.

She was born on George Lucas' birthday, smack in the middle of making the godfather.

Who was it?

Sophia.

Yes, it was Sophia.

And you can actually see her in the movie.

She is the baby playing Connie and Carlo's son in the baptism scene at the end of the film.

I was wondering, that's such a fresh baby.

That's a mess.

She literally pops Sophia Coppola out and they put her in the baptism.

Yes.

Now, this wouldn't be an episode about the godfather without us talking about that horse's head.

So, yes, it's a real horse's head.

Let's get into it.

Copolo was insistent from the beginning that the horse's head that the godfather has placed in film producer Jack Woltz's bed should be real.

Not only that, he actually wanted real blood, like from a butcher.

He was like, why can't you just go to any butcher and ask for a bunch of buckets of pig's blood?

And production designer Dean Tabolares is like, you can't do that for a lot of reasons, but mainly because blood coagulates and you're going to be shooting for a long time.

Yeah.

So he created a mixture using caro syrup that does congeal after a while, but doesn't goo up the same way that actual blood would.

Now, Paramount, obviously not team actual fresh horse's head.

So initially they sent a dried up, just

ratchety taxidermied horse's head that they said weighed like two pounds, was filled with straw.

It was sea biscuits head.

It was actually.

It was disgusting.

It's just, you could like kick it around like a piñata.

Yeah.

It was basically a hobby horse, like what they said.

Yeah.

So clearly not usable.

No.

And Coppola also wants to take it one step further.

He's like, it doesn't actually just have to be a dead horse.

I need it to be a dead racehorse because racehorses' heads look different.

Okay.

And you got to put lipstick on it.

Yeah.

And it needs to be period-appropriate lipstick on that racehorse's head.

So Al Ratty's poor assistant, Betty McCart, was charged with finding an actual fresh fresh racehorse's head.

None of the men want to deal with it.

They find this young woman assistant and they say, all right, honey.

All right, Toots.

What's up?

All right, Toots, you got one job.

Well, she did it.

She called a place that made dog food using horses and they're like, ooh, lucky you.

A racehorse was just put down and you can come get the head.

Unfortunately for her, the Teamsters refused to go get it when they found out what they would be picking up.

So she had to go out there in a limousine and pick up a stinking fresh racehorse's head and drive it back from like New Jersey to where they were shooting.

Oh my God.

Other versions of the story have the art director selecting the exact horse whose head they wanted before it was put down.

Right.

Got it.

What a job.

Also, poor John Marley, the actor playing the film producer, had to shoot with that thing in his bed for upwards of eight hours.

And they kept all the windows closed.

So it smelled horrible.

We had a cat die under our house a little while ago, and I had to go through the crawl space to get it.

And it was one of the more awful experiences of my life, which tells you two things.

One, I'm a wuss, and two, I've had a very nice life.

But that, I cannot imagine having that dead animal in my bed for eight hours while filming a scene with the windows closed because it smelled ripe.

And also they're telling him, like, hey, stretch your legs out.

Like, you're asleep.

And he's like, no, thanks.

You had a nice dream.

Give it a little shake.

Oh, my God.

At the end of the shoot, he was asked if he wanted to keep the pajamas as a keepsake.

And he goes, I'll tell you where to put the pajamas.

Wow.

So, in addition to the horse's head, of course, we also have to talk about Marlon Brando.

Brando's makeup in this movie is incredible because remember that he is only 47 years old.

You can actually look up before and after pictures of like him in the the makeup chair.

And the transformation is, it's insane.

It looks like him and then his father or something.

Yeah.

Also, it's without applying a ton of prosthetics.

Like they're not doing that much on him, which I think is why it looks so good.

Exactly.

Because it's so restrained, you believe it more.

I think part of the problem today is they'll do a ton of work, but then retain the youth of the eyes.

And this, I think, goes the opposite direction, which is like they age his eyes a lot with the crow's feet and they add the darkness to the deep bags and whatnot.

And I think that gets you 90% of the way there.

Yeah.

Well, the makeup is thanks to legendary makeup artist Dick Smith, along with Brando's personal artist.

Smith is incredible.

He would go on to work on Taxi Driver, The Exorcist, Marathon Man, Death Becomes Her, many more.

Oh, we got to cover Death Becomes Her.

I watched it, I'm embarrassed to say, for the first time somewhat recently, and I really enjoyed it.

Yeah, it's a super fun one.

So they developed a routine that would take about three hours with Marlon in the chair, which also, like, to your point, we've covered a lot of other movies that involve, you know, tons of prosthetics and they're in the chair for eight hours.

And it's, it's not what they did here.

They applied layers of liquid latex to his skin that would stretch and dry in the wrinkles that you see.

They also added age spots and yellow teeth.

And he had a custom mouthpiece built that sagged his jaw and made his jowl sort of jut forward.

He had to keep a dry ice pack near his face for most of the shoot so the makeup wouldn't just melt off of him.

Wow.

He also put a 10 pound weight on each foot to slow down his movements.

And apparently he was heavily padded around the midsection because he had, quote, washboard abs.

Get it, Marlon.

Don't doubt it.

How, though?

He'd just been lounging around on Valium for like seven years at this point.

I'm convinced everyone had washboard abs, except for Coppola if you see photos of him.

Shut up.

I mean, Marlon Brando was, he was beautiful.

for a long time.

Yeah.

Until Island Dr.

Morrow.

Yeah.

Well, really until Apocalypse now, it starts to go awry.

Yeah, that's true.

He was also a notorious prankster.

I don't know if you know this about Marlon Brando.

One of his best in this movie was in the scene where he's being carried up the stairs on a stretcher after having been in the hospital.

He hid 300 pounds of sandbags on himself and the stretcher so that the poor people trying to lift him up the stairs were like, what is going on?

And he just is laughing.

I'm sure he got like Grip and Electric to help him because they have these sandbags, right, to hold down their equipment.

But I think the heaviest ones are 25 pounds.

So that still means he had 12 very big sandbags somehow hidden in this thing.

It's so funny.

I think people really liked him.

That's definitely the impression.

Yeah, I'm sure.

Others on set also got in on the fun.

Because James Kahn and Robert Duvall knew that Marlon was a prankster, Duvall convinced James Kahn to pull his pants down and moon Marlon Brando when their cars pulled up next to each other one night.

And Brando loved it so much that he made a bet with with them about who could be named the mighty moon champion.

This will come back, but just remember that Marlon Brando won.

Okay, got it.

They're all like, you win, Marlon.

We're good.

Yeah.

Call it a day.

You'll see why.

A few more fun facts.

He insisted on eating squid and hot sauce every day.

No context.

I'll just leave that there.

I'm sorry.

And we thought the horse's head smelled bad, like Brando's breath by the end of this thing.

I love Calamari too.

He frequently also couldn't hear anyone because he was wearing flesh-colored earplugs to help drown out background noise and really focus in his performance.

He also loved to talk about the script, maybe more than he loved to rehearse actual scenes.

This definitely started to concern Coppola early on because an hours-long conversation between Robert Duvall and Marlon Brando about the nature of violence might sound cool.

It is also not usable.

Now, you may have heard that he needed cue cards because he didn't memorize his lines.

This is true.

He did need cue cards, but from what what I've read, it most likely wasn't out of laziness or not wanting to learn them.

I think it's because the script was changing so much that he often didn't have time to learn them and had to read them on the fly.

He also, I think, said himself that it helped him be more natural and less rehearsed in those scenes.

That's what I had heard is that he actually liked either the in-ear microphone earpiece that he would later use or the cue cards because he liked the spontaneity of just reacting in the moment.

I think it's a combination of that and the fact that they were literally rewriting entire chunks of the screenplay on set.

And Coppolo wasn't just rewriting it himself.

He also called in favors from friends, including someone we talked about a lot in our Chinatown episode, Robert Towne.

Towne was tapped to come in and write the scene between Michael and his father as the power is sort of transferring right before Brando's character dies.

Towne pulled the scene together very quickly.

and Francis and Brando both loved it.

And when asked if he wanted a screenwriting credit, Robert Towne said, no, it's just one scene.

And he was like, he joked, just thank me if you win an Oscar, which of course Coppola did, and he did thank him.

All right, Chris, do you remember who Gianni Russo was from our first episode?

Yes, he plays Carlo.

Carlo Rizzi, Connie's terrible, abusive husband.

Yes.

We're going to talk about him a little more because this guy is absolutely wild.

So starting with their first cast rehearsal, which was just an improvised conversation over dinner at a restaurant, it was pretty clear that Gianni was the odd man out.

He was not trained as an actor, which Marlon Brando picked up on very quickly.

Brando asked him if he had a big movie coming out or if he was on TV or, well, who did you study with?

And Russo's like, what?

So Brando calls over Coppola to be like, hey, who is this guy?

Who cast him?

Like, why is this person playing my son-in-law?

And Russo proceeds to to send Coppola away so he can have a private word with Brando.

So, Russo sent Coppola away, just to clarify.

Correct.

Okay, wow.

Bold move, Russo.

Just you wait because this is what he said to Marlon Brando.

All due respect.

I know who you are.

Don't fuck this up for me.

Do you hear me?

If you screw this up for me and I get fired and I lose this part, I will suck on your heart and you will bleed out right here.

I will suck on on your heart.

That's the scariest thing I've ever heard somebody say.

This is my favorite part of this is that Marlon Brando just stands there and listens to it and then goes, that was beautiful.

You could do this part.

Yes.

I just love, I love it.

Brilliant.

This guy's not acting and Marlon Brando has no idea.

No.

He's like, this guy's great.

He's method.

He's amazing.

Oh my God.

And remember, this guy's still on a mostly wine diet, to be fair, the diet of my dreams.

This is sort of a running thing for Brando of him not understanding that some of these guys are actual mobsters and not acting.

Yeah, it's great.

He also told Lenny Montana, who plays Luca Brazzi, to forget about acting school and just be natural when he could tell that he was nervous.

This man has never been to acting school.

Great.

He's basically Tim Allen in Galaxy Quest at this point.

He just doesn't understand that any of this is real.

So in Luca's scene scene at the wedding, James Kahn tried to get him to loosen up by saying he needed to prank Brando.

And Lenny was terrified, but he let James Kahn put a piece of surgical tape on his tongue that said, fuck you.

And when it came time to approach Brando in the scene, he stuck his tongue out.

Brando loved it and started laughing hysterically.

And then he mooned him and then he put a whoopee cushion under his chair.

Under the chair of this absolutely gigantic actual and then it blew a hole up the side of the wall.

Yeah.

But Lenny struggled majorly with his, admittedly, very few lines.

He could barely get through the actual scene where he thanks the godfather.

So instead of scrapping it, Coppola got very creative and filmed Lenny practicing his lines with index cards outside.

And it totally works.

Have you watched The Sopranos?

I've seen like half of it.

Oh, he reminds me so much of Bobby Bacola.

So much of Bobby Bacola.

Anyway,

there's a lot, I think, from The Sopranos that borrows, obviously, but also just like it infuses this character with so much sort of sweetness that I think is not in the book.

Well, and then you do care when he's killed as a result.

A character who you've hardly seen in this movie.

Speaking of his death scene, he seemed pretty game to be actually strangled during this.

He had been a professional wrestler for many years, so it seemed like he knew when to tap out, but he did apparently pass out a few times and also bleed from his ears and nose.

I mean, he is, his eyes are bugging in that scene.

That's real.

Yeah, it looks real.

It looks painful.

And then my favorite Lenny Montana story is that at one point, Ruddy's poor assistant, Betty McCart, broke her watch and Montana asked her what kind of watch she'd like to replace it with.

And she jokingly said a Rolex.

So he shows up with an actual Rolex and says it's from the boys, but don't ever wear it in Florida.

It's the only instruction.

Don't suck on your hub.

Don't wear it in Florida.

Not a problem.

Now, the set wasn't just terrifying because of actual mobsters and studio henchmen lurking around every corner.

For the guy who played Pauli Gatto, remember the driver who double-crossed Vito

and who gets killed in the car while Clemenza is peeing outside on the side of the road, it was also terrifying because of how they shot this death.

Shot being the operative word.

Now, I have double-checked this.

straight from the mouth of the poor actor, Johnny Martino, who played Pauly

Yeah.

He was told to pull a string and land on the steering wheel after he heard three shots.

The string would pull his hat off and release a squib that would launch blood down his face.

Coppola is like, get someone in your mouth, you know, like spit it out a little bit and then fall on the steering wheel.

He's like, okay, sure.

As they're about to call action, an old guy with a rifle slides into the back seat of the car behind him.

And Martino is like, hello, what the fuck are you doing here?

And the guy's like, oh, don't worry.

I'm just going to shoot three bullets bullets past your head and out the windshield.

Three real bullets?

Mm-hmm.

He also said not to worry because he just handled all the ballistics on Bonnie and Clyde.

And also the bullets would miss his head by at least four or five inches.

Passed?

The actor also wanted to know how they planned to not actually shoot Richard Castellano, who plays Clemenza, since he was right in front of the car.

Right.

And they're like, oh, yeah, don't worry about that.

There's a guy hiding next to the car with like a really thick piece of wood on a stick and he's going to pop up and hold that in front of the windshield.

It's going to catch the bullets.

Like, don't worry about it.

This is the worst Rube Goldberg device I've ever heard of.

So naturally, Martino called Coppola over to express some concern.

And Coppola goes, oh yeah, don't worry.

The marksman's really good.

Okay, action.

Oh my God.

And they did it.

They shot an actual gun like four inches away from this guy's head to blow the windshield out.

We joke because it's funny, only because nobody was hurt.

That is one of the most insane things we've actually heard on this podcast, I would say.

Truly.

I literally was like, this can't be real.

And I had to go and like find interviews with this poor man and it's real.

Also, potentially the most famous line in the movie, which is leave the gun, take the cannoli, was half improvised.

Oh.

As scripted, it was just leave the gun.

But Richard Castellano remembered his on-screen and soon-to-be off-screen real-life wife's instructions to get cannoli and dropped the iconic take the cannoli right after.

Interesting.

Another completely improvised line was James Kahn's bada bing, which of course was the name of Tony's strip club in The Sopranos.

Yeah, he, I think he's joked that he should like get some kind of compensation for how much that's shown up in mob films after this.

He clearly felt comfortable improvising throughout the movie.

That scene where he comes outside at the wedding and like roughs up the photographer and breaks the camera.

Not at all planned in any way.

That poor photographer just saw James Kahn come at him and didn't know what to do.

So, also, Clemenza holding him back, not scripted.

It was Richard Castellano trying to stop him from breaking more expensive old cameras.

Great moment, though, really establishes his character in one beat.

And then him pulling out the cash and throwing the money down.

That was something he remembered from his own neighborhood: you can get away with whatever as long as you pay for it.

Right.

Now, one of the most difficult scenes in the whole movie was Sonny's death at the toll booth.

The amount of squibs and guns going off in that scene, and squibs are

can be pneumatically released, right?

Like a burst of air, but a lot of the times it's a gunpowder charge blasting glass or blood or both.

And it looks like a thousand squibs in that scene.

It's crazy.

Well, not a thousand, but Khan himself was rigged with 110 shell casings full of powder and blood to explode on cue.

It's like having 100 bullets strapped to your body.

It's just ridiculous.

That's exactly right.

They were very dangerous because if he moved the wrong way and got any part of his body, like a hand or anything in front of one of them, they are literally filled with gunpowder.

It could blow a hole in his hand.

He also had specially designed blood packets hidden on his face that were attached with fishing line.

So the crew members would pull those off as soon as the shooting began.

And the car was rigged with 200 bullet holes that were also filled with those gunpowder squibs.

The whole two-minute scene cost $100,000, and that was for one take.

I'm not surprised of just the sheer volume of destruction and the visceral impact of it.

It is shocking to watch in a way that, look, it's so much safer now to do digital bloodbursts, which are what you see in 95% of the films, I would say, that are released today, even something, you know, like John Wick, et cetera.

It's, and they all look very convincing now.

However,

the squib, I still think looks the most visceral of any bullet impact I've seen on screen.

And this one, you can just feel Khan actually reacting to all of these things exploding on his body.

And it's, it's really horrifying.

It really shows you the power of, you know, of guns.

And then obviously the, the tragedy of this character.

It's, it's a really amazing, terrifying scene.

Totally.

It looks really good, and James Conn looks terrified, which I think he was.

Fortunately, they got the whole thing in one take, and no one blew a hole in James Conn.

That's also crazy that that's one take.

That's it.

Wow.

I mean, they literally couldn't afford to do it more than once.

I mean, it would be like a whole nother day, too, on top of just the cost, you know, to get everything reset.

Now, we're still not done with old Jimmy.

One of the strangest rivalries on set was between number one crazy man, Gianni Russo, and number two crazy man, James Khan.

Of course.

Like, Brando loves those guys, and then Khan is like the bullshit detector, I'm sure.

You know what I'm saying?

It's like in a different way.

So I, yeah.

Well, according to Russo, which we can take all of this with a grain of salt, but it all started when he was out at a nightclub with two soldiers from the Gambino family, just having a drink with Tommy Bellatti and Boozy DeCiccio, as one does, Chris.

These are real people.

What he didn't know was that James Khan was allegedly in the back room having a drink with an underboss from the Colombo family, a rival family.

Some kind of conflict or scuffle, it seems, did happen due to them both being there with competing families, and Russo left convinced that James Kahn was out to get him from there on out.

Worth noting, Kahn denies this completely, but I might side with Russo on this one.

So here's the thing.

This scuffle happened just a few days before they were set to film the scene where Sonny beats the absolute crap out of Carlo.

Yep.

Now,

Khan apparently rehearsed the scene quite a bit with the film stunt coordinator, but on the day, he added a little extra panache, Chris.

He asked the prop master for a broom handle, and the prop master is like,

why?

And Khan's like, yeah, just put it in my car.

So he comes barreling out of the car and immediately throws it at Russo, which Coppola loves and is like, oh, that was great, but you missed him.

Hit him next time.

Yeah, of course.

According to Russo, it hits him right in the back of the head.

then khan threw him over the railing which was rehearsed but slamming the garbage lid on him was not and russo claims he chipped a bone he also said that khan did not fake the kicks to his ribs when he's clinging to the fire hydrant and was fully kicking him interesting which i'm not gonna lie if you watch it again

It looks like James Khan is beating the shit out of this man.

Well, here's the thing.

Now that I think about it too, Khan's doing it on all of the things that he can kind of get away with.

Yeah.

From the way you describe it, the punches are clearly theater punches when he stands Russo up.

But when Russo's on the ground and Khan's feet are hidden behind Russo, you have no idea what he's doing because the thing is filmed in one continuous long shot from the far side of the street.

Also, Russo looks really scared, and I don't think he's that good an actor.

Oh, he does look really scared.

Yeah.

Russo firmly believed that Khan did this on purpose as retaliation, but Khan's story is very different.

He was just improvising.

Nothing personal.

Yeah.

And again, we do not condone workplace violence.

No.

Which is what this is.

Listen to your stunt coordinator.

Do not.

Do not actually beat the man.

Exactly.

Improvisation is wonderful on set when both actors are consenting to what's being improvised.

Yeah.

It did take Russo a few days to recover from this, apparently.

I believe it.

It takes me a few days to recover from a run.

I can't imagine being hit in the elbow with a garbage can lid by James Khan.

That's like...

I've been punched once in my life by someone much smaller than James Conn, and that was painful enough.

I'm good.

Yeah, I don't need to do that.

Now, Russo also made sure to pocket some extra cash from the wedding scene.

He sold cases of soda to Paramount at a markup price.

He was like, what do you think?

Like, do you want to buy chocolate bars to send my basketball team to the tournament?

He also made himself a deal with a local baker where he got the massive wedding cake for free, but sold it to Paramount for like $1,500.

You know what?

Honestly, good for him.

Good for him.

Like, bilk the studio for a little bit of money.

He does.

Speaking of the wedding scene, Coppola captured some of the shots via a helicopter, but I guess they hadn't tied things down enough.

So it started whipping up tents and prop walls, which was really scary.

And most of the helicopter shots were not usable.

But a lot of the cast and extras didn't really seem to care because they were extremely drunk.

They look drunk.

Yeah.

As the helicopter came around again and again, they started waving at it going, hello, Francis.

I honestly assumed Gopal had just like invited his family to come have a great time or something.

Well, it's funny you should mention that because a whole bunch of the 500 extras on set for this shoot were the families of actual mobsters.

Yes.

Great.

It was the family.

And Brando's walking around going, where did he find these guys?

Literally, Marlon Brando Brando was plastered during this, did not know that that's who was in the crowd, and decided to moon them all as a big joke.

The Mighty Moon Champion strikes again.

And I'm sure all these mob guys think it's amazing.

You know, like Brando.

I don't think the wives loved it.

And the theater moms also not happy with Marlon Brando's ass just out.

He did have washboard abs, so who knows?

That's not what they were seeing.

About halfway through the filming, though, things took a very serious turn.

On June 27th, 1971, producer Al Ruddy received a call from the anonymous FBI agent who had been talking to him throughout production about his dealings with the Colombo family.

I get the impression he wasn't like informing on the Colombo family.

It's just this guy was like in contact with him because they were basically like, you are dealing with actual criminals, like be careful.

Yeah.

The next day, Joe Colombo had a huge rally planned and Ruddy was supposed to go and show his support.

The FBI agent told him, quote, under no circumstances are you to be standing next to Joe Colombo tomorrow at Columbus Circle.

Do you understand?

And he's like, gotcha, no problem.

Our friend Gianni Russo received a similar call, but this one was from a Gambino family member.

He told him not to go anywhere near the rally, even though Russo was supposed to literally be on stage with Colombo.

At 11:45 a.m.

the next day, as Joe Colombo approached the stage, a man dressed as a press photographer suddenly crouched down, pulled out a gun, and shot Colombo three times in the head.

The gunman was then swiftly killed by someone else, leaving no trace of who had ordered the hit.

And Colombo would remain in a coma for the next seven years before finally dying in 1978.

And by the way, this was like down the street from where the godfather was filming,

which is pretty weird.

I think Coppola was like watching the news later that day, and they were showing like documentary footage of the godfather basically on on the news about this actual mob guy being killed.

I knew Columbo died at some point, but I didn't think it was until the late 70s.

And then, obviously, as you just said, it's because he was in a coma for seven years.

Yeah, totally forgot that that overlapped with this production.

And I think Reddy had gotten like kind of close to him at this point, so this was upsetting.

So, throughout everything that's going on, Robert Evans and Francis Ford Coppola were growing farther and farther apart on pretty much everything.

The ability to shoot in Sicily was yet another battle between Coppola and Evans, with Evans constantly trying to pressure Coppola to just shoot it in upstate New York, you know, the Sicily of America.

The beautiful rolling hills of Poughkeepsie, as they say.

Yeah, Coppola is like, they're not the same thing.

And Bob Evans and Jack Ballard are like, sure, you can.

It's fine.

Take them to the Catskills.

Jack Billard's like, you're lucky to shoot this movie outdoors, kid.

Yes.

So he did win the battle to shoot in Sicily.

And he also won the battle to allow production to shut down for two weeks ahead of the Sicily shoot so he could do a rough assembly of the film out of his American Zootrope offices in San Francisco.

So the town that you see on screen is actually not the town of Corleone.

Apparently, Corleone was A, too full of actual mobsters, and B, too urban and dirty.

So they couldn't use it.

They shot in the little villages outside of the resort town of, I think it's Taormina?

Teormina?

I'm so sorry, Italians.

Well, you know, my annunciation is not going to be any better, so we'll stick with yours, Lizzie.

Their time in Sicily was one of the few enjoyable portions of this shoot for Coppola.

Even he and Gordon Willis got along great.

It was short, but they had a really good time.

You can kind of feel it.

It feels so tranquil compared to the rest of the movie.

You're just like, Apologia, you're so beautiful.

Don't get in that car, honey.

Yeah, like, you can't drive anyway.

Yeah, I didn't even think it was a car bomb.

I think she just couldn't drive.

But Jack Ballard was still crouching over them to the point where he was literally shipping dailies back to LA across a complicated set of international flights.

And those dailies were being watched obsessively by Robert Evans.

Now, by this point, Evans had a pretty massive cocaine and prescription drug problem.

And he was relying on both heavily to get through the Godfather, which had at this point become his entire life.

Yeah.

It sounds like it all got worse when he managed to hurt his back pretty badly.

His wife said by playing tennis, who knows exactly?

There are a lot of stories about how he got a hold of these pain pills, but at a certain point, he had to literally be wheeled into the screening room on a gurney to work on the edits.

Doctors again prescribed him pain pills for whatever this injury was, which he took.

And then, of course, because pain pills make you sleepy, he took more cocaine to bring back the focus.

Yeah.

He was really obsessed with the edit, and this would ultimately be the breaking point between him and Coppola.

Coppola had been working out of San Francisco to pull together a 175-minute edit, and this is after all the shooting is done.

When he screened this cut, most people, including Robert Evans, loved it.

But again, it's 175 minutes long, so the studio freaked out.

We see this all the time.

Why, Chris?

Because they can't fit as many screenings into a day in a given theater with a, I think it's over two hours and 20 minutes or something like that there's a certain number that you need to hit and you get one extra screening per day which is a lot more money potentially i think it's like over 10 or 15 percent you know what i mean if you just look at the pure math of it well your math on the time is very good because they tell coppola he has to cut almost 40 minutes which would put you i think right at that two hour and 20 minute mark yeah now when coppola does it he cuts 40 minutes out And when he screens this version, Bob Evans reportedly hated it so much that he threatened Paramount he he would walk away if they stuck with the shorter version.

He literally said, this feels longer than the 175-minute version.

Exactly, because if you cannot understand what you're watching, it will feel interminable as a result.

Also, you have to really pay attention.

I don't, it's, it clicks at a very fast pace.

You are going across time and space very quickly.

What could they even have cut out?

Like, I'm trying to, you wouldn't be able to understand what was happening.

They would have stripped all of the wedding down.

Like, I guarantee you it would have been, you know, Sonny's dead by like 35, 40 minutes into the movie.

You know, Brando's dead by an hour.

And then all of the hits are happening.

I don't know.

I can't even imagine.

It would be so compressed.

Yeah.

It just wouldn't make any sense.

So the studio said, fine.

And this is where Coppola and Evans' stories go in completely different directions.

Now, according to Evans, he went into like a fugue state working endlessly on the the edit.

According to Coppola, he simply restored the footage that had been cut by the studio in the first place.

So Coppola was like, my first cut was perfect.

Evans didn't do anything else.

It just literally put back what had been taken out.

They stopped speaking completely and only communicated through Peter Bart.

Evans was so obsessed that he didn't even notice anything was wrong when his wife, Allie McGraw, left to go film the getaway with Steve McQueen in Texas for three months.

And he didn't visit her on location once, which would prove to be a fatal mistake.

Remember, Evans is also working on Chinatown at this point.

So he must have just not been sleeping, like really not, not well.

He also had a habit of talking himself up quite a bit, which I think is what really pissed Coppola off.

I don't think Coppola would have made anything out of this if Evans hadn't been out there.

touting his contributions to this movie.

Which is kind of how Evans got his position to begin with a little bit.

You know what I I mean?

A lot of bravado, you know, kind of led to his success.

It's a continuation of what's worked in the past.

Yeah.

Also, Al Reddy does uphold that Evans' biggest contribution was that he fought his own studio to keep the edit long.

There's really no arguing that he did do that.

And that's not nothing.

Outside of that, it is very unclear how much he actually changed and how much Coppola had already done.

Yeah.

I am inclined to believe he did do some stuff.

There's a couple of things I came across that make me think that his contributions were not nothing to this.

One is that I think Coppola wanted to end on the baptism scene and Evans insisted on ending through the doorway.

Yeah.

So there's stuff like that where it's like, that is not insignificant.

No, and it's a great character moment.

And I don't doubt that he contributed.

I think we all tend to overvalue our contributions to any endeavor and undervalue those of those around us.

But I think it's particularly hard.

He's never been on set, presumably, right?

And so Coppola is, I'm sure, thinking, you're coming in here at the 11th hour.

He's been breathing down his neck the whole time.

And from Coppola's perspective, you make the most obvious decision ever, which is not to go with a cut that's so bad it makes everyone want to jump off a bridge.

But from Evan's perspective, you know, he's effectively.

turning against his employer, like his source of status.

He's going against the family, so to speak.

So it is a big leap for him, but there's no way for either to understand the other in the sense that's the thing is I think Coppola, to your point, he's pissed that he's coming in.

He feels like he hasn't done anything.

And Bob Evans on the other side is like, I have put my life on the line for this.

You're giving me no credit for what I've done.

This all segued into another enormous fight about the music.

Evans and Paramount wanted Henry Mancini, who had just done breakfast at Tiffany's, I think a decade earlier, maybe, and he'd won the best original song, Oscar for Moon River.

Evans wanted a happier, more American score to pep the movie up.

Obviously, he is wrong on this one.

Coppola was insistent that it needed to be Nino Rota, prolific composer for mostly Italian films at that point.

He wanted it dark, moody,

distinctly Italian.

It reached a point where Coppola threatened to take his name off the movie and take out ads in the Hollywood Reporter about how terrible Paramount had been.

Wow.

So finally, he was like, you know what?

I don't care.

Do a test screening with Rota's score, And if the audience doesn't like it, you can change it.

And this was like six weeks before the film's release.

So at this point, I think he had stalled enough that he knew.

Obviously, the screening was a hit, and Evans caved.

By the way, the only reason Rhoda didn't get an Oscar nomination for this, I think, is because the main theme is actually a variation on a previous theme he had done.

And they deemed it late that he wasn't able to.

Oh, interesting.

So, I said Jack Ballard had a sort of dramatic exit.

Here it is.

He continued to plague the production all the way through the sound mix until one day they were screening the sound effects reel.

He shows up, starts going off about how garbage the sound effects sound, how they would never work in this town again.

Also, this is, I believe, Walter Murch is the supervising sound,

arguably the greatest supervising sound editor, maybe of all time and an incredible editor.

Yes.

Oh, no, I'm just saying he would eventually be, you know what I mean?

Well, it's funny you should bring up Merch because he had had it with Jack Ballard at this point.

And he explained to him, he's like, you don't know what you're talking about.

We are listening to an effects reel.

This is not the final, like, you don't know what you're doing.

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

And Ballard just paused and was like, you know what?

I don't know what I'm talking about.

And I am drunk.

And then he just walked out and they never saw him again.

Oh, no.

Jack Ballard, they broke him.

He was like, I love how he comes in.

He's like, why don't you put the words in, you dummy?

He's like stumbling around.

And then he's like, you're right.

So initially, The Godfather.

had been set for release in December of 1971, but thanks to the difficult shoot and even more difficult post-production, it had been pushed back to March at this point.

Generally not considered a great time to release something like this, especially because this is an awards contender.

Or even like a summer tent poll or, you know what I mean?

It's just kind of a dead zone.

The dumpy wary January to April sort of range.

But Paramount came up with a groundbreaking release strategy for The Godfather to counteract this.

The film premiered on March 14th, 1972.

That was the big New York premiere.

The next day it released in five theaters across New York.

Then a few days later, it expanded to LA and Toronto.

Now, within five days of the wide release on March 24th, it had expanded to 316 theaters across the country.

I think this blitz was like more than anyone had ever really done at once, and they did it very quickly.

So they platformed the release, you know, which is obviously like you kind of do concentric circles and you expand it.

And then, but they really quickly got to saturation, it sounds like.

Yes.

In the first week at the five Manhattan theaters alone, the Godfather hauled in $465,000.

Which is, that's a great per-thater average, especially for that time.

By a month past release, it was grossing $1 million a day.

Lions were wrapping around the block to get tickets to see it.

It was an absolute blockbuster.

It earned more than $250 million worldwide.

But before it ever made it into any of those theaters, Al Ruddy snuck up out a print to screen it for the boys, aka

the mob,

because they weren't allowed tickets to the actual premiere, and they absolutely loved it.

The projectionist said he was getting tipped thousands of dollars.

The Godfather made millionaires out of Coppola, Ruddy, and Puzo, but one person it didn't make rich was Marlon Brando.

And that's because right before filming was set to start, Brando's attorney had called up Charlie Blue Dorn and Evans saying Brando needs $100,000 to pay his taxes.

Oh, no.

So this lawyer struck a deal where he got that money right away but he gave up all of brando's points on the back end oh no

at the end of the day brando lost something like 11 million dollars because of this

kids pay your taxes pay your taxes and don't give up the investment in the actual profits yeah he promptly fired his entire team when he found out what had happened yeah

someone else who didn't make money off of it robert events Yeah, unless he gets promoted off of it or, you know, the board gives him more stock or something, there's no participation for him.

Yeah, despite all the work he had put in, he wasn't technically accredited producer on it like Al Reddy was.

He was the head of production at Paramount.

And that's true of the executives at any studio.

You know what I mean, for the most part.

And that's why you don't see The Godfather on his IMDB page.

You do see Chinatown because it bothered him so much on this that he wanted his name on the poster for that.

He had also absolutely destroyed his body during the production.

And it turns out also his marriage.

He learned shortly after the all-out party he threw for the Godfather premiere that his wife, Allie McGraw, was leaving him for Steve McQueen.

Arguably one of the most attractive men on the planet at that time.

Robert Evans was also not bad.

I mean, she was strapped to a gurney.

You've got a good point.

For a man strapped to a gurney, pretty handsome.

I'm not comparing myself to him.

I'm just saying it's Steve McQueen.

It's Steve McQueen.

And also,

I think I have Matthew Goode as Robert Evans in my head.

Because when I look up actual Robert Evans, I'm like, I mean, yeah.

He's like, actual Robert Evans is tall Paul McCartney.

But like, that's true.

Steve McQueen, yeah.

So she'd shown up to the premiere, but that was the last truly happy memory that he would have with her with Henry Kissinger on one arm and Allie McGraw on the other.

What a weird double deal.

What a night.

It does seem like Robert Evans, despite having, oh my God, so many more wives, never really recovered from this.

Yeah.

At least Marlon Brando won a best actor Oscar, and that was enough of a calling card to put him back on the map as an actor.

Now, of course, I'm sure you all know this, but he famously did not show up to accept his award.

And he sent a Native American woman, Sachin Littlefeather, to accept it for him.

Now, there's since been some controversy calling into question whether she had Native ancestry or not.

We're not going to get into that here.

Marlon's intention was to bring awareness to the mistreatment of Native Americans across the country, as well as their misrepresentation, specifically in film.

Unfortunately, it is a really sad and uncomfortable moment because she is booed.

John Wayne wasn't like, was ready to like get on the stage and fight her or something like that.

I vaguely remember.

Yeah, there's something ridiculous.

It was not the whole crowd at all.

No, no, yeah.

But it was a lot of the crowd.

This was part of his many, many years long pledge to bring awareness to the mistreatment of Native Americans across the country.

In fact, he also did not attend the Godfather premiere.

He sent another Native American man in his stead to that.

That was met with, I think, less frustration than this was just because of the platform of this moment.

But you can see it.

It's a bummer.

She looks great.

I think at those awards events, the gross truth of it is, like, I think actors really like to think like we're doing, and all of us creatives, like we're doing such a good job for the world.

Yes.

Like, this is so important what we're doing.

This like like play acting that we're all doing.

I'm, I'm sure I would be as guilty as anyone were I talented enough to win an Oscar, which I'm not.

And then to be reminded of like, oh yeah, no, this is actually

a distraction at the end of the day.

I'm sure makes people uncomfortable.

I used to think before I like knew more about this, that it was, that it was kind of shitty of Marlon Brando to like send her out there.

But the more I've learned about him and this moment, I don't think he had any intention to hang her out to dry.

And

I think he had the best intentions involved in this and everything that he had been trying to do.

Now, Coppola lost best director to Bob Fosse for Cabaret, which I would love to cover.

I kind of, I might get some flack for this.

I'm kind of on board with that.

I think Bob Fosse's an incredible,

just overall creative person, obviously, and very interesting and tragic person that we need to cover.

And then we also need to cover all that jazz, obviously, at some point.

I don't know.

I'm torn.

I just like The Godfather more than Cabaret personally.

So I can't really comment.

I love Cabaret.

I love The Godfather.

It's great, but they're, I don't know.

They're both amazing.

I will just say.

Wonderfully directed.

So I don't think you can choose wrong.

I don't think there's a wrong choice.

And Cabaret is also so tight in a way that obviously the godfather is not, but both amazing.

Pacino, Khan, and Duval all lost out to Joel Gray, also for Cabaret.

Again, I don't know.

Pretty good.

Well, and I would argue.

They cancel each other out, probably.

Exactly.

The movie kind of scaffolds itself with equal parts of each of them.

And so no one of them is big enough, you know what I mean, or dominates the screen enough.

To be honest, I think Pacino should have taken that one.

Even just for the Louis Diner scene alone, which is one of the greatest, like, watch a character make a decision without overacting moments in cinema history.

That's the thing, is the thing that they were on Pacino about early on that he wasn't doing enough.

It's what is so good about this performance: he's not going over the top or over-indicating anything.

Exactly.

However, Coppola and Puzzo did win for adapted screenplay, and of course, the godfather took home Best Picture.

Al Ruddy would take home another Best Picture Oscar in 2005 for Million Dollar Baby.

And he just died at 94 in May of this year.

Good for Al Ready.

That is a great old age.

Yes.

94.

Wow.

So Bob Evans' anger over what he felt was a lack of recognition for his work on the film continued to fester for many, many years.

In The Kid Stays in the Picture, his autobiography, he literally calls Coppola a fat fuck,

which is quite a shock when you're listening to the audiobook.

I was like, excuse me.

And Evans was happy to tell anyone who listened what he thought of Francis.

Now, in 1983, Evans and Coppola sent each other telegrams that I would like to read you now, Chris.

So more than 10 years after the release of The Godfather.

And again, huge shout out to the main source for these episodes, which is Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli by Mark Seale, which is where I am reading these from.

From Francis.

Dear Bob Evans, I've been a real gentleman regarding your claims of involvement on The Godfather.

I've never talked about your throwing out the Nino Rota music.

You're barring the casting of Pacino and Brando.

But continually your stupid blabbing about cutting The Godfather comes back to me and angers me for its ridiculous pomposity.

You did nothing on The Godfather other than annoy me and slow it down.

That is why Charlie, meaning Bluthorn, put in the Godfather 2 contract that you could have nothing to do with the movie.

You will never see the Cotton Club until it is an answer print.

You have double-crossed me for the last time.

If you want a PR war or any kind of war, no one is better at it than me, Francis Coppola.

Wow.

Let's hear what Bobby had to say.

His response is, Dear Francis, thank you for your charming cable.

I cannot imagine what prompted this venomous diatribe.

I am both annoyed and exasperated by your fallacious accusations when all I do is praise your extraordinary talents as a filmmaker.

Conversely, your behavior towards me glaringly lacks any iota of concern, honesty, or integrity.

I am affronted by your gall in daring to send me this Machiavellian epistle, the content of which is not only ludicrous, but totally misrepresents the truth.

I cannot conceive what motivated your malicious thoughts, but if they are a reflection of your hostility, I bear great sympathy and concern for your apparent paranoid schizophrenic behavior.

However, dear Francis, do not mistake my kindness for weakness.

Robert Evans.

I gotta say,

so much more dynamic, engaging, well-written, eloquent than watching, for example, Elon Musk and some other idiot go at each other on Twitter.

Like, this is a war of words.

I love it.

I love it.

Now, I'm going to hold off on going further into Evans' downfall because it is very much intertwined with another Coppola film that Coppola referenced in that telegram, The Cotton Club, which I know we will be covering.

Also, kind of Coppola's not total downfall, but financial downfall.

Sure.

I mean, it didn't involve a murder for Coppola, as it does, unfortunately, for Bob Evans.

But suffice it to say, Evans Evans was on his way down, but still quite far from rock bottom at this point.

Now they seem to have at least slightly reconciled prior to Evans' death in 2019.

At the 25th anniversary of The Godfather, Coppola hugged Evans and finally said, You must have done something right.

I like that.

That wraps up our coverage of The Godfather.

That was incredibly

bleak and entertaining and wonderful, just like The Godfather.

Wow, wild times, the 70s.

That's all I'll say.

You could get away with really more than you should.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, Lizzie, as always, we have to say what went right with this production.

And there's so much that we could choose from.

But if you don't mind, I'd like to go first.

Al Pacino.

I

forget how...

And the same is true of De Niro to a certain degree.

And I would argue Brando, too.

A lot of these actors kind of got pushed or pushed themselves into perhaps caricatures of themselves in later years.

You have the freak out Pacino, you know, I'm thinking, and that ass, like that gif of him.

That meme from heat, yes.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And you forget how remarkably understated they could be.

And Pacino, despite being a diminutive, I mean, 5'7 on a good day and just a very slight man, really

commands the room and your attention when surrounded by some heavy hitters, some incredibly charismatic big performers like James Kahn and obviously Marlon Brando.

So, you know, we see, so we saw Pacino recently in an interview where he fondly discusses his Shrek phone.

And he also basically says, like, the only reason he did a number of roles later in his career, even ones he enjoyed doing, like Jack and Jill with Adam Sandler, was because he'd gone broke.

You know, he'd basically spent all this money that he'd made $50 million he'd made on his earlier films.

And I don't think we should let that in any way diminish our opinion of these actors.

Like, at the end of the day, this is a job.

And at a certain age, like, you kind of just need to do the job to get the money.

And I just think Pacino remains one of our greatest actors that we've seen in the last 50 years.

And this is one of his most incredible films, along with Heat, which I just re-watched and want to cover too.

And it's so good.

So, anyway, to Al Pacino,

a very steadying performance and a very explosive explosive film.

Yeah, you need it.

I think I will go with the obvious here and say that what went right is Francis Ford Coppola.

I think that he,

for any inexperience he came into this with, he was really able to see what the heart of this movie was.

Without that, it would not have worked.

It would not be the film that we know and love.

And

his attention to detail, while I'm sure it put things behind, I'm sure it pissed people off.

Man, does it pay off?

I mean, this movie looks incredible.

I think he was very supportive of his actors.

He just, he has an eye, obviously.

He knew what he was looking for and he just nailed it.

He did it.

Like with people breathing down his neck the entire time with a pregnant wife about to give birth with Bob Evans, who, to be honest, is another what went right on this.

I know he got a lot of flack over the course of this.

I know that he, you know, was a pain in Francis Ford Coppola's butt, but there is something about the two of them together that really managed to pull this movie off.

And to your point,

Coppola made a movie that, yes, is very violent, yes, is explosive, but that's not really what you remember about The Godfather.

You remember the interpersonal connections.

And that's due to him, not just as a director, but honestly, as a screenwriter, because he wrote so much of this.

So I will give it to Coppola.

And at like, what, 32 years old?

Yeah.

Basically.

Yeah, he's a baby.

Crazy.

Crazy.

All right, guys.

Thank you so much for sticking with us on this incredible journey into the history of The Godfather.

Not the last time we'll be talking about this franchise, I'm sure.

And not the last time we'll be talking about any of its players, as we've discussed.

But

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The birthday boy.

Look how they massacred my birthday boy.

The Provost family.

Say it right.

The O's sound like O's.

Zach Everton.

Galen.

David Friscalanti.

Adam Moffat.

Kate.

film it yourself, do it yourself, Chris Zaka, Kate Elvington, M.

Exodia,

C.

Grace B,

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Let's age it up a little bit.

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and Lydia.

All right, guys, I

pulled the cotton balls out

here.

Apologies for that.

And with that, I officially retire my Brando impression for all time.

Really, truly, thank you so much for your support.

Thank you, everybody who listens to this podcast.

We couldn't be doing it without you.

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We will see you in two weeks for Malcolm X.

Yes, I'm very excited for that.

See you then.

Go to patreon.com/slash what went wrong podcast to support what went wrong and check out our website at whatwentwrongpod.com.

What Went Wrong is a sad boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer.

Editing and music by David Bowman.

Research for this episode was provided by Sarah Baum.