The Making of the Godfather Read online

  When Al Ruddy told me the news, I had not yet met Coppola, but I knew him by reputation. He was considered a highly skilled screenwriter and later in the year was to win an Oscar for collaborating on the screenplay of Patton. (He and his collaborator never met.)

  “The one thing Francis and I want you to understand,” Ruddy told me, “is that there is no intention of his rewriting your script. Francis just wants to direct and everybody is happy with your work.”

  I knew immediately that I had a writing partner.

  Sure enough. He rewrote one half and I rewrote the second half. Then we traded and rewrote each other. I suggested we work together. Francis looked me right in the eye and said no. That’s when I knew he was really a director.

  I like him. And he earned his half of the screen credit. And I was glad to see him get it. I could blame all the lousy dialogue lines on him and some of the lousy scenes. He was never abrasive; we got along fine; and finally there was a shooting script.

  The fun was over. Now everybody got into the act. Stars, agents, studio heads and vice-presidents, the producer, the associate producer, songwriters and assorted hustlers. Now I knew it wasn’t my movie.

  The big question: Who was to play the Godfather? I remembered what Brando had told me so I had a little talk with Francis Coppola one afternoon. He listened and said he liked the idea. I warned him that EVERYBODY hated the idea. Some were afraid Brando would make trouble, that he was weak at the box office, and a million other reasons. I figured this director, with two losers behind him, couldn’t put on the necessary muscle.

  Francis Coppola is heavy-set, jolly, and is usually happy-go-lucky. What I didn’t know was that he could be tough about his work. Anyway he fought and got Brando. And, incidentally Brando never gave any trouble. So much for his reputation.

  The casting began. Actors would come in and talk to Coppola and exert all their art and skills to make him remember them. I sat in on some interviews. Coppola was cool and courteous to these people, but for me it was simply too painful. I quit. I couldn’t watch them anymore. They were so vulnerable, so open, so naked in their hope for lightning to strike. It was at this time that I realized that actors and actresses should be forgiven all the outrageousness and tyrannies of their stardoms. Not to say you have to put up with it, just forgive it. But the one incident that made me check out of the casting stuff was when a quite ordinary nice-looking girl came into the office and chatted with everybody and announced she was trying to get a part. I asked her which part. She said, “Appolona.”

  The part of Appolona is a young Sicilian girl who is described in the book as quite beautiful. I asked this nice girl why she thought she wanted the part. She answered, “Because I look just like Appolona.” This is when it started to dawn on me that all actors and actresses are crazy.

  To prove the point. I got a call from Sue Mengers, who I didn’t know was a famous agent. She wanted to have lunch. I asked why. She said she represented Rod Steiger and he wanted a part in The Godfather. I told her as the writer I had no power, she should talk to the producer and director. No, she wanted to talk to me. I said OK, I couldn’t make lunch but why not over the phone. OK, she said, Rod Steiger wanted to play Michael. I started to laugh. She got mad and said she was just stating her client’s wish. I apologized.

  Steiger is a fine actor, but, Jesus Christ, there is no way he can look under forty. And the part of Michael has to look no more than twenty-five.

  Finally everything moved to New York. Coppola started shooting screen tests. Now the big problem was to find someone to play Michael, really the most important part in the film. At one time Jimmy Caan seemed to have the role. He tested well. But he tested well for Sonny, the other Godfather son, and he tested well for Hagen. Hell, he could have played all three of them. Suddenly it looked like he wouldn’t get any of them.

  Robert Duvall tested for Hagen and he was perfect. Another actor was perfect for Sonny. That left Jimmy Caan for Michael but nobody was quite satisfied. Finally the name of Al Pacino came up. He had scored a smashing success in a New York play but nobody had seen him on film. Coppola got hold of a screen test Pacino had done for some Italian movie and showed it. I loved him. I gave Francis a letter saying that above all Pacino had to be in the film. He could use it at his discretion.

  But there were objections. Pacino was too short, too Italian looking. He was supposed to be the American in the family. He had to look a little classy, a little Ivy League. Coppola kept saying a good actor is a good actor.

  Pacino tested. The cameras were running. He didn’t know his lines. He threw in his own words. He didn’t understand the character at all. He was terrible. Jimmy Caan had done it ten times better. After the scene was over I went up to Coppola and I said: “Give me my letter back.”

  “What letter?”

  “The one I gave you saying I wanted Pacino.”

  Coppola shook his head. “Wait a while.” Then he said, “The self-destructive bastard. He didn’t even know his lines.”

  They tested Pacino all day. They coached him, they rehearsed him, they turned him inside out. They had it all on film. After a month of testing they had everybody on film. It was time to show it all in the Paramount screening room in the Gulf and Western Building.

  Up to this time I had toyed with the idea of being a film mogul. Sitting in a screening room disabused me of the idea and gave me some real respect for the people in the business. Evans, Ruddy, Coppola and others sat in the screening rooms day after day, hour after hour. I took it for a few sessions and that finished me off.

  Anyway what goes on in the screening room is instructive. I had been amazed at how well the scenes played live, but they were not so effective on camera. There were tests of the girls who had tried for the part of Kay, the young girl role. There was one girl who wasn’t right for the part but jumped off the screen at you. Everybody commented on her and Evans said, “We should do something with her–but I guess we never will.” The poor girl never knew how close she came to fame and fortune. Nobody had the time for her just then. Hell, I did but I wasn’t a mogul.

  Some of the tests were terrible. Some of the scenes were terrible. Some were astonishingly good. One scene Francis had used was a courtship scene between Kay and Michael. Francis had written it so that at one point Michael would kiss Kay’s hand. I objected violently and Francis took it out. But in the tests every actor who tested kissed Kay’s hand or nibbled on her fingers. Francis called out teasingly, “Mario, I didn’t tell them to do that. How come they all kiss her hand?”

  I knew he was kidding but it really irritated me. “Because they’re actors, not gangsters,” I said.

  The irritation was not casual. I’d felt that Coppola in his rewrite had softened the characters.

  On screen Pacino still didn’t strike anybody–excepting Coppola–as right for the part of Michael. Coppola kept arguing. Finally Evans said, “Francis, I must say you’re alone in this.” Which I thought was the nicest “no” I’d ever heard. We would have to keep hunting for a Michael.

  More tests were made of other people. No Michael. There was even talk of postponing the picture. Coppola kept insisting Pacino was the right man for the part (he never gave me back my letter). But it seemed to be a dead issue. One morning at a meeting with Evans and Charles Bludhorn I said I thought Jimmy Caan could do it. Bludhorn, head of Gulf and Western, which owned Paramount Pictures, thought Charlie Bronson could do it. Nobody paid any attention to him. Stanley Jaffee got so pissed off watching the tests of unknowns in the screening room that when asked his opinion, he jumped up and said, “You guys really wanta know? I think you got the worst bunch of lampshades I’ve ever seen.” For days he had been patiently and quietly viewing stuff he hated without saying a word. So everybody understood.

  All this astounded me. Nothing I had ever read about Hollywood had prepared me for this. Jesus, talk about democracy. Nobody was cramming anybody down anybody’s throat. I was beginning to feel it was my movie as much a
s anybody’s.

  I had to go away for a week. When I came back, Al Pacino had the part of Michael, Jimmy Caan had the part of Sonny. The guy who had the part of Sonny was out. John Ryan, who tested better than anybody for the important role of Carlo Rizzi, was out. Even though he supposedly had been told he had the role. Ryan was so stunning in his tests of the part that I did something I had never done: I sought him out to tell him how great he played the part. He was replaced by a guy named Russo who had some sort of radio show biz background in Las Vegas. I never found out what happened. I would guess Coppola and the Paramount brass horse-traded. I never got in on the horse trading. For some reason I had never thought of that solution.

  Though the script was done, I was still on the payroll as consultant for $500 a week. Now the Italian American League began to make noises. Ruddy asked me if I would sit down with the league to iron things out. I told him I would not. He decided he would and he did. He promised them to take out all references to the Mafia in the script and to preserve the Italian honor. The league pledged its cooperation in the making of the film. The New York Times put the story on page 1 and the next day even had an indignant editorial on it. A lot of people were outraged as hell. I must say Ruddy proved himself a shrewd bargainer because the word “Mafia” was never in the script in the first place.

  At about this time I quit the picture as consultant, not because of any of this, but simply because I felt I was in the way. Also, in most of the arguments I had lately been siding with management, rather than the creative end. Which made me very nervous.

  The shooting of a motion picture is the most boring work in the world. I watched two days’ shooting; it was guys running out of houses and into cars that screeched away. So I gave up. The picture went comparatively smoothly and I lost track of it. It was not my movie.

  Six months later the picture was in the can, except for the Sicilian sequences, which were to be shot last.

  I started getting calls again. Evens wanted to know if the Sicilian sequences were really necessary. I could tell he wanted me to say no. I said yes. Peter Bart called me and asked if the Sicilian sequences were really necessary. I said yes. I then called up Coppola. He agreed with me. The money people thought the Sicilian sequences not necessary because why spend the money when it might easily be cut from the film?

  It is to Evans’ and Bart’s and Jaffee’s credit that they went along and shot the Sicilian sequences. They did listen to the creative point of view when they didn’t really have to, when pressures were probably put on them to save money. And the Sicilian sequences really make the film, I think.

  So they shot the Sicilian stuff and now the movie was ready to be cut and edited. Think of miles of film as a big chunk of marble and the director cutting a form out of it. Then when he’s through, the producer and studio head starts carving his statue out of it; then the producer and his editors.

  The cutting of the film had always struck me as primarily a writing job. It is very much like the final draft of a piece of writing. So I really wanted to be in on the cutting.

  I saw two rough cuts of the movie and said what I had to say. Again everybody was courteous and cooperative. My movie agent, Robby Lantz, said I was treated as well as any new writer had been in Hollywood. So then, why was I still dissatisfied? Quite simply because it wasn’t my movie. I was not the boss. But then really it wasn’t anybody’s movie. Nobody had really gotten their way with the picture.

  From what I’ve seen it’s an effective movie, and should make money, maybe even too much for those Einstein accountants to hide, and so they’ll have to pay my percentage. But I never did see the final cut so I can’t really plug it.

  I had wanted to bring some friends to see the cut and Al Ruddy said, “No, not yet.” I asked Peter Bart and he said, “No, not yet.” I asked Bob Evans and he said yes, if the picture wasn’t being pulled apart for scoring and dubbing and never mind how legitimate that excuse is. It was the second best nicest “no” I’d heard. The whole business was that they didn’t want strangers to see it. Or maybe because I was opposed to the ending they used. I wanted an additional thirty seconds of Kay lighting the candles in church to save Michael’s soul but I was alone on this. So I said the hell with it, if my friends couldn’t see it with me, I didn’t want to see it. Again kid stuff. Just because I still found it hard to accept one basic fact. It was not MY movie.

  I wish like hell the script was half as good as the acting, even though half of it is mine.

  The critics may clobber the film, but I don’t see how they can knock the acting in it. Brando is very fine. So is Robert Duvall. And so is Richard Castellano. In fact all three, I think, have a shot at the Academy Award. And they are good. But the great bonus was Al Pacino.

  As Michael, Al Pacino was everything I wanted that character to be on the screen. I couldn’t believe it. It was, in my eyes, a perfect performance, a work of art. I was so happy I ran around admitting I was wrong. I ate crow like it was my favorite Chinese dish. Until Al Ruddy took me aside and gave me some kindly advice. “Listen,” he said, “if you don’t go around telling everybody how wrong you were nobody will know. How the hell do you expect to be a producer?”

  While all this was going on, interviews and stories would appear in various publications. Always causing trouble. Ruddy gave an interview to a New Jersey newspaper, one section of which sounded like a savage putdown of me personally. Francis Coppola gave an interview to New York magazine that put both me and my book down. None of this bothered me because I’d been in the business and I knew that magazines and newspapers sort of twist things around to make a good story. I really didn’t care and a good thing too. Because I got nailed for a phone interview, and when it came out it sounded like I was putting Ruddy and Coppola down and I hadn’t meant to at all. And when word got out that I was putting this collection together, Variety ran a story that I was writing the piece as a hatchet job because I was not too happy with Paramount. Which was not true. (True, it’s not Mahoney puff.) Anyway I never read this stuff unless it’s sent to me. But all these news items invariably disturbed some of the wheels at Paramount.

  The truth is that if a novelist goes out to Hollywood to work on his book, he has to accept the fact that it is not his movie. That’s simply the way it is. And the truth is that if I had been bossing the making of the movie, I would have wrecked it. Directing a movie is an art or a craft. Acting is an art or a craft. All special to themselves requiring talent and experience (always some exceptions).

  And though it’s easy to make fun of studio brass, those who study miles and miles of film, year after year, have to know something.

  One interview I have to admit depressed me. Francis Coppola explained he was directing The Godfather so that he could get the capital to make pictures he really wanted to make. What depressed me was that he was smart enough to do this at the age of thirty-two when it took me forty-five years to figure out I had to write The Godfather so that I could do the other books I really wanted to do.

  I had a good time. I didn’t work too hard (script writing is truly not as hard as writing a novel). My health improved because I got out in the sunshine and played tennis. It was fun. There were a few traumatic experiences but all usable in a novel and as such to be accepted and even savored.

  So much has been written about Hollywood people being phony that I’m almost embarrassed to admit I did not find them so. Not any more than writers or businessmen. They are more impulsive, more outgoing, they live on their nerves, which can sometimes make them abrasive. But they gave me some wonderful moments. Once when watching a private screening of a movie at Bob Evans’ house, Julie Andrews was a guest. She had just had a couple of flops and was feeling hurt. As the white screen came rolling down, she started to hiss. It was funny and touching.

  Another lovely scene was Edward G. Robinson and Jimmy Durante falling into each other’s arms at a Hollywood party. I don’t even know if it was personal, but they did it with such joy, the joy of two
great artists who recognized each other’s greatness. They are both now what are called “old men,” but they had more vitality, more presence still, than anyone in that room. They had both been my childhood idols and Edward G. Robinson gave me a final treat that night.

  I was talking with a young, very personable agent when Robinson joined the conversation. He, too, was impressed by the young man and finally inquired as to his way of earning a living. When the young man said he was an agent, Edward G. Robinson looked him up and down as if he were still Little Caesar and the agent a squealer. The famous face registered surprise, disgust, contempt, disbelief and then finally mellowed into acceptance, a kindly acknowledgment that despite all, this was still a human being. Then Robinson put his forefinger up and said to the young man, “Love your clients. Do you hear? Love your clients.”

  A lot of funny things happened around my office while I was writing The Godfather script at Paramount. There were times when I was faked right out of my shoes.

  Most instructive was a neophyte. One day a young girl came into my Paramount office. She was very pretty, very bright, a wholesome charming kid of about sixteen. She told me her name was Mary Puzo and she had come to see if we were related. Especially since the name is spelled with only one Z, which is truly unusual.

  Well, I may have been a hermit for the last twenty years, but by this time I had four months of Hollywood under my belt. She didn’t even look Italian. I said so. She whipped out her driver’s license. Sure enough. Mary Puzo. I was so delighted that I called my mother in New York and put Mary Puzo on the extension. We all compared notes, what town the different parents and cousins had come from, but were disappointed to find no consanguineal connection. But the girl was so nice that I gave her an autographed copy of The Godfather before she left.