Speaker 1: From Airmail and iHeartMedia. This is Leave the Gun, Take
Speaker 1: the Canoli, the epic story of the making of The Godfather.
Speaker 2: Based on the book by the same name. This show
Speaker 2: will attempt to tell the story of the men and
Speaker 2: women responsible for the greatest film of all time and
Speaker 2: those who tried to stand in its way.
Speaker 3: The Five Families did not want us to shoot that
Speaker 3: picture in New York.
Speaker 4: He said, as long as I'm president of Paramount, there
Speaker 4: is no way that Ryan Rendo will play this role.
Speaker 3: So this is going on and on and on, and
Speaker 3: Francis just got.
Speaker 5: So sick of everything.
Speaker 1: He goes, I'm going to sicily just cast my fucking movie.
Speaker 5: Excuse my language.
Speaker 4: My kids came in all hysterical. They'd heard gunshots, and
Speaker 4: they went outside and all the windows had been shot
Speaker 4: out of the fuss over.
Speaker 2: He was consumed. He was taking us down. Put crash
Speaker 2: us out of there, and say the piction.
Speaker 1: I'm Mark Seal, author of Leave the Gun, Take the Canoli,
Speaker 1: published by Simon and Schuster in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: One, and I'm Nathan King, deputy editor at dearmoul I.
Speaker 1: Came to this story in two thousand and eight. I
Speaker 1: was a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. What started out
Speaker 1: as a magazine assignment about the making of The Godfather
Speaker 1: turned into an all consuming hunt for the truth behind
Speaker 1: this film that took over my life for almost twenty years.
Speaker 2: And resulted in Mark's hit book that would become known
Speaker 2: as the definitive Truth behind a story filled with so
Speaker 2: many lies.
Speaker 1: But the truth is fickle, and to this day, the
Speaker 1: principles of this story have different versions of how it
Speaker 1: all unfolded.
Speaker 2: Over the next ten episodes, we'll hear from all of them,
Speaker 2: with never before heard interview tapes of the men and
Speaker 2: women Mark spoke with when writing his book.
Speaker 1: As well as some brand new interviews and rarely heard
Speaker 1: archival tape.
Speaker 2: The stories they tell are sometimes hard to believe and
Speaker 2: will let you be the judge of what's fact and
Speaker 2: what's not. But what we can promise is that this
Speaker 2: show will take you through everything we know about the film,
Speaker 2: from the origins of organized crime in America and the
Speaker 2: writing of Mario Puzo's novel to casting, filming, and The
Speaker 2: Godfather's rapturous premiere.
Speaker 1: In this episode, we're starting at what might seem like
Speaker 1: an unusual place, a Hollywood producer's bedroom. This is really
Speaker 1: the first interview I've done in bed.
Speaker 5: That's very funny.
Speaker 2: Robert Evans was one of the most legendary producers in
Speaker 2: Hollywood history. He helped rescue Paramount from a shameful demise
Speaker 2: with pictures like Rosemary's Baby, Love Story, and of course
Speaker 2: The Godfather.
Speaker 5: It's cool be the Godfather's Godfather.
Speaker 1: As the head of production, and Evans was involved in
Speaker 1: every aspect of the movie.
Speaker 3: Take the Food antire four years, there's a lot of
Speaker 3: fights and everything.
Speaker 1: He financed the struggling author of the novel on which
Speaker 1: the movie is based.
Speaker 5: A very good writer named Mary Apruzzo, Short and green.
Speaker 1: He green lit the film's development.
Speaker 5: Nobody wanted to make it.
Speaker 3: As a matter of fact, Peramount refused to make it
Speaker 3: for a while.
Speaker 1: He hired its producer and its director.
Speaker 5: He is opreading Francis Upretting, and.
Speaker 1: He fostered the film's legend before and after its release.
Speaker 5: It's my most supporting legacy in life.
Speaker 2: Like so many others involved in the movie, Robert Evans
Speaker 2: died while we were making this podcast, and we're honored
Speaker 2: to tell his story.
Speaker 1: Here picture this. I'm in a rent car coming from
Speaker 1: Los Angeles International Airport and I drive to Robert Evans's
Speaker 1: home called Woodland. And as I pulled up to Woodland,
Speaker 1: I have no idea what I'm getting into. I'm reminded
Speaker 1: of how Robert Evans described this place in his memoir
Speaker 1: The kid stays in the picture.
Speaker 3: The grounds, the trees, the acreage, the towering eucalyptus, thousands
Speaker 3: of roses.
Speaker 5: Everything is quiet and secret behind walls.
Speaker 1: I get out of the car, I knock on the door.
Speaker 1: It swings open, and there's this butler, Alan Selka, to
Speaker 1: welcome me. Come in, mister Seal, Mister Evans is awaiting you.
Speaker 1: Memorabilia from the movie is laid across the dining room table.
Speaker 1: There's pictures, there's clippings, there's plaques, maybe an award or two.
Speaker 1: And as I'm looking at all of these things, suddenly
Speaker 1: the room turns silent, and Robert Evans walks in and
Speaker 1: it's a typically grand entrance. He's seventy eight, but I'm
Speaker 1: reminded of the actor he once was. He's wearing his
Speaker 1: trademark black sweater and bolo tie. His black hair is
Speaker 1: slicked back, his face is deeply tanned. He flashes a wide,
Speaker 1: dazzling grin and stares at me through rose colored glasses,
Speaker 1: and then he speaks, in his gravelly.
Speaker 2: Voice, it's stranger than fiction.
Speaker 1: He shakes my hand and prepares to tell me the
Speaker 1: saga of the movie that he considered both his legacy
Speaker 1: and his loss, the movie that made him and destroyed him.
Speaker 1: And then Evans, a legendary le thario, looks me in
Speaker 1: the eye and says, let's go to bed. I'll admit
Speaker 1: I was a little taken aback. I don't think I
Speaker 1: got out much except to what Evans explains that a
Speaker 1: fire had consumed his screening room and now he and
Speaker 1: his friends watch movies from his bed. So he leads
Speaker 1: me into the bedroom and I stare for a moment
Speaker 1: at his bed, which was large and covered in fur,
Speaker 1: and he says, would you rather watch the movie in bed?
Speaker 1: Or I'd you rather use the chair? And I say, frankly,
Speaker 1: I think I'd rather be in the chair, and he
Speaker 1: goes take those shoes off, and pretty soon we're lying
Speaker 1: side by side on top of this fur coverlet. He
Speaker 1: calls in the butler, Alan, who arrives with food, drinks,
Speaker 1: and a huge TV. Is queued up with scenes from
Speaker 1: the Godfather. It's clear there's a big story to tell,
Speaker 1: and it may take a while.
Speaker 5: It just be it. Godfather is Nahor and the State.
Speaker 1: Mark.
Speaker 2: You've been researching and reporting on the myth behind this
Speaker 2: film for almost twenty years, but your obsession with the
Speaker 2: movie started much earlier than that.
Speaker 1: That's true. It really started in March of nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 1: When I first saw the movie. I was nineteen years old,
Speaker 1: and one afternoon, some friends and I decided to go
Speaker 1: see a movie. And I knew asolutely nothing about this
Speaker 1: movie except on the marquee had said two words, the Godfather.
Speaker 1: I walk into the theater, the lights go down, and
Speaker 1: the music comes up. The Godfather logo comes on the screen,
Speaker 1: and the moon face of the Undertaker Bonas Sara comes
Speaker 1: out of the darkness and.
Speaker 2: He says, I believe in America.
Speaker 1: This is a movie I soon realize about family and
Speaker 1: expectations and legacy, and I started thinking about my own
Speaker 1: family and my own future, which was sort of unsettled.
Speaker 6: Then.
Speaker 1: I didn't know really what I wanted to do. But
Speaker 1: by the time the movie was over, I felt suddenly
Speaker 1: a sense of purpose, of wanting to do something in the.
Speaker 2: Arts, which is how you ended up in Robert Evans's
Speaker 2: bet thirty five years later. Exactly how did you land
Speaker 2: the Vanity Fair story? It seems like it would be
Speaker 2: a dream come true for you.
Speaker 1: It was because at the time I was new to
Speaker 1: the magazine and the stories that I did were crime
Speaker 1: scandal stories that would get me into the pages because
Speaker 1: they were kind of a must read story of the moment,
Speaker 1: And you couldn't hold these kinds of stories because the
Speaker 1: crime had just happened or the scandal had just occurred.
Speaker 1: The film stories, on the other hand, were for film writers,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't really a film writer at that point,
Speaker 1: certainly not for Vanity Fair magazine. So when I had
Speaker 1: the idea to do the story about the making of
Speaker 1: the movie of the Godfather, I thought I would be
Speaker 1: the most unlikely writer to get the job. I thought
Speaker 1: that the editor of the magazine, Graydon Carter, who is
Speaker 1: now the editor of Airmail, he could give it to
Speaker 1: any of his season film writers, which Vanity Fair had
Speaker 1: in abundance. But I dutifully wrote a pitch and gave
Speaker 1: it to my editor, the great Wayne Lawson and Wade
Speaker 1: said we'll see what Grayden says. So he took it
Speaker 1: to Graydon and suddenly they said, you're on.
Speaker 2: And when you started reporting the story, you started with
Speaker 2: Robert Evans exactly.
Speaker 1: I started with Robert Evans. But soon all roads led
Speaker 1: to a man equally as mythic as Evans, Charlie Bluedorn.
Speaker 1: He bought Paramount in nineteen sixty six, and he was
Speaker 1: known as Hurricane Charlie, an Austrian born business titan with
Speaker 1: an insatiable appetite for acquiring companies. His story begins at
Speaker 1: age nineteen in nineteen forty two. Charlie was the son
Speaker 1: of a Jewish mother and he was enrolled in the
Speaker 1: Carlton School for Boys in Yorkshire, England, and his parents,
Speaker 1: who had already left war torn Europe for America, gave
Speaker 1: him a two word directive, leave immediately. So he boards
Speaker 1: the HMS Hillary bound for America, and it was trailed
Speaker 1: by Nazi submarines intent on seeking it. But thankfully Charlie
Speaker 1: made it to America.
Speaker 2: And so he gets to America, mark and what does
Speaker 2: he do.
Speaker 1: Well, he immediately starts work. His daughter told me that
Speaker 1: there was never a day in Charlie Bluedorn's life when
Speaker 1: he wasn't thinking about business or working a business. And
Speaker 1: there's a story when he was a very, very young man,
Speaker 1: he got a job as a broker in a commodity's
Speaker 1: house in New York City and he was soon bringing
Speaker 1: in a million dollars a year into this small company.
Speaker 1: And Charlie had the ability to sell anything in everything,
Speaker 1: even spaghetti, which he was selling to, of all places, Italy,
Speaker 1: as if Italy didn't already have enough spaghetti. Then he
Speaker 1: got into the coffee business, and then he got into
Speaker 1: the autoparts business, and really he had his hands in everything,
Speaker 1: which is how he started his company, which became a
Speaker 1: conglomerate he called Gulf and Western, which signaled his ambitions
Speaker 1: to stretch from the Gulf of Mexico to the western
Speaker 1: Canadian border.
Speaker 2: Blue Dorn had a huge appetite for what most people
Speaker 2: would consider it will advised business ventures. He loved what
Speaker 2: he called rec jobs, which are businesses that are almost
Speaker 2: beyond repair. And in nineteen sixty six he bought what
Speaker 2: he thought was the biggest wreck job of them all,
Speaker 2: Paramount Pictures.
Speaker 1: That's right. Paramount was once the fabled studio that produced
Speaker 1: so many classics, Double Indemnity, The Lost Weekend Breakfast at Tiffany's.
Speaker 1: The list goes on and on and on. But by
Speaker 1: the sixties, Paramount was in trouble. Robert Evans famously once
Speaker 1: said there were eight major studios at the time, and
Speaker 1: Paramount was ninth. And Hurricane Charlie felt like he wanted
Speaker 1: to buy something that he could revive. The only thing
Speaker 1: in this case is that Charlie knew absolutely nothing about
Speaker 1: the movie business.
Speaker 2: And that fits with what Barry Diller said about him,
Speaker 2: which is that to Charlie, the only thing that was
Speaker 2: worth anything was doing the impossible.
Speaker 1: Yes, and Paramount was the impossible job. Like so many
Speaker 1: immigrants to America, Charlie thought what could be more America?
Speaker 1: And then Hollywood and movies and the dreams that they sold.
Speaker 1: I mean, he loved what he called the Schmaltz factor.
Speaker 1: Movies like Doctor j Evago and the sound of music.
Speaker 1: All of these things represented America to him, and he
Speaker 1: thought he could identify this secret ingredient that made the magic.
Speaker 1: So he felt like he could run the studio, at
Speaker 1: least in the beginning. And Charlie, who knew nothing about
Speaker 1: running a studio, who knew nothing about movies except what
Speaker 1: he'd seen on the screen, started getting into the editing
Speaker 1: room and saying things like, I'm going to remake this
Speaker 1: whole goddamn town.
Speaker 2: How did that work for him? Thinking that he could
Speaker 2: re engineer Hollywood.
Speaker 1: Well, as you can imagine, it really didn't work out.
Speaker 1: He produced a movie called is Paris Burning. It premiered
Speaker 1: in Paris, no less. It was a big, big budget movie,
Speaker 1: but the reviews were quite big, big brutal. Mad magazine
Speaker 1: even said it should be called is Paris Boring. It
Speaker 1: was something of a flop, but Charlie persevered. He would
Speaker 1: walk through the back lot of Paramount and through the
Speaker 1: Bonanza set and felt like the studio was just filled
Speaker 1: with older men who were out of touch, and that
Speaker 1: he was going to remake and rekindle that old Paramount
Speaker 1: magic again. And Hollywood took one look at Charlie Bluehorn
Speaker 1: and many people laughed.
Speaker 2: They called him a cliche, a show business neophyte who
Speaker 2: had no sense of what art is, and they sort
Speaker 2: of dismissed him as a know nothing.
Speaker 1: Yes, but he proved him wrong, because underneath the scorn
Speaker 1: and the laughter, Charlie was smart. He was brilliant. He
Speaker 1: knew he had to do something, and what he had
Speaker 1: to do was find what he called and this was
Speaker 1: one of his favorite terms, a genius.
Speaker 2: And by genius he means artistic genius.
Speaker 1: Right well, I think he meant a business genius, someone
Speaker 1: who could guide him through the treacheries of Hollywood, which
Speaker 1: can be a cutthroat town if you don't know what
Speaker 1: you're doing. He wanted a genius to help him revive
Speaker 1: the studio, revive the magic to make the movies like
Speaker 1: Paramount used to make. And that's how he found the
Speaker 1: most unlikely genius of them all, Robert Evans.
Speaker 2: Where did he dig up Evans?
Speaker 1: Funny enough, he found him in the New York Times.
Speaker 1: It was an article written by Peter Bard, a young
Speaker 1: reporter who we'll talk about later, and the story was
Speaker 1: about this rising producer who was on the lookout for
Speaker 1: books and scripts and properties that he could make into films.
Speaker 1: And the headline was, and I love this one. I
Speaker 1: like it, I want it. Let's sew it up.
Speaker 2: Mark That headline sort of gives you a hint as
Speaker 2: to what Robert Evans was doing before he got in
Speaker 2: the producing business exactly.
Speaker 1: So Evans was in the clothing business. He and his brother,
Speaker 1: Charlie Evans were partners in a company called Evan Pocone
Speaker 1: Clothing Company, and so Bob traveled to La often. And
Speaker 1: one day he's sitting out by the pool at the
Speaker 1: Beverly Hills Hotel, and this shows how lucky Evans was.
Speaker 1: Norma Shearer, the famous actress, was on the lookout for
Speaker 1: the perfect actor to play her late husband, the producer
Speaker 1: Irving Lahlberg, in a movie called The Man with a
Speaker 1: Thousand Faces, and she took one look at Evans by
Speaker 1: the pool, who was so handsome and deeply tanned, and said,
Speaker 1: that's him. So she sends her new husband over to
Speaker 1: make an introduction. The three of them get to talking
Speaker 1: and Shearer ask Evans if he's an actor, and Evans,
Speaker 1: being Evans, says no, I'm in ladies' pants. It's nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty six.
Speaker 2: And just like that, Robert Evans is an actor.
Speaker 1: It's as easy as that. He stars in the movie
Speaker 1: The Man with a Thousand Faces with no less than
Speaker 1: James Cagney, and pretty soon he's in other films, including
Speaker 1: the Sun Also Rises, And according to Evans, the cast
Speaker 1: and crew were It's so skeptical about his acting abilities
Speaker 1: that some of them threatened to walk off the set
Speaker 1: over it. And Darryl Zanik, the producer, heard about it,
Speaker 1: and in the classic scene with a bullhorn, while Evans
Speaker 1: is in the bullfighting ring, Zanick yells out, the kid
Speaker 1: stays in the picture, and that becomes the title of
Speaker 1: Robert Evans's autobiography.
Speaker 2: So he's working as an actor. How does he get
Speaker 2: into production.
Speaker 1: Well, you can say a lot of things about Robert Evans,
Speaker 1: but one thing is he's really smart. He's a businessman,
Speaker 1: first of all, and he started inquiring properties, including a novel,
Speaker 1: The Detective, which he produced and was a fairly substantial hit,
Speaker 1: starring Frank Sinatra of all people. And suddenly Evans is
Speaker 1: a producer and he became a man about town.
Speaker 2: And this is when Peter bart starts to take notice.
Speaker 2: He's a young writer, fresh from New York in Hollywood
Speaker 2: to write stories about the town.
Speaker 6: Guy, to come out here tell you like this, it
Speaker 6: was a great job.
Speaker 2: He keeps hearing about Robert Evans and he thinks to himself,
Speaker 2: this is the perfect story.
Speaker 6: I will kind of a snarky piece about how this
Speaker 6: guy from the garment business. He was buying books and
Speaker 6: making deals for himself. And he knew as he was saying,
Speaker 6: sort of a glam story about how somebody he had
Speaker 6: a time when Hollywood was in its gold Brooks could
Speaker 6: come in.
Speaker 3: And have an impact.
Speaker 1: Yes, and it gets better. Charlie Bluedorn reads the story
Speaker 1: about Robert Evans and the New York Times.
Speaker 6: What I wrote, which talked about what a sub promoter
Speaker 6: Bob was. Charlie said, Ah, this guy's a fucking guy's
Speaker 6: a sup promoter.
Speaker 1: He may be a good guy for me. He gets
Speaker 1: on the phone and he says, get Evans up here.
Speaker 1: And Evans said, he wasn't interested. He's out in Hollywood.
Speaker 1: What's he want to go to New York for, especially
Speaker 1: to meet the new owner of Paramount Pictures, the Last
Speaker 1: Place studio. But his lawyer, the legendary Greg Baltzer, says
Speaker 1: Charlie Bluedoor, and he's a true operator. When he wants something,
Speaker 1: he wants said you should get up there and meet him.
Speaker 1: Evans was reluctant, of course, but he goes to New York.
Speaker 1: He meets Blueorn and like a miracle, like something out
Speaker 1: of the movie. Charlie Bludorn taps Robert Evans to run Paramount,
Speaker 1: first stationing him in London and then bringing him to
Speaker 1: la as the head of production.
Speaker 2: So Charlie Bludorn picked Robert Evans to run Paramount all
Speaker 2: on a hunch. In a New York Times article.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and blue Doorn's wife would later say that maybe
Speaker 1: he picked him because he was handsome, he was glamorous,
Speaker 1: he could fit into the town. But if blue Dorn
Speaker 1: was considered a laughingstock when he bought Paramount, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: Evans was even more so because people said, what does
Speaker 1: he know about motion pictures? He's never really produced a movie.
Speaker 2: What was Evans's directive from blue Dorn.
Speaker 1: Nothing short of this, save this studio, green light and
Speaker 1: produce hits quick. Blue Doorn told him, Bobby, I want
Speaker 1: twenty pictures a year from you. I want pictures that
Speaker 1: people in Cincinnati are gonna want to see. I want
Speaker 1: beautiful girls, I want action, I want fun.
Speaker 2: Charlie had boundless energy and enthusiasm, and it seems like
Speaker 2: Evans fed off of that. His first order of business
Speaker 2: was to find his own right hand man.
Speaker 1: Right yes, and this is where it gets even crazier.
Speaker 1: Who does he hire as his right hand man, but
Speaker 1: the author of the New York Times story about him
Speaker 1: which got him his job, the reporter Peter Bark.
Speaker 2: You get the sense that none of these people actually
Speaker 2: knew anyone. They kind of just, you know, hired the
Speaker 2: first person that came to mind.
Speaker 1: It was a comedy of errors. It started that way anyway.
Speaker 1: Everybody was laughing about these new hires.
Speaker 6: I took there because Bob was a friend of mine,
Speaker 6: and he was in a bit over his head and said,
Speaker 6: you know, I've got to work with me. The brine
Speaker 6: will leave the brine.
Speaker 2: What was their strategy? How are Evans and bar going
Speaker 2: to save the studio?
Speaker 1: Where their strategy was really pretty simple. Peter Bart was
Speaker 1: a voracious reader, and Robert Evans, who might not have
Speaker 1: been respected his taste in novels. He was looking for
Speaker 1: hot properties, best selling books that could be turned into films.
Speaker 1: You know, with all of the attributes that bluedrn had
Speaker 1: directed him to find films that could save the studio.
Speaker 2: And as it turns out, Evans's hunch about Peter Bart
Speaker 2: was actually right. They started unearthing these great stories and
Speaker 2: hit books and best sellers that they could make into films.
Speaker 2: They produced The Odd Couple, Rosemary's Baby, and then finally
Speaker 2: a thin book, which became an even thinner script, which
Speaker 2: turned into a huge hit for Paramount. Love Story, starring
Speaker 2: Evans's future wife Ali McGraw.
Speaker 1: Exactly, and Love Story was a smash hit. Evans liked
Speaker 1: to say that people were crying so hard the audience
Speaker 1: turned into one big Kleenex.
Speaker 2: But as big of a hit as the film was,
Speaker 2: they'd need a bigger reprieve for Paramount.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a Love Story, as I wrote in the book,
Speaker 1: was a reprieve, not a rescue. They needed another hit,
Speaker 1: an even bigger hit, and that's when they found the
Speaker 1: novel that will become The Godfather.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about how Paramount came to acquire the
Speaker 2: rights to The Godfather.
Speaker 1: Well, this is another one of the biggest myths of
Speaker 1: the Godfather. And who knows what's true and what's not.
Speaker 1: But Evans knows how to tell a story. He knows
Speaker 1: how to make a myth out of reality. And this
Speaker 1: is what he told me. A guy named George Weezer,
Speaker 1: a veteran of the New York literary scene, calls him
Speaker 1: up one day and ask him for a favor.
Speaker 3: He had from George Weezer above the Palamid. He's a
Speaker 3: writer named Mary Epuso, a very good writer. He's real,
Speaker 3: short and green. He's the deep of the bookies. Here's
Speaker 3: the bookies, a lot of money and he has thirty
Speaker 3: five peech sheep being called mafia meet him, will you
Speaker 3: peez and see if you can help him?
Speaker 1: So Evans says, okay, he'll meet with Puzzo. And as
Speaker 1: Evans told me the story, this dead, broke, fat writer
Speaker 1: comes into his office with a thirty five page treatment
Speaker 1: under his arm, a big fat cigar hanging out of
Speaker 1: his mouth, and uh, pretty soon, over cigars and conversation
Speaker 1: in Evans's office, the two men strike a deal.
Speaker 5: Isn't very much.
Speaker 3: And I didn't know him as an author really, even
Speaker 3: though he was a legitate author.
Speaker 5: Well, i'll tell you what Frit and G's for it.
Speaker 5: There's an option against. Let's see serventy five thousand.
Speaker 3: Dollars it because a book it says make it fifteen,
Speaker 3: and they said, how about twelve five?
Speaker 2: I mean, if true, that's really an incredible story that
Speaker 2: these two men, both desperate in their own way, came
Speaker 2: together in this twist of.
Speaker 1: Fate exactly, and of course Evans' version is my favorite
Speaker 1: version of the events, even though Peter Bart would remember
Speaker 1: it very differently. So that this whole story of Puso
Speaker 1: come in with the thirty pages or whatever, and Bob saying,
Speaker 1: what are you in for?
Speaker 5: That's nonsense.
Speaker 6: There were sixty pages. They came in, this big pilot.
Speaker 6: Stuff came into me and I read it because George
Speaker 6: nag Lui and I thought it was really interesting stuff.
Speaker 2: Well, for the sake of the story, I'll take Evans's
Speaker 2: version to be true.
Speaker 1: But no matter what, Puso did sell the option to
Speaker 1: pair him out for.
Speaker 2: Twelve five and once they made the deal, was Evans
Speaker 2: hopeful that it would come through?
Speaker 1: Not really, you know, he bought it and basically forgot
Speaker 1: about it until he heard from Puso again.
Speaker 5: The treatment to a movie Take it to a lottery.
Speaker 1: Five months past. Poso calls him, says, I got to
Speaker 1: speak to you. I'm in LA again.
Speaker 2: What does he want to talk about the name of
Speaker 2: the book?
Speaker 3: Would I be in breaches by contract if I changed
Speaker 3: the name of my book. I forgot to use even ruddyway,
Speaker 3: and I said, I want to call it a Godfather
Speaker 3: and I had no idea.
Speaker 5: I hadn't read one page. I didn't read the thirty
Speaker 5: five page.
Speaker 1: I did it as a.
Speaker 3: Favorite, and what became almost was a favor became the
Speaker 3: biggest favorite of my life.
Speaker 1: Leave the Gun, Take the Canoli as a production of
Speaker 1: Airmail and iHeartMedia.
Speaker 2: The podcast is based on the book of the same name,
Speaker 2: written by our very own Mark Seal.
Speaker 1: Our producer is Tina Mullin.
Speaker 2: Research assistance by Jack Sullivan.
Speaker 1: Jonathan Dressler was our development producer.
Speaker 2: Our music supervisor is Randall Poster. Our executive producers are
Speaker 2: Me Nathan King, Mark Seal, Dan Fagan, and Graydon Carter.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Bridget Arsenal and everyone at CDM Studios.
Speaker 2: A comprehensive list of sources and acknowledgments can be found
Speaker 2: in Mark Seal's book, Leave the Gun, Take the Canoli,
Speaker 2: published by Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon and Schuster.