Speaker 1: It's March seventeenth, nineteen seventy one, Saint Patrick's day. The
Speaker 1: Corleone family is sitting down to dinner with the man
Speaker 1: who brought them all together, Francis Ford Coppola. Earlier that day,
Speaker 1: every member of the newly minted cast received their first
Speaker 1: call sheet three thirty pm Patsy's Restaurant, one hundred and
Speaker 1: seventeenth Street and First Avenue. Coppola's idea was to have
Speaker 1: everyone sit down to dinner Italian family style, and Patsy's
Speaker 1: was perfect. It was a known hangout for gangsters and
Speaker 1: made men. When Gianny Russo, who'd landed the role of Carlo,
Speaker 1: reports for us first down the set, he feels right
Speaker 1: at home.
Speaker 2: So I go up a little early, Casillo Guyson, I
Speaker 2: know everybody can do a hug kissing. I go around
Speaker 2: the corner. See you had people I had to pay
Speaker 2: my respects to, and so I was so happy for you.
Speaker 3: It's so crazy.
Speaker 1: Walks into the back room where the cast is gathering.
Speaker 2: What's the first time everybody met everybody? And I'm watching
Speaker 2: next Terling Hayden, Richie County, John Mooley, He's the great actist.
Speaker 4: These they were the legends to me.
Speaker 1: Marlon Brando arrives wearing an orange cashmere turtle neckt sweater.
Speaker 1: Producer Al Ruddy described it as Christ coming down from
Speaker 1: the cross. The room falls silent. Then the world's greatest
Speaker 1: living actor cracks a joke. From that moment forward, the
Speaker 1: cast doesn't just respect Marlon Brando, they love him.
Speaker 5: The nickers Brando was like God, and I watched every
Speaker 5: Brando movie.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 1: As everyone stands around, not sure what to do with themselves,
Speaker 1: Marlon opens a bottle of wine. He takes his seat,
Speaker 1: and the rest of the cast follows suit. Robert Duval
Speaker 1: remembers how easy it was to look to Brando as
Speaker 1: a father figure.
Speaker 2: And we all sat around as if we were kind
Speaker 2: of approximating the family situation around Brando's and he was,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 6: When we were young, Branda was like a godfather of actors.
Speaker 3: To this feeling, we all respect him.
Speaker 1: Coppola looks at his newly minted cast, the family he
Speaker 1: had fought so hard for, Brando at the head of
Speaker 1: the table, James Kahn on his left, Al Pacino on
Speaker 1: his right. For the first time, Coppola can feel the
Speaker 1: production coming together, just as he had envisioned it. I'm
Speaker 1: Mark Seal and I'm Nathan King, and this is leave
Speaker 1: the Gun, Take the Canoli.
Speaker 7: In today's episode, we shoot our first frame of what
Speaker 7: turns into ninety hours of film.
Speaker 1: We'll detail the day to day life on the set,
Speaker 1: including cass pranks and crew turmoil.
Speaker 7: Mark, I'm always amazed at a mid Copola's constant power
Speaker 7: struggle with executives. He was able to play the part
Speaker 7: of a strong leader with his cast.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's right. He was a great compartmentalizer. The sky
Speaker 1: is falling, people are threatening to fire him, but he
Speaker 1: has a job to do and he gets it done.
Speaker 7: So let's back up. The cast meeting wasn't really the
Speaker 7: first step in filming, which is what we're getting into
Speaker 7: in today's episode.
Speaker 1: No, I'd say it was the creative production meeting that
Speaker 1: started it all, which Coppola had called for a few months.
Speaker 7: Earlier January twenty fifth, nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 1: That's right. He invited the production team together to establish
Speaker 1: the visual style of the film. I first heard about
Speaker 1: this meeting from Dean Tabalis, the film's production designer.
Speaker 3: That two three hour meeting cemented the colicto of film.
Speaker 1: And I emailed Francis Coppola about the meeting, just asking
Speaker 1: if he could tell me more about it, and he said,
Speaker 1: I'll do one better. I'll send you the transcript from
Speaker 1: the meeting, which was incredible because you can really see
Speaker 1: the workings of a film and progress and a vision
Speaker 1: he had for so many things in the movie that
Speaker 1: actually came to pass.
Speaker 3: And he had a recorded He had a stenographer, a
Speaker 3: court stenographer with a little type machine that a courttenographer has.
Speaker 7: And this is the transcript right here. This is massive,
Speaker 7: that's right.
Speaker 1: It's eighty four single space pages written on what seems
Speaker 1: to be a manual typewriter.
Speaker 7: So tell me about this meeting. Mark, We've got Coppola, Tavalaris,
Speaker 7: a court stenographer.
Speaker 1: Who else is there, Well, it's Gordon Willis, cinematographer and
Speaker 1: the great Anahill Johnstone.
Speaker 7: Tell me about Gordon Willis. He was a bit of
Speaker 7: a legend, right.
Speaker 1: He sure was. Gordon Willis was an esteemed cinematographer, called
Speaker 1: him the Prince of darkness. He liked shooting his shadows.
Speaker 7: Gordon and Francis had a bit of animosity between them,
Speaker 7: didn't they.
Speaker 1: Well they would later, But at this meeting they were
Speaker 1: very much on the same page.
Speaker 7: Okay, what about Dean Tavalius.
Speaker 1: Tavalius is great, He's a longtime production designer, artistic designer,
Speaker 1: and artist himself. I got to know Dean quite a bit,
Speaker 1: and I was able to even visit him in Paris
Speaker 1: not too long ago. And he found so many of
Speaker 1: the classic locations and the Godfather, as he told me
Speaker 1: for the book, he spent a lot of time looking
Speaker 1: for places to kill people. And then we have costume
Speaker 1: designer Anahill Johnstone, who got her start on Broadway and
Speaker 1: made a name for herself on movies like On the
Speaker 1: Waterfront and East of Eden.
Speaker 7: Coppola is the youngest in the group right.
Speaker 1: And at least for now, he's the group's undisputed leader.
Speaker 7: Okay, let's crack this transcript open. How does the meeting start?
Speaker 1: Well? At first, Coppola sets his intentions. He wants to
Speaker 1: have a freewheeling discussion and take the script seen by scene.
Speaker 1: He had his vision for the film. He did not
Speaker 1: want to make a traditional gangster movie. Here's Dean Tabalius again.
Speaker 3: He wanted to show them as human, see the human side,
Speaker 3: the family side of their lives. The ironic thing of
Speaker 3: them loving their children and then turning around and committing
Speaker 3: terrible crimes and brutal mergers.
Speaker 7: And what about the look of the film.
Speaker 1: Well, in the production meeting transcript, you know, they go
Speaker 1: back and forth and one word kept jumping out, and
Speaker 1: that was operatic. Both Tabalairas and Kappola seemed to use
Speaker 1: that word a lot, this.
Speaker 3: Dark operatic image where the camera is fixed and things
Speaker 3: come into the frame and things sleep the frame, but
Speaker 3: the camera doesn't cut that much, it doesn't pan that much.
Speaker 7: You can really see that fixed camera technique in the film.
Speaker 7: So tell us a little bit more about the production meeting,
Speaker 7: because they go over a lot. They talk about every
Speaker 7: detail of the wedding, from the wine that's going to
Speaker 7: be served to the wait staff. They talk about costumes
Speaker 7: at length. Take us through some of what they go over.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty amazing because so many things, so many
Speaker 1: of the classic scenes that you remember from the movie
Speaker 1: were first outlined in this production meeting. They talk about
Speaker 1: the bridge, which bridge should we use, Where Michael's going
Speaker 1: to meet Salazzo in the Corrupt Police Captain, you know,
Speaker 1: where the Dawn is hospitalized after getting shot, which hospital
Speaker 1: should we use even the wedding, of course, was a
Speaker 1: major thing that Coppola talked about quite a bit. He
Speaker 1: wanted the wedding to be like the weddings that he
Speaker 1: had gone to in his youth, or you know that
Speaker 1: he was going to even now at the time when
Speaker 1: he was still a young man, of course, where everybody's
Speaker 1: talking all at once. Johnstone would say, do you think
Speaker 1: ten waiters would be enough for the wedding, and Kapala said, no,
Speaker 1: we're not gonna There's no waiters at an Italian American wedding.
Speaker 1: They didn't have that. The women would do it. The
Speaker 1: sandwiches would be ordered from a place on Ninth Avenue,
Speaker 1: and people would bring in their own food. Everything was
Speaker 1: done homemade and natural, and so that was the key
Speaker 1: to this incredible scene.
Speaker 7: He was adamant in the meeting that they not overformalize it.
Speaker 7: He said the only people in formal attire would be
Speaker 7: the wedding party, and that kids would wear their confirmation
Speaker 7: clothes and everyone else would wear their Sunday dresses and outfits.
Speaker 7: But it wouldn't be too buttoned up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he said, he's going to try to make the
Speaker 1: wedding an experience instead of a scene, take the dialogue
Speaker 1: out of it and immerse the audience with hundreds and
Speaker 1: hundreds of details.
Speaker 7: They also talk a lot about how the wedding will
Speaker 7: be juxtaposed with the setting inside the house in the
Speaker 7: Don's office.
Speaker 1: So here's where the prince of darkness comes in. The
Speaker 1: cinematographer Gordon Willis. He uses the shadows to show the
Speaker 1: darkness of the Don's office as juxtaposed against the bright
Speaker 1: lights in the sunny scene of the wedding where Johnny
Speaker 1: Fonteyne comes in and sings a song and everybody's happy
Speaker 1: in dancing.
Speaker 7: It's amazing how granular they get. At one point in
Speaker 7: the meeting, they're talking about Tom Hagen's flight to Los
Speaker 7: Angeles and the type of airplane he would fly on,
Speaker 7: and they decide it's going to be a nineteen forty
Speaker 7: six Lockheed Constellation because that's the type of airplane that
Speaker 7: would make that Transamerican flight in those days in the
Speaker 7: late forties.
Speaker 1: They debate the pros and cons of that plane, you know,
Speaker 1: and that plane is only on the screen for a second.
Speaker 1: You know, it lands, and then you see Tom walking
Speaker 1: into the Walt studios. So there's a million little details
Speaker 1: in this film that they discussed in this production meeting,
Speaker 1: and I think that's where the magic of this film
Speaker 1: was born. Obviously in the script as well, but once
Speaker 1: this script was done, then they had to hammer out
Speaker 1: all these other details that were in this meeting.
Speaker 7: One of the most visually lush parts of the film
Speaker 7: is Jack Waltz's house in Beverly Hills. What did they
Speaker 7: say about that in the meeting?
Speaker 1: Copla says this in the meeting, you know, I like
Speaker 1: the idea of Tom with a big shot where you
Speaker 1: can't even sit down with him. You have to catch
Speaker 1: in between other things. Talk to me while I'm walking
Speaker 1: and talking kind of thing that really puts Tom in
Speaker 1: second place.
Speaker 7: They go into great detail about the fake blood with
Speaker 7: corn syrup to give it the right viscosity.
Speaker 1: Coppola said, blood never looks right to me in a movie,
Speaker 1: you know, and he wanted this blood to look real.
Speaker 1: And Coppola said in the meeting, why don't we use
Speaker 1: real blood? Twenty gallons of animal blood. Any butcher can
Speaker 1: give you some blood, and Taboalius points out real blood coagulates,
Speaker 1: so you can't use real blood. They had to mix
Speaker 1: their own blood.
Speaker 7: It's funny because reading the transcript you get a sense
Speaker 7: of harmony and that they're all excited about working together
Speaker 7: and they share a lot of the same ideas or
Speaker 7: could come to agree on a lot of these things.
Speaker 7: But it doesn't betray what's going to come.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're all on the same page and you can
Speaker 1: see the back and forth. It goes on for some time.
Speaker 1: I mean they only get halfway through the script and
Speaker 1: then Copple of calls it a night, says we'll get
Speaker 1: together again, and then there's no more transcript. This is
Speaker 1: the only one that exists.
Speaker 7: Do you think they ever gotten together again?
Speaker 1: I don't think so, or they would have a transcript
Speaker 1: of it. So this is the only kind of window
Speaker 1: you have as far as some of these artistic and
Speaker 1: creative decisions were made.
Speaker 7: Mark, You're right about the filming process with such detail
Speaker 7: in your book. You have scenes pinned down the day
Speaker 7: of shooting. What was your research process like?
Speaker 1: Well, luck counts for a lot of it, and I
Speaker 1: was very lucky that we have a day to day
Speaker 1: accounting of filming from none other than Coppola's than assistant
Speaker 1: Ara Zuckerman. He wrote The Godfather Journal, which is a
Speaker 1: short but very detailed accounting of the shooting of the film.
Speaker 7: Well, let's get into it. For starters, we know that
Speaker 7: the cast of the Godfather had a lot of fun
Speaker 7: on set.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they sure did, and it started right away. James
Speaker 1: con told me a great story about riding home from
Speaker 1: that first cast dinner at Patsy's with Robert Duball when
Speaker 1: suddenly Brando's car pulls up to them.
Speaker 2: So we're coming back down Second Avenue and Brando was
Speaker 2: in the in the backseat of a station wagon. He goes,
Speaker 2: come on, moon them, we're going that second Avenue. I
Speaker 2: go crazy.
Speaker 8: I don't do that.
Speaker 3: You're the king of that.
Speaker 9: He's I can't.
Speaker 5: I'm in a bad spot, you know, He's come on,
Speaker 5: now he's starting. You go to do this, it'd be funny.
Speaker 5: So I'd pull up next to the red of well
Speaker 5: By wind and down. I just sticked my ass up
Speaker 5: and think, this is the first day he's met us.
Speaker 2: Just started falling down and we ran away, you know, cry, laughing,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: So that was the first boon of my life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that first moon really set the tone for the shooting.
Speaker 1: The cast was constantly pulling pranks on each other, and
Speaker 1: this really made everyone feel comfortable from the start. Have
Speaker 1: you ever mooned anybody?
Speaker 7: Probably when I was a kid. Yeah, time, and did
Speaker 7: that culture of camaraderie last It seems like it did.
Speaker 1: With the cast for sure. With the crew, well, not
Speaker 1: so much. There was a lot of turmoil behind the scenes.
Speaker 7: Coppola has repeatedly called the godfather of the most miserable
Speaker 7: time in his life. Was it just the micromanaging?
Speaker 1: It was micromanaging to an extreme degree. Robert Evans was
Speaker 1: under control Coppola's moves from across the country. Just weeks
Speaker 1: before filming starts, Coppola is finalizing locations, meeting with his
Speaker 1: creative team, making last minute script revisions, coordinating lighting and
Speaker 1: makeup tests, and Robert Evans is sending him these memos,
Speaker 1: just picking apart every decision he makes. Nathan, maybe you
Speaker 1: can read this particularly scathing memo sent on March fifth,
Speaker 1: just eighteen days before filming is set to begin.
Speaker 7: Sure I can do that, Evan said, quote. Feel that
Speaker 7: the character of Sonny is not nearly as flamboyant and
Speaker 7: exciting as in the book. The sexuality that everyone remembers
Speaker 7: is totally missing in the script. I think that the
Speaker 7: size of his cock and the horses head are the
Speaker 7: two most remembered scenes from the book, and the former
Speaker 7: is so lacking that I think we would be criticized
Speaker 7: for not doing more with Sonny.
Speaker 1: Yes, and this goes on and on a few more excerpts.
Speaker 1: Who's going to play Mamma Corleone? Fredo's casting? I'm not
Speaker 1: sure I'm satisfied. Are you sure the picture can be
Speaker 1: cut with a straightforward story if you decide not to
Speaker 1: go with flash forwards?
Speaker 7: And Copla is still living in an apartment with his
Speaker 7: entire family at this point, right.
Speaker 1: Yes, And apparently it's being painted, so are rigs of
Speaker 1: paint fumes. He described that time as going to war
Speaker 1: every morning. And once again, it's a miracle that this
Speaker 1: movie got made.
Speaker 7: But somehow filming begins on March twenty third, nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 1: What was the first scene? Mark the first scene? Christmas
Speaker 1: in springtime at Best in Company, the department store on
Speaker 1: Fifth Avenue. The story had conveniently shuttered the year before,
Speaker 1: and so it had been restored to its nineteen forties
Speaker 1: glory for filming and in keeping with his ability to
Speaker 1: make miracles, happen. The amazing already makes it snow.
Speaker 7: He's fresh off of being fired and rehired by Charlie Bludorn.
Speaker 1: Right, yes, but that doesn't stop Ourready he brings in
Speaker 1: snow machines, and when the temperatures r is too high
Speaker 1: for them to work, he turns to Plan B synthetic
Speaker 1: snow and wind machines to create the magical scene of
Speaker 1: Kay and Michael walking out of the store amid a
Speaker 1: swirl of fake snow, and then the crew moves through
Speaker 1: the city, landing at Radio City Music Hall, where Michael
Speaker 1: and Kay are leaving a movie and about to find
Speaker 1: out the terrible news.
Speaker 7: Would you like me better for were Ingrid Bergmann?
Speaker 1: Now that's a thought, thank him, No, I would not
Speaker 1: like your better. F Equid Burbons and these scenes are
Speaker 1: all coming together to create the iconic montage that ends
Speaker 1: with the attempt on the Don's life.
Speaker 7: It seems like this first day should be a triumph,
Speaker 7: but Copola doesn't feel that way, does he.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, all anyone can seem to see is Coppola's shortcomings,
Speaker 1: and it really is getting to him. He's having nightmares
Speaker 1: about being fired and he's getting more and more paranoid.
Speaker 7: Do you think that paranoia is justified?
Speaker 1: I really do. The studio essentially sent a spy to
Speaker 1: keep watch over him, a Paramount finance guy named Jack Ballard.
Speaker 1: Here's how great Frederickson remembers Jack.
Speaker 3: He was like a.
Speaker 10: Tough rough speaking kind of a fast, scared everybody.
Speaker 7: He sounds like a cartoon villain.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I wasn't able to talk to Jack Ballard,
Speaker 1: he had passed away years before. But Tacappola he was.
Speaker 1: And here's what he had to say about Jack Ballard.
Speaker 11: Jack Ballard was hired basically by Robert Evans to be
Speaker 11: there on the set and to haunt me and to
Speaker 11: constantly be challenging my decisions and telling me what I
Speaker 11: could do or not do. And and he was the enforcer,
Speaker 11: as it were, for Paramount, and he was it was
Speaker 11: it was. He knew about classical film production, but he
Speaker 11: had no idea of what I was trying to do.
Speaker 1: So, as Ira Zuckerman wrote in his book, Ballard's task
Speaker 1: was to keep an eye on the day to day
Speaker 1: production planning, scheduling, and shooting, and to immediately advise Paramount
Speaker 1: on any budget overruns.
Speaker 7: Even with Jack Bauard reporting back to Evans. Every day,
Speaker 7: shooting must go on. Let's transition to the restaurant shooting
Speaker 7: scene if we can. This is really a turning point
Speaker 7: for Michael as he goes from college boy to his
Speaker 7: father's successor. And it's also a turning point for al Pacino,
Speaker 7: isn't it.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, that's right. I mean the restaurant's scene.
Speaker 1: It's so much going on. It's a turning point both
Speaker 1: in the movie and it's a turning point for al
Speaker 1: Pacino in real life on the set, because he's really
Speaker 1: struggling with his confidence. Like Coppole, he thinks he's on
Speaker 1: the verge of being fired. He later said they only
Speaker 1: hired him because they liked his performance in the Panic
Speaker 1: of Needle Park, which hadn't yet been released. But so
Speaker 1: far the Paramount execs don't like what they're seeing.
Speaker 7: So what changed.
Speaker 1: Well, Coppler really encouraged him, and when the time came,
Speaker 1: Paccino steps up to the plate and hits a home run.
Speaker 9: What I want.
Speaker 1: What's most important to me?
Speaker 10: Said, I have a guarantee no more attempts on my
Speaker 10: father's life.
Speaker 7: It really is a magical scene.
Speaker 1: I have to go to the bathroom.
Speaker 9: Is that all right?
Speaker 1: Not only is al Pacino's performance incredible, but the visual
Speaker 1: and the sonic elements all come together so perfectly. You know,
Speaker 1: a huge amount of preparation went into the scene. Here's
Speaker 1: koppland that interview about his prompt book.
Speaker 9: Scene twenty six, Michael picked up by Salazzo in the
Speaker 9: killing parenthesis key scene the core to show the killing
Speaker 9: as terrifying and explicitly as possible, having taken attention to
Speaker 9: an unbearable degree to further define Michael's character in regards
Speaker 9: to his cool, totally calm execution of these men.
Speaker 7: But even that scene was an immune to the disasters
Speaker 7: that seemed to follow filming. Ira Zuckerman writes that just
Speaker 7: as al Pacino is leaving the restaurant to jump onto
Speaker 7: the getaway car, he leaps onto the side of the
Speaker 7: car and injures his ankle.
Speaker 1: He's rushed to the emergency room, and he'd later say
Speaker 1: I thought it was a sign from God that now
Speaker 1: was injured and they would have to release me.
Speaker 7: It feels symbolic that right when things start going well,
Speaker 7: they shoot this iconic scene and disaster strikes again.
Speaker 1: Absolutely like in the movies. As they say, it's got
Speaker 1: to be one thing after another. Pacino has a sprain ligament,
Speaker 1: but the show's got to go on. Brando is due
Speaker 1: on the set the next morning for his first scene
Speaker 1: as the Don, and the execs a paramount are anxious
Speaker 1: to see if the fading star can deliver.
Speaker 7: Does Copla feel responsible for him because he pushed so
Speaker 7: hard to have him as Don Corleone?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I'm sure he did. He's truly under a
Speaker 1: microscope and he really needs Brando to come through and
Speaker 1: deliver an amazing performance.
Speaker 7: So what happens?
Speaker 1: Well, Brando's flight from La lands in New York City
Speaker 1: at six am, and Brando's not on it.
Speaker 7: He missed his flight and Coppola is fuming. But Brando
Speaker 7: eventually makes it to set. And when he does, how
Speaker 7: does his first scene go?
Speaker 1: Well, it went pretty well because all he has to
Speaker 1: do is lay in a hospital bed. But apparently it
Speaker 1: was a great for morale. The cast crew and even
Speaker 1: the staff at the hospital were so excited to have
Speaker 1: the greatest living actor among them.
Speaker 7: Well, that excitement follows the film all the way to
Speaker 7: Little Italy, right.
Speaker 1: It sure does. Pretty Soon the crew descends into the
Speaker 1: center of Italian American culture in New York City, and
Speaker 1: the word is out the Godfathers in the neighborhood. Nicholas
Speaker 1: Peleggi was a reporter back then and he was working
Speaker 1: on a story about the movie for the New York
Speaker 1: Times magazine. He was the only reporter allowed on the set.
Speaker 1: And here's how he described the scene.
Speaker 6: It was security at both ends of the block, the
Speaker 6: stuff traffic. I you know, it's a very close neighborhood.
Speaker 6: These are five six story tediments. Everybody has been living
Speaker 6: in those tediments the last thirty years, and most of
Speaker 6: their parents looked at those tediments buck in nineteen King
Speaker 6: they know the world and they know it. The white
Speaker 6: guys and the lobsters, and I mean they were all
Speaker 6: they were all still there at the depleted Carlo Gamvidio.
Speaker 7: So we mentioned Carlo Gambino. Were mobsters on set?
Speaker 1: Apparently? Yes, they were shooting scene where the Don is
Speaker 1: shot by the fruit stand and Fredo's fumbling with the
Speaker 1: gun and a crowd of locals form with so called
Speaker 1: wise guys Pepper through the crowd.
Speaker 7: And Marlon Brando knows he's playing to an audience. He
Speaker 7: sort of hams it up.
Speaker 6: The oneness shot is going to cut. How he starts
Speaker 6: to get up, he hears this roar of applause. It
Speaker 6: must have reminded him of when he was in the theater.
Speaker 6: It was such a moving thing to be and when
Speaker 6: he sits up, files just like a theater out of
Speaker 6: the wood.
Speaker 1: Every time Cofflo would yell cut, Brando would harken back
Speaker 1: to his theater days, take off his hat and take
Speaker 1: a deep bow before the crowd, which would obviously roar
Speaker 1: with applause. What about Gambino, Well, according to Nicholas Pelegi,
Speaker 1: Gambino came to the neighborhood on the day of shooting
Speaker 1: and held a court at a coffee shop nearby. Can
Speaker 1: you believe it? I mean, Gambino, this is really fact
Speaker 1: meeting fiction.
Speaker 7: Don Corleone is at least partially based on Carlo Gambino. Right,
Speaker 7: so it's sort of amazing that he found his way
Speaker 7: to the neighborhood on the day of shooting.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't think it's a coincidence. Nick said that
Speaker 1: after conducting his business, he popped around the corner and
Speaker 1: watched a bit of the shooting.
Speaker 6: But a real gun bathera why's the gun Baba?
Speaker 7: So do things ever turned around for Coppola? At some
Speaker 7: point even Jack Ballard has to admit they're seeing a
Speaker 7: real masterpiece unfold.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm not sure Jack Ballard ever comes around. In fact,
Speaker 1: a month into shooting, things are more tense than ever.
Speaker 7: What's going on?
Speaker 1: Well, Coppola is running further and further behind schedule, and
Speaker 1: according to Greg Frederickson, he's under siege.
Speaker 10: He was consumed was taking us down press out of
Speaker 10: the Gray.
Speaker 1: Apparently would hear Jack on the phone with Evans reporting
Speaker 1: every time shooting went long or went over budget, and
Speaker 1: it always is in Hollywood.
Speaker 7: And there was particular contention with the scene of the
Speaker 7: Don in his office.
Speaker 1: Yes, apparently there was a hunt. You're a one thousand
Speaker 1: dollars spent on that office set in the Don's office,
Speaker 1: And when the execs saw the dailies, they did not
Speaker 1: like what they saw.
Speaker 10: Gordon Loose shot everything's so dark. They were used to
Speaker 10: rock huts. The doors day they right take the colored
Speaker 10: goovie and all of a sudden they had this sort
Speaker 10: of CPI of gold looked dark goovie and they couldn't
Speaker 10: even see the set that they spent so much money
Speaker 10: on for the ten thousand dollars disk plus Brando it
Speaker 10: picked up a cat.
Speaker 7: The cat, of course, is iconic now Don cor Leone
Speaker 7: pets him throughout the opening scene, but that was a
Speaker 7: total accident. It was a stray cat that wandered onto
Speaker 7: the soundstage, and apparently when Marlon Brando picked up the cat,
Speaker 7: it was purring right into his microphone, which only made
Speaker 7: things worse.
Speaker 10: So the cat was purring into the night.
Speaker 11: He was speaking.
Speaker 10: It was his first day and he had that impred
Speaker 10: in his mouth, so he couldn't speak very good. So
Speaker 10: it was bumbling with a cat purring kind of scenes.
Speaker 10: It was so dark that no one could see and
Speaker 10: they said, we'll finished.
Speaker 4: This is over.
Speaker 10: Jarget ris.
Speaker 7: The most memorable things about that scene are the darkness,
Speaker 7: Brando's voice, and the cat. But it seems like those
Speaker 7: were the things the executive thought would be the movie's downfall.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the studio just didn't see Coppola's vision. In fact,
Speaker 1: there was believed to be an effort between Jack Ballard
Speaker 1: and Coppola's assistant director Steve Kesten to have Coppola fired
Speaker 1: and replaced with the editor Aaron Obakian, who by the way,
Speaker 1: Coppola had actually hired for the movie.
Speaker 7: Do you think any of this was justified?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, Coppola was having arguments with this cinematographer,
Speaker 1: Gordon Willis, and apparently in the beginning it was really
Speaker 1: very tough to understand Brando's mumbling, But of course Francis
Speaker 1: insisted he needed more time.
Speaker 7: Does he know about the plot against him?
Speaker 1: Is really fast on a movie set, right, especially bad news?
Speaker 1: Kafla decided to strike first and fire six of the
Speaker 1: conspirators at once, the.
Speaker 10: Assessor, director, catch structure provisor Arab and his crew Franks
Speaker 10: as fireable.
Speaker 7: And how does Robert Evans respond to all of this?
Speaker 1: Robert Evans claimed that he had no idea about the
Speaker 1: mutiny on the set. He claimed instead that he spent
Speaker 1: an entire weekend editing together the scene of Michael shooting
Speaker 1: Salazzo and McCluskey in the restaurant.
Speaker 3: And if I'm seeing edited together, I realized that I'm
Speaker 3: doing with a brief guy.
Speaker 7: So conveniently, once Evans is behind the editing, it's coming
Speaker 7: together brilliantly. Well, of course, so with Evans suddenly behind him,
Speaker 7: do things turn around for Coppola?
Speaker 1: Well, he does have a brief moment of glory. Charlie
Speaker 1: Bludorn takes him and his father to the Palm, his
Speaker 1: favorite restaurant in New York. They order stay and they
Speaker 1: order lobster, and according to Koppla, at least they're best
Speaker 1: friends from this point forward.
Speaker 7: So Copla is riding high. What's next on the shooting schedule?
Speaker 1: Another killing, of course, this time the victim is that
Speaker 1: cutthroat Polygtto. Polygtto picks up Clemenza at his home and
Speaker 1: they're supposedly going shopping for mattresses for the war that's
Speaker 1: about to begin, and Clemenza's wife yells from the stoop,
Speaker 1: don't forget the canoli, and they drive out to what
Speaker 1: turns out to be a desolate road in the middle
Speaker 1: of nowhere, with the Statue of Liberty looming in the background.
Speaker 1: The Statue of Liberties. Back to the scene that's about
Speaker 1: to unfold. Clemenza gets out of the car to take
Speaker 1: a leak. Pol Gotto is shot from behind, slumped over
Speaker 1: the steering wheel. Clemenza zips up his pants, comes over
Speaker 1: to the car and tells the driver leave the gun,
Speaker 1: take the canoli.
Speaker 7: Do you think they knew that the scene was going
Speaker 7: to play so well when they filmed it.
Speaker 1: Well, I think they knew it was going to turn
Speaker 1: out to be a great scene, but they didn't know
Speaker 1: about that line, leave the gun, take the Canoli, which
Speaker 1: turned out to be one of the great lines in
Speaker 1: the film, totally a lived by Richard Castellano as Clemenza.
Speaker 1: So it turned out to be a lot more than
Speaker 1: they expected, I'm sure.
Speaker 7: And then we move on to the wedding mark. The
Speaker 7: wedding scene was always more than a wedding, right.
Speaker 1: Well, the wedding scene that opened the movie would show
Speaker 1: all the themes that Coppola wanted to explore in the movie.
Speaker 1: It would set the stage for all the things that
Speaker 1: were coming. It would show that the Mob was more
Speaker 1: than brute forests and bloody fights. It would show that
Speaker 1: its fathers and sons and aunts and uncles and cousins.
Speaker 1: It would show that the Mob is made up of families.
Speaker 1: And what could be more family than an Italian American wedding.
Speaker 7: And let's talk about the location, because there was some
Speaker 7: trouble locking down the Staten Island compound.
Speaker 1: Yes, there was, as always trouble. It was actually a
Speaker 1: few houses adjacent to each other to give the look
Speaker 1: of a compound, and one of the homeowners was holding out.
Speaker 1: According to al Ruddy, they had to call in a
Speaker 1: favor from the production's new guardian, angel Joe Colombo.
Speaker 12: And then I said, look, miss already, you don't understand.
Speaker 12: I worked my whole life and I've saved my whole
Speaker 12: life out to buying this house. And I don't like
Speaker 12: what you want to do with my home because I've
Speaker 12: want the home of a gangster. So I looked at Jones,
Speaker 12: Jose it's going to be the fun sign a fucking
Speaker 12: Jose's it's good for our people. He said, it's good
Speaker 12: for our people, and he did, are you kidding? The
Speaker 12: pennelmus went through the.
Speaker 7: Paper, and of course the wedding scene gives us Johnny
Speaker 7: Fontaine crying to the Godfather and the iconic slap.
Speaker 1: Which takes us to the classic scene of the producer
Speaker 1: Jack Woltz waking up to buyd a horse's head and
Speaker 1: his bad.
Speaker 7: And Copola gave us some insight into his thinking on
Speaker 7: acquiring the horse's head.
Speaker 11: Personally, I would not kill any living creature for a movie.
Speaker 11: It's not in my philosophy. And my personal conviction, I
Speaker 11: don't believe movies are something that any creature, even a fly,
Speaker 11: should be hurt. In order to do it.
Speaker 1: It was very controversial, but they came up with a
Speaker 1: really creative plan to acquire this horse's head, which had
Speaker 1: to be fresh.
Speaker 11: Yes, that was a real horse's head. But the way
Speaker 11: we did it is we went to a dog food company.
Speaker 11: With all the animal lovers who feed their little dogs
Speaker 11: and cats pet food have to Maybe they don't realize it,
Speaker 11: but the pet food is very often made from horse
Speaker 11: meat because when the horses are so they go as
Speaker 11: a main ingredient in pet food. So we went to
Speaker 11: one of those companies and they of course had a
Speaker 11: whole bunch of horses, and we chose a horse that
Speaker 11: looked like the real horse in the movie, was the
Speaker 11: same coloring and had a unique marking. So we chose
Speaker 11: the horse to be like the horse that was in
Speaker 11: the pet food coming. We asked the pet food company
Speaker 11: to not kill that horse until we said, okay, it's
Speaker 11: time to do that, and then we wanted the head.
Speaker 7: I don't even know what to say about this. It's
Speaker 7: such an outrageous thing.
Speaker 1: Mark.
Speaker 7: Do you think that they would have done something like
Speaker 7: this today.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know if people today would be that
Speaker 1: adamant to find a real horse's head. Maybe they would
Speaker 1: be able to do it with animatronics or something like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, would you really have to go and find
Speaker 1: a real horse's head to put in the bed? I
Speaker 1: think you could find a lot of ways to do
Speaker 1: it today. But you can't deny that it was one
Speaker 1: of them most effective and bloody scenes in the movie, truly.
Speaker 7: So Copla finally quells the mutiny, but things aren't going
Speaker 7: much better for him, right.
Speaker 11: Not at all.
Speaker 1: Jack Ballard still breathing down his neck, And now Coppola
Speaker 1: and his cinematographer Gordon Willis are going at it.
Speaker 7: And the root of their disagreements comes from the fact
Speaker 7: that Copola wanted to work too quickly for Willis.
Speaker 1: Well, Coppola and Willis drove each other crazy. One day
Speaker 1: Coppola wants to go handheld, the next he wants a
Speaker 1: thousand millimeter Lyns. So they went back and forth on
Speaker 1: a lot of things.
Speaker 7: And amid the turmoil, Copola's wife Eleanor has a baby
Speaker 7: right right.
Speaker 1: In the middle of filming. Sophia Coppola is born. She
Speaker 1: would of course later become a director, but first she
Speaker 1: would become an actress, and her first role as an
Speaker 1: infant is in The Godfather.
Speaker 7: At just three weeks old, Sophia Copla appears in the
Speaker 7: baptism scene in Saint Patrick's Old Cathedral, playing the son
Speaker 7: of Connie and Carlo Rizzy.
Speaker 1: A huge talent from day one.
Speaker 7: Let's move on to the succession scene, because there's quite
Speaker 7: a story here, yes.
Speaker 1: And the succession scene wasn't even written yet. There's no
Speaker 1: succession scene in Mario Puzo's book, but Coppola thought it
Speaker 1: would be a really important thing to show the transfer
Speaker 1: of power.
Speaker 7: Why did they have such difficulty with this scene?
Speaker 1: Coppola felt he needed some help. I mean, he's directing
Speaker 1: this movie. There are a thousand things happening, and he
Speaker 1: wisely tapped Robert Town, who was one of the great
Speaker 1: legendary screenwriters of Hollywood. He was still a young man
Speaker 1: at that point and still early in his career. And
Speaker 1: so Robert Town told me for the book that he
Speaker 1: gets a call in his house one day in la
Speaker 1: and Coppola is on the phone asking him to come
Speaker 1: to New York to write this scene. Takes his typewriter,
Speaker 1: flies to New York, stays in Buck Henry's apartment, and
Speaker 1: here's how Robert Town remembers it as it happened.
Speaker 4: I had one night to write the scene. I had
Speaker 4: no idea what to do, but I remember looking, do
Speaker 4: you remember.
Speaker 3: The book The Godfather? The cover of it.
Speaker 12: Yeah, of course.
Speaker 1: And he stays up all night and he's looking at
Speaker 1: the cover of the novel and he sees those puppet strings,
Speaker 1: you know, dangling down on the novel's cover.
Speaker 4: I remember looking at it, at the book cover and
Speaker 4: thinking that's a possibility.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, maybe at four am or whatever,
Speaker 1: these words come to him. I went my own life.
Speaker 13: I don't apologize to think care of my family, and
Speaker 13: I refused to be a fool dancing on a string.
Speaker 13: Have I all those big shots.
Speaker 1: A couple of picks up Town at buck Henry's apartment
Speaker 1: really early the next morning.
Speaker 4: He didn't say much, and I didn't say anything, and
Speaker 4: Practice finally about halfway there, said any luck, I said, well,
Speaker 4: I think so. I gave him the script and he
Speaker 4: read it.
Speaker 11: He liked it.
Speaker 1: Copla nods and he says, you show it Tomorrowlin and
Speaker 1: Robert Town went, what you mean, I have to present
Speaker 1: this tomorrow and Brando and he said, yeah, yeah, show
Speaker 1: it tomorrow and takes it to Marrowlin on the set.
Speaker 1: Apparently he loved it as everyone else did. It's one
Speaker 1: of the great scenes in American cinema history.
Speaker 4: At the end of the today shooting with Tomorrowland turned
Speaker 4: to me said who the fuck are you and I said, yeah,
Speaker 4: nobody really.
Speaker 9: I thought that.
Speaker 13: When it was your time that did you would be
Speaker 13: the one of all the strings. Senator go on, governor
Speaker 13: going on.
Speaker 11: So we'll get that, we'll get that.
Speaker 1: So great that when Coppla won the Oscar for screenwriting,
Speaker 1: he thanked Robert Town for this scene. And the interesting
Speaker 1: thing is the scene was written on Q cards for Brando,
Speaker 1: as were many other scenes, and you could see them
Speaker 1: holding up the Q cards for this scene in some
Speaker 1: of the classic pictures from the shooting of the movie.
Speaker 7: Because at this point in his career he had trouble
Speaker 7: memorizing his line.
Speaker 1: Right right, so he had Q cards for a lot
Speaker 1: of these things, including this succession scene.
Speaker 7: Let's fast forward to June twenty eighth, nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 7: It's the sixty sixth day of filming in New York,
Speaker 7: and Coppola is about to shoot a love scene at
Speaker 7: the Saint Regis Hotel.
Speaker 1: Yes, and just a few blocks away in Columbus Circle,
Speaker 1: the Italian American Civil Rights League is hosting its second
Speaker 1: annual Unity Day. The lineup includes bb King, Frankie Valley
Speaker 1: in The Four Seasons, Sammy Davis Junior, and of course
Speaker 1: the headliner Joe Colombo.
Speaker 7: And now Ruddy had planned to attend right.
Speaker 1: Yes, but the night before the rally he received a call.
Speaker 8: Has been on the dais sitting next to Joe Columbo
Speaker 8: when he was shot?
Speaker 12: Okay, and I was told not to.
Speaker 8: Be there that day, not asking me not to be
Speaker 8: there under no circumstances. You to be a Columbus Circle
Speaker 8: tomorrow sitting next to Joe Columbu and the phonecos clicked death.
Speaker 1: No one from the movie attended the rally, and it's
Speaker 1: probably best that they did not, because at eleven forty
Speaker 1: five am, Joe Colombo is walking through the crowd when
Speaker 1: he's approached by a man who appears to be a
Speaker 1: press photographer. The man crouches down, but he's not pointing
Speaker 1: a camera anymore. Instead, he points a pistol at Colombo
Speaker 1: and fires three times in the St. Regis Hotel a
Speaker 1: few blocks away. Coppola is watching this scene play out
Speaker 1: on the news, and in that instance, the mob and
Speaker 1: the movie makers become one. Filming in New York ends
Speaker 1: days later on July. Tewod as Joe Colombo anguishes in
Speaker 1: a coma at Roosevelt Hospital, but filming isn't truly over
Speaker 1: because they still have a few pivotal scenes to shoot.
Speaker 1: For those, the crew needs to head to the birthplace
Speaker 1: of the Mafia sicily, Leave the Gun, Take the Canoli.
Speaker 1: As a production of Airmail and iHeartMedia.
Speaker 7: The podcast is based on the book of the same name,
Speaker 7: written by our very own Mark Seal.
Speaker 1: Our producer is Tina Mullen.
Speaker 7: Research assistance by Jack Sullivan.
Speaker 1: Jonathan Dressler was our development producer.
Speaker 7: Our music supervisor is Randall Poster. Our executive producers are
Speaker 7: Meet Nathan King, Mark Seal, Doan Fagan, and Graydon Carter.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Bridget Arseno and everyone at CDM Studios.
Speaker 7: Comprehensive list of sources and acknowledgments can be found in
Speaker 7: Mark Sieal's book, Leave the Gun, Take the Canolli, published
Speaker 7: by gallery Books. An imprint of Simon and Schuster