The Godfather: 'Nobody enjoyed one day of it’

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/starsandstories/6189162/The-Godfather-Nobody-enjoyed-one-day-of-it.html

The Godfather: 'Nobody enjoyed one day of it’
Just like the film, the making of 'The Godfather’ was an ugly story of fear and dysfunction.
Philip Horne
22 Sep 2009

What was the formula that made The Godfather one of the most successful films of all time? Surely it would take an unusually harmonious combination of talents working in concert, a rare balance of commercial entertainment and artistic challenge, a run of luck those involved couldn’t miss.

But all wasn’t plain sailing on Francis Ford Coppola’s film in 1972. It was nominated for 11 Oscars, winning three, and on its $6 million budget grossed $101million for Paramount within 18 weeks of release. As the film gets a welcome cinematic re-release in a beautiful restoration, it is timely to dive into the swirling mists of legend and recall how far it was from a sure thing.

“It was the most miserable film I can think of to make,” declares its producer, Al Ruddy. “Nobody enjoyed one day of it.” Coppola agrees: “It was just non-stop anxiety and wondering when I was going to get fired.” The novel by Mario Puzo could easily not have been written: eight publishers passed on the outline for a would-be best-seller pitched by a middle-ranking, mid-forties writer with a bad gambling habit and big debts. Only bumping into a friend had led to his actually writing The Godfather. Its 67 weeks topping the New York Times best-seller list surprised everyone.

Paramount bought an option when Puzo had only written 100 pages, for a mere $12,500, rising to $50,000 if the novel was filmed. But maybe – if we’re to credit Paramount’s head of production Robert Evans – Paramount very nearly didn’t acquire it. There was a bidding war: they were “one day away from Burt Lancaster buying The Godfather, and Burt wanted to play the Don”.

Coppola was no one’s first choice. A pack of others were considered: Arthur Penn, Peter Yates, Costa-Gavras, Otto Preminger, Richard Brooks, Elia Kazan, Fred Zinnemann, Franklin J Schaffner, Richard Lester… All said no. Finally, Evans decided Mafia movies hadn’t worked because, “they were usually written by Jews, directed by Jews and acted by Jews” – and the only Italian-American director with any track record was the up-and-coming Coppola. He almost said no, too, thinking Puzo’s opus “a popular, sensational novel, pretty cheap stuff”.

But Coppola relented, partly because his company American Zoetrope was broke. Once aboard, he saw in this blockbuster the profound story of “a king, almost Greek – a king with three sons”. Puzo liked him. Henceforth, though, everything was a fight. The studio wanted to keep costs down by setting the film in present-day Kansas City; Coppola refused, demanding and getting a $5million budget. He demanded an 80 day shooting schedule; Paramount gave him only 53.

Then there was the question of who would play Don Vito Corleone? Paramount had sounded out Anthony Quinn; but also on their list were Laurence Olivier – who was ill – George C Scott, Jean Gabin, Vittorio De Sica, John Huston, Paul Scofield, Victor Mature… Coppola wanted Marlon Brando, whose name was then dirt with the studios due to unreliability and a string of flops. Paramount president Stan Jaffe declared, “Marlon Brando will never appear in this picture”, even forbidding further discussion. But Coppola pleaded to the bosses that Brando was the greatest living screen actor, and finally, extravagantly, collapsed on the carpet before their eyes. They thought he’d had a heart attack brought on by an excess of sincerity and gave in, though on tough terms.

The rest of the casting was problematic, too. Paramount wanted Robert Redford or Ryan O’Neal as Michael, the Don’s son; happily the Redford deal fell through. Rod Steiger wanted to do it. Warren Beatty turned it down. Martin Sheen, David Carradine and Dean Stockwell were considered. Even Robert De Niro tested for it: the footage that survives is remarkable. Only Coppola saw Al Pacino’s depths; casting director Fred Roos found him “this sort of runty little guy”. Coppola prevailed. Pacino was paid only $35,000, but came through.

James Caan, already a name, was tested for Michael, but was best suited for the part he got, Sonny. John Cazale as Fredo was perfect. For Robert Duvall’s part as the consigliere Tom Hagen, both John Cassavetes and Peter Falk approached Coppola. Coppola objected to casting his sister, Talia Shire, as Connie Corleone, yelling at their mother that Shire was too pretty. But she stayed in, and it became a family film: he eventually included his parents, and even his three-week-old daughter, Sofia.

The shoot itself was a nightmare. “My history with The Godfather was very much the history of someone in trouble,” says Coppola. He knew early on “they were not happy with what I had done…”, and expected to be fired at any moment. In the men’s room he heard crew members talking: about the film – “What a piece of junk!”; and about him – “This guy doesn’t know what he’s doing.” Coppola was constantly undermined. Indeed, Elia Kazan was lined up as a possible replacement. Coppola “kept dreaming that Kazan would arrive on the set and would say to me, 'Uh, Francis, I’ve been asked to…’”. But Brando nobly said he would walk off the picture if Coppola was fired. Pacino, too, expected the boot: “I always felt that I still had to win these people over.” He was convinced “I was out – and then the Sollozzo scene came”. They loved his intensity as he takes bloody revenge in that great sequence in the restaurant.

Brando came good. Coppola notes that “without exception, every one of his crazy ideas I used turned out to be a terrific moment”.

Coppola wanted to fill the film with “hundreds and hundreds of interesting specifics”, one example being the cat Brando cradles in the first scene. It wandered onto the set, Coppola befriended it and settled it on Brando’s lap.

Further disagreements abounded. Evans thought it unnecessary to shoot the Don’s death scene, now one of the best-remembered moments of the film. Cinematographer Gordon Willis thought Coppola unprofessional – Coppola said Willis “hates and misuses actors”. Still, the end result is tremendous, radiating a powerful darkness. Even the now iconic music, by Nino Rota, was disliked by Evans. A favourable preview audience saved its bacon.

Finally, there’s the length. Coppola chopped it down, on Paramount’s strict instructions, to a paltry 135 minutes (for exhibitors’ convenience). Then, Evans says, he himself turned on Coppola: “You shot a saga, and you turned in a trailer. Now give me a movie.” The film was restored to its nearly three hours, and the rest is history – and movie legend.

Philip Horne teaches literature and film in the Department of English at University College London

The Tucker That Time Forgot

Thanks to Susie Bright...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/automobiles/collectibles/26tucker.html

Collecting
The Tucker That Time Forgot
Ian Mullarney for The New York Times

This story can have many different endings. Some of the plucky startups, like Ferrari and Honda, endure, and their cars become the stuff of legend. Many more — Bricklin and DeLorean, for example — drop out of sight before gaining a commercial foothold.

Among the failures is one of the most fascinating chapters of American automotive history, the story of Preston Tucker and his attempt to break into a market dominated by Detroit’s Big Three in the years after World War II.

Though the Tucker had long been out of the public eye, interest in the against-the-grain entrepreneur who built it was resurrected by a 1988 film directed by Francis Ford Coppola. “Tucker: The Man and His Dream” depicted Tucker’s enterprise crushed by the combined power of the federal government and the business interests aligned against him.

Now the famously controversial marque is about to get another turn in the spotlight, with the completion of a Tucker convertible in Wisconsin that some enthusiasts have said was a secret prototype for a planned new model.

While much of the Tucker saga is steeped in myth and intrigue, a great deal is known about the 1948 models Tucker actually produced: one hand-built prototype, known as the Tin Goose, and 35 of the sleek Tucker 48 sedans, best remembered for their distinctive third headlight in the center of the front end that was designed to swivel with the steering.

During the 1950s, 16 more of the cars were assembled from leftover parts. These later vehicles, built using factory designs and specifications, are widely accepted as the genuine article, barely less sought-after than any of the originals. All told, 46 of the Tucker four-door sedans are believed to remain.

Surviving Tuckers are worth amounts approaching, and in some cases, exceeding $1 million.

Over the years, there had been whispers here and there, a few mentions in books and articles, about a mysterious convertible that Tucker and his crew had started working on in the days before he was forced to shut down operations in 1949.

But that’s all they were, just tantalizing hints. Few people knowledgeable about Tucker’s history took the stories seriously.

The widespread doubt added to the surprise that Justin Cole, a classic car restorer in Madison, Wis., felt at a car show last September when a collector mentioned to him a pending deal involving a Tucker convertible.

In this complex swap, the collector, Allan Reinert of Burlington, Wis., was to transfer the convertible Tucker to another collector in return for cars and cash. A 1957 Corvette that Mr. Cole was trying to sell was part of the transaction. The man who wanted the Tucker would be sending Mr. Cole a check for the Corvette, which Mr. Cole would then deliver to Mr. Reinert as partial payment for the Tucker convertible.

“I had never heard of a convertible Tucker,” Mr. Cole said, “so I asked him to tell me more about it, and the more he went into the details, the more he caught my attention — things like the correct Franklin engine and Cord transmission, and a frame made of the thickest steel of any Tucker in existence.

“I wanted to believe what he was telling me, but it was very hard to believe. So I went out to Allen’s place and looked into his garage. I saw what I needed to see.”

Significantly, there were only two doors, not the four that all the other Tuckers had, and the doors were longer than those of Tucker sedans. Moreover, Mr. Cole said, the frame had been fabricated of much thicker steel than other frames, and it was reinforced with tubular steel welded inside the box assembly. Many of the parts were stamped with the number 57.

When a check for the Corvette still hadn’t arrived after several days, Mr. Reinert decided to sell the convertible to Mr. Cole instead of to his earlier customer. He said he had wanted $750,000 for the frame and two trailer loads of parts, but agreed to sell it for a total of $475,000, which included the value of the ’57 Corvette, a ’54 Corvette and a 2003 Ford Thunderbird. Mr. Cole estimated the combined values of those three cars at around $240,000.

Since then, Mr. Cole and his crew have put about 1,500 hours into restoration of the car, working with the parts that came from Mr. Reinert. A few sheet-metal panels at the rear of the body, including the decklid and a filler panel, had to be fabricated.

Mr. Cole said he anticipated finishing the car in August and showing the car on Sept. 13 at the Fairfield County Concours d’Élégance in Westport, Conn.

The closer his shop, Benchmark Classics, gets to completing the restoration, the louder the chorus of doubters becomes, with some of the most vocal objections being raised on the forum of the Tucker Automobile Club of America’s Web site, tuckerclub.org. Many participants in that forum say they believe that Preston Tucker never intended to produce a convertible and that Mr. Cole is engaging in an elaborate hoax.

Both Mr. Cole and Mr. Reinert say they are surprised at the vehemence of the objections. They say they have eye-witness accounts, some in the form of affidavits that have been posted on a Web site created for the convertible project at tuckerconvertible.com, from people who had seen the drawings, reinforced frame, factory number stampings — and the car being prepared as a convertible — long before Mr. Reinert acquired it.

One such person, John Walczak, a 60-year-old retired banker from Woodstock, Ill., said he had seen the uncompleted car as a convertible in a Milwaukee machine shop in 1971 or 1972. Also, he said, he saw full-scale engineering drawings — bearing the stamp of the Tucker Corporation — of the car as a convertible.

Jerry Renner, now the owner of a motorcycle shop in Arbor Vitae, Wis., said that Mr. Reinert had brought the frame and body parts for restoration help in the late 1980s. Mr. Renner added that while the project was in his shop, he had been visited by two former Tucker employees who recognized it as an experimental convertible begun in the Tucker factory months before it closed.

Mr. Cole said that his car was no different in authenticity from any of the 16 Tuckers built from leftover parts after the factory closed, and that it should be seen as the legitimately final chapter in the strange story of Preston Tucker’s attempt to create a competing automobile brand in the United States.

“In a way, I am a little like Preston Tucker himself,” Mr. Cole said. “It seems like everyone is against me, but I will not back down. I will finish this project.”

An earlier version of this article misstated the condition of the Tucker's frame when Justin Cole bought it. The frame had been restored and was not rusted.

A version of this article appeared in print on July 26, 2009, on page AU1 of the New York edition.

'The Godfather,' at Its Greatest

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/artsandliving/movies/features/bonus-points/092308.html
'The Godfather,' at Its Greatest
By JEN CHANEY
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2008

Stop what you're doing and clear a space on that crowded home entertainment center shelf. Room must be made for "The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration," ($69.99) the box set that releases today and delivers one of the most influential series in cinema history, looking better than it ever has before.

A team of technicians spent more than a year meticulously restoring the three "Godfather" films, which also make their debut today on Blu-ray disc ($124.99). The results? A sun that shines even brighter on Connie Corleone's wedding day in "The Godfather"; blacker-than-midnight shadows in Michael Corleone's study in "The Godfather Part II"; and blood that pops with crisper crimson color during the Atlantic City shoot-out in "The Godfather Part III." In short, anyone who loves the movies simply must experience filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola's classics -- or at least the first two, since, let's face it, the third one most of us could take or leave -- through these DVDs, which capitalize on modern technology in a way that only enhances Coppola's and cinematographer Gordon Willis's original vision.

For those whose adoration of The Godfather" borders on religious fervor -- you know these people, they're the ones who can never resist a "Leave the gun. Take the cannoli" joke -- this collection is the definitive one to own. Everything that came with the 2001 box set, including several featurettes, 34 deleted scenes and three solid commentary tracks by Coppola, is here. But so is another disc with an all new slate of excellent extras, including one that explains every detail behind the restoration of the movies in more technical terms than some fans may have ever thought they needed.

Another smart addition: "Godfather World," a featurette that has great fun digging up homages to the mafia saga in everything from "The Simpsons" to "The Sopranos" to a recent Audi commercial. A wide range of admirers -- "Sopranos" creator David Chase, "South Park" mastermind Trey Parker, Coppola pal Steven Spielberg -- also appear in the interviews to explain why these movies have so widely influenced pop culture. (As actor Joe Mantegna puts it, "The Godfather" is "the Italian 'Star Wars.'")

Given the intense popularity and acclaim earned by this trilogy, some viewers may be surprised to realize how perilously close "The Godfather" came to never happening at all. The half-hour documentary "The Masterpiece That Almost Wasn't" delves into all that ugly behind-the-scenes history. For Corleone family scholars, many of the details -- about the shake-ups at Paramount in the late '60s and early '70s, the studio's desire to remove Coppola from the production and Al Pacino's near failure to be cast as Michael -- will sound very familiar. But for those just discovering these epics, the documentary does a fine, concise job of explaining this Oscar-winning enterprise's place in cinema history.

As fantastic as "The Coppola Restoration" is, the box set is not without its flaws. For one, none of the major cast members participate in any of the featurettes, and their absences are keenly felt. Surely Pacino, Diane Keaton, Talia Shire, Robert Duvall and Robert De Niro have some memories and insights about "The Godfather" to share. Even more maddening, though, is "'The Godfather' on the Red Carpet." Based on the title, I assumed this featurette would consist of archival footage from the original film's premiere back in 1972. Instead, it contains nothing more than a series of interviews with actors who showed up at the premiere of this year's handheld horror movie "Cloverfield," another Paramount picture. It's great that these young stars share a fondness for these unforgettable films. But as extras go, this one stands as an offer you can, and should, refuse.

Most Oddly Comforting Bonus Point: With the economy on shaky ground, many Americans may find themselves living in fear of getting fired. Maybe some of them will feel better to know that, as "The Masterpiece That Almost Wasn't" and Coppola's commentary explain, the director lived with that same fear. And this guy is one of his generation's finest filmmakers. "It's a good reminder of what a delicate thing it is to create a really fine work of art, in any discipline," notes San Francisco Chronicle film critic Mick LaSalle. "And how dangerous it is to interfere with that."