0:42

Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back

0:45

to another episode of What Went

0:47

Wrong, your favorite podcast, Full Stop,

0:49

that just so happens to be

0:51

about movies and how it's nearly

0:53

impossible to make them, let alone a

0:56

good one, let alone a great one,

0:58

about organized crime in America. As

1:00

always, I'm Chris Winterbauer joined

1:02

by our guide today. Lizzy Bassett, Lizzy,

1:05

how are you doing tonight? I'm doing

1:07

great. I've been steeped in the T

1:09

that is The Godfather, which is, yes,

1:11

full of organized crime, both on screen

1:13

and off screen. Very exciting. And I'm

1:15

excited to tell you how it wraps

1:17

up today. I can't wait to hear

1:19

about it. But before we get into

1:21

this episode, guys, we have to say

1:23

thank you. The outpouring of support following

1:26

the fires here in Los Angeles here

1:28

in Los Angeles has been really... truly

1:30

remarkable. Thank you to everybody who's

1:32

reached out. Thank you to everybody

1:34

who joined the patron and sent

1:36

a nice note. We really, really

1:38

appreciate it. And we would like

1:40

to give a special shout out

1:42

to Meredith Farmer. Meredith works for

1:44

a company called Taylor Stitch Clothes.

1:46

They make men's clothing of which

1:48

I had none after the wildfire.

1:50

And they very generously sent me

1:52

a bunch of clothes. The clothes

1:54

are absolutely fantastic. I truly feel

1:56

like I could be a featured

1:58

extra in a featured. Sheridan show.

2:01

You can tell that they are absolutely

2:03

top-notch quality, that they're going to last.

2:05

Honestly, they might even survive the next

2:07

time my house burns down. So if

2:10

you guys are looking for a wardrobe

2:12

upgrade, that's a little rugged and much

2:14

hipper than what you're currently wearing, at

2:17

least in my case, check out Taylor

2:19

Stitch clothing, and remember, they even made

2:21

Chris look good. So imagine what they

2:23

could do for you. Thanks again, Meredith.

2:26

And that's Taylor Stitch Close. We want

2:28

to give them a really special shout

2:30

out for supporting folks after the wildfires.

2:33

All right, Lizzy, back to the Godfather.

2:35

Last we heard, we had just witnessed

2:37

our first whack, so to speak, of

2:40

this production. That's right, Al Reddy, fearless

2:42

producer of The Godfather had just been

2:44

swiftly fired by Charlie Bludorn, who's the

2:46

head of Golf and Western in the

2:49

Paramount Board for the deal that he

2:51

made with the Italian American Civil Rights

2:53

Civil Rights Civil Rights League, The mafia!

2:56

The actual mafia, that's correct. But here's

2:58

the thing. This was late March of

3:00

1971 and Copla had just started filming

3:03

across town and it turns out that

3:05

the deal that got already fired is

3:07

what got him immediately rehired. Okay, there

3:09

we go. Yes, Joe Colombo is a

3:12

loyal man. And if he's not working

3:14

with already, he's just going to shut

3:16

down all the locations all over again.

3:19

So... That's amazing. He's like, why don't

3:21

you bring back the guy dealt with

3:23

before? Yes. And we can continue this

3:25

thing of ours. Exactly. It was like,

3:28

I'm not doing this. If it's not

3:30

the man I just made a good

3:32

deal with. And what if we learned?

3:35

Organized crime, more ethical and deeper integrity

3:37

than Hollywood. That's right. Maybe the point

3:39

of the movie, to the movie, to

3:42

be honest. So Coppola begs Bludhorn to

3:44

reinstate already and Bludhorn does it, but

3:46

with a caveat. He says, quote, one

3:48

more line to the press and I

3:51

will personally choke you to death. So

3:53

we're just going full mob, full mob

3:55

across the board. Well, remember he also

3:58

had connections. I know, exactly. Seems like

4:00

everyone in the 70s either did a

4:02

bunch of cocaine and or had connections

4:04

to the month. The Colombo connection did

4:07

continue to come in handy throughout filming,

4:09

especially as they were trying to secure

4:11

the Staten Island compound for shooting where

4:14

they were his houses. They had sign

4:16

off from most of the people they

4:18

needed in order to film, but there

4:21

was one poor guy who was holding

4:23

out. He didn't want to do it

4:25

because he said he'd worked his whole

4:27

life to afford the house and he

4:30

didn't want it portrayed as the house

4:32

of a gangster. And Al Reddy was

4:34

like, oh, I'm so sorry. I'm calling

4:37

Joe Colombo. Yeah, exactly. So he calls

4:39

Joe Colombo. Colombo holds a meeting with

4:41

the three of them. And the guy

4:44

says that about not wanting to have

4:46

his house portrayed that way. And Colombo

4:48

just goes, give me the pen, and

4:50

the guy's hand and the guy's shaking

4:53

as he's signing on the dotted line.

4:55

already was like, I felt a little

4:57

bad. Oh, yes, Al. Yeah, not the

5:00

best. And as always, the little guy

5:02

does get squeezed eventually. Oh, well, also

5:04

all of these filming locations that they

5:06

were getting through Joe Colombo, they were

5:09

just passing most of the money that

5:11

they made off of the Godfather back

5:13

to the mob. Like, that's 100% they

5:16

were, they were tithing. Yeah. So with

5:18

Reddy reinstated, they were off to the

5:20

races, and the Godfather would end up

5:23

being shot at 120 New York locations

5:25

over 67 days. How packed is that?

5:27

That's insanely packed. Yeah. I mean... It

5:29

may just be because I was just

5:32

knee deep in Stanley Kubrick's eyes wide

5:34

shut in which they shot seven locations

5:36

for 400 days. Oh my god. But

5:39

that's 120 and 67. 67 days for

5:41

a three-hour movie. That's that seems very

5:43

very fast. Well it's actually more because

5:46

they shot more in Sicily. I think

5:48

it's a total of 77-ish. That's not

5:50

but only 10 days in Sicily. That's

5:52

not that much considering everything they did

5:55

in. Sicily, including blowing up a car

5:57

and he gets married, he spends half

5:59

his life there. Yeah. It's only 10

6:02

days. Yeah, they pack it in. Yeah.

6:04

So as with Ghostbusters closing down New

6:06

York City streets caused a lot of

6:08

confusion and pissed local residents off quite

6:11

a bit. Angry New Yorkers would shout

6:13

at the crew and the sounds of

6:15

honking and screaming from the traffic messed

6:18

up. A ton of takes that they

6:20

had to dove over in post. It

6:22

was just people saying like, hey, godfather,

6:25

fuck you. So let's talk about the

6:27

production, which Copla said was, quote, the

6:29

most miserable time of his life, and

6:31

he is including Apocalypse Now. Oh, because

6:34

I was about to say the most

6:36

miserable point of your life so far.

6:38

No, he is including Apocalypse Now. Wow.

6:41

The studio did not have a lot

6:43

of faith in Copla, and they definitely

6:45

didn't have a lot of faith in

6:47

Al Pacino. Right from the beginning, Chris,

6:50

there was a pretty bad omen for

6:52

Al. So he was like scruffy looking

6:54

at the time of the shoot. So

6:57

the studio sent him to get a

6:59

haircut and a shave before starting his

7:01

part as a young clean cut Michael.

7:04

Yeah, fresh out of the military. Right.

7:06

But when the barber heard he was

7:08

cutting the hair of the guy who

7:10

was going to play Michael Corleone, he

7:13

had an actual heart attack and had

7:15

to be carried away on a stretcher

7:17

to the hospital. Oh my God. And

7:20

this like 5-7 little guy walks in

7:22

and he just clutches his chest. Pachino

7:24

was not on steady footing at all

7:27

early in the shoot. He was shown

7:29

some footage of himself and he felt

7:31

certain that the studio was gonna fire

7:33

him. You know, he was right. Paramount

7:36

was not impressed. What's weird is that

7:38

the footage they were seeing was early

7:40

scenes with him and Kay, where he

7:43

is more subdued. And the way that

7:45

he described this is he was like,

7:47

I don't necessarily think, like I'm not

7:49

jumping off the screen, but I'm not

7:52

supposed to. Like he's supposed to. No,

7:54

it's almost a misdirect. So he, I

7:56

mean, that was what he was going

7:59

in with, and he's right, but I

8:01

think they were all so nervous about

8:03

him already that they were looking at

8:06

this being like, he's terrible. Yeah, it's

8:08

interesting because, you know, in a traditional,

8:10

like, or let's say, current Hollywood film,

8:12

you would think, he needs to start

8:15

to change and show that he can

8:17

be the boss at the turn. at

8:19

the end of act one, right? So

8:22

25, 30 minutes into the film. Right,

8:24

but it takes a lot longer. Doesn't

8:26

happen for an hour in this movie.

8:28

In fact, he's hardly in the first

8:31

hour of this movie. Yeah, that's true.

8:33

It just goes at its own rhythm.

8:35

Yeah, it's like the first, it's really

8:38

not until Vito is shot while Freido's,

8:40

you know, driving him that Michael steps

8:42

back into the picture. lit up. But

8:45

even this scene was an absolute slog

8:47

to film. It took hours to reset

8:49

because they had to clean up all

8:51

the blood, reset the swabs every time.

8:54

Apparently it was taking so long that

8:56

Sterling Hayden who plays the crooked cop...

8:58

McCluskey. Yes, went for a walk and

9:01

then disappeared. And no one could find

9:03

him for like hours, but it turns

9:05

out he just fell asleep on a

9:08

park bench and was woken up by

9:10

children throwing rocks at him. Children? Welcome

9:12

to New York. Yeah, awful New York

9:14

1970s children, I love old New York

9:17

1970s children, I love it. Yeah, just

9:19

tucking rocks out of him and he

9:21

was like, I guess they got to

9:24

get back to set. And a point

9:26

on those squibs too is those squibs,

9:28

they have to be applied with makeup.

9:30

And then on his forehead as well.

9:33

So you have to do effectively prosthetic

9:35

makeup as well. Yeah, the makeup in

9:37

this movie is insane. We're going to

9:40

get into it a little bit. A

9:42

lot of squibs. And also they were

9:44

using a very fine powder for the

9:47

explosions, I think, behind his head. So

9:49

again, just like tons of cleanup. Pachino

9:51

definitely knew that his job was on

9:53

the line and he took the scene

9:56

very seriously. He got coaching from Al

9:58

Atieri. gun. Remember, Al has some personal

10:00

family experience with that. And Lettieri also

10:03

spoke fluent Italian and was trying to

10:05

help Paccino with it in the scene.

10:07

Paccino was not fluent. But Al kept

10:10

stumbling, couldn't get the lines right, which

10:12

is why you see him switch from

10:14

Italian to English in the scene. That

10:16

was Paccino just being fed up and

10:19

switching. And it works so well. I

10:21

love that moment. Yeah. I also think

10:23

it's more accurate to... I guess my

10:26

understanding, second generation, Italian-American would not be

10:28

fluent. And a lot of these guys

10:30

were not fluent in Italian, you know,

10:32

by the time they had been, those

10:35

that have been raised entirely in the

10:37

United States. Right, I mean, he understood

10:39

enough, but it was at a point

10:42

where he was like, I need to

10:44

be able to clearly get my point

10:46

across this is not doing it. Yeah.

10:49

They shot the scene so many times

10:51

that at one point Pachino asked Copila

10:53

what his motivation was. for 16 hours

10:55

and the sun is coming up and

10:58

everybody wants to get the hell out

11:00

of here. That's great. Yeah. It's a

11:02

George Lucas answer. So now they really

11:05

had to wrap, but there was one

11:07

thing left to capture, which was Michael's

11:09

getaway from the restaurant. Because they were

11:11

short on time, they hadn't done an

11:14

actual rehearsal of this sequence. They were

11:16

just like, eh, just go. So the

11:18

car pulled up outside the restaurant, but

11:21

apparently had not been told to fully

11:23

stop. So Al Pacino just threw himself

11:25

at the car to try to jump

11:28

on you know how in 1940s cars

11:30

they have those little running boards so

11:32

he was trying to like land that

11:34

and catch on it but he missed

11:37

completely landed in the street badly hurt

11:39

his ankle and was just laying there

11:41

and on Conan O'Brien brings a friend

11:44

recently he said he was actually really

11:46

relieved as he was lying on the

11:48

ground because he was like I think

11:51

this might get me fired and I'm

11:53

so exhausted. I'm so done with this

11:55

movie. I'm so done that like that

11:57

he was like thank God great this

12:00

is this should take care of it

12:02

but unfortunately Paramount really loved the performance

12:04

that he had just given. So they

12:07

shot him in the ankle with some

12:09

painkillers and had him finish the day.

12:11

We'll just numb it up. You're not

12:13

going to feel this leg anymore, but

12:16

let's just keep going. You don't need

12:18

it. Pachino was not the only one

12:20

who thought he was going to get

12:23

fired the entire time. So did Francis

12:25

Ford Coppola. Coppola had assembled an extremely

12:27

experienced team for the film, including cinematographer

12:30

Gordon Willis, who had just come off

12:32

of Clute. He's great. It looks amazing

12:34

too. It's so timeless. All of his

12:36

movies do. All of his movies do.

12:39

He is a legend. He would go

12:41

on to shoot the Parallax View, Godfather

12:43

Part Two, all the president's men, Annie

12:46

Hall, Manhattan, and one of my all-time

12:48

favorite over-the-top 90s thrillers, malice. I love

12:50

malice. I love malice. Which you might

12:52

notice about all those movies is that

12:55

they're very dark, physically dark, and that

12:57

is because he is known as the

12:59

Prince of the Prince of Darkness, because

13:02

of his propensity to play with shadows.

13:04

The costume designer was Anna Hill, Johnny

13:06

Johnston, also a legend who had literally

13:09

outfitted Brando on the waterfront, and the

13:11

production designer was Dean Tevalaris, who had

13:13

previously worked on Little Big Man. So

13:15

Copla was by far the youngest, and

13:18

realistically the least experienced on set. Initially

13:20

it doesn't seem like this was an

13:22

issue. He was very welcoming to ideas

13:25

during the team's pre-production brainstorms, but it

13:27

started to become clear that he maybe

13:29

didn't understand sort of the like... practical

13:32

application of things in the way that

13:34

the rest of the team did. I

13:36

mean he was coming from indie film

13:38

effectively and these are studio veterans. Exactly.

13:41

He was a huge stickler for time

13:43

period authenticity but the rest of the

13:45

team sometimes had to like give him

13:48

a little help to understand that certain

13:50

elements need to give a bit to

13:52

make it a more cohesive picture. Sure.

13:54

Like he was concerned about the color

13:57

of the women's lipstick not being exactly

13:59

accurate and they were like, yeah, but

14:01

like you don't actually see women that

14:04

often in this movie and like it's

14:06

gonna be okay. Right. Yeah. And like

14:08

I said, he was absolutely miserable. He

14:11

was stuck in a tiny apartment with

14:13

his very, very pregnant wife and two

14:15

kids and he couldn't sleep. And before

14:17

cameras even started rolling, especially Robert Evans,

14:20

did not trust Coppola. They were immediately

14:22

concerned that the script at over 170

14:24

pages was way too long. It's really

14:27

long script. You know, rough math for

14:29

any folks out there who haven't heard

14:31

it on this podcast. you assume on

14:34

average one minute per page. So that

14:36

means they're staring down a two-hour and

14:38

50-minute film without credits, which would push

14:40

it over three. It's almost exactly what

14:43

the film ends up being. So that's

14:45

a very long movie post, you know,

14:47

the musical road shows of Hollywood that

14:50

had kind of dominated 15-20 years prior.

14:52

Well, he also kept hearing rumors that

14:54

the studio had sent a spy to

14:56

the set. to keep eyes and ears

14:59

on the production. And the rumors, Chris,

15:01

were true. Oh, yeah. Jack Ballard was

15:03

described by Walter Murch, the film's sound

15:06

effects supervisor, as Bob Evans, Lukabrazi. He's

15:08

an enforcer. And we killed it. Well,

15:10

he does have a dramatic exit that

15:13

we'll get to later. He cared about

15:15

the bottom line, and he was there

15:17

to enforce it, no matter what. Not

15:19

a particularly creative guy. It doesn't sound

15:22

like. Do we need

15:24

women at all? Could we... Who cares

15:26

about the lipstick? Could we do without

15:28

their lips? His reports back to Paramount

15:30

and Evans got more and more negative

15:32

every day and it didn't help that

15:35

Copula was almost immediately running behind. Yeah.

15:37

So Ballard would send all the dailies

15:39

back with a specific list of every

15:41

single time he felt that Copula or

15:43

one of the actors had messed up.

15:46

I mean, this is horrible. Like, this

15:48

is not... If your job exists to

15:50

find problems, and that's his whole job.

15:52

It's so stupid, he has to justify

15:54

his existence by sending everything that's wrong.

15:56

That's exactly right. And Copeland's... securities were

15:59

getting to the crew who were starting

16:01

to think that maybe the godfather wasn't

16:03

going to be so great after all.

16:05

Apparently one time Copla went to the

16:07

bathroom and while he was in there

16:09

in the stall two crew members came

16:12

in and started calling him and the

16:14

film a quote load of shit and

16:16

he heard the whole thing and he

16:18

just picked his feet up and listened.

16:22

It's like high school, the mean girls

16:24

come in. It's terrible. I'm sure he

16:27

felt like everyone was out to get

16:29

him, and at a certain point in

16:31

the production, they actually were. So Copla's

16:34

editor initially was a guy named Aram

16:36

Avakian, who he had worked with previously

16:38

on Europe Big Boy Now, and Copla

16:40

trusted him. But Aram was also a

16:43

director. At the beginning of the film,

16:45

Aram had asked Copla to staff up

16:47

the production team with a bunch of

16:50

his buddies, including cinematographer for Gordon Willis

16:52

Gordon Willis. Unbeknownst to Coppola, he had

16:54

basically staffed Aram's team and not his.

16:57

It started to become clear that Aram

16:59

wanted Coppola's job for himself. And as

17:01

the editor, he has actually like a

17:04

unique position to have a lot of

17:06

influence because he kind of sits between

17:08

Coppola and the studio in an interesting

17:11

way. Well, he's also in control of

17:13

a lot of the footage that's going

17:15

back to the studio. Exactly. I mean,

17:18

the editor can make something terrible look

17:20

great and something great look terrible look

17:22

terrible. One night at dinner with Copla

17:25

and his wife, Aram waited for Francis

17:27

to leave the table and then started

17:29

talking to Eleanor Copla about how the

17:32

movie wasn't coming together. She said she

17:34

got the distinct impression that he was

17:36

trying to use her to convince Francis

17:39

to quit. Fortunately, this lady was absolutely

17:41

not having it. No, if she, God

17:43

bless her, will follow Copla into the

17:46

sun. Yeah. If you watch her in

17:48

Heart of Darkness, it's pretty incredible. Yeah,

17:50

she's not the one to try that

17:53

with. So Al Reddy had gotten wind

17:55

of what Aram was up to and

17:57

he had warned Peter Bart, but Bart

18:00

was still shocked when Jack Ballard announced

18:02

on a conference call that Copla was

18:04

stuck in big time and Aaron Avakian

18:06

was to be the new director. So

18:09

Jack's making that call? He's saying this

18:11

is what we should do. He doesn't

18:13

actually have the authority to do that.

18:16

Yes. He's making the suggestion. Got it.

18:18

Got it. Got it. So in mid-April,

18:20

Robert Evans's red emergency phone. Yes, he

18:23

has a phone like the president has.

18:25

Great. The nuclear football. Yes. Rang in

18:27

the middle of the night. And Jack

18:30

Ballard told him the movie doesn't cut

18:32

together. And so Bob Evans is like,

18:34

put Aram on. And Aram told him

18:37

that individually the shots looked great, but

18:39

that referring to Copala, quote, the fucker

18:41

doesn't understand continuity. Right. What's interesting to

18:44

me is that Evans, despite all of

18:46

the issues that he had had with

18:48

Copala, and as we will see, will

18:51

continue to have, does not really seem

18:53

to buy this. I do think, like,

18:55

say what you will about Bob Evans,

18:58

he is a nut, but, like, he

19:00

has taste and I think he knows

19:02

when he sees something special, even if

19:05

he hates him. I also think he

19:07

knows people and their machinations, and he

19:09

can smell a snake a mile away.

19:12

And the way that Aram has worded

19:14

it is so specific to not put

19:16

any blame at the feet of his

19:19

friend. the cinematographer, Gordon Willis, right? Yes.

19:21

Individual shots look great. By the way,

19:23

was lighting stuff way too dark at

19:26

one point, and he did have to

19:28

pull him back a little bit. I

19:30

mean, he's amazing. Yeah. But yeah, that's

19:32

a really good point. Since Evans didn't

19:35

immediately fire Copala, Francis made a wild

19:37

decision. He picked six people, including Avakian,

19:39

who he believed were part of the

19:42

coup, and he fired them all. I

19:44

mean, good for Copala. Like... You gotta

19:46

do it. You gotta pull the plug.

19:49

Yeah, and he timed it right too.

19:51

He did it like midweek when there

19:53

was a holiday on the Monday or

19:56

something so that they couldn't get anything

19:58

done. And yeah, he just said, I'm

20:00

the director and you don't have a

20:03

job anymore. It sounds like there's a...

20:05

of the chance Avakian wasn't leading the

20:07

coup that may have actually been Copeland's

20:10

first AD, but regardless, they all had

20:12

to go because clearly they were up

20:14

to something. Back in LA, Bob Evans

20:17

was furious to find out that the

20:19

AD had made actual offers to other

20:21

directors, including Elia Kazan. Yeah, and that's

20:24

a huge, enormous overstep of the first

20:26

AD, because it's also an intergilled overstep,

20:28

and unless... First 80s were not part

20:31

of the director's guild at this point

20:33

in time, I'm not 100% sure, it

20:35

would be the equivalent of your first

20:38

mate attempting to subvert the captain, you

20:40

know, on a ship. It's a crazy

20:42

move. Yeah, it's a crazy move. It

20:45

really is. That's bold. Well, it didn't

20:47

work. And fortunately, Evans backed Copala and

20:49

Copala's little midnight murder spree among his

20:52

own crew paid off. Guys,

20:57

the best thing about this podcast is

20:59

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21:01

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22:05

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22:07

terrible opinions. It's figuring out which streaming

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service is actually streaming the movie that

22:11

I need to watch for this podcast.

22:14

Because when I Google it, it gives

22:16

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22:18

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23:01

One of Air Mavakian's friends that Copla

23:04

didn't fire was cinematographer Gordon Willis. Now

23:06

Willis was kind of a grouch in

23:08

general, although an incredibly talented one, who

23:10

would get extremely pissed off if actors

23:13

even slightly missed their mark. Why is

23:15

that Chris? Because he has not enough

23:17

light to cover them if they step

23:19

anywhere besides his their mark? Yeah, exactly.

23:22

Because he's lighting it so tightly that

23:24

even a little bit of a deviation

23:26

from their mark would ruin the shot.

23:29

Sorry, I really, I will say, one

23:31

of the reasons I think this movie

23:33

looks as timeless as it does is

23:35

it's not overlit. It looks amazing. Great

23:38

contrast, deep shadows. It doesn't have that

23:40

kind of studio light feel or even

23:42

kind of like the overlit action movie

23:44

of the 80s, for example. It really

23:47

feels natural in a way that I

23:49

think a lot of films, especially a

23:51

lot of earlier, you know, color films

23:54

from let's say like the late 50s

23:56

and 60s did. Oh, it looked very

23:58

different. It looks incredible. But also thinking

24:00

about this as an actor, it's like

24:03

you have, you're so constrained in terms

24:05

of your movements, which would be really

24:07

hard. He had a sign on his

24:09

camera that said actors think marks are

24:11

German currency. Which is like... It's funny,

24:14

but it's also... It's a little hostile.

24:16

Yeah, exactly. Like, look at this while

24:18

I record you do your job. Right.

24:20

Yeah. So this obviously requires a lot

24:23

of careful preparation on Willis's part.

24:25

But Coppola was very partial to

24:27

changing things on a whim, so

24:29

they really did not get along

24:31

at first. While shooting the family

24:33

dinner scene after Don Corleone has

24:35

been shot, Coppola decided to change everything.

24:37

And Willis is like, that's fine, but

24:39

I need to redo all of the

24:42

lighting now. And Coppola's like, nah, it's

24:44

fine. Let's just go, let's go now. They

24:46

end up screaming at each other. with Willis

24:48

saying you don't know how to do anything

24:51

right and storming off of the set and

24:53

copula immediately calls for another one

24:55

of the cameraman Michael Chapman to

24:57

go ahead and shoot the scene and this guy

24:59

literally runs away and locks himself in

25:02

the bathroom because he does not want

25:04

to get involved well yeah because he's

25:06

probably concerned that he's gonna get fired

25:08

by his boss who is Gordon Willis

25:10

by either of them yes totally exactly

25:13

So Copla just absolutely explodes, runs off

25:15

to his office, and literally punches down

25:17

his door, like breaks his door into

25:20

tatters. It has to be replaced by

25:22

carpenters the next day. Anyway, they

25:24

were fine. They resolved it. They got back.

25:26

They're best friends by the end of

25:28

the week. One person who did back Copla

25:30

Majorly was Brando, and he said that he

25:33

would walk if Copla were fired. So that

25:35

must have carried some weight. And I think

25:37

it's probably a pretty big reason that Copla

25:40

kept his job through a lot of this.

25:42

Now to top everything off, as I

25:44

said, Copala's wife was super duper

25:46

pregnant when this started, and immediately

25:48

after filming the sex scene between

25:50

Sunny and the random bridesmaid, Copala

25:52

was informed that Eleanor was in labor.

25:55

So he ran and grabbed a camera and

25:57

headed to the hospital. It turns out they

25:59

were actually... waiting to tell him until

26:01

the scene had rapped. I would have

26:03

been so mad. I'll jump in briefly

26:06

if I may, one story really quickly,

26:08

even worse than this that's related. I

26:10

believe on the shoot of full metal

26:13

jacket, I think it was Matthew Moding's

26:15

wife went into labor and it was

26:17

gonna be a C-section and Kubrick told

26:19

Moding. He shouldn't go because he needed

26:22

to finish the shoot. And he basically

26:24

said, you'll just get in the way

26:26

of the doctors, get queasy and throw

26:29

up. You're more useful here. And Moding

26:31

said, if you don't let me go,

26:33

I will like break my own hand.

26:36

So they have to take me to

26:38

the hospital. And Kewbrick said, fine, but

26:40

you have to be back here tomorrow,

26:42

8 a.m. First thing to finish your

26:45

scene. smack in the middle of making

26:47

the godfather, who was it? Sophia? Yes,

26:49

it was Sophia. And you can actually

26:52

see her in the movie. She is

26:54

the baby playing Connie and Carla's son

26:56

in the baptism scene at the end

26:58

of the film. I was wondering, that's

27:01

such a fresh baby. I was like,

27:03

oh, I got a real fresh one.

27:05

She literally pops Sophia Copla out and

27:08

they put her in the baptism. First

27:10

like, shoot it! What's doing? Yes. Now

27:12

this wouldn't be an episode about the

27:15

Godfather about the Godfather without us talking

27:17

about that horses' So yes, it's a

27:19

real horse's head. Let's get into it.

27:21

Copelow was insistent from the beginning that

27:24

the horse's head that the godfather has

27:26

placed in film producer Jack Wolts' bed

27:28

should be real. Not only that, he

27:31

actually wanted real blood, like from a

27:33

butcher. He was like, why can't you

27:35

just go to any butcher and ask

27:37

for a bunch of buckets of pig's

27:40

blood? And production designer Dean Tavillaris is

27:42

like, you can't do that for a

27:44

lot of reasons, but mainly because blood

27:47

coagulates. and you're going to be shooting

27:49

for a long time. Yeah. So he

27:51

created a mixture using kero syrup that

27:54

does congeal after a while but doesn't

27:56

go up the same way that actual

27:58

blood would. No paramount? obviously not team

28:00

actual fresh horses head. So initially they

28:03

said a dried up just ratchety taxidermee

28:05

horse's head that they said weighed like

28:07

two pounds was filled with straw. It

28:10

was seabes. It was disgusting. It's just

28:12

you could like kick it around like

28:14

a pin yada. It was a hobby

28:17

horse. It was like what they said.

28:19

Yeah, so clearly not usable. No. And

28:21

Copel also wants to take it one

28:23

step further. He's like, it doesn't actually

28:26

just have to be a dead horse.

28:28

I need it to be a dead

28:30

race horse because race horse's heads look

28:33

different. Okay. And you got to put

28:35

lipstick on it. Yeah. It needs to

28:37

be period appropriate lipstick on that race

28:39

horse's head. So already's poor assistant Betty

28:42

Betty McCart was charged with finding an

28:44

actual. Fresh racehorse's head None of the

28:46

men want to deal with it. No,

28:49

they find this young woman assistant and

28:51

they say all right, honey. All right,

28:53

tuts. What's up? All right, tuts You

28:56

got one job. Well, she did it.

28:58

She called a place that made dog

29:00

food Using horses and they're like oh

29:02

lucky you a race horse was just

29:05

put down and you can come get

29:07

the head Unfortunately for her, the teamsters

29:09

refused to go get it when they

29:12

found out what they would be picking

29:14

up. So she had to go out

29:16

there in a limousine and pick up

29:18

a stinking fresh race horse's head and

29:21

drive it back from like New Jersey

29:23

to where they were shooting. Oh my

29:25

god. Other versions of the story have

29:28

the art director selecting the exact horse

29:30

whose head they wanted before it was

29:32

put down. Right. Got it. What a

29:35

job. Also, poor John Marley, the actor

29:37

playing the film producer, had to shoot

29:39

with that thing in his bed for

29:41

upwards of eight hours, and they kept

29:44

all the windows closed, so it smelled

29:46

horrible. We had a cat dying. under

29:48

our house a little while ago, and

29:51

I had to go through the crawl

29:53

space to get it. And it was

29:55

one of the more awful experiences of

29:57

my life, which tells you two things.

30:00

One, I'm a wuss, and two, I've

30:02

had a very nice life. But that,

30:04

I cannot imagine having that dead animal

30:07

in my bed for eight hours while

30:09

filming a scene with the windows closed,

30:11

because it smelled ripe. And also they're

30:14

telling him like, hey, stretch your legs

30:16

out, like you're asleep. You had a

30:18

nice dream. Give it a little shake.

30:20

Oh my God. At the end of

30:23

the shoot, he was asked if he

30:25

wanted to keep the pajamas as a

30:27

keepsake. And he goes, I'll tell you

30:30

where to put the pajamas. Wow. So

30:32

in addition to the horse's head, of

30:34

course, we also have to talk about

30:36

Marla Brando. Brando's makeup in this movie

30:39

is incredible, because remember that he is

30:41

only 47 years old. You can actually

30:43

look up before and after pictures of

30:46

like him in the makeup chair. And

30:48

the transformation is, it's insane. It looks

30:50

like him and then his father or

30:53

something. Yeah. Also, it's without applying a

30:55

ton of prosthetics. Like, they're not doing

30:57

that much on him, which I think

30:59

is why it looks so good. Exactly.

31:02

Because it's so restrained. You believe it

31:04

more. I think part of the problem

31:06

today is they'll do a ton of

31:09

work, but then retain the youth of

31:11

the eyes. And this I think goes

31:13

the opposite direction, which is like they

31:15

age his eyes a lot with the

31:18

crow's feet and they add the darkness,

31:20

the deep bags and whatnot. And I

31:22

think that gets you 90% of the

31:25

way there. Yeah. Well, the makeup is

31:27

thanks to legendary makeup artist Dick Smith,

31:29

along with Brando's personal artist. Smith is

31:32

incredible. He would go on to work

31:34

on taxi driver. I watched it, I'm

31:36

embarrassed to say, for the first time,

31:38

somewhat recently, and I really enjoyed it.

31:41

Yeah, it's a super fun one. So

31:43

they developed a routine that would take

31:45

about three hours with Marlon in the

31:48

chair, which also, like, to your point,

31:50

we've covered a lot of other movies

31:52

that involve, you know, tons of prosthetics

31:54

and they're in the chair for eight

31:57

hours and it's not bad. they did

31:59

here. They applied layers of liquid latex

32:01

to his skin that would stretch and

32:04

dry in the wrinkles that you see.

32:06

They also added age spots and yellow

32:08

teeth and he had a custom mouthpiece

32:11

built that sagged his jaw and made

32:13

his jowl sort of jut forward. He

32:15

had to keep a dry ice pack

32:17

near his face for most of the

32:20

shoot so the makeup wouldn't just melt

32:22

off of him. Wow. He also put

32:24

a 10 pound weight on each foot

32:27

to slow down his movements. And apparently,

32:29

he was heavily padded around the midsection

32:31

because he had quote, washboard abs. Get

32:33

it, Marlon. Don't doubt it. How, though?

32:36

He'd just been lounging around on Valium

32:38

for like seven years at this point.

32:40

I'm convinced everyone had washboard abs, except

32:43

for Copel, if you see photos in

32:45

him. Yeah. Well, really until Apocalypse now,

32:47

it starts to go awry. Yeah, that's

32:50

true. He was also a notorious prankster.

32:52

I don't know if you know this

32:54

about Marlon Brando. One of his best

32:56

in this movie was in the scene

32:59

where he's being carried up the stairs

33:01

on a stretcher after having been in

33:03

the hospital. He hid 300 pounds of

33:06

sandbags on himself and the stretcher so

33:08

that the poor people... trying to lift

33:10

him up the stairs for like what

33:12

is going on and he just is

33:15

laughing. I'm sure he got like grip

33:17

and electric to help him right because

33:19

they have the they have these sandbags

33:22

right to hold down their equipment and

33:24

but I think the heaviest ones are

33:26

25 pounds so that still means he

33:29

had 12 very big sandbags somehow hidden

33:31

in this thing. It's so funny I

33:33

think people really liked him that's definitely

33:35

the impression. Yeah I'm sure. Others on

33:38

set also got in on the fun.

33:40

Because James Khan and Robert Duval knew

33:42

that Marlon was a prankster, Duval convinced

33:45

James Khan to pull his pants down

33:47

and Moon Marlon Brando when their cars

33:49

pulled up next to each other one

33:51

night, and Brando loved it so much

33:54

that he made a bet with them

33:56

about who could be named the Mighty

33:58

Moon Champion, this will come back, but

34:01

just remember that Marlon Brando one. Okay,

34:03

got it. They're all like, you win,

34:05

Marlin, we're good. Yeah, call it a

34:08

day. You'll see why. A few more

34:10

fun facts. He insisted on eating squid

34:12

and hot sauce every day. No context,

34:14

I'll just leave that there. I'm sorry.

34:17

And we let the horses had smelled

34:19

bad. Brando's breath by the end of

34:21

this thing. I love Kalamari, too. He

34:24

frequently also couldn't hear anyone because he

34:26

was wearing flesh-colored earplugs to help drown

34:28

out background noise and really focus in

34:30

his performance. He also loved to talk

34:33

about the script, maybe more than he

34:35

loved to rehearse actual scenes. This definitely

34:37

started to concern Copala early on because

34:40

an hours-long conversation between Robert Duval and

34:42

Marlon Brando about the nature of violence

34:44

might sound cool. It is also not

34:47

usable. Now you may have heard that

34:49

he needed cue cards because he didn't

34:51

memorize his lines. This is true. He

34:53

did need cue cards, but from what

34:56

I've read... it most likely wasn't out

34:58

of laziness or not wanting to learn

35:00

them. I think it's because the script

35:03

was changing so much that he often

35:05

didn't have time to learn them and

35:07

had to read them on the fly.

35:09

He also, I think, said himself that

35:12

it helped him be more natural and

35:14

less rehearsed in those scenes. That's what

35:16

I had heard is that he actually

35:19

liked either the in-ear microphone earpiece that

35:21

he would later use or the cue

35:23

cards because he liked the spontaneity of

35:26

just reacting in the moment. I think

35:28

it's a combination of that and the

35:30

fact that they were literally rewriting entire

35:32

chunks of the screenplay on set. And

35:35

Copla wasn't just rewriting it himself. He

35:37

also called in favors from Friends, including

35:39

someone we talked about a lot in

35:42

our Chinatown episode, Robert Town. Hmm. Towne

35:44

was tapped to come in and write

35:46

the scene between Michael and his father,

35:48

as the power is sort of transferring,

35:51

was right before Brando's character dies. Towne

35:53

pulled the scene together very quickly, and

35:55

Francis and Brando both loved it. And

35:58

when asked if he wanted a screenwriting

36:00

credit, Robert Towne said, no, it's just

36:02

one scene. And he was like, he

36:05

joked, just thank me, if you win

36:07

an honor. Oscar, which of course Copala

36:09

did, and he did thank him. All

36:11

right, Chris, do you remember who Giani

36:14

Russo was from our first episode? Yes,

36:16

he plays Carlo. Carlo Rizzi, Connie's terrible

36:18

abusive husband. Yes. We're going to talk

36:21

about him a little more because this

36:23

guy is absolutely wild. So starting with

36:25

their first cast rehearsal, which was just

36:27

an improvised conversation over dinner at a

36:30

restaurant, it was pretty clear that Giani

36:32

was the odd man out. Hmm. He

36:34

was not trained as an actor, which

36:37

Marlon Brando picked up on very quickly.

36:39

Brando asked him if he had a

36:41

big movie coming out, or if he

36:44

was on TV, or who did you

36:46

study with? And Russo's like, what? So

36:48

Brando calls over Copla to be like,

36:50

hey, who is this guy who cast

36:53

him? Like, why is this person playing

36:55

my son-in-law? And Russo proceeds to send

36:57

Copala away so he can have a

37:00

private word with Brando. So Russo sent

37:02

Copla away, just to clarify. Correct. Okay,

37:04

wow. Bold move, Russo. Just you wait,

37:06

because this is what he said to

37:09

Marlon Brando. All due respect, I know

37:11

who you are. Don't fuck this up

37:13

for me. Do you hear me? If

37:16

you screw this up for me, and

37:18

I get fired, and I lose this

37:20

part, I will suck on your heart,

37:23

and you will bleed out right here.

37:25

That's the scariest thing I've ever heard

37:27

somebody say. This is my favorite part

37:29

of this is that Marlon Brando just

37:32

stands there and listens to it and

37:34

then goes, that was beautiful. You could

37:36

do this part. Yes. I just love,

37:39

I love it. Brilliant. This guy's not

37:41

acting and Marlon Brando has no idea.

37:43

No. He's like, this guy's great. He's

37:45

method. It's amazing. Oh my god. And

37:48

remember, this guy is still on a

37:50

mostly wine diet. To be fair, the

37:52

diet of my dreams. This is sort

37:55

of a running thing. for Brando of

37:57

him not understanding that some of these

37:59

guys are actual mobsters and not actors.

38:02

He also told Lenny Montana who plays

38:04

Luka Brazzi to forget about acting school

38:06

and just be natural when he could

38:08

tell that he was nervous. This man

38:11

is never into acting school. Great. He's

38:13

basically Tim Allen and Galaxy Quest at

38:15

this point. He just doesn't understand that

38:18

any of this is real. So in

38:20

Luka's scene at the wedding, James Khan

38:22

tried to get him to loosen up

38:24

by saying he needed to prank Brando.

38:27

And Lenny was terrified, but he let

38:29

James Khan put a piece of surgical

38:31

tape on his tongue that said, fuck

38:34

you. And when it came time to

38:36

approach Brando in the scene, he stuck

38:38

his tongue out. Brando loved it and

38:41

started laughing hysterically. And then he mooned

38:43

him and then he put a whoopie

38:45

cushion under his chair. Under the chair

38:47

of this absolutely gigantic actual. And then

38:50

it blew a hole up the side

38:52

of the wall. Yeah. But Lenny struggled

38:54

majorly with his. admittedly very few lines.

38:57

He could barely get through the actual

38:59

scene where he thanks the godfather. So

39:01

instead of scrapping it, Copala got very

39:03

creative and filmed Lenny practicing his lines

39:06

with index cards outside. And it totally

39:08

worked. Have you watched the Sopranos? I've

39:10

seen like half of it. Oh, he

39:13

reminds me so much of Bobby Bacala.

39:15

So much of Bobby Bacala anyway. There's

39:17

a lot, I think, from the Sopranos

39:20

that borrows, obviously. But also just like...

39:22

It infuses this character with so much

39:24

sort of sweetness that I think is

39:26

not in the book. Well, and then

39:29

you do care when he's killed, as

39:31

a result, a character who you've hardly

39:33

seen in this movie. Speaking of his

39:36

death scene, he seemed pretty game to

39:38

be actually strangled during this. He had

39:40

been a professional wrestler for many years,

39:42

so it seemed like he knew when

39:45

to tap out, but he did apparently

39:47

pass out a few times and also

39:49

bleed from his ears and nose. His

39:52

eyes are bugging in that scene. That's

39:54

real. Yeah, it looks real. It looks

39:56

painful. And then my favorite Lenny Montana.

39:59

story is that at one point, Reddy's

40:01

poor assistant Betty McCart broke her watch

40:03

and Montana asked her what kind of

40:05

watch she'd like to replace it with

40:08

and she jokingly set a Rolex. So

40:10

he shows up with an actual Rolex

40:12

and says it's from the boys but

40:15

don't ever wear it in Florida. Now

40:17

the set wasn't just terrifying because of

40:19

actual mobsters and studio henchmen lurking around

40:21

every corner. For the guy who played

40:24

polygato, remember the driver who double-crossed veto,

40:26

and who gets killed in the car

40:28

while Clements is peeing outside on the

40:31

side of the road, it was also

40:33

terrifying because of how they shot this,

40:35

Johnny Martino, who played polygato. Yeah. He

40:38

was told to pull a string and

40:40

land on the steering wheel after he

40:42

heard three shots. The string would pull

40:44

his hat off and release a squib

40:47

that would launch blood down his face.

40:49

Copel is like, get some in your

40:51

mouth, you know, spit it out a

40:54

little bit and then fall on the

40:56

steering wheel. He's like, okay, sure. As

40:58

they're about to call action, an old

41:00

guy with a rifle slides into the

41:03

back seat of the car behind him.

41:05

And Martino is like, hello, what the

41:07

fuck are you doing here? And the

41:10

guy's like, oh, don't worry, I'm just

41:12

going to shoot three bullets past your

41:14

head and out the windshield. Three real

41:17

bullets? He also said not to worry

41:19

because he just handled all the ballistics

41:21

on Bonnie and Clyde. And also the

41:23

bullets would miss his head by at

41:26

least four or five inches. Pass? The

41:28

actor also wanted to know how they

41:30

planned to not actually shoot Richard Castellano

41:33

who plays Clemenza since he was right

41:35

in front of the car. Right. And

41:37

they're like, oh, yeah. Don't worry about

41:39

that. There's a guy hiding next to

41:42

the car with like a really thick

41:44

piece of wood on a stick and

41:46

he's gonna pop up and hold that

41:49

in front of the windshield. It's gonna

41:51

catch the bullet. It's like, mah, don't

41:53

worry about it. This is the worst

41:56

room Goldberg device I've ever heard of.

41:58

So naturally Martino called Copla over to

42:00

express some concern and Copla goes, oh

42:02

yeah, don't worry. The marksman's really good.

42:05

Okay, action. Oh my God. And they

42:07

did it. They shot an actual gun

42:09

like four inches away from this guy's

42:12

head to blow the windshield out. We

42:14

joke because it's funny only because nobody

42:16

was hurt. that is one of the

42:18

most insane things we've actually heard on

42:21

this podcast i would say truly i

42:23

literally was like this can't be real

42:25

and i had to go and like

42:28

find interviews with this poor man and

42:30

it's real also potentially the most famous

42:32

line in the movie which is leave

42:35

the gun take the can only was

42:37

half improvised as scripted it was just

42:39

leave the gun but Richard Castellano remembered

42:41

his on screen and soon to be

42:44

off-screen real life, wife's instructions to get

42:46

canolee and dropped the iconic, take the

42:48

canolee right after. Interesting. Another completely improvised

42:51

line was James Kahn's, Bada Bing! Which

42:53

of course was the name of Tony

42:55

strip club. and the Sopranos. Yeah, I

42:57

think he's joked that he should like

43:00

get some kind of compensation for how

43:02

much that's shown up in mob films

43:04

after this. He clearly felt comfortable improvising

43:07

throughout the movie, that scene where he

43:09

comes outside at the wedding and like

43:11

ruffs up the photographer and breaks the

43:14

camera. Not at all planned in any

43:16

way. That poor photographer just saw James

43:18

Khan come at him and didn't know

43:20

what to do. So also Clemenza holding

43:23

him back, not scripted. It was Richard

43:25

Castellano trying to stop him from breaking

43:27

more expensive old cameras. Great moment though,

43:30

really establishes his character in one beat.

43:32

And then him pulling out the cash

43:34

and throwing the money down. That was

43:36

something he remembered from his own neighborhood

43:39

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44:55

one of the most difficult scenes in

44:57

the whole movie was Sunny's death at

45:00

the toll booth. The amount of squibs

45:02

and guns going off in that scene,

45:04

and squibs are, they can be pneumatically

45:07

released, right, like a burst of air,

45:09

but a lot of the times it's

45:11

a gunpowder charge, blasting glass or blood

45:13

or both, and it looks like a

45:16

thousand squibs in that scene. It's crazy.

45:18

Well, not a thousand. But Khan himself

45:20

was rigged with 110 shell casings full

45:23

of powder and blood to explode on

45:25

Q. It's like having a hundred bullets

45:27

strapped to your body. It's just ridiculous.

45:29

That's exactly right. They were very dangerous

45:32

because if he moved the wrong way

45:34

and got any part of his body

45:36

like a hand or anything in front

45:39

of one of them, they are literally

45:41

filled with gunpowder. It could blow a

45:43

hole in his hand. He also had

45:46

specially designed blood packets hidden on his

45:48

face that were attached with fishing line

45:50

so the crew members would pull those

45:52

off as soon as the shooting began.

45:55

And the car was rigged with 200

45:57

bullet holes that were also filled with

45:59

those guns. powder squibbs. The whole two

46:01

minutes scene cost $100,000 and

46:04

that was for one take. I'm not

46:06

surprised of just this sheer volume

46:09

of destruction and the

46:11

visceral impact of it, it is shocking

46:13

to watch in a way that, look,

46:15

it's so much safer now to do

46:18

digital blood bursts, which are what you

46:20

see in 95% of the films I

46:22

would say that are released today, even

46:24

something, you know, like John Wick, etc.

46:27

And they all look. very convincing

46:29

now. However, the squib, I

46:31

still think, looks the most

46:33

visceral of any bullet impact

46:36

I've seen on screen. And

46:38

this one, you can just

46:40

feel Khan actually reacting to all

46:42

of these things exploding on

46:44

his body. And it's really

46:46

horrifying. It really shows you

46:48

the power of guns and

46:50

then obviously the tragedy of

46:52

this character. It's a really

46:55

amazing, terrifying scene. Totally. It

46:57

looks really good and James

46:59

Khan looks terrified, which I

47:01

think he was. Fortunately, they got

47:03

the whole thing in one take and no one

47:05

blew a hole in James Khan. That's also

47:07

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

47:09

Wow. I mean, they literally couldn't afford

47:11

to do it more than once. I

47:13

mean, it would be like a whole

47:15

other day too on top of just the

47:18

cost, you know, to get everything reset.

47:20

Now we're still not done with old

47:22

Jimmy. One of the strangest rivalries on

47:24

set was between number one crazy man,

47:27

Of course. Like, Brando loves those guys,

47:29

and then Khan is like the bullshit

47:31

detector, I'm sure. You know what I'm

47:33

saying? It's like, in a different way.

47:35

So, yeah. Well, according to Russo, which

47:38

we can take all of this with

47:40

a grain of salt, but it

47:42

all started when he was out

47:44

at a nightclub with two soldiers

47:46

from the Gambino family, just having

47:48

a drink with Tommy Baladi and Boazzi,

47:50

as one does, Chris. See, sir? These

47:52

are real people. What he didn't know was

47:55

that James Khan was allegedly in the back

47:57

room having a drink with an underboss from

47:59

the Colombo family. a rival family. Some kind

48:01

of conflict or scuffle it seems did

48:03

happen due to them both being there

48:05

with competing families and Russo left convinced

48:08

that James Khan was out to get

48:10

him from there on out. Worth noting,

48:12

Khan denies this completely, but I might

48:14

side with Russo on this one. So

48:17

here's the thing, this scuffle happened just

48:19

a few days before they were set

48:21

to film the scene where Sunny beats

48:24

the absolute crap out of Carlow. Khan

48:26

apparently rehearsed the scene quite a bit

48:28

with the film's stunt coordinator, but on

48:30

the day, he added a little extra

48:33

panache, Chris. He asked the prop master

48:35

for a broom handle, and the prop

48:37

master is like, mmm, why? And Khan's

48:39

like, yeah, just put it in my

48:42

car. So he comes barreling out of

48:44

the car and immediately throws it at

48:46

Russo, which Copla loves, and is like,

48:48

oh, that was great, but you missed

48:51

him, hit him next time. Yeah, of

48:53

course. Then Khan threw him over the

48:55

railing, which was rehearsed, but slamming the

48:57

garbage lid on him was not, and

49:00

Russo claims he chipped a bone. He

49:02

also said that Khan did not fake

49:04

the kicks to his ribs when he's

49:06

clinging to the fire hydrant and was

49:09

fully kicking him. Interesting. Which I'm not

49:11

going to lie, if you watch it

49:13

again, it looks like James Khan is

49:16

beating the shit out of this man.

49:18

Well, here's the thing, now that I

49:20

think about it, too. Khan's doing it

49:22

on all of the things that he

49:25

can kind of get away with. Yeah.

49:27

From the way you describe it. The

49:29

punches are clearly theater punches when he

49:31

stands Russo up. But when Russo's on

49:34

the ground and Khan's feet are hidden

49:36

behind Russo, you have no idea what

49:38

he's doing because the thing is filmed

49:40

in one continuous long shot from the

49:43

far side of the street. Also, Russo

49:45

looks really scared and I don't think

49:47

he's that good an actor. Oh, he

49:49

does look really scared. Yeah. Russo firmly

49:52

believed that Khan did this on purpose

49:54

as retaliation, but Khan's story is very

49:56

different. He was just improvising. Nothing personal.

49:59

Yeah. And again. We do not condone

50:01

workplace violence. No. Which is what this

50:03

is. Listen to your stunt coordinator. Do

50:05

not. Do not actually beat the man.

50:08

Exactly. Improvisation is wonderful on set when

50:10

both actors are consenting to what's being

50:12

improvised. Yeah. It did take Russo a

50:14

few days to recover from this, apparently.

50:17

I believe it. It takes me a

50:19

few days to recover from a run.

50:21

I can't imagine being hidden in the

50:23

elbow with a garbage can lid by

50:26

James Khan. That's like... I've been punched

50:28

once in my life by someone much

50:30

smaller than James Khan and that was

50:32

painful enough. I'm good. Yeah, I don't

50:35

need to do that. Now, Russo also

50:37

made sure to pocket some extra cash

50:39

from the wedding scene. He sold cases

50:41

of soda to paramount at a markup

50:44

price. He's like, one of these kids,

50:46

like, do one of my chocolate bars

50:48

to send my basketball team to the

50:51

tournament? He also made himself a deal

50:53

with a local baker, where he got

50:55

the massive wedding cake for free, but

50:57

sold it to Paramount for like $1,500.

51:00

You know what? Honestly? Good for him.

51:02

Good for him. Yeah, like built the

51:04

studio for a little bit of money.

51:06

He does. Speaking of the wedding scene,

51:09

Copala captured some of the shots via

51:11

a helicopter, but I guess they hadn't

51:13

tied things down enough. So it started

51:15

whipping up tents and prop walls, which

51:18

was really scary, and most of the

51:20

helicopter shots were not usable. But a

51:22

lot of the cast and extras didn't

51:24

really seem to care because they were

51:27

extremely drunk. They look drunk. Yeah, as

51:29

the helicopter came around again and again,

51:31

they started waving at it going, hello

51:34

Francis. I honestly assumed Gople had just

51:36

like invited his family to come have

51:38

a great time or something. Well, it's

51:40

funny you should mention that because a

51:43

whole bunch of the 500 extras on

51:45

set for this shoot were the families

51:47

of actual mobsters. Yes, great. It was

51:49

the family. And Brando's walking around going,

51:52

Where did he find these guys? Literally.

51:54

Marlon Brando was plastered during this, did

51:56

not know that... that's who was in

51:58

the crowd and decided to moon the

52:01

mall as a big joke. The mighty

52:03

moon champion strikes again. And I'm sure

52:05

all these Bob guys think it's amazing.

52:07

You know, like Brando. I don't think

52:10

the wives loved it. And the theater

52:12

mom's also not happy with Marlon Brando's

52:14

ass, just out. He did have Washboard

52:17

abs, so who knows? That's not what

52:19

they were seeing. About halfway through the

52:21

filming, though, things took a very serious

52:23

turn. On June 27th, 1971, producer Al

52:26

Reddy received a call from the anonymous

52:28

FBI agent who had been talking to

52:30

him throughout production about his dealings with

52:32

the Colombo family. I got the impression

52:35

he wasn't like informing on the Colombo

52:37

family, it's just this guy was like

52:39

in contact with him because they were

52:41

basically like, you are dealing with actual

52:44

criminals, like be careful. Yeah. The next

52:46

day Joe Colombo had a huge rally

52:48

planned and Reddy was supposed to go.

52:50

and show his support. The FBI agent

52:53

told him, quote, under no circumstances are

52:55

you to be standing next to Joe

52:57

Colombo tomorrow at Columbus Circle, do you

52:59

understand? And he's like, gotcha, no problem.

53:02

Our friend Giani Russo received a similar

53:04

call, but this one was from a

53:06

Gambino family member. He told him not

53:09

to go anywhere near the rally, even

53:11

though Russo was supposed to literally be

53:13

on stage with Colombo. At 11.45 AM

53:15

the next day. As Joe Colombo approached

53:18

the stage, a man dressed as a

53:20

press photographer suddenly crouched down, pulled out

53:22

a gun, and shot Colombo three times

53:24

in the head. The gunman was unswifully

53:27

killed by someone else, leaving no trace

53:29

of who had ordered the hit, and

53:31

Colombo would remain in a coma for

53:33

the next seven years before finally dying

53:36

in 1978. And by the way, this

53:38

was like down the street from where

53:40

the godfather was filming. Which is pretty.

53:42

weird. I think Coppola was like watching

53:45

the news later that day and they

53:47

were showing like documentary footage of the

53:49

godfather basically on the news about this

53:52

actual mob guy being killed. I knew

53:54

Colombo died at some point, but I

53:56

didn't think it was until the late

53:58

70s. And then obviously, as you just

54:01

said, it's because he was in a

54:03

coma for seven years. Totally forgot that

54:05

that overlapped with this production. And I

54:07

think Gruddy had gotten like kind of

54:10

close to him at this point. So

54:12

this was upsetting. So throughout everything that's

54:14

going on, Robert Evans and Francis Ford

54:16

Copala were growing farther and farther apart

54:19

on pretty much everything. The ability to

54:21

shoot in Sicily was yet another battle

54:23

between Coppola and Evans with Evans constantly

54:25

trying to pressure Coppola to just shoot

54:28

it in upstate New York, you know,

54:30

the Sicily of America. The beautiful rolling

54:32

hills of Poughcy, as they say. Yeah,

54:34

Coppola is like, they're not the same

54:37

thing. And Bob Evans and Jack Ballard

54:39

are like, sure you can, it's fine.

54:41

Take him to the cat skills. Jackbilla

54:44

is like, you're lucky to shoot this

54:46

movie outdoors, kid. Yes. So he did

54:48

win the battle to shoot in Sicily.

54:50

Right. And he also won the battle

54:53

to allow production to shut down for

54:55

two weeks ahead of the Sicily shoot

54:57

so he could do a rough assembly

54:59

of the film out of his American

55:02

so trope offices in San Francisco. So

55:04

the town that you see on screen

55:06

is actually not the town of Corleone.

55:08

Apparently Corleone was A, two full of

55:11

actual mobsters, and B, two urban and

55:13

B, two urban and dirty. So they

55:15

couldn't so they couldn't use it. So

55:17

they couldn't use it. They shot in

55:20

the little villages outside of the resort

55:22

town of, I think it's Tarmina, Teormina?

55:24

I'm so sorry, Italians. Well, you know,

55:27

my enunciation's not going to be any

55:29

better, so we'll stick with yours, Lucy.

55:31

Their time in Sicily was one of

55:33

the few enjoyable portions of this shoot

55:36

for Copla. Even he and Gordon Willis

55:38

got along great. It was short. but

55:40

they had a really good time. You

55:42

can kind of feel it. It feels

55:45

so tranquil compared to the rest of

55:47

the movie. You're just like, Apollonia, you're

55:49

so beautiful, don't get in that car,

55:51

honey. You can't drive anyway. Yeah, I

55:54

didn't even think it was a car

55:56

bomb. I think she just couldn't drive.

55:58

But Jack. Ballard was still crouching over

56:00

them to the point where he was

56:03

literally shipping dailies back to LA across

56:05

a complicated set of international flights. And

56:07

those dailies were being watched obsessively by

56:09

Robert Evans. Now by this point Evans

56:12

had a pretty massive cocaine and prescription

56:14

drug problem and he was relying on

56:16

both heavily to get through the godfather

56:19

which had at this point become his

56:21

entire life. Yeah. It sounds like it

56:23

all got worse when he managed to

56:25

hurt his back pretty badly. His wife

56:28

said by playing tennis, who knows exactly,

56:30

there are a lot of stories about

56:32

how he got a hold of these

56:34

pain pills, but at a certain point

56:37

he had to literally be wheeled into

56:39

the screening room on a gurney to

56:41

work on the edits. Doctors, again, prescribed

56:43

in pain pills for whatever this injury

56:46

was, which he took. And then, of

56:48

course, because pain pills make you sleepy,

56:50

he took more cocaine to bring back

56:52

the focus. Yeah. He was really obsessed

56:55

with the edit, and this would ultimately

56:57

be the breaking point between him and

56:59

Copla. Copla had been working out of

57:02

San Francisco to pull together a 175-minute

57:04

edit, and this is after all the

57:06

shooting is done. When he screened this

57:08

cut, most people, including Robert Evans, loved

57:11

it. But again, it's 175 minutes long,

57:13

so the studio freaked out. We see

57:15

this all the time. Why, Chris? Because

57:17

they can't fit as many screenings into

57:20

a day in a given theater with

57:22

a, I think it's over two hours

57:24

and 20 minutes or something like that.

57:26

There's a certain number that you need

57:29

to hit and you get one extra

57:31

screening per day. Which is a lot

57:33

more money, potentially. I think it's like

57:35

over 10 or 15 percent, you know

57:38

what I mean? If you just look

57:40

at the pure math of it. Well,

57:42

your math on the time is very

57:44

good, because they're very good. Yeah. Now

57:47

when Cobala does it, he cuts 40

57:49

minutes out. And when he screens this

57:51

version, Bob Evans reportedly hated it so

57:54

much that he threatened Paramount, he would

57:56

walk away if they stuck with the

57:58

shorter version. He literally said, this feels

58:00

longer than the 175 minute version. Exactly,

58:03

because if you cannot understand what you're

58:05

watching, it will feel interminable as a

58:07

result. Also, you have to really pay

58:09

attention. I don't, it's... It clicks at

58:12

a very fast pace. You are going

58:14

across time and space very quickly. What

58:16

could they even have cut out? Like

58:18

I'm trying to, you wouldn't be able

58:21

to understand what was happening. They would

58:23

have stripped all of the wedding down.

58:25

Like I guarantee you it would have

58:27

been, you know, Sunny's dead by like

58:30

35, 40 minutes into the movie, you

58:32

know, Brando's dead by an hour and

58:34

then all of the hits are happening.

58:37

I don't know. I can't even imagine.

58:39

It would be so compressed. So the

58:41

studio said, fine, and this is where

58:43

Coppola and Evans stories go in completely

58:46

different directions. Now, according to Evans, he

58:48

went into like a fugue state working

58:50

endlessly on the edit. According to Coppola,

58:52

he simply restored the footage that had

58:55

been cut by the studio in the

58:57

first place. So Coppola was like, my

58:59

first cut was perfect, Evans didn't do

59:01

anything else, it just literally put back

59:04

what had been taken out. They stopped

59:06

speaking completely and only communicated through Peter

59:08

Bart. Evans was so obsessed that he

59:10

didn't even notice anything was wrong when

59:13

his wife, Ali McGraw, left to go

59:15

film the getaway with Steve McQueen in

59:17

Texas for three months. And he didn't

59:19

visit her on location once, which would

59:22

prove to be a fatal mistake. Remember

59:24

Evans is also working on Chinatown at

59:26

this point. So he must have just

59:29

not been sleeping, like really not not

59:31

well. He... also had a habit of

59:33

talking himself up quite a bit, which

59:35

I think is what really pissed Coppola

59:38

off. I don't think Coppola would have

59:40

made anything out of this if Evans

59:42

hadn't been out there touting his contributions

59:44

to this movie. Which is kind of

59:47

how Evans got his position to begin

59:49

with a little bit, you know, what

59:51

I mean? A lot of bravado, you

59:53

know, kind of led to his... success.

59:56

It's a continuation of what's worked in

59:58

the past. Yeah. Also, Al Reddy does

1:00:00

uphold that Evans' biggest contribution was that

1:00:02

he fought his own studio to keep

1:00:05

the edit long. There's really no arguing

1:00:07

that. He did do that. And that's

1:00:09

not nothing. Outside of that, it is

1:00:12

very unclear how much he actually changed

1:00:14

and how much Copla had already done.

1:00:16

Yeah. I am inclined to believe he

1:00:18

did do some stuff. There's a couple

1:00:21

of things I came across that make

1:00:23

me think that his contributions were not

1:00:25

nothing to this. One is that I

1:00:27

think Coppola wanted to end on the

1:00:30

baptism scene and Evans insisted on ending

1:00:32

through the doorway. Yeah. So there's stuff

1:00:34

like that where it's like, that is

1:00:36

not insignificant. No, and it's a great

1:00:39

character moment. And I don't doubt that

1:00:41

he contributed. I think we all... tend

1:00:43

to overvalue our contributions to any endeavor

1:00:45

and undervalue those of those around us.

1:00:48

But I think it's particularly hard. He's

1:00:50

never been on set, presumably, right? And

1:00:52

so Copelas, I'm sure thinking, you're coming

1:00:54

in here at the 11th hour. He's

1:00:57

been breathing down his neck the whole

1:00:59

time. And from Copelas perspective, you make

1:01:01

the most obvious decision ever, which is

1:01:04

not to go with a cut that's

1:01:06

so bad it makes everyone want to

1:01:08

jump off a bridge. But from Evan's

1:01:10

perspective, he's effectively turning against his. employer

1:01:13

like his source of status. He's going

1:01:15

against the family, so to speak. So

1:01:17

it is a big leap for him

1:01:19

and there's but there's no way for

1:01:22

either to understand the other in the

1:01:24

sense. That's the thing is I think

1:01:26

Copla to your point he's pissed that

1:01:28

he's coming in he feels like he

1:01:31

hasn't done anything and Bob Evans on

1:01:33

the other side is like I have

1:01:35

put my life on the line for

1:01:37

this you're giving me no credit for

1:01:40

what I've done. This all segueed into

1:01:42

another enormous fight about the music. Evans

1:01:44

and Paramount wanted Henry Mancini, who had

1:01:47

just done Breakfast at Tiffany's, I think

1:01:49

a decade earlier maybe, and he'd won

1:01:51

the best original song Oscar for Moon

1:01:53

River. Evans wanted a happier, more American

1:01:56

score to pep the movie up. Obviously,

1:01:58

he is wrong on this one. Copala

1:02:00

was insistent that it needed to be

1:02:02

Nino Rota, prolific composer for mostly Italian

1:02:05

films at that point. He wanted it

1:02:07

dark, moody, distinctly Italian. It reached a

1:02:09

point where Copla threatened to take his

1:02:11

name off the movie and take out

1:02:14

ads in the Hollywood reporter about how

1:02:16

terrible Paramount had been. Wow. So finally,

1:02:18

he was like, you know what? I

1:02:20

don't care. Do a test screening with

1:02:23

Rota score, and if the audience doesn't

1:02:25

like it, you can change it. You

1:02:27

can change it. and this was like

1:02:30

six weeks before the film's release so

1:02:32

at this point I think he installed

1:02:34

enough that he knew. Obviously the screening

1:02:36

was a hit and Evans caved. By

1:02:39

the way the only reason Rhoda didn't

1:02:41

get an Oscar nomination for this I

1:02:43

think is because the main theme is

1:02:45

actually a variation on a previous theme

1:02:48

he had done and they deemed it

1:02:50

late that he wasn't able to... Oh

1:02:52

interesting. So,

1:03:02

I said Jack Ballard had a

1:03:04

sort of dramatic exit. Here it

1:03:06

is. He continued to plague the production

1:03:08

all the way through the sound mix

1:03:10

until one day they were screening the

1:03:13

sound effects real. He shows up, starts

1:03:15

going off about how garbage the sound

1:03:17

effects sound, how they would never work

1:03:20

in this town again. Also, this is,

1:03:22

I believe, Walter Murch is the supervising

1:03:24

sound. Arguably the greatest supervising sound editor

1:03:27

may be of all time and an

1:03:29

incredible editor. Yes. Oh no, I'm just

1:03:31

saying he would eventually be, you know

1:03:34

what I mean? Well, it's funny you

1:03:36

should bring up merch because he had

1:03:38

had it with Jack Ballard at this

1:03:41

point and he explained to him, he's

1:03:43

like, you don't know what you're talking

1:03:45

about. We are listening to an effects

1:03:48

real. This is not the final, like

1:03:50

you don't know what you're doing and

1:03:52

on top of everything else, sir, you're,

1:03:55

you're drunk. You're drunk. You're drunk. You're

1:03:57

drunk. You're drunk. And Ballard just paused

1:03:59

and was like, you know what? I

1:04:02

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

1:04:04

I am drunk. And then he just

1:04:06

walked out and they never saw him

1:04:09

again. Oh no. Jack Ballard, they broke

1:04:11

him. He was like, I love when

1:04:13

it comes in, he's like, why don't

1:04:16

you put the words in, you

1:04:18

dummy? He's like stumbling around and then

1:04:20

he's like, you're right. So initially the

1:04:22

godfather had been set for release in

1:04:25

December of 1971, but thanks to the

1:04:27

difficult shoot and even more difficult post-production,

1:04:29

it had been pushed back to March

1:04:32

at this point. generally not considered a

1:04:34

great time to release something like this,

1:04:36

especially because this is an awards contender.

1:04:39

Or even like a summer tent pole,

1:04:41

you know what I mean? It's kind

1:04:43

of a dead zone. The dumpuary January

1:04:46

of April sort of range. But Paramount

1:04:48

came up with a groundbreaking release strategy

1:04:51

for The Godfather to counteract this. The

1:04:53

film premiered on March 14th 1972. That

1:04:55

was the big New York premiere. The

1:04:58

next day it released in five theaters

1:05:00

across New York. Then a few days

1:05:02

later it expanded to LA and Toronto.

1:05:05

Now within five days of the wide

1:05:07

release on March 24th, it had expanded

1:05:09

to 316 theaters across the country. I

1:05:12

think this Blitz was like more than

1:05:14

anyone had ever really done at once

1:05:16

and they did it very quickly. So

1:05:19

they platformed the release, you know, which

1:05:21

is obviously like you kind of do

1:05:23

concentric circles and you expand it. But

1:05:26

they really quickly got to saturation it

1:05:28

sounds like. Yes. In the first week

1:05:30

at the five Manhattan theaters alone, the

1:05:33

Godfather hauled in $465,000. Which is, that's

1:05:35

a great per theater average, especially for

1:05:37

that time. By a month past release,

1:05:40

it was grossing $1 million a day.

1:05:42

Lines were wrapping around the block to

1:05:44

get tickets to see it. It

1:05:46

was an absolute blockbuster. It earned more

1:05:49

than $250 million worldwide. But before it

1:05:51

ever made it into any of those

1:05:53

theaters. already snuck out a print to

1:05:56

screen it for the boys, aka the

1:05:58

mob. Because they weren't allowed tickets. actual

1:06:00

premiere and they absolutely loved it.

1:06:02

The projection is said he was

1:06:05

getting tipped thousands of dollars. The

1:06:07

Godfather made millionaires out of Copula,

1:06:09

Reddy, and Puzo, but one person

1:06:12

it didn't make rich was Marlon

1:06:14

Brando. And that's because right

1:06:16

before filming was set to start,

1:06:18

Brando's attorney had called up

1:06:20

Charlie Bludhorn and Evans saying Brando

1:06:22

needs $100,000 to pay his taxes. Oh

1:06:24

no. So this lawyer struck a deal

1:06:27

where he got that money right away.

1:06:29

but he gave up all of Brando's

1:06:31

points on the back end. Oh no. At

1:06:33

the end of the day, Brando

1:06:35

lost something like $11 million

1:06:37

because of this. Kids, pay your

1:06:40

taxes. Pay your taxes and

1:06:42

don't give up the investment

1:06:44

in the actual profits. Yeah.

1:06:46

He promptly fired his entire

1:06:48

team when he found out what

1:06:51

had happened. Yeah. Someone else

1:06:53

who didn't make money off of it?

1:06:55

Robert Evans. Yeah, unless he gets promoted

1:06:57

off of it, or you know, the board gives him more

1:06:59

stock or something. There's no participation for him. Yeah, despite all

1:07:01

the work he had put in, he wasn't technically a credited

1:07:03

producer on it, like Al Reddy was. He was the head

1:07:05

of production at Paramount. And that's true of the executives at

1:07:07

any studio, you know what I mean, for the most part.

1:07:10

And that's why you don't see the Godfather on his IMDB

1:07:12

page. You do see Chinatown, because it bothered bothered him so

1:07:14

much on this, that he wanted him so much on this,

1:07:16

that he wanted his name on the poster for the poster

1:07:18

for that he wanted his name on the poster for that

1:07:20

he wanted his name on the poster for that. He had

1:07:22

also absolutely destroyed his

1:07:24

body during the production and it

1:07:26

turns out also his marriage He

1:07:28

learned shortly after the all-out party.

1:07:31

He threw for the godfather premiere

1:07:33

that his wife Ali McGraw Was

1:07:35

leaving him for Steve McQueen Arguably

1:07:37

one of the most attractive men

1:07:39

on the planet at that Robert Evans

1:07:42

was also not bad. I mean

1:07:44

she was strapped to a gurney

1:07:46

You've got a good point Four

1:07:48

men strapped to a gurney pretty

1:07:50

handsome. I'm not comparing myself to

1:07:52

him. I'm just saying it's Steve

1:07:54

McQueen. I know it's Steve McQueen

1:07:56

and also I think I have

1:07:58

Matthew Good as Robert Evans in

1:08:00

my head. Because when I look

1:08:02

at the actual Robert Evans, I'm

1:08:05

like, I mean, yeah. He's like,

1:08:07

actual Robert Evans is tall Paul

1:08:09

McCartney. But like, that's true. Steve

1:08:11

McQueen, yeah. So she'd shown up

1:08:13

to the Premier, but that was

1:08:15

the last truly happy memory that

1:08:18

he would have with her with

1:08:20

Henry Kissinger on one arm and

1:08:22

Ali McGraw on the other. What

1:08:24

a weird double date. It does

1:08:26

seem like Robert Evans, despite having,

1:08:28

oh my God, so many more

1:08:30

wives never really recovered recovered from

1:08:33

this. Yeah. At least Marlon Brando

1:08:35

won a Best Actor Oscar, and

1:08:37

that was enough of a calling

1:08:39

card to put him back on

1:08:41

the map as an actor. Now,

1:08:43

of course, I'm sure you all

1:08:46

know this, but he famously did

1:08:48

not show up to accept his

1:08:50

award. And he sent a Native

1:08:52

American woman, such a little feather,

1:08:54

to accept it for him. Now

1:08:56

there's since been some controversy calling

1:08:58

into question whether she had Native

1:09:01

ancestry or not. We're not going

1:09:03

to get into that here. Marlon's

1:09:05

intention was to bring awareness to

1:09:07

the mistreatment of Native Americans across

1:09:09

the country as well as their

1:09:11

misrepresentation specifically in film. Unfortunately, it

1:09:14

is a really sad and uncomfortable

1:09:16

moment because she is booed. John

1:09:18

Wayne wasn't like ready to like

1:09:20

get on the stage and fighter

1:09:22

or something like that. I vaguely

1:09:24

remember. Yeah, there's something ridiculous. It

1:09:26

was not the whole crowd at

1:09:29

all. No, no, yeah. But it

1:09:31

was a lot of the crowd.

1:09:33

This was part of his many,

1:09:35

many years long pledge to bring

1:09:37

awareness to the mistreatment of Native

1:09:39

Americans across the country. In fact,

1:09:42

he also did not attend the

1:09:44

Godfather Premier. He sent another Native

1:09:46

American man in his stead to

1:09:48

that. that was met with, I

1:09:50

think, less frustration than this was

1:09:52

just because of the platform of

1:09:54

this moment. But you can see

1:09:57

it. It's a bummer. She looks

1:09:59

great. I think at those awards

1:10:01

events, the gross truth of it

1:10:03

is, like, I think actors really

1:10:05

like to think like we're doing,

1:10:07

and all of us creatives, like,

1:10:10

we're doing such a good job

1:10:12

for the world. Like, this is

1:10:14

so important, what we're doing, this

1:10:16

like play acting that we're all

1:10:18

doing, I'm, I'm sure I would

1:10:20

be as guilt. as anyone were

1:10:23

I talented enough to win an

1:10:25

Oscar, which I'm not. And then

1:10:27

to be reminded of like, oh

1:10:29

yeah, no, this is actually a

1:10:31

distraction at the end of the

1:10:33

day. I'm sure makes people uncomfortable.

1:10:35

I used to think. before I

1:10:38

like knew more about this that

1:10:40

it was that it was kind

1:10:42

of shitty of Marlon Brando to

1:10:44

like send her out there but

1:10:46

the more I learned about him

1:10:48

and this moment I don't think

1:10:51

he had any intention to hang

1:10:53

her out to dry I and

1:10:55

I think I think he had

1:10:57

the best intentions involved in this

1:10:59

and everything that he had been

1:11:01

trying to do. Now Copla lost

1:11:03

best director to Bob Fosse for

1:11:06

Cabaret which I would love to

1:11:08

cover. I kind of, I might

1:11:10

get some slack for this. I'm

1:11:12

kind of on board with that.

1:11:14

I think Bob Fosse is an

1:11:16

incredible. I love the Godfather too,

1:11:19

but they're both amazing. They're a

1:11:21

very interesting and tragic person that

1:11:23

we need to cover, and then

1:11:25

we also need to cover all

1:11:27

that jazz, obviously, at some point.

1:11:29

I don't know. I'm torn. I

1:11:31

just like The Godfather more than

1:11:34

Cabaret personally, so I can't really

1:11:36

comment. I love Cabaret. I love

1:11:38

The Godfather too. But they're, I

1:11:40

don't know. They're both amazing. They're

1:11:42

both wonderfully directed. So I don't

1:11:44

think you can choose wrong. I

1:11:47

don't think there's a wrong choice.

1:11:49

And Cabaret is also so tight,

1:11:51

in a way that obviously the

1:11:53

Godfather is not, but both amazing.

1:11:55

Pachino Khan and Duval all lost

1:11:57

out to Joel Gray, also for

1:11:59

Cabaret, again. I don't know, it's

1:12:02

pretty good. Well, and I would

1:12:04

argue... They cancel each other out,

1:12:06

probably. Exactly. The movie kind of

1:12:08

scaffolds itself with equal parts of

1:12:10

each of them, and so no

1:12:12

one one of them is big

1:12:15

enough. You know what I mean?

1:12:17

Or dominates the screen enough. To

1:12:19

be honest, I think Pachino should

1:12:21

have taken that one. Even just

1:12:23

for the Louis Diner scene alone,

1:12:25

which is one of the greatest,

1:12:27

like, watch a character make a

1:12:30

decision without... over acting moments in

1:12:32

cinema history. That's the thing is

1:12:34

the thing that they were on

1:12:36

Pachino about early on that he

1:12:38

wasn't doing enough. It's what is

1:12:40

so good about this performance is

1:12:43

that he's not going over the

1:12:45

top or over indicating anything. Exactly.

1:12:47

However, Copla and Puzo did win

1:12:49

for adapted screenplay and of course

1:12:51

the Godfather took home best picture.

1:12:53

Al Ruddy would take home another

1:12:55

best picture Oscar in 2005 for

1:12:58

a million dollar baby. And he

1:13:00

just died at 94 in May

1:13:02

of this year. Good for Al

1:13:04

Reddy. That is a great old

1:13:06

age. Yes. 94. Wow. So Bob

1:13:08

Evans' anger over what he felt

1:13:11

was a lack of recognition for

1:13:13

his work on the film continued

1:13:15

to fester for many many years.

1:13:17

In The Kids Days in the

1:13:19

picture, his autobiography, he literally calls

1:13:21

Copala a fat fuck, which is

1:13:23

quite a shock when you're listening

1:13:26

to the audio book. I was

1:13:28

like, excuse me? And Evans was

1:13:30

happy to tell anyone who listened

1:13:32

what he thought of Francis. Now

1:13:34

in 1983 83... Evans and Copila

1:13:36

sent each other telegrams that I

1:13:39

would like to read you now,

1:13:41

Chris. So more than 10 years

1:13:43

after the release of The Godfather.

1:13:45

And again, huge shout out to

1:13:47

the main source for these episodes,

1:13:49

which is Leave the Gun, Take

1:13:51

the Canole by Mark Seal, which

1:13:54

is where I am reading these

1:13:56

from. From Francis. Dear Bald Evans,

1:13:58

I've been a real gentleman regarding

1:14:00

your claims of involvement on The

1:14:02

Godfather. I've never talked about your

1:14:04

throwing out the Nino Rota music.

1:14:07

You're borrowing the casting of Pachino

1:14:09

and Brando. But continually your stupid

1:14:11

blabbing about cutting the godfather comes

1:14:13

back to me and angers me

1:14:15

for its ridiculous pomposity. You did

1:14:17

nothing on the godfather other than

1:14:19

annoy me and slow it down.

1:14:22

That is why Charlie, meaning Bluehorn,

1:14:24

put in the godfather2 contract that

1:14:26

you could have nothing to do

1:14:28

with the movie. You will never

1:14:30

see the Cotton Club until it

1:14:32

is an answer print. You have

1:14:35

double-crossed me for the last time.

1:14:37

If you want a PR war

1:14:39

or any kind of war, no

1:14:41

one is better at it than

1:14:43

me. Francis Coppola. Wow. Let's hear

1:14:45

what Bobby had to say. His

1:14:47

response is, Dear Francis, thank you

1:14:50

for your charming cable. I cannot

1:14:52

imagine what prompted this venomous diatribe.

1:14:54

I am both annoyed and exasperated

1:14:56

by your fallacious accusations when all

1:14:58

I do is praise your extraordinary

1:15:00

talents as a filmmaker. Conversely, your

1:15:03

behavior towards me glaringly lacks any

1:15:05

iota of concern, honesty, or integrity.

1:15:07

I am affronted by your gall

1:15:09

in daring to send me this

1:15:11

Machiavellian epistle. The content of which

1:15:13

is not only ludicrous, but totally

1:15:16

misrepresents the truth. I cannot conceive

1:15:18

what motivated your malicious thoughts, but

1:15:20

if they are a reflection of

1:15:22

your hostility, I bear great sympathy

1:15:24

and concern for your apparent paranoid

1:15:26

schizophrenic behavior. However, dear Francis, do

1:15:28

not mistake my kindness for weakness,

1:15:31

Robert Evans. I gotta say, so

1:15:33

much more dynamic, engaging, well-written, eloquent,

1:15:35

than watching, for example Elon Musk

1:15:37

and some other idiot go at

1:15:39

each other on Twitter. Like this

1:15:41

is a war of words. I

1:15:44

love it. I love it. Now

1:15:46

I'm going to hold off on

1:15:48

going further into Evan's downfall because

1:15:50

it is very much intertwined with

1:15:52

another copula film that copula referenced

1:15:54

in that telegram, the Cotton Club,

1:15:56

which I know we will be

1:15:59

covering. Also, kind of copulus, not

1:16:01

total downfall, but... financial downfall? Sure,

1:16:03

I mean it didn't involve a

1:16:05

murder for Copla as it does

1:16:07

unfortunately for Bob Evans, but suffice

1:16:09

it to say Evans was on

1:16:12

his way down, but still quite

1:16:14

far from rock bottom at this

1:16:16

point. Now they seem to have

1:16:18

at least slightly reconciled prior to

1:16:20

Evans' death in 2019. At the

1:16:22

25th anniversary of the Godfather, Copla

1:16:24

hugged Evans and finally said, you

1:16:27

must have done something right. I

1:16:29

like that. That wraps up our

1:16:31

coverage of the Godfather. That was

1:16:33

incredibly Bleak and entertaining and wonderful,

1:16:35

just like the Godfather. Wow, wild

1:16:37

times, the 70s. That's all I'll

1:16:40

say. You could get away with

1:16:42

really more than you should. Yeah,

1:16:44

all right, well, Lizzy. As always,

1:16:46

we have to say what went

1:16:48

right with this production. And there's

1:16:50

so much that we could choose

1:16:52

from, but if you don't mind,

1:16:55

I'd like to go first. Al

1:16:57

Pacino. I forget how, and the

1:16:59

same is true of De Niro

1:17:01

to a certain degree, and I

1:17:03

would argue Brando too, a lot

1:17:05

of these actors kind of got

1:17:08

pushed or pushed or pushed themselves.

1:17:10

into perhaps caricatures of themselves in

1:17:12

later years. You have the freak

1:17:14

out Pachino, you know, I'm thinking,

1:17:16

and that ass, that jiff of

1:17:18

him. That meme from heat, yes.

1:17:20

Exactly, yeah. And you forget how

1:17:23

remarkably understated they could be. And

1:17:25

Pachino, despite being a diminutive, I

1:17:27

mean, five seven on a good

1:17:29

day and just a very slight

1:17:31

man, really. commands the room and

1:17:33

your attention when surrounded by some

1:17:36

heavy hitter, some incredibly charismatic, big

1:17:38

performers like James Khan and obviously

1:17:40

Marlon Brando. So, you know, we

1:17:42

saw Patino recently in an interview

1:17:44

where he fondly discusses his trek

1:17:46

phone and he also basically says

1:17:48

like the only reason he did

1:17:51

a number of roles later in

1:17:53

his career. even once he enjoyed

1:17:55

doing like Jack and Jill without

1:17:57

him Sandler, was because he'd gone

1:17:59

broke, you know, he basically spent

1:18:01

all this money that he made

1:18:04

$50 million he'd made on his

1:18:06

earlier films. And I don't think

1:18:08

we should let that in any

1:18:10

way diminish our opinion of these

1:18:12

actors like at the end of

1:18:14

the day, this is a job

1:18:16

and at a certain age, like

1:18:19

you kind of just need to

1:18:21

do the job to get the

1:18:23

money. And I just think Pachino

1:18:25

remains one of our greatest actors

1:18:27

that we've seen in the last

1:18:29

most incredible films along with heat,

1:18:32

which I just re-watched and I

1:18:34

want to cover too. And it's

1:18:36

so good. So anyway, to Al

1:18:38

Pacino, a very steadying performance and

1:18:40

a very explosive film. Yeah, you

1:18:42

need it. I think... I will

1:18:44

go with the obvious here and

1:18:47

say that what went right is

1:18:49

Francis Ford Copla. I think that

1:18:51

he, for any inexperience, he came

1:18:53

into this with, he was really

1:18:55

able to see what the heart

1:18:57

of this movie was. Without that,

1:19:00

it would not have worked. It

1:19:02

would not be the film that

1:19:04

we know in love. And his

1:19:06

attention to detail while I'm sure

1:19:08

it put things behind, I'm sure

1:19:10

it pissed people off. Man does

1:19:12

it pay off. I mean, this

1:19:15

movie looks incredible. I think he

1:19:17

was very supportive of his actors.

1:19:19

He just, he has an eye,

1:19:21

obviously. He knew what he was

1:19:23

looking for, and he just nailed

1:19:25

it. He did it, like with

1:19:28

people breathing down his neck the

1:19:30

entire time with a pregnant wife

1:19:32

about to give birth. with Bob

1:19:34

Evans, who to be honest, is

1:19:36

another what went right on this.

1:19:38

I know he got a lot

1:19:40

of flack over the course of

1:19:43

this. I know that he, you

1:19:45

know, was a pain in Francis

1:19:47

Ford Copala's butt, but there is

1:19:49

something about the two of them

1:19:51

together that really managed to pull

1:19:53

this movie off. And to your

1:19:56

point, Copala made a movie that,

1:19:58

yes, is very violent, yes, is

1:20:00

explosive, but that's not really what

1:20:02

you remember about the godfather. You

1:20:04

remember the interpersonal interpersonal connections. And

1:20:06

that's due to him, not just

1:20:09

as a director, but honestly, as

1:20:11

a screenwriter, because he wrote so

1:20:13

much of this. So I will

1:20:15

give it to Coopola. And at

1:20:17

like, what, 32 years old, basically?

1:20:19

Yeah, he's a baby. Crazy. Crazy.

1:20:21

All right, guys. Thank you so

1:20:24

much for sticking with us. on

1:20:26

this incredible journey into the history

1:20:28

of the Godfather. Not the last

1:20:30

time we'll be talking about this

1:20:32

franchise, I'm sure, and not the

1:20:34

last time we'll be talking about

1:20:37

any of its players as we've

1:20:39

discussed, but we can't continue this

1:20:41

and we wouldn't have even gotten

1:20:43

this far if it weren't for

1:20:45

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1:20:47

listeners of this. And you guys

1:20:49

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1:20:56

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1:20:58

And we are so happy and

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Or if you really want to

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1:21:37

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1:21:41

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impression. The birthday boy, look how

1:22:01

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filming yourself, do it yourself, Chris

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Zaka, Kate Elrington, M. Exodia, C.

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Singleton, Jay-J-J-Rapido, Giustri, Sam-Gerwin, Sadie, just

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Rela, and Lydia. Huh. All right,

1:22:50

guys, only, uh, pull the cotton

1:22:52

balls. All right, all right, guys,

1:22:54

only, uh, I don't know. Apologies

1:22:57

for that. And with that, I

1:22:59

officially retire my brand-o impression for

1:23:01

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1:23:03

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1:23:05

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