- Field Day |
- Buildings Alive |
- Visions |
- CLGBT |
- Green Community |
- Fun & Free S#!T |
- Crossword |
- CL Space |
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
The Godfather Wars
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 3:38 PM
For the Godfatheraphiles among us, and I count myself as a big one (in more ways than one), the latest issue of Vanity Fair does not disappoint.
In a long story, author Mark Seal details the Hollywood and real Mob fights behind the making of the film. The story's tease pitches it this way:
In many ways, the men who made The Godfather-director Francis Ford Coppola, producer Al Ruddy, Paramount executives Robert Evans and Peter Bart, and Gulf & Western boss Charles Bluhdorn-were as ruthless as the gangsters in Mario Puzo's blockbuster. After violent disputes over the casting of Marlon Brando and Al Pacino, they tangled with the real-life Mob, which didn't want the movie made at all. The author recalls how the clash of Hollywood sharks, Mafia kingpins, and cinematic geniuses shaped a Hollywood masterpiece.
Seal details how producers didn't want the short Al Pacino as Michael Corleone, among other colorful anecdotes. The piece begins:
It all began in the spring of 1968, when a largely unknown writer named Mario Puzo walked into the office of Robert Evans, the head of production at Paramount Pictures. He had a big cigar and a belly to match, and the all-powerful Evans had consented to take a meeting with this nobody from New York only as a favor to a friend. Under the writer's arm was a rumpled envelope containing 50 or 60 pages of typescript, which he desperately needed to use as collateral for cash."In trouble?," Evans asked.
And how. Puzo was a gambler, into the bookies for ten grand, and perhaps his only hope of not getting his legs broken was in the envelope-a treatment for a novel about organized crime, bearing as its title the very word the underworld guys wanted to stamp out: Mafia. Though the word had been in use in its current meaning in Italy since the 19th century, it gained recognition in America in a 1951 report by the Kefauver Committee, a congressional group headed by Democratic senator Estes Kefauver, of Tennessee, created to investigate organized crime. The good news, Puzo claimed, was that the word had never before been used in a book or film title.
"I'll give you ten G's for it as an option against $75,000 if it becomes a book," Evans remembers telling the writer, more out of pity than excitement. "And he looked at me and said, 'Could you make it fifteen?' And I said, 'How about twelve-five?'"
Without even glancing at the pages, Evans sent them to Paramount's business department, along with a pay order, and never expected to see Puzo, much less his cockamamy novel, again. A few months later, when Puzo called and asked, "Would I be in breach of contract if I change the name of the book?," Evans almost laughed out loud. "I had forgotten he was even writing one." Puzo said, "I want to call it The Godfather."
Latest in Daily Loaf
-
White House hints they'll veto bill that would cut funding to HART & PSTA
"The bill takes us back to the dark ages," Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood says.
-
Mitch Perry Report 2.15.12: Privatizing prisons goes down in Tally
-
Santo ad mocks Mitt's growing rep for character assassination
This is the first time a Romney opponent has immediately responded to a negative ad.
- More »
Top Commenters
Comments (0)