Inside the making of ‘The Godfather’: 5 things you may not know

Courtesy Paramount Pictures. “The Godfather Notebook” (Regan Arts), Francis Ford Coppola

Movie director and winemaker Francis Ford Coppola does not make many public appearances. But earlier this week, Coppola made an appearance at the Castro Theater in San Francisco to discuss the publication of “The Godfather Notebook,” a reproduction of a notebook that served as his guide while directing the 1972 Oscar-winning movie, “The Godfather.” The book, published by Regan Arts in New York, made its debut this week.

Coppola fashioned his notebook after the “prompt book” concept he learned as a theater student, and it ended up being “a kind of multilayered road map” for him to direct the film, he said, noting that the movie’s script “was really an unnecessary document for me.” It is full of Coppola’s typed and handwritten notes, with characters, scene lists, outlines and thoughts on adapting Mario Puzo’s 1969 book of the same name into film.

At a packed house, hosted by the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco, Coppola spoke on stage with Adam Savage, the former host of the show “MythBusters” and told some fascinating stories about the making of one of the most legendary and influential of films, “The Godfather,” the story of an Italian-America mafia family.

Coppola, who was 32 at the time he was hired to direct the film, said he frequently worked in San Francisco’s Caffe Trieste in North Beach, where he often sat in a corner, working on his Olivetti typewriter. On stage, he shared a few anecdotes and little-known tales about the making of “The Godfather,” which influenced later American crime films, including Martin Scorsese’s “Goodfellas” and HBO’s “The Sopranos” series.

Here are five things you may not have known about the mob drama.

1. Coppola had to fight to cast Marlon Brando

Coppola battled executives at Paramount Pictures for many of the casting choices, especially Marlon Brando as the head of the Corleone family, Vito Corleone. The studio asked that Brando do a screen test free, and Coppola went to Los Angeles to shoot it with a hand-held camera. Brando came into the room with long blond hair, wearing a kimono, “like a gorgeous blonde Adonis,” Coppola said. He was soon amazed at how the actor became Vito, including creating the gravelly voice by stuffing cotton into his mouth and rolling his hair into a bun and putting black shoe polish on his hair. “I could not believe the transformation I had seen,” he said, adding that he took the footage to New York to show the Paramount executives to further convince them that Brando was their man.

2. The role of Michael almost went to Ryan O’Neal

For Michael Corleone, the studio executives wanted either actor Ryan O’Neal, after his success as a lead in 1970s “Love Story,” or Robert Redford. Coppola had seen a young actor named Al Pacino on stage in New York who he thought would be perfect, but he could not convince the Paramount executives. “He was short, he wasn’t movie-star handsome, but he had something that really worked,” Coppola said, adding that after he brought Pacino out to San Francisco to get to know him a bit better, he could not see anyone else in the role. Pacino then appeared in the 1971 film, “The Panic in Needle Park,” and the studio executives agreed to hire him for the role of Michael after seeing some footage of his performance as a heroin addict.

3. Coppola feared being fired

During much of the time working on “The Godfather,” especially in the early days, Coppola was afraid of being fired by Paramount. After the initial actor disagreements, the executives were not happy with what they were seeing in the dailies, especially one of the first scenes filmed with Brando. They complained he was mumbling and they could not understand him. So Coppola reshot the scene, everyone was happy and they took him out to dinner. But he said the scene that ended up in the movie was the one shot in the first day of filming.

4. A few legendary quotes were improvised

One of the most famous lines in the movie, “Leave the gun, take the cannoli,” was partially improvised. Actor Richard Castellano, who played Clemenza, thought of the line during the filming, as a result of something Coppola said to him. “The director is like a coach,” Coppola said, adding that he wants to create a situation where actors are comfortable. “They are like a cellist,” he said, only “the instrument is themselves.”

5. Coppola drew on his own personal experiences

Coppola’s own experience growing up in an Italian-American family helped him set the tone and create an accurate ambience, and his family and friends made contributions or appearances. For the beginning wedding scene, Coppola’s knowledge of Italian weddings is seen in even the smallest details of what he said were old school Italian “football weddings,” named for sandwiches individually wrapped in wax paper, so they can be thrown among the guests. His father, a musician, composed the music for “Connie’s Wedding.” During the famous baptism scene, Coppola’s daughter, filmmaker Sofia Coppola, appeared as the baby during the scene where Michael Corleone stands as godfather to his nephew. The scene juxtaposes Michael vowing to denounce Satan, with solemn church organ music in the background, cut with shots from a series of violent murders of the rival family heads, that take place throughout New York and Las Vegas.

“I took what my home life was like and the only difference was that my family was musicians and not murderers,” Coppola said.

Excerpts from the book itself are fascinating to read, from Coppola’s descriptions of how he sees each of the characters (Michael is handsome in a delicate way, but his presence seems to radiate danger), to the synopsis of scenes, to Coppola’s notes about imagery, tone, and a section called pitfalls, where he warns himself on what he wants to avoid (such as in the wedding scene, where among his list of things he hopes to avoid are “clichés and Italians who-a, talka lika-dis.”

“The Godfather Notebook” debuts just in time for the holidays. It comes in two versions: a 784-page paperback for $50 and a deluxe signed edition for $500, which also includes ephemera such as 50 photographs, a script page, and 17 index cards with notes on the wedding scene.