TS: Godfather vs Godfather II

Really the best way to watch the first two movies is that 7 hour long thing (The Godfather Epic) they did for NBC where they put them all in chronological order and added an hour or so of outtakes, but I don't think that's available anywhere anymore.

OTM

it's a testament to something that despite the mess it's still so highly regarded.

The second is more powerful though; the shooting of Fredo is very good and I thought a nice contrast with killing Don Ciccio; it starts with killing a bad guy who nobody misses. It ends with killing your brother. I hated Michael after that.

Yeah, right?

Even though I know the first is supposed to be the greatest film of all time and everything, I just have no desire to see it, but I can't figure out why.

In Part II: I always liked the end of Frankie Five Angels with Tom in the prison yard.

the deniro bits are straightforward enough. childlike, really.

but can anyone come out here and explain the rest of it?

there are two brothers michael is trying to shake down in vegas? and hyman roth is in cahoots with them, possibly? but hyman claims to be on michael's side?

they try to kill michael, and try to pin it on the old guy back from new york.

and then they try to kill that old guy, and tell him it's on michael's orders (this is confusing, because maybe it is michael!).

er, and at some undisclosed point the feds investigate the corleone family and they have to go to court.

i think i would have liked a godfather 1.5, in which vito and mo green (=bugsy siegel?) and hyman roth build up their empire of crime. i guess roth is coming out of chicago?

Brando's performance is mostly hammy crap. And if you ever see I in a theater, Diane Keaton's assorted hairstyles draw gales of laughter.

Great line: "Don't do Columbo--it makes my head hurt."

Five episodes finished, starting to warm to Teller, Ribisi, and the series. Bettye's the most interesting character, I think; don't know anything about her real-life counterpart. Eric Balfour as Dean Tavoularis--haven't seen him since Six Feet Under. Just by coincidence--started the book before the series--I'm reading a biography of Sue Mengers, who has turned up in a couple of scenes.

From his Facebook:

Paul Schrader
8h
I HAD A GREAT IDEA. David Shwartz asked me to intro The Godfather at the Paris under the rubric of directors pick best films. I said I would do it if the theater threw a Rocky Horror style cos play contest for best character wardrobe (a Francis signed script as the prix) and I could invite John Epperson and Charles Busch to join me on stage and overdub the memorable lines: "offer he can't refuse," "I will call upon you to do a service for me," "may their first child be a masculine child," "sleeps with the fishes, "that's my family, Kay. that's not me."Plus a confetti-filled sing/dance along for wedding song: "See'è 'na luna mezz'you mare Mamma mia m'a maritare Figlia mia a see you te dare Mamma mia pensace tu" and pass along the cannoli's and sound effects when Michael goes to the bathroom...you get the idea. Shwartz assured me that Paramount would in no manner allow the film to be screened under those conditions so we decided I would introduce Ozu's Tokyo Story instead.

That thing where they transpose a line (or something close) from the movie into the making-of story, I think I've counted six or seven instances thus far.

The account of Evans, Ali McGraw, and The Getaway presented here (McGraw really wants to do the film, Evans tries to dissuade her) is literally the exact opposite of what's given in the Mengers biography. No idea which, but either The Offer has it wrong or Brian Kellow's research is faulty. And in a couple of paragraphs on Evans and The Godfather in the Mengers book, Al Ruddy isn't mentioned once.

the incorporation of the lines us def thd eyerolliest part (among many)

One of the worst scenes for me so far was the first time they assembled the cast for a Corleone dinner, and you're supposed to believe that everyone started improvising in character, except the guy who plays Carlos, who apparently wasn't in on it and became a pin-cushion for everyone else. "Kiss the ring! Kiss the ring!"--ugh.

yeah that was p bad

Did Coppola ever comment on The Offer? I tried googling "coppola interview the offer" and got nothing. If you can point me in the direction of something, please do. Eight episodes in and I'm really starting to wonder how much of this is true and how much is Ruddy's self-serving revisionism. The whole thing with Carlo Rizzi slugging Talia Shire for real on set, and then Ruddy arranging to have Caan actually pummel Rizzi in the famous street beating--really? The series pays regular lip-service to Coppola, and some to Puzo and the actors, but basically the success of the film--its very existence--comes down to Ruddy swooping in to solve one crisis after another without hardly ever breaking his sagacious calm.

A couple of things that suggest it's mostly fiction:

https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/movies-tv/wondering-how-accurate-the-offer-is-about-the-making-of-the-godfather-dont-ask-its-writer

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2022-04-27/the-offer-paramount-the-godfather-fact-fiction

my folks watched it, I had zero interest. will read the Wikipedia article on the making of the movie

If you're interested in a full-length book, I recommend Harlan Lebo's The Godfather Legacy--which I'm almost curious enough to re-read now (but won't, because I was already Godfathered-out even before I started The Offer).

yeah iirc from the credits the series is based on ruddy’s “remembrances” or “recollections” or whatever so it’s more like a fever dream of what happened than any kind of watertight factual dramatization

just let it wash over you like waves of bullshit dotted with random
actual events ie there WAS a movie called godfather & it WAS directed by coppola but everything else is up for grabs as far as ruddy seems ti be concerned

Don't think I've ever seen a credit quite like it:

"Based on Albert S. Ruddy's experience of making The Godfather."

Yeah, that'll hold up in court (actually, its very vagueness probably offers legal protection--"Well, that's how Albert S. Ruddy remembers it").

In legal circles, known as the "Uncle Leo defense": "He's a 90-year-old man--he gets confused!"

pretty much

When Bettye talks to Ruddy about wanting to break off and start her own agency, the words she uses could have come from Sue Mengers. But, going by the postscript, that's her story too.

I thought there was some subtlety in the way they brought Lapidus around. How credible you find his reconciliation with Evans will vary, but I like the low-key way they presented it: Lapidus looks up at all the clippings on Evans' wall and finally sees the rapport Evans has with creative people (you can even see him start to come around at the tail end of that meeting with Alvin Sargent that he crashes). And I liked how they balanced that with Evans coming around to Lapidus's keen sense of the traps to be aware of in how they opened The Godfather. They rescued each of them from caricature.

So: with the many problems noted above by everyone who's posted, worth the 10 hours I'd say. And I'm sure they got the basic reality correct: it was a project riddled with complications.

Now, someone give me the 10-episode prestige TV making of Cabaret please

I'd watch the Cabaret show

hell yes

And the entire last episode better be about all 8 of those Oscars

there's plenty of Cabaret content in Fosse/Verdon

I want a series on the making of Nashville, with a whole episode devoted to Kael's preemptive review.

Yeah, I assume Cabaret was already covered by that.

oh watched fosse/verdon but would be happy for more Cabaret

yeah, there was some Cabaret in the Halston series too, but I want it to be the sole focus

i never finished the Halston show - Cabaret being in there might make me revisit

weird bit of crossover content in The Irishman/The Offer (based on a cursory scan of storylines, haven't seen the latter)

What was it? I must have missed that.

By the end, I think the best, most natural performance might have been Jake Cannavale as Caesar. When I saw the name I assumed he was Bobby's son (he is); also Sidney Lumet's grandson.

Joe Colombo's attempted assassination was shown during The Irishman, as was the hit on Joe Gallo by the titular Irishman. different contexts, obv. the former was this dreamlike & grisly slo-mo shooting.

There's a clean-looking print of Crazy Joe (Peter Boyle) on YouTube; I've never seen it, will watch soon.

The Halson show was fine. I admired Ewan McGregor's commitment to it.

When I saw the name I assumed he was Bobby's son (he is)

didn't he also play Bobby's son in Nurse Jackie? I remember him being good in that

pic.twitter.com/10uaMqe5h3

— mouse (@punchedrunk) April 21, 2023

(Open tweet for the full joke)

why do I find it so funny when Tattaglia is seen meticulously grooming himself during the meeting of the 5 Families

Maybe that's what the Don meant when he said Tattaglia's a pimp

Lol I actually think it is

Watched this with mom tonight in honor of dad

It never gets old.

You're not a wartime consigliere, Tom

(masked and very very distanced of course)

It's gotten old. That was all decided last year.

CLEMENZA

Anyway watching this tonight was a blessing.

always a good call <3

Part II at Regal cinemas in the US for $5 this week

WAHT

Part II at Regal cinemas in the US for $5 this week.

lol

my offer is this:

nothing.

I had the odd experience of watching II before I watched I. Anyway, I prefer the second, particularly the denouement. And the Fredo/Michael dynamic. Cazale is just devastating.

"I am not resigning," Johnson said defiantly at a news conference Tuesday, calling the threat "absurd" as Republicans are "trying to do their job." "We need steady leadership. We need steady hands on the wheel," he said. "Look, I regard myself as a wartime speaker."

If he were a wartime speaker, a Sicilian, they wouldn't be in this shape.