TS: Godfather vs Godfather II

Cuneos last words: "Who's your barb-"

Tattaglia was Deaths Very Much in Character

The demands on me were impossible. I had settled on a price and everybody else’s was settled upon mine. Coppola had me losing weight to play Clemenza as a young man. I was down to 194 pounds. When I received the script five minutes later, it had me rolling in at 300 pounds.’’

Pretty fucked. Pentangeli was definitely a risk because now all you had left from the old 'family' besides Corleones was Hagen, Cicci Al Neri, and Rocco, and you had to entrust a huge amount of the story to someone the audience was just meeting, but it worked out fine.

I agree with Castellano that Clemenza wouldn't have flipped, also

gazzo gave a thoroughly excellent performance fortunately, the right mix of pride and pathos and clearly a good character in how he would be an easy mark for the con pulled on him. I wonder if clemenza falling for it would have been as believable. HOWEVER we can also see it implied that Michael made a tactical error in telling Roth it was Pentangeli who tried to kill him, which led to Roth giving the go ahead on the hit, which led to the betrayal. Lots of layers there.

lol @ clem’s blog invoking meet the stupids, a movie i found extremely hilarious at the time

clip upthread reveals i was wrong sry re “interrupted by a waiter”— he loses his nerve and summons one himself. tragicer, obv.

scene where michael visits pentangeli on set of i believe in america scene (now lit, but still w the blank white paper outside the blinds) is richer for its not being clemenza— they are both standing in the place of ghosts.

"I want you to show them a good time in Havana."

"My specialty, right?"

What's great is, he's not wrong. Fredo can be funny and easygoing in ways Michael can't. He gets people like Senator Geary to drop their guard (and yeah, the Jerry Lewis bit... Fredo's a natural comedian). He actually could be smart, but he's in the wrong family entirely.

Two episodes into The Offer. Some of it seems right, some of it wrong. Judging by the prominence of Al Ruddy's name in the credits, it does seem like a work of self-glorification. (One of the wrongs, I'd say, is Giovanni Ribisi's hamminess.)

Fredo's not dumb, not like everyone says. He's smart, and he wants respect.

That's the way Pop wanted it.

The show is both terrible and reasonably watchable

At least up until the last episode and its utterly damp squib of a depiction of Oscar night, which I guess is because they had to dance around what a disappointment of a night it was for GODFATHER, compared to CABARET.

Pretty much exactly how I'd describe what I've seen so far.

yeah Eric otm that is a perfect description

it’s def Ruddy-aggrandizing & a lot of the time it is borderline like watching a stupid Lifetime movie … but the Coppola and Pacino of it is kinda worth it imo plus i find Godfather lore just kinda addictive yknow? … and Ribbisi is unintentional comic relief for his ott nonsense

The guy they had playing Pacino was kinda cute too, fwiw

My favourite performances so far--maybe I should recognize some of them; I don't--are Evans, Ruddy's wife, and Ruddy's secretary. I also like the guy from Gulf & Western who's the money man--not Bluhdorn, his underling. I recognized him but had to check; same guy who played Father Gill in Mad Men. (Bluhdorn was prominent in the whole Heaven's Gate debacle, I seem to recall...but that was a different studio, so maybe I'm misremembering.)

I also like the guy from Gulf & Western who's the money man--not Bluhdorn, his underling. I recognized him but had to check; same guy who played Father Gill in Mad Men.

That'd be Tom Hanks's not-embarrassing son

But, yes, Matthew Goode the clear MVP in this cast

Ha--had no idea he was Hanks' son. And that should be Ruddy's girlfriend, not wife. (Posting while working...or working while posting, maybe.)

One of the weirder things (obviously intentional) was when Ruddy goes to the New York politician in E2 and tries to secure permission to film in New York. The way he gets turned down is almost a paraphrase of something Vito says to the other family heads in their big meeting about Sollozzo.

i liked Burn Gohrman as Bluhdorn - it is very ott but anecdotally i get the impression Bluhdorn was even more ott IRL & that this is him toned down lol

Matthew Goode for sure the mvp as Evans, he’s great start fo finish, no notes as the kids say

And yeah, Pacino actor is super handsome! i hadn’t seen him before this. He does an ok job w the voice too

though re the voices w this show it’s hard not to seem like everyone’s doing a tight five of celebrity impressions at the Chuckle Hut, and it can very easily take you out of the story

i think Juno Temple’s Bettye character is great - there’s not a lot else for the women characters to do so in this bc it’s such a sausage fest & she really does a lot with her part to make herself indispensable & grab some of the spotlight when she can

There was a really good scene between Bettye and Francoise in E2, where Francoise is trying to figure things out but--supremely self-assured--knows that there's nothing sexual going on between Ruddy and Bettye, admires that Bettye doesn't betray Ruddy, and a mutual respect is established.

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.