Francis Ford Coppola
Appearances
Fresh Air
Bonnie Raitt / Francis Ford Coppola
Well, it's true that Mario had always liked the idea of Brando. But Mario was often Bayshore. He was not really on the scene so much. Even a lot of my work with him was my sending him drafts and him writing notes. So although he had posed the idea of the Godfather being Brando, I don't even know if he told me that. because I just was hit by a whole bunch of ideas from the studio.
Fresh Air
Bonnie Raitt / Francis Ford Coppola
Danny Thomas was one, Ernest Borgnine. It was a whole bunch of ideas. Even Carlo Ponti was suggested. And finally, I came down to the thing about the character of that character was that, you know, you couldn't find anyone new, as we had done for all the other parts. Al Pacino was totally unknown. Johnny Casale was... Bobby Duvall was really a lot of new people got big parts.
Fresh Air
Bonnie Raitt / Francis Ford Coppola
But like a man who was supposed to be in his 60s, it couldn't be new and like had never been in anything before because what was he doing all those years? So finally, with my colleague in casting, Fred Roos, we said, well, who are the two greatest actors in the world? So we said, well, Laurence Olivier and Marlon Brando. Each one had a difficulty for that part. Olivier was British.
Fresh Air
Bonnie Raitt / Francis Ford Coppola
He was perfect age. He looked like one of the real guys, Genovese. and Brando was only 47 years old. He was extremely handsome, as always, had long, flowing blonde hair, and most important, he had just been in some pictures, notably one by the great Pontecorvo called Byrne, That was a huge flop, tremendous financial flop.
Fresh Air
Bonnie Raitt / Francis Ford Coppola
So the studio felt that Brando was supposedly difficult to work with, sort of irresponsible, you know, would cause big delays. The film was only budgeted for $2.5 million, you have to understand. It wasn't like we could throw money around. And my decision to make it in the 40s and have period cars and shoot in New York was
Fresh Air
Bonnie Raitt / Francis Ford Coppola
was already impacting the course, so that's one of the reasons why I was so unpopular. But they also hated my casting ideas. They hated Al Pacino for the role of Michael, and they hated Marlon Brando for the role of the Godfather.
Fresh Air
Bonnie Raitt / Francis Ford Coppola
And I was told categorically by the president of Paramount, Francis, as the president of Paramount Pictures, I tell you here and now, Marlon Brando will never appear in this motion picture, and I forbid you to bring it up again.
Fresh Air
Bonnie Raitt / Francis Ford Coppola
Well, when he said, I forbid you to bring it up again, I, like, feigned that I just fell on the floor on the carpet and, like, you know, as if, you know, what. And then I said, what am I supposed to do? If you tell me I can't even discuss it, how can I be a director if the part I think should be cast that you won't even let me talk about it? And they said, all right, we'll tell you it this way.
Fresh Air
Bonnie Raitt / Francis Ford Coppola
One, if he will do the movie for free. Two, if he will put up, well, if he'll do a screen test. And three, if he'll put up a million dollar bond that he will in no way have any misbehavior that causes the, you know, the overrun of the picture budget, then you can do it. So I said, I accept.
Fresh Air
Bonnie Raitt / Francis Ford Coppola
So at least they were saying if I did three things, have a screen test, if I could get him to do the movie for nothing, and if I could have him put up a million dollars, which is absurd. But at least I said I accept, meaning, okay, now I can talk about it.
Fresh Air
Bonnie Raitt / Francis Ford Coppola
No, I called him up and I said to Marlon, Marlon, you know, of course this is an Italian-American, you know, wouldn't it be fun if we could like do a little experiment and kind of improv and see what playing in Italian might be like? That was my way to talk to an actor essentially asking for a screen test, but I didn't put it in those ways.
Fresh Air
Bonnie Raitt / Francis Ford Coppola
And I knew that if I could do something with this little screen test that was convincing, the absurd idea of him doing it for nothing, although they didn't pay him much more than nothing. I think they paid him scale, which was an insult. And obviously putting up a bond to prevent misbehavior was, you know. Sometimes, you know, you say you accept terms meaning that you just have a way to continue.
Fresh Air
Bonnie Raitt / Francis Ford Coppola
Yeah. The important thing was to do some sort of a little screen test that I could get on tape and show to all these executives.
Fresh Air
Bonnie Raitt / Francis Ford Coppola
Well, I'd always heard the rumor that Marlon Brando didn't like loud noises and he always wore things in his ears. So I took a couple of my colleagues from San Francisco from this period of, you know, having young filmmakers all have a... And I told them all to dress in black and no one was to speak. We would do sign language. And so we descended on Marlon's house early in the morning.
Fresh Air
Bonnie Raitt / Francis Ford Coppola
He wasn't up and these dinges went to different corners and set up their cameras. And I also brought a whole bunch of like Italian sausage and little Italian cigars and provolone and little things. And I put them in dishes around just without even saying what I was doing. And then the door opened. They said...
Fresh Air
Bonnie Raitt / Francis Ford Coppola
He was gonna wake up in the door open out came this beautiful man in a Japanese robe with flowing blonde hair and I'm shooting all of this and he came out and he didn't talk very much he you know, he's Marlon was a brilliant man and he just knew what was going on instantly and he I remember he came and he took his hair and he rolled it up and made it sort of like a bun in the back and then he took
Fresh Air
Bonnie Raitt / Francis Ford Coppola
shoe polish and he made and he was mumbling the whole time and he made a shoe polish and made his hair black and then he put on the shirt that i had brought and i remember him folding the the lapel those guys always that lapel is always folded he said and um and right in front of my eyes but then he said well he's shot in the throat in the story somebody should talk like this you know his throat
Fresh Air
Bonnie Raitt / Francis Ford Coppola
And he started doing that. And right in front of my eyes, he transformed himself into this character. And I couldn't believe it. And then he started picking up the sausage and eating it. And he just gravitated to the props and was using it to create a kind of Italian-ness the way he did it. And the whole time he was just going like this. He was going...
Fresh Air
Bonnie Raitt / Francis Ford Coppola
He wasn't saying anything, which was funny because his phone rang. This was his home. His phone rang, and he picked up the phone and went, I said, my God, who was it who called? What are they going to think? But when it was all done, I had this tape, and it was quite remarkable.