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Coppola's Godfather Adaptation Notebooks

posted 7 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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I've gotten a book called "The Godfather Notebooks," and I'm very educated/entertained by it.

Its a "mix and match" of the materials that Francis Coppola produced to write the script for The Godfather from the 1969 novel by Mario Puzo.

We see the typewritten treatment pages (done even for a multi-million blockbuster on an old typewriter with skipping keys), and some hand-written pages, but BEST of all:

Coppola reproduces pages from Puzo's novel upon which Coppola hand-wrote notes and lines and "Xs" to adapt the book into a great movie.

Its fascinating.

To adapt the book, Coppola wrote down something about EVERY PAGE, starting with plot points ("Don meets with Sollozzo to discuss narcotics contract") and then picking what's good(the scene where Tessio asks Tom Hagen to be forgiven for betraying Michael -- "Can you get me off the hook for old time's sake?" -- Coppola writes a big "This is GOOD!" next to that passage. Or picking what's not good -- or necessary. Three pages of background on a crooked cop named Neri get great big "X"s through the entire pages -- the material never made it into the movie.

Most amusing: the infamous page 28 where Sonny's sexual encounter with bridesmaid Lucy goes on for three lurid paragraphs. All Coppola writes on that page is "Hagen tells Sonny the Don is looking for him." Ha.

But several times the notes on these pages of the book have one key word: Hitchcock. Or "how would Hitchcock design this?"

And then, when we reach the pages where the Godfather is first shot(but not fatally) while buying fruit, we get...

MORE

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

..we get this note across the top of the page:

"THE SHOOTING: Great detail. The Don is the main character of the movie, so, as in Psycho, we are totally thrown when he is shot."

You know, I showed The Godfather to a young relative a year or so ago for her first time, and she WAS shocked when Don Vito got shot at the fruit market. "Wait! Brando is only in the movie this long? He gets KILLED? " I told her to hang in and keep watching, but the truth of the matter is, to her, it WAS a shocker.

And I've never thought much about the Psycho connection. But COPPOLA did.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

A nice "touch" that runs through The Godfather Notebooks is how Coppola would break down every main sequence into a typewritten page of two with these "contours":

SYNOPSIS
THE TIMES
TONE AND IMAGERY
THE CORE
PITFALLS

So for instance , when Sollozo tells Tom Hagen to get in the car ("Don't worry. If I wanted to kill you, you'd be dead already") we get

TONE AND IMAGERY

How does he tie his tie? What are the Christmas presents?

THE CORE

Sollozo picks up Hagen.

PITFALLS

Failing to get to the point: the kidnapping of Hagen.

---

I love how Coppola writes up the "pitfalls" of the scene where Michael shoots Sollozzo and Captain McClusky in the Italian restaurant:

PITFALLS

Rushing this scene would ruin it. Otherwise, this scene can't be ruined.

...so Coppola knew when Mario Puzo gave him gold.

Indeed, as I re-read so many pages from Puzo's novel here, I realized how much Puzo DID give Coppola. The scenes, the dialogue ("Can you let me off the hook -- for old time's sake")...the characterizations.

I had misremembered Puzo's novel as a sleazy sex scene fest, and it turns out that much of what is in the movie IS in the book.

[–] TexasJack (12516) 7 years ago

This sounds really interesting. I have to check this book out.

[–] vicky_lc2001 (1907) 7 years ago

Thanks for sharing these. I agree with puzo's contribution, almost all if not all are verbatim from the book itself. But Coppola truly is avisionary that made this book Shakespearean in film, or is it a Greek Tragedy?

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Its a little of both(I lean Shakespeare), but it truly is some sort of miracle.

Critics were expecting The Carpetbaggers. Or The Adventurers(a more racy Harold Robbins book on the screen.) Or The Brotherhood(a middling Mafia movie.) Or maybe Airport with Italians. And they got a film that clearly hewed to art in the visuals and craft on the page.

Coppola's best choice was to take out almost all the sex. It would have ruined the seriousness of the tale. And a lot of it was unfilmable even with an R.

[–] vicky_lc2001 (1907) 7 years ago

Someone else said that these films were perfect and I have to agree, I can't see any flaw in them.

I think this is also why people are so hard on TGF3, because despite it being a good film, it simply isn't flawless like the previous two.