Carmine Caridi: How ‘The Godfather’ actor was banned from The Academy for leaking VHS screeners
Carmine Caridi, the actor best known for his roles in the last two The Godfather movies, is the first and only actor in history to be thrown out of the Academy for leaking VHS screeners the Academy sends to members for award consideration. It’s an intriguing Hollywood tale and the sort of escapade you can imagine a character getting busted for in one of the crime dramas Caridi starred in himself.
Caridi was born in 1934 in Manhattan and grew up in a mobster-filled neighbourhood. He took up acting at the local Boys Club, and having served in the US Army for three years during the Korean War, he returned to New York and continued acting. From there, he starred on Broadway in Man of La Mancha and had an understudy part in That Championship Season.
His breakthrough role, however, was in Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather movies. Caridi held screen tests alongside Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, and Coppola cast Caridi as Sonny. Production for the film was well underway, with Caridi being measured for his costume, until Paramount executives came in at the last minute and demanded Coppola reshuffle his cast, and Caridi was out. Sonny’s role then went to James Caan. Caridi is still featured in the Godfather trilogy but in more minor roles. Despite the setback, he went on to perform in other great crime movies, including Sidney Lumet’s brilliant 1981 Prince of the City and 1974’s The Gambler, in which he also starred alongside James Caan once again.
In 1982, Caridi was accepted as a member of the Academy. During that time, the Academy would send out VHS tapes of unreleased films to its members for their consideration for upcoming awards. Caridi, aware of the strict rules the Academy had on sharing screeners, would copy tapes and send them to friends and family, and though foolish, his intentions were clearly harmless. “I sent screeners to people, besides my brother and sister, who couldn’t afford them,” Caridi told The Hollywood Reporter, “I made a lot of people happy.”
However, things changed dramatically when he met Russell Sprague, who would turn out to become one of the most infamous movie pirates in history. Caridi met Sprague in LA in the 1980s, and Sprague had come over to fix Caridi’s VCR. Learning that Caridi made copies of screeners and sent them to friends, Sprague asked if Caridi could send copies to him in Chicago, and Caridi obliged.
There had been mounting pressure from studios around the 2000s to impose stricter rules on screeners to curb piracy damaging the industry. And in 2003, the Academy made all members sign a confidentiality agreement for all screeners they received. By 2004, Caridi was busted, breaking the agreement.
Caridi claimed to be unaware that Sprague was, in fact, copying the screeners himself and posting them online. Nevertheless, Caridi was pulled in by the FBI and offered immunity if he offered up Sprague; it was certain he would face jail time if he didn’t. Soon after, The Academy board of governors voted unanimously to expel Caridi as a member. Caridi was then sued by Columbia Pictures and Warner Brothers, and a US district judge ordered him to pay the maximum penalty possible under federal law of $300,000 to each studio.
You would imagine such a public event in Hollywood would impact piracy with screeners. However, even up to as recently as 2015, Warner Bros sued Innovative Artists, having traced a leaked screener of The Hateful Eight, which was put online. Caridi continued to work as an actor after the incident and before his death in 2019, and he still continued to be sent screeners from SAG, though not as many as he did from The Academy.
