Francis Ford Coppola didn’t want to direct ‘The Godfather’
It’s safe to say that most movie buffs need to have their credentials checked if they haven’t seen The Godfather at least once. Although not everyone walks away with the same opinion on the operatic mafia film, future directors have taken more than their fair share of cues from this study of the ultimate anti-hero without even realising it. Despite its knack for being one of the most celebrated movies of all time, arguably the most sceptical fan was actually Francis Ford Coppola.
Based on the book of the same name, Coppola remembered initially hating the story and not thinking that any sort of adaptation would do that well, telling Howard Stern: “Half of the book is about this lady who has this gynaecological problem and the guy was going to operate on her, and then he made love to her. I thought it was very sleazy, and I wanted to be more of an artist.”
Though Coppola may have wanted to serve his muse, it wasn’t what would pay the bills, eventually working with Paramount Pictures on the adaptation to appease the more respectable names in the film world. Given the nature of the story, though, Coppola remembers even some of the biggest names in the industry being uncertain of its potential.
When the movie was undergoing production, Coppola knew how unrealistic the movie’s success was. He continued, “There had been a few Mafia movies before, and they had all been flops. So all the big directors turned them down. They eventually decided to make it very low-budget. And I was also a screenwriter, so they thought that would get a free rewrite out of me.”
Coppola’s suspicions proved correct when he also got the script, recalling: “I thought the script was really hokey. I didn’t want to do it because I had written the script for the movie The Conversation, and I was trying to get money for that. It was George Lucas who told me that I should do it because we needed to get some money coming in.”
After numerous rewrites and picking the best sections for the original text, Coppola still wasn’t off the hook. For all of the great ideas that he brought to the table, Coppola’s refusal to work with any big names turned him into public enemy number one for the film company. He said: “The rumour was I was getting fired every week. They didn’t like my casting because I had new actors that no one had heard about. The studio wanted to get someone like Robert Redford to play Michael Corleone.”
By sticking to his guns, Coppola walked away with one of the best films in cinema history, as Al Pacino’s iteration of Michael carries his anger on his face and rises from being a humble man trying to make an honest living to the future head of the crime ring in New York. The studio might not have wanted to take a chance on a low-budget film, but something magical can often happen when they roll the dice.
