‘The Godfather’: How close did Francis Ford Coppola come to being replaced?
When Francis Ford Coppola was announced as the director of The Godfather on September 28th, 1970, few industry insiders or film enthusiasts could have predicted that he was about to create what many consider the greatest motion picture of all time. Remarkably, this included Coppola himself, who initially didn’t want the job. Even Paramount Pictures seemed unsure, offering the project to several other directors before settling on Coppola—and even keeping a replacement ready in case he dropped the ball.
You see, by the time Coppola was finally approached to direct the film, Paramount had already courted the likes of Sergio Leone, Elia Kazan, Peter Bogdanovich, Arthur Penn, Peter Yates, and Otto Preminger. They all declined, with Leone – the studio’s top pick – adding insult to injury by choosing to make his own gangster epic Once Upon a Time in America instead.
Coppola was finally considered an option for two main reasons. Firstly, he is Italian-American, and legendary producer Robert Evans believed the specificity of his cultural perspective would be key to the film’s success. In 1968, Paramount released The Brotherhood, a mafia picture with almost no Italians in front of or behind the camera, and Evans was determined not to repeat that mistake.
The second reason, however, was all about cold, hard commerce. The studio knew Coppola would be available on the cheap because his previous movie, The Rain People, hadn’t exactly set the box-office alight, and his production company, American Zoetrope, was also in a terrible financial predicament. The outfit, which Coppola formed with his good friend George Lucas—yes, that George Lucas—was on the hook to Warner Bros for $400,000 after Lucas’ sci-fi picture THX 1138 had gone horribly over budget.
It was a perfect storm of factors, with Coppola’s friends and family encouraging him to take the job – if only to pay his bills. There was just one problem: Coppola felt Mario Puzo’s source novel was sleazy and overly sensationalistic, and he had no desire to make a violent gangster film. Instead, he had aspirations of being a true cinematic artiste like his heroes Jean-Luc Godard and Federico Fellini. So, he actually added to Paramount’s misery by turning down the movie too.
Thankfully, Coppola soon realised he could frame the film as a metaphor for capitalism in America told through the lens of a crime family, and it started to sound interesting to him. Add to that the fact that the young director needed the cash, and the decision began to seem obvious.
After taking the job, though, Coppola admitted he felt he was going to be fired every single week, as he clashed with the studio on casting. He went to bat for a then-unknown Al Pacino to play the lead, while the studio wanted an established star like Robert Redford or Ryan O’Neal, and he also fought a long battle to get the legendarily difficult Marlon Brando cast as Don Corleone.
These disputes—among other factors—led to an uncertain atmosphere in the early days of The Godfather’s shoot. So uncertain, in fact, that star Robert Duvall – who played consigliere Tom Hagen – told Siskel and Ebert in 2012, “It’s not widely known that when Coppola made The Godfather, the studio had a substitute director standing by at all times. One false move and Francis would have been replaced.”
If that sounds like a recipe for a stressed-out director who felt like he was walking on eggshells – it was. As Duvall admitted: “That was incredible pressure for him to work under. It’s a great picture, but under the circumstances, it’s a miracle he even finished it.”
