How ‘The Godfather’ ruined the ending of a Clint Eastwood classic
Clint Eastwood has always been a man who knows when to end a story. Never one to outstay his welcome, either as an actor or director, his movies generally clock in around the two-hour mark and have an economy of storytelling few can match. Sometimes, though, he has to kill his darlings, and that’s exactly what happened with the ending of one of his most acclaimed movies. Fascinatingly, its connection to The Godfather may have even caused it to be chopped.
In 1976, screenwriter David Webb Peoples wrote a western titled The Cut-Whore Killings. The young scribe would go on to write the likes of Ladyhawke and Leviathan, as well as co-write Blade Runner and 12 Monkeys. Back then, though, he was excited when Francis Ford Coppola optioned his western script, especially because he had modelled its final scene after the iconic denouement of The Godfather.
The script’s ending saw gunslinger William Munny return to his Kansas farm after a bloody path of destruction in the town of Big Whiskey. When his son Will Jr asks if he killed anyone on his journey, he lies, “Naw, son, I didn’t kill nobody.” You see, at the start of the movie, Munny retired from gunslinging but was tempted back into getting his hands dirty by a financial windfall that could save his farm.
Peoples told Yahoo Entertainment that this scene was inspired wholesale by Michael Corleone lying to Kay about whether he ordered the massacre of the Dons of all five crime families. This act positioned him as head of the Corleone family. He explained, “What’s good about that scene is that it means that the killings aren’t triumphant killings. Munny doesn’t say, ‘I killed that motherfucker.’ He’s ashamed of what he’s done.”
Unfortunately, Coppola couldn’t secure funding to make the movie, and by the early ’80s, it had found its way into Eastwood’s hands. Now known as The William Munny Killings, Eastwood optioned it but held back on making it until 1991. By the time cameras rolled, the movie had been bestowed with its now iconic title Unforgiven. Eastwood loved the script, though, so he didn’t alter much of its content beyond changing the title.
To Peoples’ delight, Eastwood shot the Godfather-inspired ending just like he’d written it, and he believed the screen legend had executed it beautifully. However, when the film was coming together in editing, Eastwood had some bad news for Peoples: he had to cut the scene. Instead, the film would cut directly from the aftermath of Munny’s violent acts to a postscript telling the audience that the ashamed cowboy and his kids left their home and started over in another town.
A crestfallen Peoples explained, “He said he thought that it was a beat too many, and he wasn’t going to use it. He had this sense that the movie had already ended, and sticking on another scene wasn’t going to help.”
Peoples couldn’t help wishing that Eastwood had chosen to keep the scene in the film, but when he watched it, he had to admit that the rhythm of the picture did feel correct. He confessed that Eastwood “has a brilliant sense of drama.”
To this day, the scene has never been viewed by anyone not involved in the production. It has not appeared as a deleted scene in any home video release of Unforgiven, and Peoples has no idea what happened to the footage. He mused, “I don’t know if it’s something Clint would want to re-release or put on a reel or something. Either way, it’s done. He made the movie, and it’s a beautiful movie.”
It does raise an intriguing question, though: did Eastwood jettison the scene because he felt it too closely resembled the ending of The Godfather? Even though Peoples thought it was the perfect ending for Munny, with a ton of subtext and regrets left unsaid, perhaps Eastwood didn’t want to remind his audience too obviously of a scene from the greatest film ever made. Or maybe that’s just speculation on our part.
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