How ‘The Godfather’ saved Francis Ford Coppola from ruin: “It wasn’t a great deal”
While Francis Ford Coppola has made several brilliant contributions to the cinematic medium, including his thriller The Conversation and his epic Vietnam War movie Apocalypse Now, it would be fair to say that The Godfather, widely considered one of the best films of all time, is certainly his most significant.
Released in 1972, based on Mario Puzo’s novel of the same name, Coppola and Paramount Pictures gathered together a magnificent cast including Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall and Diane Keaton to chart the lives of the American-Italian Coppola crime family between 1945 and 1955.
Two years later, Coppola returned to the story once again to further document Michael Corleone’s rise to power while looking back into the past at how Vito Corleone first came to the United States from his native Sicily. The film was equally as brilliant, even if the final part of the trilogy, released in 1990, was not.
In an interview with DGA, Coppola once explained how taking on The Godfather saved him from financial ruin. In the 1960s, Coppola directed four feature-length movies, including 1969’s The Rain People, which was produced by the director’s own production company, American Zoetrope, which, according to Coppola, was meant to be an independent company.
However, as the 1960s turned into the 1970s, Zoetrope was in “trouble”, but at that very time, Coppola got a call from Paramount with the offer of a new project, one that would change his professional career. Coppola noted in the interview, “They owned this book called The Godfather, which was starting to become popular, and they thought they’d hire an Italian-American director because that might bring some authenticity to it, and a young director because he might be easier to push around and would able to make the film for less money.”
Coppola read Puzo’s novel but felt that it was “cheesy” and that he wouldn’t be interested in taking on a film adaptation. However, George Lucas, who had become friends with Coppola during the making of 1968’s Finian’s Rainbow and who subsequently founded Zoetrope with Coppola, warned his fellow director that a “chain” was about to be put on the door of Zoetrope.
With that in mind, Coppola reluctantly accepted Paramount’s offer, even though he felt that it wasn’t the best deal. “It wasn’t a great deal,” Coppola explained. “They offered me two possibilities, one of which was very little money plus 10% of the movie, or a little more money but only 6% of the movie.” At the time, Coppola had two children and was in debt, so he took the advance sum with just 6% of the movie, which thankfully turned out to be “a lot of money”.
After completing the film, The Godfather went on to become the highest-grossing film ever made (at least for a while), bringing in a box office taking of over $250million dollars. In addition, Coppola’s effort drew widespread critical acclaim and announced the director as a major talent of his generation.
So, not only is The Godfather one of the greatest movies ever made, but it also served as a vitally important film in securing the future of Coppola’s family and his production company, Zoetrope, which is rather remarkable considering that he didn’t want to make it in the first place.
