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Francis Ford Coppola is trolling me about our resemblance.
(Hell reprise this theme at the end of our conversation.)
How was your Thanksgiving?It was actually very nice.
We did it outside, around two oclock.
We arranged the family, the participants, at their own tables.
It was sort of like an outdoor restaurant.
I chopped and carved the turkey and made one of the dishes.
Everyone has their favorite that they make.
Which dish is your favorite?Usually its the stuffing.
Basically its the pecans and the chestnuts that make it so good.
What prompted you to go back to it?A thirdGodfatherwas not something that I had thought necessary.
But I had a very happy collaboration with Mario Puzo.
He was like an uncle figure to me.
Sequels in America were always calledThe Return of FrankensteinorThe Son of Monte CristoorThe Invisible Mans Revenge.
They always had a title like that orAbbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.
And I realized that I could apply it to theGodfatherstory.
Thats what happened with the script forPart II.
ForPart III, at that point, I had been through a bankruptcy.
So, I became intrigued with what Mario said that we should call itThe Death of Michael Corleone.
And it shouldnt be a third film.
It should be a coda or an epilogue.
And I realized that was also probably because that meant there could be a four and five and …
But I didnt have the clout that I had had years earlier whenGodfatherwas such a success.
They wanted to release it on Christmas.
It was a big, complicated movie.
She was just a kid who had a crush on her cousin, which was all it was.
Sofia had been in some little films for me, as all my children had.
She was inPeggy Sue Got Marriedas the sister.
So, I asked her to come in, and she tested for it.
She didnt particularly want to do it.
She was in school, but she did it.
So, when the picture came out, of course, thisVanity Fairarticle came out.
You know journalism whats written tends to guide what gets written afterwards.
I felt that I did this to her.
At any rate, the whole subject ofThe Godfather IIIwas painful for me.
I was haunted by how I had missed the boat, so to speak.
What was wrong with the picture?
I felt the story wasnt clear.
And the story was really interesting.
They had this huge corporation called Immobiliare, and [Bluhdorn owned both Paramount and part of Immobilaire].
Charlie Bluhdorn told me all of this stuff to amuse me, I guess.
But I hadnt really made that clear enough in the first cut.
I have seen movies change from devastating to wonderful in my life.
And those changes could be made in a day, the audience reaction.
When we previewedThe Godfather Part IIin San Francisco, we had a tepid reaction.
And it was a mixed movie, meaning the sound and everything was done.
Then you do one little stupid thing and suddenly it goes.
This is the nature of all complex constructions.
Is that accurate?I think that is accurate.
Money is no objectUsually, the way I put these productions together, Im also responsible for the money.
I take the limits of it really to heart.The Godfatherwas a little bit like that.
You cant do that.
He was always shutting off the production, and it was horrible.
What saved you?In one case, it was winning the Oscar forPattonthat saved me.
I fired them all on Wednesday.
It was a peremptory attack on my part that I wasnt fired.
Then, of course, the reaction tothe Sollozzo scene.
That was shot pretty early, maybe in the first two weeks.
That was deemed to be a strong scene.
So that had a lot of sway, to save me.
It was less frantic because I was in control of the production so firmly.
We went to Sicily, and the sun never came out.
Well, why would you want to shoot Sicily if theres no sun?
For many days, we just sort of said, Well, theres no sun.
It was a very complicated movie much more complicated than the firstGodfather, but there was no interference.
I was the producer, and it went very smoothly.
I mean, I didnt know how to shoot helicopter sequences or such large-scale pyrotechnics.
There were other things going on in the Philippines that had higher priority than our movie.
All the scenes inside helicopters were actually inside helicopters while they were flying.
But when were in the helicopter, and things are hitting us,they really were hitting us.
But everything we did was extraordinarily dangerous.
I thank God a thousand times that no one got killed during the making of that movie.
There was one death, during the construction of one of the big sets.
It wasnt during the shooting period.
That weighs heavily on me.
This is while in production.
I was hoping that she would say, Oh no, dear.
Its going to be fine.
I think that explains part of it.
But indeed I did feel that I was never going to climb out of the mess.
In the 1970s, obviously you were like a god to so many people.
I was always trying to learn as much as I could about moviemaking.
Thats why I did so many.
I was deliberately making decisions like that.
But thats not a good thing if you want to have a career.
I wouldnt change my life.
I fantasize having not madeGardens of Stone.
I wouldnt have lostmy son.
And finally to have it all come out like that in that final scene …
He lives with the fact that he destroyed his child, which is why he was doing it all.
So many people go through this one way or the other.
And what Michael did in his life was terrible.
When he does his confession with the Cardinal, I mean, he is truly grieving for his sins.
But he has to pay for them, and he does.
What kind of say do you have over what happens toThe Godfather?I have no say, really.
They made a terrible video game out of it.
And theyre making a television series.
Ive always tried, even, to always recognize that its substantially Mario Puzos.
I guess theyre making a TV series about the making ofThe Godfather, which sounds interesting.
Oscar Isaac is going to play you.
This is something that you have no say in?Well, there are two.
My attitude is that Barry Levinson has made all kinds of wonderful films.
Im lucky that its him and not someone else.
One thing I heard about Barrys script is that my character curses a lot.
I rarely curse, especially in front of ladies.
Paramounts making another one thats based on the book that the producer Al Ruddy wrote.
It was an anomaly.
At the time, he was my active nemesis.
And he did take the music ofThe Godfatherand throw it out.
So, there were a lot of things which, at the time, infuriated me.
But I came to feel some love for him.
Over the years, I imagine there have been lots of attempts to capitalize onThe Godfather.
So, there have been many attempts to do that.
As I became more influential in that mix, I always tried to discourage just the wholesale commercialization.
Even my own family.
My father wrote a lot of the music inThe Godfather, especially in the first one.
All those tarantellas and dances … My mother wantedThe Godfather Cookbook.
The rush to commercializeThe Godfatherwas embarrassing to me.
You know, I have very pure ideas about commercial stuff and making money in that.
If you invent the cure for polio and become wealthy as a result, thats okay.
Think of all the young children you helped.
Thats making money in a just way.
Star Warswas your protege George Lucass project, and he continued it for many years.
It has become this giant property.
Whatever benefits he got from it, he deserved and is welcome to.
If I feel sadness, it is that he didnt make the other movies he was going to make.
George is truly a brilliant, talented person.
Just look atAmerican Graffitiand see all the innovation.
We shouldve had more.
Have you expressed to him this notion that he should make more personal films?Oh, yeah.
Im at the point where I cant bring it up anymore.
I do sort of think of him as a kid brother.
We older people have to celebrate the success [of younger people].
Thats how it should be.
We critics love to psychoanalyze filmmakers, of course.
And a lot of Sofias films often feature a younger woman dealing with a larger-than-life father figure.
Theres only one girl in our family.
My brother had all boys.
My sister had all boys.
And I had all boys [except for] Sofia.
She was the lone girl, and she was surrounded by boy cousins.
She was extremely precocious.
She was always saying funny things and doing interesting things.
She had a sense of design and art.
She was a talented painter.
Im sure I spoiled her.
But she only became more formidable the older she got.
Did Jon Voight loom over his daughter?
How do you avoid that?
I was very impressed with that kind of writing.
It was like a Borges story.
And then of course,Tetrowas a film that I mightve written as a 20-year-old.
So Im working on a new version of that.
I feel all three of them can be improved.
Theyre mine, and Im not done with them.
The dynamic within the Corleones, as an American mythology, seems so applicable to so many other families.
The Trumps, the Kennedys, the Bushes.
He didnt know a lot about the mafia.
He read it all inthe Valachi papersand in the books, as I did.
Even his Italian was nonexistent.
I mean, any real Italian knows that Vito Corleone would never be called Don Corleone.
You would call him Don Vito.
Im Don Francesco, I am not Don Coppola.
What came out in Mario was a natural understanding he had of the family.
A lot of the Godfather character he wrote, the so-called Don Corleone, was based on his mother.
He wroteThe Godfatherjust to make money for his family.
So, of course, it ends up being true to the family idea.
I made theGodfatherfilms with my family.
Here I am working with my sister, my fathers writing music, my daughters the baby inThe Godfather.
So, yes, of course it reeks of family.
Because it is a family.
Its a real family.
Did you see the viral video of Chris Cuomo at a bar where somebody called him Fredo?
He just went ballistic on this guy, and he was screaming that Fredo was an ethnic slur.
Im constantly amazed at the fact that Saddam Husseins favorite movie wasThe Godfather.
One of Donald Trumps favorite movies wasThe Godfather.
Its Rudy Giulianis favorite movie.
By the way, I had the great privilege of meeting Cuomos father, Mario Cuomo.
What a wonderful man.
I was talking to him because I was writingthis utopian filmthat Im still trying to do.
And I asked him, What could America be one day?
And he told me, and I was very inspired by it.
Did you ever meet Donald Trump?Oh, yes.
I went to the same military school he did, the New York Military Academy.
He was pretty insulated.
In a way, Donald Trump was a man who would do daring things, which appealed to me.
I went to see him once, and he was kind enough to meet with me.
I admired his audacity and his ability to have a dream project.
But, I guess a dream project can go wrong if it started for the wrong reasons.
Obviously, today, he has behaved more like someone in 1934 Germany than he has a dream builder.
Youve been working onMegalopolisfor a long time.
Is that the project youre trying to get off the ground now?Yeah.
Of course, the movie business is in a state of confusion.
Nothing can be released in theaters, and big films are very difficult to finance.
People are thinking more of streaming and that jot down of thing.
The taste of what film you could get off the ground is not one that involves risk.
All of my movies, certainly the best ones, had a lot of risks.
And I said to him one word.
I said, Risk.
Risk is a part of art.
Its not a little movie like those last three.
Its a big movie, and it would take everything I have to do it.
You also have an uncanny eye for talent.
Theres always someone the next day that youre still thinking about, who stuck with you.
Obviously, when youre young, it might be a woman.
Or it just might be some old guy who said something.
But something sticks, and you dont know why.
Thats how I cast.
Also, I have this extraordinary colleague named Fred Roos who was very meticulous in searching out new talent.
It was funny watchingThe Outsidersagain, and seeing young Tom Cruise.
Somehow, in that cast, he was the least good-looking one at that age.I really like Tom Cruise.
And he was a trade-off.
Fred Roos was not as hot for Tom Cruise as I was.
I personally championed Tom Cruise.
And I must say, Tom Cruise was all business.
He would do anything to have his part be a little better.
He would do dangerous falls.
He would chip his teeth.
He was a hundred percent invested in doing whatever…
I dont think he cared for me very much because maybe he thought I was a jerk or something.
I did a lot of funny things on that picture.
You say Tom Cruise didnt like you.
Did he ever say anything or …He never said, I dont like you.
I just dont think he liked me.
Not everyone likes me.
Tom Cruise actually wrote a very beautiful and warm thank-you letter after the film.
The actor does the performance.
Were you disappointed when Robert Duvall didnt come back forGodfather III?Very much.
I didnt know how to deal with it.
I always admired [Duvall] and liked him.
I tried to show there were no hard feelings.
But I was very disappointed.
Did you stay in touch with Brando afterApocalypse?Somewhat.
He had a love-hate relationship with me.
Ive known a lot of great people in my life.
I got to meet Akira Kurosawa.
I got to meet Jean Renoir, Orson Welles.I met Marcel Duchamp.
He had the most extraordinary thought process of anyone Ive ever met.
He could talk to you about termites for two hours.
He loved his children.
Brando loved children and loved innocent creatures.
I remember I went to him when Sofia was born, and I used her as the baby inGodfather.
Sofia probably was like three weeks old, and I said, Marlon, youve been so good.
I have this award I want to give you.
He took the baby in his hands so gently and with such assurance.
He lit up like it was the most beautiful thing.
But getting back to that scene afterDon Juan DeMarco, he said we went through some tough patches.
I think he was very sensitive that it was construed that I had blamed him for coming toApocalypsevery overweight.
I think he was sensitive to press reporting.
I think he took umbrage that I had criticized him.
He acknowledged that we had some tough passages between us.
But I totally admired him.
In recent years, some have looked back on that period and interrogated it more.
The American film industry had a handful of women directors, notablyDorothy Arzner,Ida Lupino.
But that was it.
There was no precedent.
We atZoetropemade a very big effort to develop women directors in the 80s.
I was the first one to hire a woman to be head of production, with Lucy Fisher.
We were shoulder to shoulder with the girls in everything we did.
That was the world that I graduated into.
The world changed dramatically on our watch.
This was not anything to do with Zoetrope; this had to do with changing politics and social norms.
AfterGodfather III, and what seemed like a comeback, you madeBram Stokers Dracula.
You went in a completely different direction.
I mean, really.
I said, Was it really the worst?
But he said that.
See what the critics said about Herman MelvillesMoby Dick, or what the critics said about BizetsCarmen.
The critics at the time, what they pronounce rarely makes sense 40 years later.
I have always had very mixed critical responses because my films stick out.
They want you to toe the mark.
That was it, in a nutshell.
Also, I knew that the studio would be afraid of me doing a runaway production.
But, really, I wanted to do it in the studio.
Ive always been doing weird, stupid things and following my heart.
of course, was consideredJack.
I was proud to showJackat the David Lynch festival, and I thought the audience enjoyed it.
They laughed a lot.
The biggest thing thats wrong withJackis thatBig, the film that Penny Marshall made, is better.
I was shocked recently to learn that you directed an episode ofSaturday Night Live.That was pretty funny.
The actual night, it was the onlySaturday Night Livethat had a continuous story to the skits.
And your wife says something like, But you do your best work when youre self-indulgent.
What are we meant to be doing?
What will glue us all together and make us a happy human family again?
Its well-known that the climate crisis is not really a climate crisis for the Earth.
The Earth will make it.
Its the human species thats at risk.
I think we have to start thinking of ourselves as a family.
In truth, we are.
Okay, I think thats all the time we have.
Francis, thank you so much.Okay.
Ill look like you now for a second.
[Puts on a pair of glasses.]
Youll be me in 20 years, or 30 years.
Good luck to you.
