Pencils and Pop Culture: Pencils, Puzo and "The Godfather"

Pencils and Pop Culture: Pencils, Puzo & “The Godfather”

It stands as one of the most revered films of all time with a dedicated fan following and scores of critical plaudits. However, had it not been for the unique, intense collaboration between a small-time writer and an upstart film director, “The Godfather” and its accompanying sequels would never have made it to the screen.

“The Godfather” began as a novel by a ne’er-do-well writer named Mario Puzo, who would have been 91 this month. While he had written two other novels prior to “The Godfather,” critical success did not translate into cash, and Puzo desperately needed funds. He sold the novel’s film rights to producer Robert Evans for a pittance in order to cover a gambling debt. Evans could not have guessed that the manuscript he purchased, mostly out of pity, would become a saga about the rise of the fictional Corleone family became a sweeping, emotionally riveting film that captured the struggles of an immigrant family as they realize the dark side of the American Dream.

Directly responsible for the film’s scope was the collaboration between director/screenwriter Francis Ford Coppola and Puzo, a partnership that remains legendary in Hollywood circles for its warmth and creativity. Coppola carefully annotated the pages of Puzo’s novel with flurries of handwritten notes, underlining key elements, jotting ideas for framing and lighting specific actions and highlighting imagery and themes that would translate to the screen. Annotating the novel created a blueprint for Coppola, setting the stage for the film’s tone and design long before the cameras rolled.

Puzo would rework passages in the script, leaving with handwritten notes for Coppola in the margins to ensure a realistic tone in dialogue. According to a 2009 profile on the making of “The Godfather” in Vanity Fair, Puzo had specific instructions for the scene in which Al Pacino’s Michael Corleone is taught how to make spaghetti sauce by Clemenza, played by Richard Castellano. Of the dialogue, which originally included more formal instructions, Puzo noted “First you fry some garlic, not brown. Gangsters don’t brown.”

Perhaps it was that closeness and willingness to collaborate that made “The Godfather” into the enduring classic that it remains in both pop culture and the cinematic canon. Both Puzo and Coppola would collaborate on the scripts for the two subsequent sequels, and the men remained good friends until Puzo’s death in 1999.

In discussing the magic of “The Godfather,” Francis Ford Coppola once said, “Everything that makes ‘The Godfather’ a wonderful film comes from the book. That’s why on the title, at my behest, it says ‘Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, because the book had it all.”

Any “Godfather” fans among our Studio 602 readers? Tell us your favorite lines, scenes and reasons you think “The Godfather” remains a classic film in the comments below!

Photo Credits: “Marlon Brando”/Paramount, “Coppolas notes on Puzo’s ‘Godfather;”/3 A.M. Magazine