Behind the Godfather Story: “In the end, this crew of certifiable misfits delivered a full-blown masterpiece”

It’s the forgotten characters who often make movie books intriguing, and Seal’s story finds its footing when he introduces a great one: Mario Puzo, the chronically broke, frustrated author with an addiction to high-stakes gambling and high-carb pasta, who decides to write a pulp novel about the mafia in a last-ditch effort to escape bankruptcy. Despite his Italian American background, Puzo knew next to nothing about the mob when he started, and did a lot of his research talking to well-informed blackjack dealers and roulette wheel operators at the Sands and Tropicana hotel casinos in Las Vegas. “I never met a real honest-to-god gangster,” he later confessed.

Puzo’s more-than-400-page epic captured the brazen ruthlessness and brutality of the mobsters he portrayed, but also their devotion to their families and sense of honor. “It was Puzo’s genius to turn them into family men,” wrote reviewer Maria Laurino in the Wall Street Journal. And Puzo turned the mafia into a metaphor for America — its greed, violence, pretensions and betrayals. The novel, published in 1969, became a huge bestseller; the paperback deal netted Puzo $410,000. But Robert Evans, the young, aggressive, playboy-handsome production head tasked with turning around Paramount’s fortunes, had already purchased the screen rights for a mere $12,500, with another $50,000 if the picture got made.

Paramount was not enthusiastic. Mafia pictures had generally bombed, including the studio’s recent stinker, “The Brotherhood.” But Evans and chief deputy Peter Bart figured the problem could best be addressed by hiring an Italian American director. They chose 30-year-old Coppola. He was deeply skeptical about the job — “I was young and had no power, so they figured they could just boss me around,” he told Seal. But like Puzo and Brando, he too was deeply in debt after opening his own independent studio. He pocketed the $175,000 director’s fee and reluctantly set to work.

The studio, ever guarding its wallet, wanted to update the story from the 1940s to a cheaper-to-depict contemporary setting, and film it on the Paramount back lot. Coppola managed to overcome these notions as well as sabotage the studio’s more bizarre casting ideas — including Ernest Borgnine as the Godfather, Vito Corleone, the role that went to Brando, and Robert Redford or Ryan O’Neal as Michael Corleone, Vito’s youngest son and successor, the part that eventually went to Pacino. The studio execs hated the idea of casting Brando, who had wasted the previous decade making mostly dismal movies. They made him post a bond of $1 million to ensure he wouldn’t delay the film shoot and insisted he forgo his usual salary for a bargain-basement $50,000. He grudgingly agreed — and won the Academy Award for best actor.

Coppola insisted on verisimilitude, even overseeing the color, quality and trajectory of the blood in the gory, unsettling scenes of gangland executions. Many scenes were visually operatic — Coppola and cinematographer Gordon Willis kept the camera in a fixed position, creating a tableau that the actors walked in and out of. Willis used underexposed film and low lighting to produce darkly rich compositions.