Description

Peter Bart and Al Ruddy discuss making the iconic film The Godfather 1972. Ruddy discusses how painful it was to make, from the beginning, right through to the end. He says the Hollywood cliche is true - movies that are torturous on set, make great movies on screen. The film was based on a critically acclaimed book by Mario Puzo. Gulf & Western was the movie distributer run by Charlie Bluhdorn, who wanted to make it as a low budget film. Francis Ford Coppola was brought on board as director. The casting process was plagued with in-fighting, particularly with the casting of Marlon Brando and Al Pacino. Brando even had to audition and then take a massive pay cut. They had problems with the Italian American mob, who read the script and would only allow it to be made if they didn't mention the word mafia in the film. Ruddy almost got fired by Gulf & Western because he spoke to the press about the mafia. Every day was a battle from beginning to the end. Coppola also nearly got fired as he had not done very much pre-production work. This became his way of working throughout his career, he liked a degree of confusion. Once filming started the daily rushes were badly received as the footage appeared to be very darkly lit and nobody could understand what Brando was saying. In post productin the film was running to 3 hours long, so there were tensions with the distributors. Ruddy being a tough no-nonsense producer was there to protect the film and 40 years later it's regarded as an iconic masterpiece that won three Oscars including Best Picture. He says it's so popular because it's basically a movie about a family, a Greek Tragedy. Also there isn't one performance he would change, everyone was great. They both agree that conflict and tension on set can bring the best out in people but this was by far, too much tension.

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