Word: coppolas
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Flamboyant San Francisco Lawyer Melvin Belli let it be known that he was available. Coppola and Puzo agreed that the actor they saw in the role was Brando (see CINEMA). Once again the Paramount bosses howled. They saw Brando in his more familiar role as the star of money-losing pictures and a moody troublemaker on the set. Brando's shenanigans during the filming of Mutiny on the Bounty had become legend, and the star, who is currently divorced from his second wife, was famous for his sometimes tumultuous off-screen romances...
...years. Still, asking him to go through a screen test was like asking the Pope to recite the catechism. But Brando was so eager for the part that, when he heard about the stipulation through the grapevine, he beat Paramount to the punch by suggesting a test himself. Coppola hauled a video-tape camera to the star's house and Brando, with a little shoe polish under the eyes and wads of tissue paper in his cheeks, trans formed himself undeniably into the Godfather...
With the casting battles behind him, Coppola found other problems on the set. Some members of his crew, openly unimpressed with his direction after the first few days, began plotting to get him fired. His cinematographer seemed to obstruct more than help. "I'd tell the guy how I wanted to shoot the scene," says Coppola, "and he'd say, 'Oh, that's dumb.'" Evans decided after three weeks that Coppola was near a nervous breakdown and never knew whether the director would show up the following day. But Coppola...
...growing pressure being exerted by the Italian-American Civil Rights League. Shopkeepers in New York City, where the film was now being shot, were making difficulties over the use of their premises for locations, unions were becoming restive, and Joseph Colombo was continuing his harassment by publicity. Coppola was stopped on the street by people asking, "How come you, an Italian, can make such a movie...
During shooting, says Coppola, "there was a full flush of intuition that Brando fused with his technique. If a herd of buffalo ran across the set, he'd react in character." For Brando's death scene, the script called for him to cavort with his grandson in a garden, then topple over from a stroke. Brando suggested adding a little game that he played with his own children: he cut a set of jagged fangs from an orange rind and inserted them in his mouth. The result not only drew a spontaneous on-screen reaction from the child...