Coppola takes another stab at final Godfather
Just when he thought he was out, Coppola goes back in to create a new and improved Godfather Part III
For Francis Ford Coppola, 81, tinkering with some of his past films has become a pastime — and there were several things still niggling him about The Godfather Part III, his 1990 threequel. Coppola says it was never the film he wanted audiences to see.
“I never really wanted to call it Godfather Part III because I never felt it was a third part,” he says. “I wanted to call it, The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone. I was always intrigued by that title. The death of somebody could mean in the last scene he gets shot and dies, or it could mean something deeper and more fundamental ... it could be the death of Michael Corleone's soul, which is how I chose to interpret it.”
Some critics dwelled on his daughter Sofia's performance as Michael's daughter, Mary, who is struck down in a hail of gunfire.
“The critical tone that attacked my daughter was annoying. She was only like 17 years old and I thought she did what I wanted, which was to present this sort of kid with baby fat on her face, who found herself caught up in something big.”
Coppola, who oversees a California wine empire, conceived of a fresh beginning and a more ambiguous ending. The newly realized third Godfather is in select theatres and available on Blu-ray this month.
Q How did you first envision The Godfather Part III?
A With the second Godfather, when I called it The Godfather Part II — that had never been done in America. Originally, the company pushed back ... They thought that people might think it was just the second half of The Godfather. These were the same type of marketing people who thought George Lucas's American Graffiti would be about feet ( laughs). I prevailed, though, because I had a lot of clout after the success of the first Godfather.
(Then) a whole crop of part II'S showed up — there was Rocky II, Mission: Impossible II and many movies with numbers. So years later, when they came back with the notion of doing a third film, of course they wanted to call it Part III because they thought maybe it could be a franchise and there could be a Part IV and V ... Being a tragic drama, I personally never felt that The Godfather was the kind of story that could be easily serialized. I felt that once you dealt with fundamental principles of the main protagonist, Michael Corleone, that it was a tragedy and the first and second film articulated that. If there was going to be a third movie it should be more like what we call in musical terms a coda, or an epilogue ... an illumination of the first two parts and an intensification of it.
Q How and when did you decide to return to the film to give it this new life?
A Mario Puzo (who co-wrote the film and is the author of the original novel) and I always wanted to call it The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone … A few years ago, I said to my editor, “Show me the beginning of the movie and let's see how I feel if instead of Part III it says, The Death of Michael Corleone.” I wanted to know what kind of emotion that would elicit. But after watching it, I knew that the beginning shouldn't be what it was. Here's this guy, Michael Corleone, who has been sucked into a criminal enterprise that he didn't want, but he did it for the sake of saving his father and his family and, in the end, he wants to purge himself of it and he does it through a deal with the Vatican ... In reality, he's getting involved with an even bigger criminal organization without even realizing it. I thought, “What a great story.”
But that's not clear in the way the movie was cut originally. So right after this title, I decided to begin it with a very clear scene that shows Michael and the Archbishop in which you understand what the deal is. … He was doing this because he didn't want his kids to be damned by this criminal activity just as he had been. He wanted his son and daughter to be free of it. After that, the movie started to make itself.
Q I remember reading an old quote from you in which you said the future of cinema would be a little girl making movies with her dad's camera. What's it like to see that come to pass?
A I feel sanguine that I can't say what's coming next for the cinema, but I do know the movies that your grandchildren will make will be beautiful and unlike anything I can imagine. That fills me with a joy.
This passing on of the arts from generation to generation, each one doing something to it and passing it on to the next, it's the human phenomenon.
We are improving, we are disposed to be kind to one another and are more joined together to creating a heaven on Earth than we were 400 years ago, certainly. The process is bumpy, but ultimately in the big picture, what we uncover, whether it's in 20 years or 200 years, will come close to a kind of paradise on Earth ...
Q What advice would you give your younger self?
A What I tried to do — make it personal. I never just jumped into a type of movie and made that repeatedly. I always tried to change the style, tried different subjects and I took a lot of chances with my choices. Some I won with, but many I lost with … There are many goals in life. You can wish to be rich or famous, but after a while, you learn the greatest pleasure of all is to be a man who has a sense of knowledge about life.