‘Godfather’ Changed The American Lexicon
This month in Washington, during the trial of Roger J. Stone Jr., who was convicted of obstructing investigations into a possible conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, one piece of evidence had nothing to do with Russia, Hillary Clinton’s emails, WikiLeaks or the Trump administration.
It was Mr. Stone’s mentions of a character from “The Godfather: Part II” who gives false testimony during a Senate hearing on organized crime.
“Do a Frank Pentangeli,” Mr. Stone texted an associate set to testify about him before a Congressional committee in 2017.
The message, according to prosecutors, was an attempt by Mr. Stone, a Republican political operative and longtime adviser to President Donald J. Trump, to advise his associate to mimic Pentangeli’s obtuseness.
“I don’t know nothing about that,” Pentangeli, played by Michael V. Gazzo, demurs when he is questioned in the 1974 film about a character’s mob ties.
Mr. Stone, 67, called his text mere banter. In the end, his associate, Randy Credico, did not testify, invoking his right against self-incrimination.
Witnesses have been pulling Pentangelis for years, and the surfacing of the term in the Stone case is just one example of where elements of the “Godfather” films have become pervasive in the real world.
Earlier this year, a detractor of the CNN host Chris Cuomo, whose brother, Andrew, is New York’s governor, referred to him as “Fredo,” the bungling sibling in the Corleone clan. And when someone threatens to have you “sleep with the fishes,” they are repeating a phrase largely made popular by the films.
Edward McDonald, who as a federal prosecutor secured convictions against leaders of four of New York’s five Mafia families, said prosecutors are not immune. After offering a defendant a plea deal, he said, “You might say, ‘I made him an offer he can’t refuse: immunity instead of 10 years in prison.’ ”
Even mob guys have mirrored behavior from the “Godfather” films, as in 1977 when prosecutors said a man acting on behalf of the Colombo crime family was trying to hide bribe money in a restaurant. He chose the same place where Michael Corleone finds the gun hidden for him in “The Godfather”— a toilet. “Just like in the movies,” an undercover agent exclaimed on a wiretap.
Kenneth Dancyger, a professor of film at New York University, attributed the impact of the Godfather series on the American lexicon to the combination of skilled scriptwriting, acting and directing, as well as to insights into an American brand of power and corruption. “At the heart of it,” he said, “is family and honor and trying to protect the family from a corrupt world, which is what Don Corleone is trying to do.”
The scripts for the first two Godfather films were a collaboration by its director, Francis Ford Coppola, and Mario Puzo, who wrote the book by the same name with research materials like mob trial transcripts. “He never met an honest-to-God gangster,” said Mr. Puzo’s son, Tony Puzo, 72.
“He’d be very amused at all this Godfather stuff now,” he said. “He didn’t understand why people loved the Godfather references, why they held it as gospel that a quote from ‘The Godfather’ had any relevance except for being a witty term. He didn’t believe in the righteousness of mobsters. He was just writing a story.”