All Versions of... The Godfather Movie Trilogy

[00:00:00] This podcast is a production of Unfiltered Studios. If you would like to know more about joining Unfiltered Studios, please visit our website at unfpod.com for more information. I mean, for me, one of the reasons I'm so angry at Coppola is because as soon as I think about the five best American movies, he's got two of them.

[00:00:22] Godfather 1 and 2 are so magnificent. I cannot not watch them. I'm clicking away and bang, I hit Godfather 1 or 2 and I say to myself, well, I'm just going to watch for five minutes. Two hours later, I'm there when the end comes up. They're great movies. They are brilliantly directed, magnificently directed, acted, the writing.

[00:00:52] Gordon Willis' work, the cameraman's work is phenomenal. And they are as close to perfect movies as I think exists. It is kind of, you know, you either buy into it or adapt just as like you were saying about, you know, editing Godfather 2 and kind of finding that balance.

[00:01:13] See, this is how I learned from basically the greatest teacher is a student. So I'm supposedly be telling you some smart stuff, but you're telling me. That's humbling. What I needed to know is that if you're in the wrong key, the acting is, it's just an illusion. So it doesn't work. It's the same performances in Godfather 2, whether you have the 20 minutes or 10. Exactly. But in one sequence, it works. Oh, that's helpful. Thank you.

[00:01:40] You're welcome, sir. Have you learned anything from reading your reviews over the years? You're still reading them. I can't believe you shouldn't be the need to do that. One, because I was looking for something else. And then I was curious. I'm saying, well, if this guy obviously doesn't like, also, I very much disagree.

[00:01:57] I remember when the New York Times started to have a star rating system for art. I was so mad because I said, art is not sports. Sports, you want the score. I mean, the Dodgers are playing the Yankees. What was the score? What were all the statistics? But art, I don't get it. I mean, is the Taj Mahal three stars and Notre Dame four stars?

[00:02:26] Right. Depending on the lighting of the day. Yeah. And what are the pyramids? In other words, art doesn't, the scoring doesn't work for art. Right. Well, it gets into the awards conversation, too, obviously, which is a complicated thing. To me, the greatest award I ever got, and one of it was recent. It's when this young man, what's his name? He made All Quiet on the Western Front. Oh, Edward Berger.

[00:02:54] He came to see me. He said, I want to meet you. I said, well, and I was told his movie was wonderful. Very good, Conkly. So I said, well, it's my pleasure. He says, you know, I became a film director. I wasn't, but I saw Apocalypse Now. That, to me, is the greatest award to know that I am part of, in a way, his story. Yeah. And that's a thrill. It's curious, because I'm sure you get that a lot, obviously.

[00:03:19] Some, you know, but I mean, I take that. I remember I once read a book by Balzac, and in this book, someone said to Balzac, you know, all the young writers are stealing your stuff. And Balzac said, that's why I write it. I want them to take it, because then I'm part of their work. Yeah. And that's how I feel, like, you know, people that I met who were very young that saw my film, not only him, but before Alfonso Cuaron.

[00:03:47] I mean, so, my God, what an artist. Well, it's all for the continuum. You're part of the lineage, and he will pass on to the next. But that's the greatest award you can get. Do you, I mean, because for 50 years, people have been coming up to you saying Godfather 1 and or 2 were both are the greatest films ever made. And I know you have a compliment, I mean, you are very proud of those films, but I also know that from reading about you that it's not necessarily maybe the film that you would put as your favorite.

[00:04:15] Well, I can't think of myself up in that level, because I know who came before. And, you know, people talk about what's your 10 favorite movies. You know, we all know you could say, what are your 1,000 greatest films? In the silent era, there were already 50 masterpieces.

[00:04:34] So when you're dealing with, you know, all of them, and there's so many names of them, the, what's the guy that last, the guy who said the sound came to, sound had to come, but it was too soon. Who made, you know, who made the last laugh and all of, Marnau. Oh, sure, okay. I mean, you have giants like Marnau and Kurosawa and millions of them.

[00:05:01] Of course, we are on the shoulders of super giants. Right. And it's hard to think of yourself as a big shot or anything when you know what came before and who inspired you. We missed. We voted. We edited. We voted.

[00:05:25] Sometimes we get so deep into conversation that we have separate segments worthy of their own place in the sun. Here is a reshuffled mini episode. Before I reach my hotel, I'll be assassinated.

[00:05:47] The Academy Award winning films plus footage never before seen now transformed into a television masterpiece. Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday on NBC. We've sold the casinos. We have no interest in anything illegitimate. Owns the large corporation worth six billion dollars.

[00:06:19] Corleone, this deal can make you one of the richest men in the world. Friends, our business together is done. As they're unhappy, they think you abandoned them. Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. Mr. Corleone, we have a problem.

[00:06:50] I said we make him dead. You give me the order, I'll take care of him. He's not personal, Godfather. It's only business. I'm left in this family with my father's strength. Call yourself Vincent Corleone. He has not yet showed his face.

[00:07:34] I was watching The Godfather last week. And there's so many things I just was like going, holy crow. You forgot about this part and that part. I forgot about that. Well, the thing is, if you ever see The Godfather 1 and 2, then you watch the saga, which is all chronological. Yes. They threw in a lot of stuff in there that wasn't in there before. It is one of those. You can watch any version of it. It's pretty much the same thing, but you do it in chronological.

[00:08:01] Or you can, yeah, you can watch it even on TV. It's not ruined. I mean, very recently, AMC decided to air the third movie's director's cuts, the CODA cut. Like, there's one scene that was cut out of Godfather 2 where Vito's making a delivery and she's Don Corleone being beat up by some kids and they slit his throat, right? Love it. As you do in the prime movie, yeah. Uh-huh. And what happens is that, you know, he says, I saw him.

[00:08:30] He's nothing big. He's nothing big. And then we shoots him in the end. We shoots him in the frigging apartment during the feast of, I don't know, St. Anthony or St. Basil or one of those saints, my Italian heritage. We always have some guy. We always have five old guys, ten old guys carrying a giant statue, you know. And then, okay, everybody shoot off the fireworks, you know.

[00:08:58] Oh, no, that's what it's like, you know. I bet. But when they show Don Corleone, he shoots the guy, you know, he puts the gun in his head. He puts the gun in his head and pulls the freaking trigger. I mean, that's a great scene. You don't have any music. You have the music from the parade band. Right. Well, he's following, you know, Don Cheech to his house. And that makes a great scene, you know. Yes.

[00:09:24] You know, I think that's probably one of the best scenes I've seen in a movie next to Michael's. Going to shoot McCroskey and Salazzo in the restaurant, you know. Absolutely. And I want you guys to put a gun there. We're the voyeurs. I don't want my brother coming out with his dick in his hands. And we feel like the voyeurs. I love how he gets rid of the gun, too. He breaks it up in like five pieces. He's dropping in a different chimney. Instead of having to hide. It was pretty elaborate cover up there. So I guess this brings us to the magic question, you know.

[00:09:53] So there are six versions I counted. You know, there's the NBC TV edit of the first two movies in chronologic order. It was a two-night event. AMC replays it. Then there was the trilogy VHS edit. Then there was the uncut version of the trilogy that HBO played in the 2000s. Still occasionally plays. You can get bootleg copies on eBay. And obviously there's the original separate films. Then there's the part-free, you know, Coda recut.

[00:10:21] Then there's the edited trilogy TV cut. So, but the TV edits, if you're going to watch it, I do absolutely recommend the novel for TV, you know, NBC cut. Because like you get so much more of Vito's early struggles and revenge schemes on the other guys who, you know, are caught. He's kind of almost the unsung village hero, if you will, at times. Like, yeah. He goes on some fun crusades.

[00:10:49] I think the one that's shown in chronological order is the best one. Because that shows you a lot more that happens during the movie. Absolutely. I think, I think, I think if they were to put the chronological cut out on DVD, you know, Blu-ray would be on, you know, it's good. Because it shows you when he's in the town of Corleone, because his real name is Vito Antolini. And, you know, it shows him coming to America, you know, being a father,

[00:11:17] becoming a father of family, working at, working at the store. You know, he kills Don, you know, he kills Don Cheech. You know, he goes back to, he goes back to Italy and he's a big. He feels like a guy with an oar, like he bashes his face in or something like that. Yeah. The one scene I love is when he goes to the old, when he goes back to visit the old Don who killed his father and his brother and his mother. That's what it was. Yeah. And he's like, he's like, I don't know what I mean. Vito Antolini. What? Vito Antolini.

[00:11:46] He takes the knife and sticks it in the guy and grots him, like, you know, cuts him in two. He's like, ah! From the chest, if I remember right. Right. And it's like, the guy's bleeding all over. And like, he tells the other guy, get in the car. And the guy, he shoots the two guys, you know, and they're getting in the car and they're leaving. And that to me is like the ultimate thing that I love is like, you know, it ends on that with him coming back. And then it opens up with Connie's wedding and, you know, for, for the second half. So that's the thing.

[00:12:15] There's like a 20 year gap there then. Yeah. There's a 20 year gap. And I think Kurosawa put in something of a, there was a gang war going on. The olive oil war or something like that. And as this did, it sounds like a bad cartoon, but you know, where do you think olive oil comes from? Yeah. Or refining it. I do also, on that note, I do like how they do reintroduce a scene that they cut because it didn't look right, but they reintroduced in the TV edit,

[00:12:45] which is Michael decides to get rid of Fabrizio. Yeah. Yeah. With the, with the, with his own shop or something. And he was a bodyguard who betrayed the family, but I, yeah, it's interesting how in the novel they imply that Michael got rid of the five families who betrayed him. And he sends one of his henchmen to his bizarria.

[00:13:10] But it's interesting how for the longest time that confused me. Cause I would see the publicity image they would use. I'm like, when does Michael have a shotgun in his hand? Oh, yes. And so people were like, when does that happen in the movie? Oh, it's in the cut scene. That's now in the Godfather. That was me watching Ransom for two times in a row. Cause the part that confused me was Gary Sinise. I was like, wait a minute. He's the cop.

[00:13:39] He's the bad guy. The bad guy. Is he the bad cop on the loose? What the fuck? Cause, okay. I get it now. A little bit of trivia about part two. Morgana King, when Mama Corleone dies, she did not want to get in the coffin. Oh, geez. You didn't want to get in the coffin. So I think they, they did a, a, a bust of like a, like a thing of her because, you know, they had her in there, but. Friends is like,

[00:14:06] this isn't the worst melodrama I've had to work with so far. Trust me. I've had bigger battles to fight. When, when, when he finds about Fabrizio, he actually has a bomb go off in the, in the pizzeria. And they, and then Coppola was like, you know, the shock was like, eh, the shotgun doesn't work. It's just, we'll just have him blow up the pizzeria and he'll be across the street when it blows up. And then that's it. You know, he just takes, he, he, he takes care of that with, you know, what happened with Apollonia.

[00:14:36] So, you know, that's the thing. That's the thing we got to look at is that, you know, he basically was like, eh, the shotgun don't work, you know, but the thing that got me the most is they were going to easy, baby. We'll return after these messages.

[00:15:24] We'll be right back. We'll be right back.

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