Casting 2 Con Francis Ford Coppula- Site
After 18 months of shooting, Coppola had 1.2 million feet of film. He also had no ending. Brando had improvised nonsense for three weeks. The script’s climax—a massive USO show attack—was abandoned.
Coppola’s final con? Casting the movie in the editing bay. He overdubbed Willard’s voice with a whispery, drug-hazed narration written by his son, Roman, then a teenager. He took a random monologue from Brando about snails crawling on a razor blade and made it the film’s philosophical spine. He even cast his own daughter, Sofia (future director of Lost in Translation), as a refugee child. Casting 2 Con Francis Ford Coppula-
When the film premiered at Cannes, half the audience booed. The other half stood for 15 minutes. Coppola famously declared: “My film is not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam.” After 18 months of shooting, Coppola had 1
Coppola was not the first choice to direct The Godfather. He was, in fact, the studio’s last resort. At 31, he had made two low-budget features (Dementia 13, The Rain People) and just won an Oscar for co-writing Patton. Paramount wanted an Italian-American to deflect accusations of ethnic stereotyping, but they didn't trust Coppola. They told him, "This is not an art movie. This is a commercial novel." He overdubbed Willard’s voice with a whispery, drug-hazed
Coppola’s first act of genius was a 40-page memo arguing that the book was a metaphor for American capitalism. His second was threatening to quit unless he got his way on three key roles: Vito, Michael, and Sonny.
Coppola’s casting philosophy invited actors to reshape roles. He encouraged improvisation and personal choices that enriched the script: