AHC- The Godfather bombs.
- Thread starter BigWillyG
- Start date
The Paramount executives wanted Robert Redford or Ryan O'Neal for Michael Corleone rather than "that midget Pacino". Probably best to start there, and torpedo Marlon Brando's involvement too.
The original plan was to make it fairly cheaply, set in the present day of the 1970s rather than as a period piece, and to set it in either St Louis or Kansas City (I forget which one) rather than New York. The Paramount executives also wanted Ernest Borgnine to play Vito Corleone. It was on Francis Ford Coppola's insistence that they made it closer to the book and allowed Brando to do a screen test. The film was also originally meant to have less than a third of its final budget -- only $2 million -- but making it a period piece meant it became more expensive to make. So if you get rid of Coppola, you end up with a cheap, less-well-cast, poorly-adapted version of The Godfather which may simply end up being a bad movie.
How do you get rid of Coppola? Well, it may be easiest to simply prevent him from taking the job in the first place. And, if I recall correctly, there's a simple POD for that: don't let George Lucas convince him to take the job. Coppola was worried about selling out his artistic integrity and stuff like that but Lucas told him "Do the job now, get the cash and the credit, and you'll be able to do the stuff you want later." So, prevent that conversation from taking place and Coppola may pass on The Godfather.
After that, there are still ample opportunities for Coppola to drop out or be fired. His working relationship with the Paramount executives was infamously awful on that picture. But if you want to get rid of Coppola's effect on the film's artistic direction, then the earlier you get rid of him the better.
Now, actually making the film an outright flop will be difficult since it was only made for $6.5 million in OTL, and in the ATL may be even cheaper. But Paramount Pictures was in bad financial shape at the time and desperately needed The Godfather to be a hit -- so even if it ends up making a profit, it may still be regarded as a failure if it isn't enough of a success.
How do you get rid of Coppola? Well, it may be easiest to simply prevent him from taking the job in the first place. And, if I recall correctly, there's a simple POD for that: don't let George Lucas convince him to take the job. Coppola was worried about selling out his artistic integrity and stuff like that but Lucas told him "Do the job now, get the cash and the credit, and you'll be able to do the stuff you want later." So, prevent that conversation from taking place and Coppola may pass on The Godfather.
After that, there are still ample opportunities for Coppola to drop out or be fired. His working relationship with the Paramount executives was infamously awful on that picture. But if you want to get rid of Coppola's effect on the film's artistic direction, then the earlier you get rid of him the better.
Now, actually making the film an outright flop will be difficult since it was only made for $6.5 million in OTL, and in the ATL may be even cheaper. But Paramount Pictures was in bad financial shape at the time and desperately needed The Godfather to be a hit -- so even if it ends up making a profit, it may still be regarded as a failure if it isn't enough of a success.
Might not financially bomb that way but you could certainly have it go from the classic it is today to just another '70s exploitation film.
Like I said, though, Paramount was expecting The Godfather to save them from their money trouble. So if they hype it up enough before release that everyone expects it to be a big hit, but it only makes around $10 million or so, it could get perceived as a bomb.
The problem with actually getting it to bomb is that it was fairly cheaply made in the first place.
Drop James Caan, replace him with Elliot Gould
Drop Al Pacino, replace him with Joel Grey
Drop Marlon Brando, replace him with Eddie Albert
Drop Robert Duvall, replace him with Fred Astaire
Drop Francis Ford Coppola replace him with Stanly Kubrick
Cave into the Italian American pressure groups and remove the clear references to Italy and Italian Americans. Set the movie in Dallas TX.
BTW: All of the replacements listed were nominated for Academy Awards within three years of when The Godfather was produced.
Drop Al Pacino, replace him with Joel Grey
Drop Marlon Brando, replace him with Eddie Albert
Drop Robert Duvall, replace him with Fred Astaire
Drop Francis Ford Coppola replace him with Stanly Kubrick
Cave into the Italian American pressure groups and remove the clear references to Italy and Italian Americans. Set the movie in Dallas TX.
BTW: All of the replacements listed were nominated for Academy Awards within three years of when The Godfather was produced.
Have it edited so that it is rated PG at most, on top of all the other suggestions.
The horse head is replaced with the stuffed head off a hobby horse.
This whole thread is so scary that I'm going to watch both The Godfather and the Godfather Part II two times(instead on my usual one time) each this holiday season.
The actual novel by Mario Puzo whilst an okay book does have some pretty clunky dialogue in it, with the Godfather what we got was a film that was better than the original source material. He was apparently in need of cash when he wrote it and his publishers suggested that a mafia book might sell, he's on record as saying "I wished like hell I'd written it better". One way you could possibly make it worse would be if the screenwriters/director are much more faithful to the book.
