The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather by Mark Seal

Episode Date: October 24, 2021

Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather by Mark Seal The behind-the-scenes story of the making of The Godfather, fifty years after the classic film’s original release. The story of how The Godfather was made is as dramatic, operatic, and entertaining as the film itself. Over the years, many versions of various aspects of the movie’s fiery creation have been told—sometimes conflicting, but always compelling. Mark Seal sifts through the evidence, has extensive new conversations with director Francis Ford Coppola and several heretofore silent sources, and complements them with colorful interviews with key players including actors Al Pacino, James Caan, Talia Shire, and others for irresistible insights into how the movie whose success some initially doubted roared to glory. On top of the usual complications of filmmaking, the creators of The Godfather had to contend with the real-life members of its subject matter: the Mob. During production of the movie, location permits were inexplicably revoked, author Mario Puzo got into a public brawl with an irate Frank Sinatra, producer Al Ruddy’s car was found riddled with bullets, men with “connections” vied to be in the cast, and some were given film roles. As Seal notes, this is the tale of “a classic movie that revolutionized filmmaking, saved Paramount Pictures, minted a new generation of movie stars, made its struggling author Mario Puzo rich and famous, and sparked a war between two of the mightiest powers in America: the sharks of Hollywood and the highest echelons of the Mob.” ​ Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli is the lively and complete story of how a masterpiece was made, perfect for anyone who loves the movies.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks it's voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming here with a great podcast i'm really excited about today's podcast i'm normally excited about every podcast we have some of those brilliant authors on we put them in the google machine we go some brilliant

authors send them to the show and like a whole mess and pop up and appear one or two times a day which you know is pretty awesome because i learned so much and hopefully you guys do too as well but today my number one movie the the number one movie in my book is the movie The Godfather. That is the number one movie of all time of any movie that I've ever watched. I'm a real big movie buff. It's The Godfather. And if you're a man and you have not watched The Godfather or understood what The Godfather is about, I do question your manhood. So you need to sit down and watch that movie. So we're excited to announce my new book is coming out. It's called Beacons of Leadership, Inspiring Lessons of Success in Business and Innovation. It's going to be coming out on October 5th, 2021.

And I'm really excited for you to get a chance to read this book. It's filled with a multitude of my insightful stories, lessons, my life, and experiences in leadership and character. I give you some of the secrets from my CEO Entrepreneur Toolbox that I use to scale my business success, innovate, and build a multitude of companies. I've been a CEO for, what is it, like 33, 35 years now. We talk about leadership,

the importance of leadership, how to become a great leader, and how anyone can become a great leader as well. So you can pre-order the book right now wherever fine books are sold, but the best thing to do on getting a pre-order deal is to go to beaconsofleadership.com. That's beaconsofleadership.com. On there, you can find several packages you can take advantage of in ordering the book. And for the same price of what you can get it from someplace else like Amazon,

you can get all sorts of extra goodies that we've taken and given away. Different collectors, limited edition, custom-made numbered book plates that are going to be autographed by me. There's all sorts of other goodies that you can get when you buy the book from beaconsofleadership.com. So be sure to go there, check it out, or order the book wherever fine books are sold.

Today, we have an amazing author on the show. He's written a book called Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli, the epic story of the making of The Godfather just came out October 19, 2021, right off the presses there. It has that hot, steamy print smell. Mark Seal is going to be joining us today, talking about his amazing book so that we can find out more about what went into The Godfather, at least tease it out.

You've got to buy the book to find out the whole story, but you're going to get a few teasers here. Mark is a veteran author and journalist. He joined Vanity Fair as a contributing editor in 2003. Covering stories as varied as the Bernie Madoff scandal. Ghazane Miswell, am I pronouncing that right? Ghazane Miswell. Is that how you pronounce that? Oh, I've always been doing it wrong, haven't I? But like, we should care anyway. You're a journalist, that has to work for you. Me, I just, I think she's evil. Tiger wrong, haven't I? But, like, we should care anyway. You're a journalist. That has to work for you. Me, I just, I think she's evil. Tiger Woods.

I'm just going to keep doing commentary during people's bios. This is real professional. Tiger Woods and the fall of Olympian Oscar Pistorius, the making of classic films such as Pulp Fiction and more. Welcome to the show, Mark. How are you? Thank you so much, Chris. Great to be here. I'm still going to forget how to spell her name, Maxwell. So there you go.

No worries. So anyway, welcome to the show. Give us your plugs so people can find you on the interwebs. Yeah, you can find me on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or my website, mark-seal.com. And you can find the book on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, wherever fine books are sold. There you go. So what motivated you to pick The Godfather as telling the story, the making of it? I've always been fascinated by the film, as so many people have been as well. And I watched it. I was a college freshman in 1972. And I walked out of the theater, a youngster, and I felt like I walked out no longer a kid anymore. And from that point, I was fascinated, obsessed. I love the movie so much. And in 2008, I was lucky enough to

be assigned by Vanity Fair magazine to write a making of the Godfather story for the 2009 Hollywood issue. And I was able to interview much of the cast and crew, including some of the some of the members of the cast and crew that have since left us. And like Robert Evans, the head of production at Paramount during the film. And from that point on, my obsession only grew, and I had always wanted to do a book using some of the interviews that I had done, and, of course, much more research into what I describe in the book as quite a long and deep well. It really is interesting. I think I've seen a few making of The Godfathers,

where Francis Ford Coppola has talked about things. Like one big thing was the apocalypse now which was making it was a was an apocalypse of its own and irony so it's really interesting to me give us an hour we're arcing of the view of the book and and what's inside yeah the book book starts out with robert evans and we are in his home and we he tells me about we watch parts of the movie together and he tells me about, we watch parts of the movie together, and he tells me about the fights, the tremendous fights, the battles of the Godfather that were behind the scenes, almost as fiery as those that happened on screen. And from there, I go into more or less the real unveiling of the mob in America,

which was in the 1960s, which is where Mario Puzo, the author of The Godfather, got his ideas and inspirations. But what Puzo did, Mario Puzo, the author, is really the hero of the story because he created this family, the Corleone family, from thin air and from research. And he made us care about these men, not as gangsters or killers, but as family men. And that was the secret to both the book and the movie. And then from there, the book just traces the making of the movie with all the twists and turns and fights and craziness and all through the filming and the actual debut and premiere 50 years ago in next March in New York City. It's wild. You've probably seen, and if anyone else sees online,

there's lots of YouTube videos now about the early casting videos where they tried to cast, I think it was, well, they were moving them all around because I guess they had to do that for the dailies or whatever that they send up to the thing. Because I guess the studio didn't want Al Pacino as Michael Corleone, right? That's exactly right. So Francis Ford Coppola, to his incredible credit, he envisioned the cast as the cast that we see on screen now.

He saw Michael as Al Pacino, and nobody wanted Pacino because he had never been in a movie before. He was a star on Broadway of sorts. He had won a Tony for a play there, but nobody wanted him because he was basically an unknown in cinema. But Coppola said every time he closed his eyes and saw those scenes in Sicily, the face of Al Pacino flashed in his mind. And so he saw the cast. He saw Sonny as James Connors' Sonny. He saw Robert Duvall as Hagen, the consigliere. And most of all, the man, the actor who nobody wanted, Marlon Brando. is his relationship with with francis ford coppola over several movies that the whole dynamic between the two of them and of course marlon brando at the time was extraordinary what are some teaser points you want to tease out in the book that maybe you found that are pertinent maybe things that maybe haven't been explored yet in some of the media i think the brando story in itself is quite extraordinary because he was seen as over at 47 he was known as temperamental on the set and sometimes late. And so nobody

wanted him. They wanted people like possibly Ernest Borgnine. Danny Thomas wanted the role. Can you imagine Danny Thomas as the godfather? Who knows who else wanted the role? They considered Laurence Olivier, but he was older. And Burt Lancaster wanted to buy the project and cast himself as the godfather. But thanks to Coppola's visionary approach to the film, we have Marlon Brando in possibly his greatest role ever. I just feel like the story behind the scenes is almost, now I'm not going to say as compelling, but the story behind the scenes is almost, now I'm not going to say as compelling, but the story behind the scenes is pretty wild,

almost as wild as the story on the screen. Yeah, there was so much that went into it. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I heard this story that he was spinning out, I think they're called the dailies that they send up to the studio. And they were spinning them around to confuse the studio. And then when they finally sent up Michael's scene where he goes to the bathroom and takes the gun and, and goes out and shoots the cop and the other dude,

that Italian restaurant scene, that's when they cemented his role. Is that true? That, that scene, you can't deny the majesty of that scene, but he goes into the bathroom and you remember Tessio says, the restaurant, it's perfect for us. There's an old fashioned toilet and you go into the back and you hear the click of that gun coming off the back of the commode.

And then he was supposed to come out blazing. That's what Lorenzo told him in the basement. But instead, he comes out and you hear the roar of that overhead subway going through in his head. And then, boom, he shoots them both. And that was when Michael is on his way to becoming the godfather on screen. And that's when Pacino is cementeded as michael corleone is in real what do you think endears this movie so much to people is it mostly a men's movie that that a lot of i identify with it as a man it somehow it appeals to me at some sort of testosterone level and i i think i know why but what do you think why you're I think you're right. You're right, Chris. It is.

But it's also a movie that a lot of women love, too, because here's the key. They're not just gangsters or killers or these men are not just criminals. But the brilliance of Mario Puzo in writing the novel and Francis Coppola in directing the film was to make these men family, their aunt, their uncles, their cousins, their brothers, their grandfathers. You see their weddings, their funerals, their baptisms. And so you fall in love with this family, not because of what they're doing on the criminal side. You fall in love with them because they're family men. And that's the dimension that really hadn't been seen in film before. And that's what made it a phenomenon. And that's what continues to this day.

You really nail it on the head there because I'm thinking of Mean Streets and a lot of other gangster movies pre-Did the Godfather. And, yeah, it was like mostly gangsters running around shooting up everything. You see the family story. You see the interactions with their wives, their kids, their fathers, their caretakers, their family. There's a romantic look to it, I think, that's very different than just some straight mob movies. Exactly.

Before The Godfather, Paramount had done a movie called The Brotherhood, and although it starred Kirk Douglas, and although it didn't get terrible reviews, it more or less didn't do well at the box office. So Paramount was reluctant to make the film at all. And nobody, a few directors wanted it. And they gave it to Francis Coppola, who was 31 or 32. And he was just, he didn't want to do it in the beginning either.

And so it was this unlikely combination of reluctance and then all out, almost war between all of these parties that produced this masterpiece. Just crazy. And how did Francis, I think you talk in the book about how he financed this and some of the different monetary issues for the budget and everything that went into, do you want to tease out any of that? Yeah, it was supposed to be a low-budget film, and they didn't want to shoot it in New York in the beginning. The studio was reluctant to shoot it in New York because New York is the most expensive place to film a movie. They wanted to do it in St. Louis or a Midwest city that they could make look like New York,

but Francis Coppola was adamant that it be filmed in New York. Also, it was said that there was talk of making it a contemporary film in 1972. In 1971, when it was shot, Francis Coppola said, no, it's got to be done in the 1940s, when Mario Puzo's novel was set. And both of those things made a huge difference. And also, they were both expensive. So in the end, the budget ended up being around $6 million, which wasn't a lot today, but back then it was. Yeah. That's just crazy. One of the things that really floored me when I heard about it later on The Godfather, and I'd watched it like a billion times, like I just totally was

into The Godfather and Godfather 2, and not so much godfather 3 yeah that's another book probably the but i heard francis ford coppola in interview he goes to me the story and i'm not sure i'll get this right on the quote so you feel free to correct me but the story is about a king and three princes or three kings. Yes. And they're all very different. And the key to Michael is cunning. Yeah. Which was, if you study power and you study empires and you study kings and all this

stuff, like the whole story really makes sense, especially the dynamic between Sonny and his brothers. That's right. Yeah. When Coppola first read Puzo's novel, he said, what is this, the carpetbaggers? He thought there was a lot of steam. Mario Puzo was good at writing steamy scenes. And he was just a great, prolific, creative writer. But in the beginning,

he didn't want to do it. But then he had this concept that it was going to be about a king and his three sons. And he presented that and what is this? And that was just the perfect thing. That was the thing that made it great that it is a king and it is his three sons. There's Sonny, who's so big and overpowering. And there's Michael, who, as you say, exhibited this cunning. And then there's Fredo, who we know. He had the perfect combination, and he envisioned all this. He was such a visionary in this film, and that's what made him one of the great directors of our time. And this was the start of his amazing career. And yeah, I never really understood the dynamic. I just made some character choices here. But when you understand, like, family hierarchy, I'm a first child.

So I'm probably a lot like Sonny. In fact, it's when I've been shot up. But then you understand Fredo, who's the middle child. And then you understand Michael. You really start to understand the paradigms of the hierarchy of the family and how these actually play a very similar role in a lot of families and family hierarchy. Correct me if I'm wrong. No, exactly. Michael, the magic of Michael, I think, and I think Al Pacino had said this in interviews before, that Michael had to start out slow and quiet.

So you see the transition and you follow his transition into what he becomes in that restaurant when he shoots these two men. And then after that, when he becomes the godfather, the heir to his father's empire. And that scene in the garden, I never wanted this for you, Michael, Governor Corleone and all of that. And he said, get there, Pop, and all of that. You just see the passing of the torch from father to son. And you see all this over the course of three hours. Yeah. Yeah.

It's amazing. So much happens. Was there resistance to making the film? It was, yeah, because the studio was struggling. It had a hit in Love Story. But that, as I write in the book, that was a reprieve and not a rescue. The Godfather was a rescue.

The Godfather made Paramount one of the most successful studios in the world. So do you talk in the book about, I know in the 60s, I think it was in the 60s, the mob, the understanding of the mob, or at least the understanding widely across America, was the hearings in the, I think,

do you talk about that in the book? I do. I do. Because this is the thing, in the 60s, when Mario Puzo started writing the book, the tough offer hearings were happening across, in 19 cities across America. And people were like glued to their television screens to watch the real life. Robert Kennedy was involved in this, and it was these hearings on black and white television. It was like a reality show almost. Everybody was glued to their television sets watching this. And it was kind of like who these men were, who the mafia was, who the mob was all playing out in real time on television. And I get into that in the book.

And also I say that one of the people watching this was Mario Puzo. And he was at home like everybody else watching these hearings unfold. But what he did is he went down into his basement and over a manual typewriter with the sound of his five kids up above, he created this fictional family that was as believable as fact. Even more so because people came to believe that these men and their families actually existed. Yeah. I think I misquoted when I said that Mean Streets came out prior to Godfather. I think Mean Streets came out in 78, I think. It was after so

does so that leads me to my next question i'm trying to get an idea here of gangster movies that preceded the godfather really changed the tone of gangster movies then because i'm thinking yeah it did because if you watch like the brotherhood and movies like that they're more melodramatic they're it's not it doesn't have the heart and the soul of the godfather. It doesn't have the family. I don't think you feel the same as you do when you watch the Corleone family. So it was a whole different at the time. Now the family is featured in The Sopranos, Tony Soprano's family, and everything that happens around him. But back then it was new.

And so that's what made it such a hit and such a phenomenon around the world, not just in the U.S., but it went worldwide. And I think it was because the family aspect of it is what made it new and fresh. Mean Streets came out in 73, so it might have been being filmed around the time. But yeah, Mean Streets, there wasn't really a family element to it. And before that, there was the bogey movies. There were gangster movies. I'm a huge bogey fan. I'm the bogey fan.

Not the bogey fan, but I'm huge. And then I'm trying to think of who is the little guy who would always do the gangster movies. Cagney? James Cagney, yeah. Right. I remember that, yeah. And he, I always had problems with him being a gangster. He's a great actor and played a lot of great parts.

This little guy, you just, I don't know, whatever. He seemed a little too squealy to be a, but what do I know about gangsters? I don't know. I always had trouble with him being a gangster. So this really, when this movie came out, it really, I think, blew up in the genre, wouldn't you say? It did.

You know, I write about the premiere in New York at the Lowe's State Theater. And there were limo lines around the block. And it rained and turned to snow. And Robert Evans, the head of production, walked in with his wife, Allie McGraw, on one arm and Dr. Henry Kissinger on the other. And he writes that the lights went down and after three hours, the lights went up and there wasn't a sound in the theater. He thought, this is a bomb. It's a bomb. Nobody made a sound. There was no applause. There was no, not a sound, but it wasn't a bomb the the sound it was the sound of people being stunned the audience was stunned into silence and it happened like that across america that people were speechless when it was over like this and from that point on it was like a rocket

ship yeah and i think if i recall rightly franc Ford Coppola didn't even want to do a second one. He's like, that would be stupid to do a second one. I can't, I'm not sure. I believe that's true.

I'm not positive, but I can tell you one funny thing about that. Francis Ford Coppola at the time, he attended the premiere, but then he went to Paris to write the screenplay

for The Great Gatsby, feeling that the movie was not going to be a success. Yeah, that thing's done. Yeah, he just didn't know. And then he was in his hotel room in Paris when his wife called him, and she was still in New York after the premiere, I believe. And she says, and she looked out of her window and could see lines around the block at the theater.

And she goes, oh my gosh, you won't believe it, Francis. This is a phenomenon, which it was. There were lines around the block. There was a story in the LA Times that I quote in the book about waiting in line to see the Godfather because there was lines for so long that life would happen. They said you could do your Christmas shopping. Babies were being born. Different things were happening because the lines for so long that life would happen they said you could do your christmas shopping babies were being born different things were happening because the line was so long you had to wait that long to get it there's so many the movie is just extraordinary

there's so much there's so much history in it and what's weird is is it almost becomes more real because it's entwined with history the story of the i forget the name of the singer at the beginning but that's frank sinatra's story, right? With the Tony. Well, thinly veiled. And yeah, Johnny Fontaine is one of the more compelling characters in the movie. And I was able to meet the actor who played him, the singer, Al Martino, who met me in Los Angeles. He's now sadly left us, but he was great in the role.

And I think that was his first major role in a film because primarily he was a singer in Las Vegas. And yeah, that character was great, wasn't he? Yeah. And wasn't Frank Sinatra pissed about that? Cause he didn't want that out. That's what the story goes to. And I talk about that in the book that Mario Puzo met Frank Sinatra one night at Chasen's, which was

the Hollywood restaurant of its day. And they got into quite a screaming match. And Sinatra said, somebody brought Puzo, the author Mario Puzo, over to meet Frank Sinatra, thinking Sinatra would be pleased. And Sinatra said, I don't want to meet him. Wow. And then he started screaming at him. And you can read about what happens. It's pretty intense. Read the book. Read the book. It's pretty intense what happened from that point forward.

Really? Frank Sinatra? He seemed like such a settled, laid-back guy. Oh, yeah. I think he was, right? But I don't think he cared for the betrayal. Although it's said that later on he was interested in doing something with the movie, but I don't think that was ever meant to be.

Yeah. There's so many great one-liners or liners from the movie, a billion of them. What made you choose this line in particular for the title of the book? Yeah, because to me that was one of the great scenes in the movie, the killing of Pauly Gatto, the turncoat, who turned against the family and ended up enabling, in a sense, the Dons shooting. And so they take him out to that deserted rub

beneath the shadow of the Statue of Liberty. And the great thing is it's a part of, it's a road where the Statue of Liberty has And the great thing is, it's a part of it. It's a road where the Statue of Liberty has its back to the scene. And then, so they shoot him, they kill him in the car. And the actor, Johnny, who played Pauly Gatto, told me about the shooting, which is really interesting on how it all happened. But after the shooting, Clemenza, who orchestrated this whole thing, tells his cohort, take the gun, which was scripted.

Take the gun, scripted in the script, but not in Puzo's novel. Take the gun. But then he remembers what his wife told him at home that morning. Don't forget the cannoli. And then he goes, take the gun gun and then he pauses and a complete ad lib this was never in the script in the movie anywhere he said take the gun he's no he said

leave the gun i'm sorry leave the gun and then he says that the ad lib take the cannoli and to me that kind of like sums up everything it sums up up the gangster part of it, leave the gun. And it also sums up the family aspect. Take the cannoli, don't forget that. So it's kind of like it represented the film for me in many ways. There's so much of the improv too that's in the movie you probably talk about

in the book, right? Yes, the improvisational things that happen on the fly. But that was the greatest one. It's such a line. Everybody always says it. It's one of the greatest movie lines, most remembered movie lines of all time. I'm going to give him an offer he can't refuse.

It's probably way up there. It's not personal. It's business. It's another one that you quote. There's so many great lines in that movie that people quote to themselves back and forth over the years. And stunning what actors do, like marlon brando i think he started out with he put in some dental things or had some dental things made to make his cheeks come out and give him that that look and then of course i think it contributed a little bit to the delivery of voice is that

correct it did and you know one of the the first things that convinced the studio that Brando was great was they insisted that he do a screen test. And so Francis Coppola didn't want to call it a screen test. He called it a makeup test. Let's just play around and see. And so he drove up to Brando's home on Mulholland Drive and Brando came out in a kimono with his hair pulled back in a ponytail. And they said they watched him, and he pulled his hair back, and he put some shoe polish on his upper lip, and he put some Kleenex in his jaws. He said, I kind of want to talk like a bulldog, he said. Wow.

And he became, while they were filming this test tape, Don Corleone before before their very eyes. And they said it was fantastic. And then Coppola took that film, that short tape, straight to New York and he showed it to the head, to the man who owned Paramount, Charlie Bluthorne. And nobody from that point could deny

that brando was the actor for the role i've i had a talent agency for about six years up in utah while in utah when when touch my angel's running so we sent a lot of people that film and there's a couple other films it was after a big strike in hollywood so everyone was filming in utah and so i got to sit in with a few a few Hollywood productions where I actually got to sit with the directors and the producers in the audition just to see what it was like. It was extraordinary because you'd see just boring presentation, just one after the other. People come up reading the script,

and then you'd see the one that would come up, like you were talking about with Marlon Brando, where one person would come up and you were talking about with more with uh marlon brando where one person would come up and just explode uh in the audition with their delivery of it and if it was a crying scene you'd be in tears then you realize that there was no music that normally is in a film to help cue that there's no background there's no scene there's no real setup but you're it's just someone sitting in front of a bunch of people in chairs in a warehouse somewhere or something. And to be able to move you that way with the power of their acting ability and then the choices they made in choosing to deliver that.

Because usually it's a person who makes a completely different choice when they come to the audition. You're just like, wow, no one saw that one coming. That's the thing right there. Yeah, exactly. These actors are amazing, right? They could make you suspend belief for three hours. And then they were pulling location permits during the movie? That's right.

Yeah, in the beginning, they went to New York, and suddenly the city seemed like it was shut down for them. They couldn't find locations. Locations that had been available suddenly weren't available. The truck drivers were threatening not to work. And they discovered that there was a campaign against the movie by what was called the League. And it was a group of men and women who were trying to stop the stereotyping of Italian-Americans in popular culture. Oh, wow. Wow.

That's crazy. I would have thought it was a mob being like, hey, what? It was led by Joe Colombo, who was said to be the head of one of the five families. But what happened was, is that after a while, a meeting was held between Mr. Colombo and the producer, Al Ruddy, who, to his credit, saved the movie on many levels. And all he wanted was that one word be taken out of the script, the word mafia. And it was only in the script at the time, one time.

So they agreed to take the single word mention. Obviously, they didn't know it was only one mention, but it was only one mention. They took it out, and all of a sudden, the city opened its doors, and New York was on for the making of The Godfather. Wow, that is crazy. And this launched so many careers of so many great actors or took them over the top, I guess you would say. Yes, it sure did. In the beginning, these actors were not known.

Diane Keaton was on a commercial, and she was on the Johnny Carson show quite a bit, but she wasn't a known, she wasn't a star at that point. All of these young actors that Coppola, to his credit, envisioned as the cast of The Godfather from the very beginning, and nobody else, very few other people could actually see them as starring in these roles. But the moment they starred in The Godfather and this became such a huge hit, they became huge stars of our day. They're still leading the box office thing.

Yeah. It always does. I think Robert De Niro, wasn't he in one of the original screen tests? Yes. Robert De Niro was originally up for the role of Polly, who was shot in the car that we just talked about. And he was also auditioned for the role of Sonny Corleone. But thank goodness that he didn't get either role because he was able to appear as the young Don in Godfather 2. And he was perfect for that in Godfather 2.

So what do you think? Are you going to make a Godfather 2 book now? I don't know. It was enough so far to do number one. You know, because number one, the stories in number one were the creation story of All to Follow. And I was just so blessed and lucky to be able to,

and fortunate to be able to write about this great movie. And I just loved every minute of it. So who knows? But I loved writing the one about Godfather 1. Yeah. It's such a great, it's such a great, you could almost write a million movies on the one movie about the making of it. It's just insane. And they really captured so much lightning in a bottle early when it came down to it. They did. That's right. Like I said before, you watch it now, it still feels fresh. It still feels new. It's still, you still kind of become entranced and you're still stunned into silence at the end.

It still has that magic, which so few movies have. You could count them. You could count the ones that do. Yeah. I remember the, one of the lines that always resonates well for me is, I'm with you now. When he goes to his dad in the hospital, he goes, I'm with you now, Dad. And then you see the changeover or the crossover.

I remember there was a story, too, that I'd heard recently about Luca Brazzi. I forget the name of the guy who played it, but how he was having trouble with the lines. And somebody just came up with that on the spot, or he delivered it on the spot, and it was how he was having trouble with the lines and sometimes he just came up with that on the spot or he delivered on the spot it was just like 12 great improv or something yeah the great lenny montana yeah that was one of the great discoveries okay so lenny montana was a wrestler and he was like a championship wrestler they said he looked like he could eat raw meat and they they had been trying to cast this character of Luca Brasi, who was Don Corleone's enforcer.

But they didn't have the right guy. They were already filming. And one day on the set, Lenny Montana said that he was there visiting his mother where they were filming The Godfather. And he said, what's going on? And they said, they're filming The Godfather, and he said, what's going on? And they said, they're filming The Godfather. And suddenly he stood out head and shoulders above the crowd, and he was brought in to see Francis Ford Coppola, who said, took one look, he said, that's Luca Brasso.

He really is, too. Like, he really is fierce. And you see him, the scene that you mentioned was at the wedding. That wedding scene was so great, wasn't it? And you see hundreds of extras and in the introduction of all the characters. And there were Michael and Kay are talking. Kay said,

Michael, who is that man over there talking to himself? He goes, that's Luca Brasi. He sometimes helps. Who's he? He sometimes helps my father out sometimes.

He's rehearsing his lines. Later on, they filmed that. Apparently, he couldn't get his lines, so they decided to use that, which was so perfect. He's an enforcer. He's not

articulate with words. This is a guy you send to go out. It just worked. It just worked. You know, he was so perfect in that role. Yeah. And Francis Ford Coppola, what an amazing director and stuff. I've loved almost all of his movies.

Oh, yeah. From that, he went on to such. This was so fantastic. And he did Apocalypse Now, which was almost a crazy set. But he said The Godfather was even more intense because that was his real first big studio picture. And all of the things that happened on the set, which you can read about in the book that are just, that were just insane. There you guys go. We could talk about this forever, but we want people to go buy the book. So give us your plugs, Mark, so people can go find you on the interwebs in order of the book.

Yeah, no, you can find me on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or my website, www.mark-seal.com. And anyway, I hope you enjoy the book. And it was a real pleasure to write and it's always a pleasure to talk about it chris there you go it was a pleasure to have you on the show thank you very much mark thank you chris thank you and go order the book guys this is the number one greatest movie of all time in my thing i think number two might be number two godfather two there's so many great scenes in it i really need to sit down and watch it like 10 times to really get the nuances and scenes. And you start really connecting stuff and going, oh, wait, that goes over there. It's just such a complex thing.

And it's just a smorgasbord of brilliance and story and actors and just incredible. And when you really think about how hard it is to hit lightning in a bottle on a movie, if you study movie making and acting, they really smack one out of the park. I think the test of time is really. So check it out. October 19th, it just came out. Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli, the Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather by Mark Seale. Thanks, my audience, for tuning in.

Go to youtube.com forward slash Chris Sauce to see the video version of this. Go to goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Voss. You can see everything we're reading and reviewing over there. Also, go to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, all those different places on the Internet. You can see all the groups that we have and everything we do. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other, and we'll see you guys next time. And go watch The Godfather if you haven't.

Jesus, wow. So we're excited to announce my new book is coming out. It's called Beacons of Leadership, Inspiring Lessons of Success in Business and Innovation. It's going to be coming out on October 5th, 2021. And I'm really excited for you to get a chance to read this book. It's filled with a multitude of my insightful stories, lessons, my life, and experiences in leadership and character. I give you some of the secrets from my CEO Entrepreneur Toolbox that I use to scale my business success, innovate, and build a multitude of companies. I've been a CEO for, what is it, like 33, 35 years now. We talk about leadership, the importance of leadership, how to become a great leader, and how anyone can become a great leader as well.

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