The Extras - "The Godfather" Trilogy 50th Anniversary Restoration

Episode Date: May 15, 2022

Archivist James Mockoski and editor Robert Shafer of American Zoetrope join the podcast to talk about the restoration of “The Godfather” trilogy for the 50th Anniversary 4K release.  We discuss the importance of the 2007 restoration led by Robert Harris as the starting point for this latest restoration.  And they provide insights into the working relationship with Paramount Studios and how the workload was divided.  Robert Shafer also relates working with Francis Ford Coppola on the recent version of Godfather III, called “The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone.”  And finally, they preview some future 4K releases.Purchase on Amazon: The Godfather Trilogy 4KThe Godfather Trilogy 4K Collector's EditionOtaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers.  Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals.  www.otakumedia.tv The Extras Facebook pageThe Extras Twitter Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog GroupOtaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals. www.otakumedia.tv

Hi, I'm film historian and author John Fricke. I've written books about Judy Garland and the Wizard of Oz movie, and you're listening to The Extras. Hello and welcome to The Extras, where we take you behind the scenes of your favorite TV shows, movies, and animation, and their release on digital, DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K, or your favorite streaming site. I'm Tim Allard, your host. Today, we have two very special guests on the show to talk about the 4K restoration of the Godfather trilogy

for the 50th anniversary celebration. James McCoskey and Robert Schaefer, welcome to The Extras. Thank you, Tim. Hi. Well, before we dive into the discussion of the restoration, James, maybe you can tell us a bit about your role there at American Zoetrope. Hello, I'm James. And thank you very much, Tim, for having me.

I worked with Francis for the last 20 years as his film archivist. We do everything for post-production. We've been doing restorations for the last 10 years now of his titles. now doing restorations for the last 10 years now of his titles. I'm very fortunate to be working with Francis because, you know, he's one of the very few filmmakers that actually own the rights to many of his films, and not a lot of filmmakers do that or have that ability. Yeah, I was curious, the fact that you have an in-house film archivist,

that must be why, right? Because he has the ownership versus the studio. Yes, and Francis learned very early on to keep everything because you never know. He shot it, don't shoot it again. Don't record that audio again because, you know, he might go back to it, may not have worked in the original production, and maybe that music might work 30 years later. And we keep recycling a lot of stuff. So Francis instilled even to George Lucas to keep everything. And that's why George Lucas has a phenomenal archive as well. Right, right. And Robert, what's your role there? So I'm an editor with American Zoetrope. I started as an intern about 15 years ago, right out of college and stuck around ever since. And as James said, we wear many hats. And my primary role was editor and assistant editing early on and editing features and things later.

And when there's less projects to work on, I jump on to other things. And when James started bringing the restoration stuff in-house, that was a big opportunity to really get as much help as he needed. And I jumped in and started restoring as well. And it turns out that, you know, editing and restoration, especially with the projects we've been working on lately, are very interlinked because, you know, often Francis will want to make small changes here and there or, you know, do some editorial work alongside the restoration. So it's worked out nice. Well, we'll get into the coda where there's a really good story that you could tell us about that. But before we do that, let's kind of go back to the beginning of this whole thing. I mean, in 2007, you've got that Robert A. Harris restoration for the Blu-ray release then,

I think the following year, great restoration. But take us back to when this specific 50th anniversary or 4k restoration you guys started talking about it thinking about it and and take us back to that well the conversation really started with andrea callas who runs the archive for paramount she's the one that approached us and said you know the 50th is coming on and this is a challenging trilogy this is not an easy task and when the studio is aware of it it will be you know a year away and we need more time because godfather is a patchwork of various sources it's a very complicated project and so she's the one that really spearheaded to making sure that we had our sights uh for the 50th and started in enough time to make the, to do it right.

When was that? What year would that have been? Oh God, this was pre COVID. I would say it was probably around 2017, 2018. It was about five years ago. I, I, to, to start that discussion. Yeah. So how does that work then? Obviously the, I worked for Warner brothers, obviously the studios, they have their libraries and there's a you know for home entertainment especially you kind of know when your dates are coming up the 10 the 20 you know the the big one so it's not like that was any surprise so then they they say

okay it's the 50th was there what do we want to do i mean like what are we going to do for this we want to do a re-release. Talk about that part of the thinking of. Yeah, well, for Paramount, yeah, for Paramount, it was making sure that everything had been combed through, every can. She had her team there go through the vaults and just make sure that everything was unearthed because you know when robert harris started this i mean robert harris to his credit with gordy willis back in 2007 they did go through a lot of material and found as best as they can because godfather went through this path over the last 50 years that it had been recut things were damaged during the original release things were printed to to death off the original negative damage sections had to be replaced with negative. Things then were used for a different film

or a different version of the film, you know, the epic or the saga, and things got misplaced in different cans. And so, you know, Bob did as best as he can at this time, but he still found other material in the last 13, 14

years. And so we were able to sort of increase or build upon what he started as that foundation, which was foundational work, because that 2007, they found material that they couldn't restore back in the 90s. You know, they did a photochemical restoration, but they couldn't do, a lot of things were just torn, shredded that, you know, you can't work with in a photochemical world. But now with digital, they were able to now go back to the original negative and work from that element. So thankfully, that was the recipe that led us to this work 50 years from the 50th anniversary.

So then did the initial efforts kind of fall on the Paramount team to say, hey, these are the materials we found in the vaults or things of that nature? Or where do you step in or do things start with you? Well, we have a great relationship over the last many years with paramount and andrew called us and said you know we're thinking of doing this he said well that's that's fortuitous because francis has an idea for godfather three perhaps we could work team up and work together and he's great we you know we had already done apocalypse we've done some other restoration and you know they they knew our work and they said oh this this could be a great collaborative effort to have the two studios come together to to work to do our thing uh and then francis could be through this from the very moment of the beginning

of this and sort of shepherd it through and and have his blessing at the end uh but yeah godfather three or godfather uh coda the The Death of Michael Corleone. Francis said, you know, I never really felt comfortable how it was 30 years ago. And now looking at it, I kind of want to tweak it, tinker with it and get it kind of dialed into where he wanted it to be 30 years. But sometimes it needs that time uh to sit and lie with him and like many of his films he likes to go back to it and and find where he could just kind of let go you know sometimes he can't let go of these things but he needs time and and and and find that happy medium where he just like i said apocalypse now with rob worked on, we call it the Goldilocks cut. You know, it wasn't the original, it wasn't Redux,

but it's the final cut. It's somewhere in between, you know? So he very much loves to revisit his films if he thinks that it hasn't had his final say on it. And was that the first film then that kind of was in the queue? I mean, you have the three films, but because you guys wanted, or because Francis wanted to do

some more work with the CODA, was that the first film that you guys kind of dove into? Yeah, CODA was the very first effort we did and released during the height of COVID. But Paramount, it didn't scare them. They still wanted to do

a theatrical release. They found 150 theaters across the country that still were able to screen the film, and we did rather well, and thankfully, a good reception to Godfather Tota that I think fans felt

that, yes, he was able to let it go and very happy with reception and how he was able to tweak the very beginning of the film, and I think he leaves it on a good note. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Hi, this is Tim Millard, host of The Extras Podcast. And I wanted to let you know that

we have a new private Facebook group for fans of the Warner Archive and Warner Brothers catalog physical media releases. So if that interests you, you can find the link on our Facebook page or look for the link in the podcast show notes. So Robert, I recall in the documentary that's on the release that talks about the restoration, you had a pretty interesting story about working with Francis on that. Maybe you can take us back. How did that all kind of begin? Uh, you know, um, as it normally begins with Francis, uh, an email, uh, he'll say, Hey, you know, uh, I had an idea. Can, can we, uh, watch a Godfather three, um, in the theater together? And, you know, I might have a couple of ideas. I'm sure. And so I set it up and we

watched through it. And when it was done, he, you know, he had a couple ideas. He said, well, see what happens if you take out the opening Tahoe estate montage and start with the party. And then I had some ideas for the end after that. And so, you know, we met again after I did those changes. And, um, I think Francis loves how accessible the edits are these days. You know, it's not like a big production to, to try a few things and to just see what they look like, see what they feel like, even if it's not perfect, even if you're just, you know, grabbing the DVD and chopping it up. So, you know, we start with some rough ideas like that. And I think slowly as we start watching it more and more, um, ideas that he had when he was working on it, you know, 30 years ago, start to pop up and was like, yeah, I kind of always wanted to try that. Or, you know, I was never happy with this. And so we just keep working at it and working at it and things just keep coming up and coming up until, you know, we're at a point

that, that he's happy watching it from start to finish. Yeah, you know, we did that with Apocalypse and we did that with certainly Cotton Club. But Godfather 3 is, you know, when you're touching the Godfather, that's a higher stakes and a much more, you know, much bigger project. I think Robbie's right. The process is very accessible to him, he's always want for instance has always wanted that ability to access his films more quickly tinker with him experiment with him and it goes back to the days of one from the heart when he's with a silverfish and you know developed it seems very complicated now with all the decks of videos and switching frames and switching scenes and

calling the actors to do different things uh he was trying to get to that process where he could experiment while filmmaking about how the film will fit together and it's no different now it's very easier now to to be able to to to get closer to how he wants to work with the film you tell the story yeah it's it's instant gratification really it's you know it's like you can he has an idea we do it real quick and he sees if it works or not um so it's it's uh it's really his own little sandbox and so then you're working with the old film you're not working with restored elements at that point are you no um you know certainly there was a lot of moving around and deletions and things like that are really easy to do but when it comes to to like finding a new reverse cutaway of Michael or something

like that, we don't necessarily have all that footage. So, well, actually we did, we don't have the final footage, but we do have, thankfully, I mean, this is another reason that, yeah, videotapes. Another reason that he needs an archivist is he has, you know, every single take from every movie he's done since I don't know when, but. Shot on video. Shot on video, yeah. And we've never thrown them away and it's made it very easy that we didn't have to go back to the film and transfer it. Uh, sometimes I've done that with like cotton club or apocalypse where it was just easier to find the daily roles and like,

and I'll just videotape it for my phone. And then, uh, Robbie will cut that until we get the film actually transferred. But, uh, that's been the great easy thing for us to do is just pull the original videotapes and cut it in. Yeah. I think they're hi-eight tapes or something, right? They're all hi-eight video or whatever. Yeah. We just put them in and then, so we have a really, you know, low quality version of the takes,

but it's good enough to plug into the scene to see if it works. And then, you know, once it does work, uh, we order the, uh, the high quality stuff. And I remember actually, it's, it's funny what an audience will, you know, the quality doesn't matter nearly as much as the story. Um, you know, you can, you can make a kind of pastiche of a scene with just whatever low quality videotapes you, you, you want and still understand if it works or not. And in fact, on Cotton Club, I think, you know, we added so much, there was like half hour of, low quality videotapes you want and still understand if it works or not. And in fact, on Cotton Club, I think we added so much. There was like half hour of beta cam footage mixed in with HD quality footage. And we did a screening at the local theater for people who don't normally critique film quality. They're just a general audience.

And I was like, so nervous because I was like, oh, they're going to see this VHS quality shots cut into this. They're not going to know what they're looking at, but everybody loved it. And it was one of the best screenings we ever had. And, you know, standing ovation at the end, it was, it was fantastic. So it works. Yeah. You don't, you don't hear the term beta cam too often these days. That's kind of where I started three quarter going all the way back but so when did you uh when did you kind of start that um the the re-editing and then how long did that take oh man when did uh i should look at the dates um well we released it at what at 2020 the height we probably started 2018 i would say uh robbie would have started the edit and once we knew this was edit. And once we knew this was serious, 2017, 2018, once we knew it was serious,

then we had the discussion with Andrea and they started giving me material so we could start cleaning. But Robbie would still work on the edit and fine tuning it up to the very last minute. So I would be chasing him, hoping that we would meet at the end and meet the deadline that we needed together. But Francis is notorious that we'd still be working on the cut to the very last minute. Right. Yeah. So this is a lot of conversations that I have to have with James. Sorry, we made a change.

We have to order some new film or, you know, we have to go back to the sound mix and then make this adjustment. That's a lot of conversations like that. So, so kind of in parallel, then you're doing the restoration, um, and cleanup and all this other stuff on what Godfather one and two while, while three is happening or, uh, excuse me, actually, no, uh, we finished Godfather three, uh, first in 2020 and the, in the spring of 2020. And then that's when I started getting Godfather 1 and delivered that at the end of the year in 2020. And then Godfather 2 came in. Godfather 2 was sort of a collaboration with MTI.

They did a phenomenal job, but we also came back to do sort of a polished pass on that. They did a phenomenal job, but we also came back to do a sort of a polished pass on that. So and they also found more negative in certain scenes that they gave to us for Godfather 2 to clean. Let's talk a little bit then about the actual kind of restoration. You started on three when you were looking at it. How big of a job was it? Was it like this is going to be work, but it's not horrible? Or was it like, wow, there's some going to be some major. like this is going to be work, but it's not horrible. Or was it like, wow,

there's some going to be some major. Yeah. I remember the conversation. I think Laura Thornburg who was a work for Paramount and knew the, everything about the Godfather and she had retired, but they brought her back in to, to consult and spearhead supervised the restoration of all three films. And she said, well, you know, the labs are closing. We can't get any work done where we normally do would you mind taking on a little bit more i said we would love to do godfather one or two she said which one do you want i said well which is the most challenging

and she said godfather one i said we'll take that which i sometimes like well maybe i made the wrong decision but that one it was pretty pretty hairy and and challenging for for two people to to do it because uh you know the first reel is for four different sources you know there's a there was not a lot of original negative in that and you know from ivy tech material tech uh aRI to dupe negatives. It was a quilt of material. And there's some reason like reel eight, the first 10 minutes of it, it was dupe material that was pretty heavily worn over the last 50 years. So it certainly upped our game and challenge that luckily we were able to tackle. Doing it in HDR was a tremendous, I mean,

that just made the challenge even more difficult because, you know, just looking at the negative, you could tell that it was so much, it was pretty far away from what the final color was going to be. And once we would get back, you know, QC reviews and we would actually get to see the film in color in HDR, there was really super fine dirt that we couldn't see. Micro. Yeah, this is this is the problem with HDR is that it takes a level of cleaning that we don't we didn't necessarily do with our older titles, you know, that we have to extra scrutiny. titles, you know, that we have to extra scrutiny. And sometimes when the color grade is applied,

you're revealing more things like I can't see that on my monitor, but in HDR, you can. So that's still a hard thing of trying to find stuff that you can't see in your own workspace, but can see at the lab when the HDR grade is applied. So this is all happening during the COVID shutdown, right? You guys, by that time, this is what, 2020 or something. How did you guys divvy up the workload or how'd you go about the task of attacking the Godfather? Robbie and I would just take a reel. I'll take reel one, he'll take reel two. And we just hired a setter and he'll send it to him at his house. And that's generally how we just alternate reels.

So when we had we were set up pretty well, you know, we were already working from home. So we were we already had a leg up starting that. But we also went the extra step of making sure that we had relatively similar systems with relatively similar monitoring. You know, we had LG HDR monitors, OLEDs, or similar monitoring. We had LG HDR monitors, OLEDs, and we had a system where we could send projects back and forth to each other to review each other's work just as if we were sitting next to each other.

We could look through our projects and write on the screen, here's a piece of dirt, here's a piece of dirt, here's a scratch, here's whatever, and then send it back and we could review each other's work very easily. And even though we're not an official lab, we were able to, from our previous restoration that we did

where we couldn't get Francis down, we had a C10, an LG C10 that I would review alongside with the Sony display, our mastering display, and make sure that everything is translating. And we would take that TV, the C10 up, and that's what he reviewed it on. You know, generally you want them in the lab, but because of COVID, we didn't have that luxury. But we had a fairly good system where we could just show it on a monitor, knew that it was translating, and he could make his color notes on.

And so by that model, then we carry that through the Godfather and continued and it worked well with us. Did you guys ever get together to do any work or was it pretty much all in your own places? During COVID, we kept separate. We were all under lockdown. So it was more like Zoom and meetings through that to coordinate. And then I would set it up and Robbie could remote in and start things for him.

Well, we did review with Francis in person and we went to the lab to review. Yeah, I personally went to, we went down to the lab. Robbie and I would go down to the lab and review down there. But, you know, the labs were, you know, they had like four people or they would have a separate facility down the road where you would have to keep your numbers correct on the on the warner's lot so i've talked to a few projects that were doing restoration during covid and people seem to make it work i mean it was because of uh where we are with technology these days i mean you couldn't do that 10 years ago i don't think the same amount, you couldn't have done it from home. I don't think. Yeah, no, no, it's certainly,

I mean, that's the nice thing about it was Zoetrope. I mean, I think people would have said, why are you doing in your living room? And you have to have your prop. I look at this as the same light. You certainly need a dark place. Well, you don't, you know you don't, you know, and, and we, we've proven that. And I think a lot of people have seen that you can work from home and you, you don't need to have that perfect environment to do this work. And so thank you. You know, Francis allows us to experiment and even with our own environment and then labeled to do the, a lot of the work here made it a cost of effective for us. But i mean this is the nice thing of covid allowed it it showed people that you don't have to have these high expectations so and still get a good

product out right well i mean we're not sacrificing in quality right i mean i've always thought and then you know obviously editors you think oh they can work you know if they have a good setup at home that's not an issue but you know with all the other assets that you're dealing with and as an archivist you know that seems like it would need a little bit more uh maybe interaction and and you have physical things but everything gets digital or excuse me everything's digital so now you know that really opens it up for well, as long as I have the hard drive or we've got the access to the broadband, you get the assets. So, well, how you're talking about the Godfather, any specific kind of anecdotes or things you remember about a challenging area of that one? There's many.

Robbie could talk to you about the hospital sequence, which was a bit of a night. Yeah, the hospital sequence. Yeah. I mean, the grain management and looking at grain is something that we did very little of in our past restorations. And but Godfather was like a it's a master class in grain. It's just there's there's some scenes that have very little and some scenes that are just have a lot. And the hospital, I think, by far has the most grain. And the big challenge of that is that, you know, once it goes to the lab that we don't manage the grain necessarily on our end on the restoration. But once it goes to the lab that they do a little bit, you know, they. the lab that they do a little bit you know they this was a problem of multiple sources that it needed to fit and then the same the grain pattern could alternate in the same shot and so once we

get i get footage back from from the lab on the hospital there's dirt that just blends in with the grain so well on my system that it's so hard to see i can't remember how many rounds we went through on the hospital scene alone it was just it was a lot yeah that is and and you know generally uh your philosophy of grain is not to touch it on our side i mean we still needed to look theatrical still needs to look like film and i i know a lot of studios thankfully you know paramount it was very conscious of what francis wanted and respect that the vision of Gordy and Francis. And that was not a tough battle. But there had to be some management because footage is coming from such a variety of sources that it would look unnatural to go flopping within the same scene with grain not there.

And suddenly, so we had to figure out a solution for that um but uh there there's times where you know things can go hairy with the grain management and we were fighting that where i think getting artifacts grain would start looking like magnetic particles and that's yeah that's you know something that makes me cringe because you there's something I, you know, I don't want to add something artificial. It can add something artificial. It still needs to look. So Robbie and I were very conscious of making sure things didn't go down a rabbit hole. And it's funny, you know, with the Godfather, especially, there's a lot of it really brings out a lot of the creative aspect of restoration.

Like, what do you fix and what do you leave in and where do you put your hand and, you know, stabilization and deflickering. What's intentional and what's not. You know, there's times where the camera's bumped, you know, like when Michael's running out of the restaurant after he shoots Salazzo and he hits the camera with his shoulder. And it's like, you know, I could easily fix that and make it perfectly stable. but uh but you know that's been there for so many years and it's part of the film so you know yeah there's actually a good story that i've been getting a lot of calls lately on the 19th and uh the godfather 2 uh version where they're riots in cuba and they're throwing out the slot machines well there's a couple there's one shot where there's perforations broke off in the camera while they were shooting and it's there and then you see

the perforations over the frame it's okay good 50 of the frame and parents are well should we fix it and i said well it's been there for 50 years no one has seen it uh so we're gonna leave it as an artifact because it would be really difficult to do it and you know there's there's francis always says you know if a hair comes in the gate he says well if it was there when we shot it in the philippines and apocalypse is like that just reminds us the film was challenging to work with it was we're all humans mistakes happen in filmmaking and you know it doesn't need to to be perfect we left, we left it in as sort of a nod of what it took to make, to make the film. But, you know, out of 4k, I think more people are seeing,

you know, but you know, it is what it is. Yeah. I was watching, you know, watching it leading up to our discussion and the coda and then also the, the original and I love the grain. I mean, I, I mean, I guess, yeah, that i guess yeah that's how you you remember it i mean that that is the way it is and you you see so many movies now they're just so clean you know you don't need sharp it's perfect you know and that's the thing you know the marvel it's like everything looks sharp and perfect and pristine you know film audience is sort of not a film audience anymore they They don't really know what film looks. It doesn't look natural to them. You know, Marvel looks natural in a sense.

So anything that, you know, has grain is sort of foreign to them now. And so you have to re-educate people to that aesthetic. And, you know, that's challenging with a lot of studios that people just don't have that language of film any longer.

But, you know, that's what we're of film any longer but um you know that's what we're here as archivists you know you brought up uh gordy uh willis and uh the grain but there was also quite a bit in terms of trying to get his color right in terms of the restoring of the color uh talk a little bit about that the 2007 2008 is our master recipe of what the film should look like uh how are you know 12 years technology change monitor changes it's it's a it's a different environment it is a different presentation the color is is different i mean we're doing it by nature of in an hdr it's not going to be a one one but francis is But Francis is there. We have Gordy's last color

timing as reference, and that's what's in our room all the time to use to make sure that we're not going too far afield. But it's still by the nature of its beast, a different presentation, and it's not going to be exactly one-for-one. But we do hope

that God rest his soul that Gordy would approve and that he'd like the effort. So, yeah. And obviously the sharpness you guys in the documentary talks about, you know, it shows examples from the wedding scene. Just the sharpness, too, that you gain from maybe where it was a little blown out or things of that nature. I mean, the restoration of the images is just fabulous. The color, everything. I think that's also, you know, the difference in technology and what scanners were able to do back then and now.

The scanning technology, even in a short amount of time, is so much better in stabilization and that it was worth re-scanning the negative that was done in 07. Cleaning tool software, the software we used, Diamant, is so much better than it was back in the early 2000s. So it certainly benefited after 15 years of the technology advances. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there were elements that we were not able to use previously

that we can use now for those sequences you referenced in particular. There was just more information available. thing and that is talk a little bit about the extras that are on here there is a must-see documentary on the 2020 restoration that you both of you guys are in that's called full circle preserving the godfather again that's a must-see for anybody who buys um wants to buy this there's also capturing the corleones through the lens of photographer steve shapiro that's a very stylish very good piece about the onset photographer on that first film there's rare eight millimeter home movie footage from the production of the godfather and then a ton of legacy extras which paramount has been um it was terrific that they included all of that so when you get if you buy the 4k, um, 50th anniversary, you get all of that. It's a

five disc set. You get all three of the films and the part three also has what the, uh, the 162 minute theatrical cut and the 170 minute 1991 cut, which I believe was called the, uh, the final director's cut. So there's a lot, but having said that, are there any plans for restoring versions of the, the chronological Godfather saga or the complete? That, that is, that is on our camp. No, you know, that was a favor that Francis did for the studio back then. And you know, for him, it's, it's, it destroys Godfather too. You know, they, they pulled them back in to do God, they pulled him back in to do Godfather.

He didn't want to do Godfather. And Godfather was a really difficult experience for him. And then to be offered Godfather 2, he's like, I don't want to go through this again. But he was able to wrestle away the creative control and said, well, if I'm going to do it, then I would like to do it my way. And that becomes the editing style, you know, going back through the time and,

and going back to young Vito and current Michael, that was revolutionary. And, and, and to, to string it all in chronological order for Francis feels like he's lost something there, you know, and for him as an artist, it's, it's not interesting. Well, how did something there, you know, and for him as an artist, it's not interesting. Well, how did, I mean, how does Francis feel about the restoration and everything that happened? Well, he approved it. So I think that's a good sign.

I thankfully, you know, the nice thing about Francis, the wonderful thing about Francis is that he loves to see his films over and over again, and he never gets sick of it. And he will always make comments, great comments about it, what he would have wanted to do. And if that leads a conversation of maybe we should maybe address it, maybe we should fix it or create a different cut, you know. Or if he's loving the film, he will tell us, oh, great stories about, you know, the death scene of

Marlon Brando that might not have happened because back during shooting, we were about to go to lunch and Paramount's bean counter was saying, you know, we're going over budget. Let's cut that death scene. Marlon's like, no, I worked it out. You know, I used to do these things with my kids where I would put an orange peel in my mouth and scare scare them and dracula right and marlin fought for that scene and they during lunch the the crew broke and he shot that with with marlin and the boy and you know and so these are the great things we sit with francis and he will tell us about these experiences and then i know when he's actually doing this he's liking what what we're showing him. He's not worried about the technical part of it. He's enjoying the story. And then we've done our job. Right. Yeah. Well, that's great to hear. And

you mentioned a few other projects that you have done in the past, Apocalypse Now, Cotton Club. Are there certain things you're working on at the moment that you could talk about? Yeah, Robbie and I are currently working on a 1966 film that Francis wrote with Gore Vidal, or adapted, called Is Paris Burning with Paramount, another collaboration with Paramount, thankfully. And then we're going to go into One from the Heart, which I think will look beautiful in HDR. And then I think the 50th of conversation will be coming around the corner. So we got, we got some stuff in the pipeline. Yeah.

Well, James Robert, it's been great having you on the show today. Thank you so much for making the time in your busy schedules. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. Well, for those of you interested in purchasing the new 4k restoration of the Godfather trilogy, there will be links in the podcast show notes and on the website at www.theextras.tv.

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