Coppola, Pacino, De Niro, Keaton & others reminisce about The Godfather I & II
For the 45th anniversary of The Godfather’s release in movie theaters, the Tribeca Film Festival gathered director Francis Ford Coppola, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Diane Keaton, James Caan, Robert Duvall and Talia Shire for a back-to-back screening of The Godfather and The Godfather Part II followed by a panel discussion. Tomris Laffly highlighted some of the high points of the discussion.
“I found it a very emotional experience. I forgot a lot about the making of it,” said Francis Ford Coppola, who viewed the two films for the first time in many years. “This film could be made today, but it wouldn’t get a go ahead from a studio. The first film was made for about $6.5 million; the second was made for $11 or $12 million. They would never get a green light today,” he stated, briefly touching upon the dire state of the industry today. Diane Keaton, who said she watched the films on a computer quite recently, built on Coppola’s sentiments. “I hadn’t seen it in about 30 years. I couldn’t get over it,” she said. “It was so astonishing, Francis. It was so beautiful,” she continued. “And everybody is so great in it. Every choice you made was so authentically brilliant. I just kept crying, and that damn Talia. I am not kidding…. Everything was astonishing to me and I didn’t expect it.”
Every time I watch The Godfather, I’m struck by how much Pacino reminds me of Matthew Broderick in the first half of the movie. It’s gone by the end of the film and in every subsequent movie he made. Broderick, on the other hand, still seems very much the same, not so much the adult Ferris Bueller eventually became but more like a Ferris that never grew up at all.
Above, the original trailer for The Godfather.
Update: A video of the entire panel:
(via @nph)
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