You're Wrong About - “The Godfather”

Episode Date: July 21, 2018

Sarah tells Mike about how America's favorite gangster movie is really its favorite killing-the-American-Dream movie. Digressions include the Mona Lisa, Bruce Springsteen and the tyranny of height-ism. The sound quality continues to worsen.  Continue reading →Support us:Subscribe on PatreonDonate on PaypalBuy cute merchWhere to find us: Sarah's other show, Why Are Dads Mike's other show, Maintenance PhaseSupport the show

If I were to do like sort of a standard high-stakes American podcast presentation and I like interviewed you What I would do is I'll be like Michael Hobbs tried to buy shoes And there'd be like a quote and you'd be like I wanted brown brooks never like he only wanted brown brooks Like when someone is just like trying way too hard sexually and you're like did you like learn a routine and then memorize the order? You Welcome to you're wrong about the podcast where we debunk political and historical myths I came up with a new tagline this week. Oh, that's a good one I don't know if it's completely accurate, but taglines don't have to be accurate

Well, it describes at least some of what we do It's like saying you're an importer exporter when you also partake in other activities. I am Michael Hobbs I'm a reporter for the Huffington Post. I'm Sarah Marshall I'm a writer for the New Republic and the believer in best feed and this week. We are talking about the Godfather Yes, which is neither a political nor a historical myth, but we'll get there. I would argue that it is both but So I watched the Godfather last night to brush up okay my friend Cooper Bombardier and whose seller I'm currently recording this episode with you in Nova Scotia and It was funny because he like came down to watch it with me

And he's like, oh, huh I don't think I've ever actually seen all of the Godfather all at once and I was like, yeah A lot of people like haven't really seen all of the Godfather It's just this thing that is like that we absorb through cultural miasma I think there should be a word for that thing where you know the satire of the object Far before you know the actual object like I heard I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore For like 10 years before I realized that was a reference to something right and I think the Godfather has a similar Cultural place. Yeah, I saw references to Godfather stuff in the Simpsons for years and then you watch the movie and you're like

Oh, that's where that comes from like oh that But it's hard to experience a cultural object when it's like you already sort of know it Through this like weird cheesecloth version of it that you've already seen Yeah, and I think a lot of movies from that period have become like that Jaws is another one Oh, yeah, and we're really going to also be talking about the 70s as a whole for cinema I think it was a decade when the idea of what a movie could do culturally suddenly Manifested in a new way and one of those examples is that Jaws became like the first summer blockbuster and

I mean, so I'll start by asking you what's your relationship to the Godfather How do you have any relationship to it? I've seen the Godfather all the way through once I was homesick. I was 16 or 17 and considered myself like a film scholar because I worked at a video store I always wanted to work at a video store It was kind of fucked up because it was like the neighborhood video store But then once I started working there It turned out that it was like mostly a porno video store that I didn't know this because I was like 15 years old And then once I started working there, it turned out that like 90% of the income of the store was from like my friend's dad's renting

Tapes to yeah, like Wow, room that I had never gone into because I was a child Was like twice as big as the actual store that I knew and it was just pure pornography Wow That was what I ended up doing that summer was having my friend's dad's come out of that little room and look at me and Want to die and I also wanted to die in that moment, but anyway anyway Yes, when I was sick I dispatched my mom to go to the video store that I worked at and to get all three Godfather movies

Hmm my impression of the Godfather was mostly just like I've seen all this before like the horse's head The wedding that shot at the very end where he closes the door I sort of knew all of that it was like Participate it was like seeing the Mona Lisa for the first time or something where you're like This is this thing that I kind of already know and you're it dampens any of the emotional impact So I feel like for me the Godfather's always just been this like cultural artifact It's never been a movie that I feel particularly strongly about I don't even know if I think that it's like good or bad It's just this like everyone says is a classic and I don't I don't really know what to think about yeah

What is yours? Well, so I grew up with the perception that the Godfather just like was one of the great movies and that there were Objectively great movies. The Godfather was one of them. I mean, do you have that perception? Oh, totally? Yeah, it was always the number one on all those lists And I had that same experience if I tried to watch the first Godfather when I was 13 And I just like you know, I was a 13 year old girl. There wasn't a lot for me there It's about the dynastic struggles of Italian guys in the 40s like I And one of the interesting things about that movie is that like I mean What do you remember about or do you remember anything about the presence of women in the Godfather movies?

I just remember them being like scolding Herodians, but they were always like what you had to work around So you could do like the real business right? They were sort of objects and that you're giving them away at a wedding And then it's like this these people that you have to hide your True self from they're never equal participants and I could be remembering this But I don't remember there being any like evil women or like they were not on equal footing with the men in that movie at all They were just obstacles. I cannot think of an instance where a woman Yeah, like has enough power or volition to pose any kind of a threat. So you saw it when you were a kid

How old were you when you saw it? I was 13. I watched way too many things when I was too young for them Yes, this is an ongoing theme of the show. Yeah of just like of doing everything Like a little earlier than you should and kind of knowing it but being like I just I'm ready Just give it to me. And so yeah, but I guess I watched the first Godfather and it just left me completely cold I mean, I also I didn't understand what was happening. Yeah, like I think another problem is that if you insist on being Precocious you consume all these texts before you really understand what's going on totally all that cultural Content that you're kind of supposed to like. Yeah, you just end up having this weird distant relationship with it Because it's like it's a classic with a capital C

Yeah, I always find that so many of the things that made that type of entertainment noteworthy have now become cliches Like what a friend of mine who studied art history was telling me the other day that one of the reasons why the Mona Lisa is really Famous is because it was one of the first paintings to depict a commoner rather than royalty And it was one of the first paintings to do realistic three dimensions That it was there were techniques in there that were interesting at the time Both of those things are so common now that we don't immediately look and be like ooh a commoner Wow Right, we're not like oh my stars that painting depicts dimensions Yeah, like we're not as impressed and it's the same with with something like the French connection

That was like one of the first movies to do these like chaotic chase scenes through a crowded city But we've seen those a million times now move it like most movies I feel are just like chaotic chase scenes punctuated by Sexist jokes that were written by at least six people like that's what movies aren't right. So what's the core story of the Godfather? What's the narrative that it's actually telling so in the Godfather part one? We start with the wedding of Connie Corleone who is the youngest child of Don Corleone played by Marlon Brando And he's there with his family everyone's well He and his man are doing their deals and the like very dark shadowy nucleus of the Corleone family compound while outside

Everyone is sun-drenched and dancing and Johnny fun thing is there From the beginning there's a spatial idea of like things can be bright and nice outside because men are here in the dark Doing their dark things. So Don Corleone is like brokering deals behind the wedding. Mm-hmm And Al Pacino is the youngest son oldest son youngest youngest son and he's just returned from World War two Yes, and he's there with his girlfriend Kay played by Diane Keaton So we start off with seeing the status quo for the Don Corleone family there for the Corleone family They're very powerful World War two is over. It's a time of celebration the escalation to our premise is that an assassination attempt is made on Don Corleone by

Salatso who's a guy who attempted to broker a deal with him to get him to start distributing Heroin which Don Corleone was not into because he's too decent to get involved in drugs So Salatso decides to take him out He is unfortunately unable to kill him and so while Don Corleone convalesces Michael who never wanted to take part in the family business Before is pulled in and he decides he has to avenge his father So he goes and he kills Salatso after that he has to go abroad Where he marries a young lady who then gets killed in a carabinet for him and of whom he never speaks again until the godfather part three and

After that he comes back to America Mary's Kay who seems to have no will of her own at this point learns the family business gets revenge on the people He needs to get revenge on and at the end of the movie we watch a vast series of hits on all of his rivals and potential rivals be carried out while he is Holding his nephew during his christening and saying that he renounces Satan as all of these murders that he's ordered are being carried out And then the final murder is that of his sister Connie's Husband his brother-in-law which is crossing a line and so the end of the movie is Connie saying, you know

How could you do it? How could you kill my husband? you didn't think about me and We end with Diane Keaton is Kay asking Michael if he was responsible and he says just this once you can ask me about my business No, and it's like there can only be lies now at this point and the godfather part two is about Don Corleone having to flee Sicily by himself as a child and come to America and Raises young family and have to start getting involved in neighborhood organized crime because he and all his neighbors are being squeezed by a Local boss named Don Fannucci So he has to kill him and take his place and become a more ethical boss

And that takes place a little Italy during the Feast of San Gennaro So if you're gonna do like a gay godfather, you could have a crucial hit take place during pride And so the godfather too is Don Corleone, you know killing his first person and go back to Sicily and kill the man who killed his father Forcing in the flea as a child and there's this sense in the movie of Don Corleone having been like and now the score is settled And I can raise my children to not have to do these terrible things that I had to do Because the American dream is that your children don't have to do the terrible things that you did so they wouldn't do terrible things And that came out in 1974. What's the third one about? I've never actually seen it

The third one is about you know, Michael is old that takes place 20 years after the end of the second movie and It's about Michael trying to get out of the family business and then basically having to just when I thought I was out They pull me back in as the only salvage book quote from that movie And it's also about his Michael son wanting to be an opera singer and Michael ultimately being really into it because it's like How do you escape a grinding cycle of eternal patriarchal abuse and numbness the arts? Sure make a collage And Also his actions leading to his beloved daughter played by poor Sophia Coppola being killed accidentally and at the end of the movie Michael is like sitting in a courtyard

Really whizzing than old and he just quietly dies Oh, and I think men hate that movie so much like partly because it's bad but also because It's a movie about Al Pacino getting old getting in firm, you know And you're like Michael like remember when you killed all of those people like you've really been brought wages of loneliness You know like you're someone weakened by like the way that they've destroyed their life And if any you kind of lose plausible deniability when you watch the Godfather part three like when you watch the other two Godfather movies

They're mostly like wheeling and dealing and power and killing people and the Godfather three is like What if you lose the ability to have relationships with other human beings and you're lonely forever? That's what this movie is about. Yeah, the Godfather three is like consequences the movie This is what one of the things I wanted to ask you was like what is it aesthetically that made the Godfather? So Noteworthy in that we're sort of used to these I guess complicated depictions of male Antiheroes and yeah good guys bad guys like what was it that the Godfather did? That nobody was doing at the time. What made it so no where they okay?

So let's talk about the history of the Godfather and I would say that going into this We would agree that our perception of it as teens growing up in the 90s Was that it was like this great classic this thing that you were supposed to like and get the greatness of yes And the Godfather I think always has has come to fall within that sort of like that really tiresome way that people talk about the Canon things that people are supposed to recognize the greatness of but maybe have lossy ability to actually enjoy and What I find interesting about all this is that nobody thought the Godfather was gonna be great And all of the people who were involved in it from the very beginning only wanted to make money Oh, wow everyone involved seems to have had this kind of really like the startle

Reflex when it became so critically adored everyone's just like what really? And so Mario Puzo who according to some sources that he disputes I think Robert Evans the the studio had a who financed the movie talked about Puzo being like alright I'll adapt my book into a screenplay for you because I have gambling debts, so And Puzo had written the book because he wanted to make money He was a novelist and he had attempted to go Hollywood and had hated it and being chewed up by it Much as Francis Ford Coppola already had been being chewed up by Hollywood for a few years by the time He made the Godfather so one of the big themes of it is you know

Men who are very are furious at the power structures that they are attempting to work with him Which I think is relevant But Mario Puzo who's an Italian guy has like never really had contact with the mob Although he is a he is a big-time gambler and he actually blurb this book that I bought this week called casino gambling for the winner Yeah, so he's at least a prolific enough gambler that he's blurbing how to beat the casino books in the 70s What a qualification But he's not you know He's never really had firsthand contact with the mob, but he goes and he decides to write a mob story

So he goes and reads all these chronicles because at this point This is like post all of these federal investigations that have led to thousands of pages of testimony given by people important to mobster power structures over the years like the 70s are a time when it seems like Italian American and Jewish organized crime in America is is losing power And so we can afford to be kind of nostalgic about it because in the 70s Americans are more afraid of like South America and The black power movement. I was not there, but I would guess in a 1972 people were a lot less scared of Italians They were in 1942 and it's kind of like there's a book called how the Irish became white about how Irish

Yeah, when they first started arriving in America in the mid 19th century We're seen as like unambiguously ethnically other and then gradually stopped being so ethnically other because other immigrants who were even more Identifiably ethnically other like people from southern Italy started coming over Something I also learned because the Godfather is so much about the Italian American immigrant experience And this is just something that it never occurred to me to even wonder about because we only have so much time for wondering in a day Yes, but one of the things they talked about was that there were different rates of return for different immigrant populations So for example, Russian Jews who emigrated to America State in America at a rate of like an 85 to 90 percent

Because they were fleeing pogroms and they had no reason or ability to go back But Italians I think had a return rate of like 50 percent because they were much more likely to come to America and get You know high paying by the standards of the Italian economy jobs for a few years and then to go back and then we come over again But there was a much more porous relationship that the that America had with Italy and it had with for example most Eastern European countries and there was also the sense I think That Italians would never be good immigrants because they didn't come over and assimilate they came over and they were like I am going to be Catholic. I am Maybe gonna be an anarchist

I'm gonna have my own systems of power and of taking care of my community and of government and of policing and You the American government are not going to take care of me So fine, we will go our separate ways essentially right which is a very Intelligent response to discrimination. Yeah, I mean my understanding is a lot of the current panic over immigrants parallels Exactly the same panic over Italian immigrants that it was like these Sicilians come over. They're committing crime They're living in ghettos their kids don't speak English. Mm-hmm. It's impossible to socialize them. They're never going to grow up We're gonna have this permanent underclass in the country I mean all of the ugly stuff that you hear about immigrants now

It was word-for-word the same stuff about Sicilians and all the stuff we talked about in crack babies, too Totally just like dehumanization by now We barely even think of Italian people as any different than any other white person like we don't think of them as ethnically different than white They've just become white people. Yeah And also this thing that we get very concerned about when you know immigrants or some Otherized class of people are in America and mainstream America does not allow them to assimilate And so they're like fine and then they turn around and they're able to make their own money and we're like No

You your job is to be ground down Right. So the book the godfather comes out of Mario Puzo Is he cashing in his own like Italian heritage? Like does he have any firsthand knowledge of the mob or is he just reading these cases and kind of extrapolating? He said he has no firsthand knowledge of the mob. I'll read you actually This is his obituary in the New York Times when mr. Puzo wrote the godfather in the late 1960s He did it reluctantly his first two novels had received favorable reviews, but had earned him a total of $6,500 At 45 and in debt he thought he was going downhill fast as a writer

But he had some favorite stories to tell about the mafia And for the money he decided to write a book about Italian Americans and organized crime from the author's account He had scant encouragement from publishers and received an advance of only $5,000 But when the book was published in 1969 it became one of the most phenomenal successes in literary and cinematic history The book was the number one bestseller in the united states and was on the new york times bestseller list for 67 weeks As he wrote in 1972 i'm ashamed to admit that i wrote the godfather entirely from research I never met a real honest to god gangster. I think the gambling world pretty good, but that's all I love that he says i'm ashamed to admit

Yeah It's also interesting that in the sopranos in the 90s the characters are always watching and talking about the godfather And we started in the 90s to talk about this sort of self reflexive Model of the way that structures of power see themselves And I feel like being a gangster and watching the godfather or being an american man And watching the godfather as a movie about power is like being It's like the story that oliver stone tells about you know, he makes wall street Which ends with its main characters being indicted and then this generation of young guys

Watch it and decide based on that that they're going to become wall street stockbrokers And so oliver stone meets these guys and they're like your movie inspired me to go work on wall street and he's like what? It's interesting. Like why do you think it caught fire? Like why do you think this random book by this random dude Went so viral So, okay, I have some thoughts about this. I read the book of the godfather You can tell that it was written in haste. I mean it also contains a lot of really graphic and weird sex stuff Oh, maybe I should read. Okay. So when we're introduced to sonny corleone who's played by james conne in the movie What his character is introduced one of them salient. You know what? I'm just gonna read it for you because it's really great

Sonny corleone had strength. He had courage. He was generous and his heart was admitted to be as big as his organ Oh my god, subtle very subtle How do you write this and not just like giggle to yourself? Oh, I'm sure he did Okay, so in the in the movie of the godfather We see sonny corleone running off from his sister connie's wedding in the opening scene with one of the bridesmaids lucy mancini So here's a description of that in the book Lucy mancini lifted her pink gown off the floor and ran up the steps sonny corleone's heavy cupid face readily obscene with whiny lust

frightened her it's also like offensive to italians for having been written by an italian guy She had teased him for the past week to just this end In her two college love affairs She had felt nothing and neither of them lasted more than a week Coraling her second lover had mumbled something about her being quote too big down there Lucy had understood and for the rest of the school term had refused to go out on any dates

During the summer preparing for the wedding of her best friend connie corleone Lucy heard whispered stories about sonny one sunday afternoon in the corleone kitchen sonny's wife sandra gossiped freely sandra was a coarse good-natured woman who had been born in italy but brought to america as a small child She was strongly built with great breasts and had already born three children in five years of marriage sandra and the other women teased connie about the terrors of the nuptial bed My god sandra had giggled when i saw that poll of sonny's for the first time and realized he was going to stick it into me I yelled bloody murder after the first year my insides felt as mushy as macaroni boiled for an hour When I heard he was doing the job on other girls, I went to church and lit a candle

Why do straight men write like this? There's something so Weird about like this straight guy thing about penis size. It's so weird But then oh and then what happens though is that lucy mancini has a big enough vagina So this comes this book comes out in 1969 it stays a bestseller for months and months and months Robert evans of the studio had bought the rights to the screenplay had mario puzo write it for them for about $12,000 And they didn't really want to write a gangster movie. There had been cork douglas gangster movie that had bombed And there was a sense at the time that gangster movies were kind of finished And they kind of were right because the gangster movies that had come before the godfather were like little caesar and the original scar face and

You know these movies where wise guys who were not leading men not supposed to have sex appeal not to be these complex Antiheroes they were just villains They weren't supposed to be interesting and they existed to be gunned down. It was the era of like now. Look see hey kappa Yeah, what are you doing here like dick tracy style gangsters where they all have tommy guns and they're just caricatures Yeah, and they're all like they have no personalities. They're not human beings And so there's a sense in the studios of like We don't really want to make a movie the godfather and then it sort of stayed on the bestseller list for months And then it became the bestseller in europe and they're like

Okay And no one wanted to make it when I think about why I imagine it being a bestseller in 1969 america I'll read you a passage actually and i'll ask you what you think of it because to me this relates to why it was successful So this is from a scene in puzos the godfather where michael has Come back to america and is asking his Former girlfriend k who he hasn't seen in two years to marry him And so here's a scene of uh, this is something michael says to k's He's trying to explain the philosophy behind his father's work and organized crime

And he says he doesn't accept the rules of the society we live in because those rules would have condemned him to a life Not suitable to a man like himself a man of extraordinary force and character What you have to understand is that he considers himself the equal of all those great men like presidents and prime ministers And supreme court justices and governors of the states He refuses to live by rules set up by others rules which condemn him to a defeated life But his ultimate aim is to enter that society with a certain power Since society doesn't really protect its members who do not have their own individual power In the meantime, he operates on a code of ethics. He considers far superior to the legal structures of society

So what do you think about that? I guess it's all about american individualism Or it's this idea of the american dream where you're like building a fortress around yourself Like that's the definition of making it is that you're creating all these structures Built around you rather than participating in any larger structure. Right much like how jim jones made it That's what it sounds like to me of kind of like build your own society. I mean, I guess that's kind of what the mafia is Is a Parallel society within a larger society that has its own rules And its own mores and its own enforcement mechanisms and it's kind of a quasi society

And and it's like a russian nesting doll of a society in another one It's also an interesting Simulacrum of the immigrant experience right where you're building this little world unto yourself. And so it makes sense That within an immigrant community because you're participating in this bigger society But you're also distrusted by that society and rejected by that society You sort of have to create this separate structure for yourself And so it makes sense that people would adopt this ideology To go along with what they have to do that necessity creates an ideology around it

Yeah, and this also makes me think of just you know, how how you and I are always talking about wanting to ultimately do an episode on some aspect of hiv or aids And how I feel like one of the Interesting things about you know, what happened in america when aids started appearing and spreading in the early 80s Was like the way that the gay community had to figure out how to relate to a larger society that had resources That they needed but also didn't care and had a history of treacherous behavior and like The fears when the first hiv test was invented that it would be used to sort people into like Quarantine and internment camps and it's like yeah, that is exactly the kind of

That the american government has always been pulling like why would you not think that that would happen? Right, and also I guess the same thing with a parallel structure too that there's Vocabulary that the gay community has there's different aesthetic preferences that the gay community has there's All these adaptations things like drag queens are a form of adaptation Chosen family is a form of adaptation You can see the same sorts of things that there's kind of this parallel structure And you have to interact with the dominant structure because you need to shit basically But you're gonna kind of create your own family within that. What's interesting though is that

Society is profoundly uninterested in these parallel structures when they are for example, like el salvadoran Communities living in the Bronx like 10 to an apartment who are working as delivery people Right like when it's low-income communities or marginalized communities that are forming their own parallel structures We do not care right whereas with mafia movies I think part of it is also that we can Participate in like the money and the power that they have yeah Some of it is the fact that these people are not necessarily downtrodden or not downtrodden in economic ways

That we can vicariously Participate in the fantasy of going your own way but going your own way with the resources to match right? You're not scraping together the scraps that you have like the gay community was in the 70s and 80s You're scraping together what you have but you're creating a fiefdom You're creating a kingdom And a power structure with real power and real resources behind it. And that's what that's what's appealing about it Yeah, and it's so interesting how mobster movies have become this aspirational thing

And what's funny to me is that so when I think about that passage that I read to you I see that same thing you said that idea of like the powerful individual but also this fantasy of Dropping out of society Because it sucks and there's so much stuff in in the godfather so much stuff in the godfather movies about the legitimate people Are the real criminals so the first gangster thing we see happening in Not in the book of the godfather within the movie is The classic the you know too cliched to be shocking at this point almost horse head in the bed scene Yes, and that happens because a guy who is clearly frank sanatra johnny fontain

Needs this hollywood executive guy to cast him in a movie And he won't because he's been blackballed because he seduced this girl that the hollywood producer waltz had his eye on and so robert duvall playing the concillary tom hagan Goes to hollywood and tries to talk waltz into giving johnny fontain the role and basically comes to him with this approach of Don Corleone would very much like you to give johnny fontain this role and he can give you all of this nice Stuff and end all of your union troubles and offer you protection Because one of the things that gets talked about a lot in puzos the godfather

Is the don corleone model of power? Which is that you establish friendship with everybody? Everybody's your friend you do favors for them and then they have to do things for you and you do you know The iron fist and the velvet glove And so he comes to waltz saying will you please do this and waltz Has a speech during which he makes the cardinal error that you should never make And one of the godfather books or movies which is to call someone a guinea Anyone who calls an italian a guinea will be killed or something terrible will happen. That's a racial threat, right?

Yeah, that's a okay put your word of term for an italian So of course then we see the scene where the next morning waltz wakes up and his Racehorse cartoon has had you know his head cut off and put in his bed and there's a famous scene where he takes The cover is back and there's all this blood and he screams which is what's fascinating about this movie By the way, is that that's what it feels like when you get your period for the first time I am at my best and worst an overland PhD But that is like an interesting an interesting scene genitally though

The location is like emasculated at this point. He has no power. I should have known you would go there with this That everything is just about dicks You're probably right. That's what they teach you to do in grad school for the humanities. That's why stem is making more money I mean to me what that scene demonstrates is like this guy is a fucking Slime and there's also all this other stuff in the book about how terrible he is and he is molesting one of his Child stars and he's clear. He's just this over determined Villain, which I'm sure has to do with the fact that Mario Puzo did not like The kind of characters he had to deal with in Hollywood

Like there's so much attention in the book to the struggles of Italian guys in Hollywood And how everyone's a jerk to them and the women are all sluts and there's this line about how Johnny Fontaine ruined his voice on Cigarettes booze and broads and I was like, how did he lose his voice on broads? How do women? Destroy a man's singing career But yeah, I think the first thing that we see is this parallel structure coming up against something that's recognized as a legitimate power

structure in mainstream America And this guy is a horrible sleaze ball who deserves to be emasculated by the Corleone family and then you watch that happen And the exact same thing happens in the godfather too with the senate the nevada senator except worse because they Kill a prostitute that he was cavorting with and then make him think that he had a blackout and killed her And that's how they get him in their pocket It's like these people who represent legitimate society come in and are jerks and they're like you're An Italian so you can't do anything to me and then they get reassured that that is in fact not the case

I mean that must be part of it too that you can cast it as an underdog story Right The way that it's done deliberately that there's not moral ambiguity in this that it's like you want something from this guy He's an asshole to you. He calls you a racial slur and he's like a pedophile sleaze ball Then it's like you're the just one right for being like we're gonna threaten you and damage you and Make you do what we want It still allows you to retain the mortal high ground right because he's disrespected you and he's an asshole anyway

So it's like maybe it plays on this idea that like the justice system the formal justice system is taken over by the establishment And here's an informal justice mechanism where it's like the the little guy Sticking it to like the big powerful guy like those stories always resonate yeah, and I think that's a lot of the appeal of mobster movies and I also think about this a lot with Scorsese movies because I think that the shift from Godfather to the Scorsese gangster movie, which is goodfellas in 1990 Which is the same year that godfather 3 comes out and everyone hates it And the casino which comes out in 1995 is that those movies are from the perspective of workers in big mobster families

Godfather is a dynasty story. Scorsese movies are worker stories And they're always about how, you know, the mob is really powerful and the structures that these people are working for Get too powerful and too focused on their own power and don't remember to take care of the guys under them anymore Everything falls apart, but at the end of the day, at least they're not the feds This was a time when the federal government was running all of these surveillance operations on campuses because they were so afraid of student protesting and the government responded through, you know, all of these crazy Attempts to surveil

young people and to take out revolutionary figures so that there wasn't too much racial unrest and things like that And the godfather says a story about people who have their own power structure with its own code of ethics Who are being victimized by the feds? And I think there's just something about living in that time where you're like I don't know like Where more people feel like criminals. So the book is a runaway bestseller studios decide Hey

Let's make a movie out of this. We might as well make it. We might as well make some money And so no one wants to direct it and frances ford coppola has attempted to start his own Movie studio and he's taken out alone from warner brothers or from warner to make to make some films and one of them is George Lucas's movie thx something something and warner who has Given coppola three hundred thousand dollars to finance his movies Watches this because they're like, oh, this is an example of the movies that frances ford coppola is making and they're like, oh, no We need our money back And so frances ford coppola essentially has the loan sharks coming for him

So he's like fine. I'll make the godfather And robert evans apparently was interested in hiring him because he was like, you know We've never had an italian directed gangster movie before So let's do that and he literally said, you know, we had that we're gonna hire coppola so I can smell the spaghetti Oh my god Yeah, so they hired coppola and it was one of those shoots where Everything seemed to be going badly. They were behind gag duel by the end of the first week and also Puzo had written the screenplay which means that it probably had too much johnny fontaine in it

I'm guessing and so frances ford coppola Was rewriting it by night as they were shooting So there were people who would show up to to film their scene because they were playing a character from the book and they would be like Oh, sorry actually last night. We decided you're not in this movie anymore. Oh, wow And he did all these things that hollywood didn't really do like he had not the same, you know 100 or so hired extras for the whole movie, but actual people he filmed on location He apparently hung out with martin scorsese's parents to like learn about little italy locations and study them To me the most interesting thing about how unlikely it is that this all came together is that the studio was dead set against having al peccino in it

They were like, we cannot he's too short. Yeah, that was their main objection. They were like, he is way too short That's weird because with movie magic You don't have to know it that anyone is short like tom cruise is the size of stalin and nobody has any idea because All of the actresses are shorter than him and they shoot him from below like gandalf. Yeah I am the same height as tom cruise. So I follow this very closely. I am all for like five foot five men's rights But yeah, I mean there's all kinds of techniques that you can use like no one in the world knows That tom cruise is the same size as me. That's just because you're not famous enough yet So if you say hey, would you think that tom cruise is the same size as michael hobs the person you're talking to would say

The fuck are you talking about? True But yeah, that is a weird it's just a weird objection. Well, and I think they also were like, wait No, we can't the star can't be an italian guy. That's gross It's so funny growing up in the world that we have To think about all these groups that people were discriminatory against that I have never Come across like Americans used to hate irish people Americans used to hate italian people like john f kennedy had to give a whole speech about how he was a catholic

Yeah, what it proves is that we're willing to hate anyone. We just don't care And it's also to some extent inspiring that now it would almost be cartoonish To be like I can't believe you're dating an irish guy It would just be like what It would just be a weird thing to say It wouldn't even like it would almost not be offensive because it would just be so weird And so It's a great example of the way that like tokenism works

And that other forms of discrimination apply where it's like we can't have an italian playing an italian Which seems so dumb, but then we that happens all the time That it's like non trans actors play trans people and like non fat actors have to gain 60 pounds and like There there's a million ways that we still do this tokenism now Yeah, and so the person the studios wanted to cast as michael corleone was robert redford No way. I was just gonna say he's not gonna be blonde is he that's terrible. He's the most blonde person who ever lived You know, he's just he's so freckly So I was watching the godfather with my friend cooper last night and it got to al peccino appearing and cooper went

Oh my god. Is that dustin hoffman? Nice Which I think that could have worked also. He's like an inch taller than well. He's an inch taller than me I don't know how he compares to al peccino, but I know the heights of all the actors under like five eight I don't know how tall al peccino is. I don't either. I don't think he's that short. He's not he's just like a regular sized guy I feel triggered by the phrase regular sized So how dare you? Really? I feel called out I

Think an al peccino is I do think that the godfather really rides on him. Oh, I just put that interestingly But he's great in it. Yeah, and pauline kale has this Description of him that I loved he was one of the first voices That inspired people to really take those movies seriously because people knew that they loved them They were immediately really successful. They were nominated for a bunch of oscars But like my fair lady got nominated for a bunch of oscars. That doesn't mean it's deep And one of the things that she talks about is how these are also stories about fathers and sons and about this universal human experience

And to me it's universal because I am not part Of the parallel society of masculinity, but like my life is very affected by it I watched uh the godfather for the first time in a long time and then I watched the godfather too Which I had never seen which is the movie that depicts the childhood of the godfather Corleone and then what happens after the events of the godfather when michael his son al peccino regular size still Has killed all of these people in order to maintain the family empire and his father has died And he's moved operations to nevada and it's sort of how things progressed for him from there And how he ultimately completely loses his soul and it's the most

It's so it's so sad like I finished it and I was like this is like writing a confession Like confessing to a crime. This is like american masculinity confessing. They're like listen, we know That even when we try to love each other and uphold our systems of power They're so intrinsically damaging that we end up feeling the need to kill our own brothers Know that we've created a worldview that doesn't allow us To express or accept love or to do anything but madly accrue power and my personal overland phd Of the godfather movies too in terms of how they think about the immigrant experiences that michael is the american child He's born in america. He's supposed to be shielded

From the business. He's supposed to be senator corleone governor corleone And then the godfather he you know when he's wooing k he says in five years The corleone family is going to be completely legitimate, which is a crazy thing to say It's like michael. Do you really think that crime? is going away like That there's that this is a game you can ever get out of and in the book it plays it like he really does believe that That's possible. It's more ambiguous in the movie

And what happens is that the first godfather the book and the film and with this Orgy of violence where he has to take out all of his rivals and rise As the head of the corleone family and establish his power now that his father has died and take over and What I find interesting about that is that the way Don corleone is introduced to us as a character Especially in both movies is someone who cares about taking care of his community And someone who is actually able to sort of he's merciless and he has people killed

But he also takes care of the people in this big circle that he is the caretaker of and someone has to do it Because no one else is going to take care of the italians And the movies make the argument very persuasively that this he's an honorable person stepping into a role that it's necessary for him to fulfill And michael is someone who doesn't have a community whose own family is completely alienated from him by the end And who isn't able to be merciful toward ambiguous

allies and rivals and so michael by the end of the godfather and then certainly in the godfather to distinguish himself as someone Who has to have all the power all the marbles has no sense of proportion No sense of family no sense of community is convinced that he's legitimate in some significant ways And doesn't feel safe until he's annihilated everyone who poses a threat to him It's just this to me this huge indictment of the american dream because we watch someone do all of these Things that destroy them Emotionally so that their children don't have to do them and then their children do them to it a far greater degree as a way of

Honoring them and feeling like they are Being the people that would make their fathers proud because what we watched michael do he has become an american And that's why his last is soul It is also interesting that these movies really are like dark and kind of an indictment of this entire culture and yet Their actual cultural impact was to glorify this culture. Yeah, same with good fellows in casino and everything else Yeah, they're really about like how toxic and horrible this bullshit like you have to respect me thing is and getting entrenched in your position and going after your rivals to show Your own family that you're not weak like how poisonous that is

And yet None of the poison of that is what has been the cultural Impact of these movies the cultural impact of these movies has been like wow gangsters are cool What an interesting glimpse like same with scarface where he fucking dies at the end But what do people take away like rappers sample scarface in their songs because it's like oh, he's such a cool badass guy Yeah, and somehow it's like the badassery That has traveled from these movies and not the actual consequences And i'm so confused about that and i'm someone who like I watch gangster movies partly

So that I can learn how to be assertive like that i'm aware of that behavior So like I know that i'm doing some of the weird things that american men do when they relate to gangster movies And I still don't understand it like I have watched clips from the godfather when I think about Negotiation tactics and be like okay, just like be like michael corleone always be the calmest person in the room I also think it's weird Like one of the things that always strikes me whenever there's mafia movies is how over represented The mafia is in american pop culture That everyone always makes these movies claiming that they're not glorifying it or claiming that they're condemning this culture

But if we didn't want to spend time with these people, why do they keep making these movies? Like there's an infinite number of subcultures In a country of 330 million people and yet this one subculture is the one We keep hearing about and we keep making movies about and we keep getting fascinated by and it's clearly not the consequences that we're fascinated by it's the Trappings it's the clothes. It's the cars. It's the weird vocabulary It's the mores. It's the you know go to the mattresses and these other little phrases that people still use And going to the mattresses is great because all men want is to all sleep in one big room and eat spaghetti

That's my understanding of what that phrase means. Yes But it's just weird that like there's all these other cultures that we're just not interested in or not fascinated by And then this is the one that we keep coming back to Maybe this is why I didn't find godfather all that resonant is that all these gangster Tropes i've seen a million fucking times. Yeah, you don't really see a lot of stories about someone who started off as a small But humble drag queen and then gradually became the biggest most powerful drag queen in all the world And then became master of her domain. Why not? I guess you could I guess it's just a failure of imagination Every world has a way of rising to the top right that every world has a hierarchy

And like rules to enforce it and like a king of the hill Type competition for i'm at the top, but i'm gonna kick everybody else back down The lack of creativity in returning again and again to this one fucking subculture Is just amazing to me that it's like these depths have been plumbed. I don't need to see more like men feeling ambivalent about Their relationship to being made of made guys It's just like dumb There's so many interesting stories to tell and this one keeps getting told over and over again

Well, and men don't realize that they're constantly looking at themselves because they don't see it as men looking at men They see it as like all human beings looking at all human beings They're like these are the choices of narratives and they're all about white straight guys And they're a cruel of power. But is that the world that godfather built? Do you think I mean Do you think that was the beginning of us kind of pretending not to have sympathy for monsters but actually having sympathy for monsters? Yeah, I think so culturally because there really hadn't been anything like it before where we had the mobster Antihero and also this idea of being able to study dynastic power

And we love stories about dynastic power and power going from father to son Like that's one of the most delightful treats if you're seeking like the masculinity narrative What else did people love about the godfather when it came out? I mean, I think it was seen as a really well-acted movie because it was Which was also something that coppola really had to fight tooth and nail for like it took four months for them to a grand casting And he had to audition all of these people for the studio Folks and finally got his way and it's you know one of those examples of a director being able to make a good movie by

Systematically undermining everything that he was expected to do. So obviously I love it because I'm that inspired by tales of Creative people being slightly jerky so they can do what they want If I recalled on to like in one minute defend the godfather I would say that like it's about all of this cultural stuff that was happening at the time And that we continue to be obsessed with obsessed with and that can become really tiresome because it's like we Have not figured out how to tell another story because we can't learn that it's a sign confession from masculinity saying i'm sorry I ruined everything and made everyone It's like we read it and then we forget it

We have to tell ourselves again and we forget it and we can't learn it So what's the legacy of the godfather? I mean, I guess some of that is obvious, but what do you see is the main legacy? I see the legacy of it that it's gotten a little bit too acclaimed for its own good I don't know. I mean, maybe we see it as this big fancy Important classic partly is a way to shield ourselves against its brutalness also because it's like it's really sad They're sad movies masculinity is terrible and it ruins everyone's life. So maybe Talking about it. It's like this great movie where everyone made very good choices and it's touched with greatness is

a way of not talking about the fact that it's Sad and dark and affecting and it is this like signed confession that we as a society made Right, so it's an indictment of something that its legacy glorifies Yeah, kind of like the song born in the usa. Yes, it's actually criticizing something But then the legacy of it is like, yeah, bitch born in the usa It's awesome Like no one actually gets into the specifics about what it means Do you know that reagan chote tried to choose born in the usa is his campaign song in 1984?

Yeah, because he never actually listened to it, right? Clearly So what do you think like we're wrong about on the godfather? I think we're wrong that it's like this normal american movie What does that mean? Well, don't you think that we have this sort of implicit idea about things that are culturally really big in that way of like Yeah, this is like a regular story about heroism and the struggle the hero's journey Whatever if something becomes popular and takes american by storm and you're like, yeah, it's it's because it's so great The godfather captured our minds and hearts because it's so great. It's so amazingly great

And like it is great, but it's not that great Like there are lots of great movies mccabe and mrs. Miller is a great movie Nashville is a great movie So you think the godfather tapped into something like it's not necessarily its inherent greatness It's that it tapped into a bunch of threads that were already around in american society Yeah, I guess that's my ultimate you're wrong about about the godfather like we We just all became obsessed with it and we're like, why aren't we obsessed with the story and we're like, it's because it's just so Great and it's like maybe it's because we're all mentally ill

The culture that we're living in and the godfather for whatever reason for all sorts of reasons really like Enables us to do that to look at the problem without feeling like we're looking at the problem Or like we're indicting ourselves with it and we're just so drawn to it And I think we're often really compelled as audiences toward stories that tell us something really scary about the world that we're living in but make that fear accessible in some way And with this it's like It's not about all of us americans. It's about gangsters It's not about us. It's about them. Like that's one of the comforting things it does

And how you know, michael becomes the most dangerous violent scary person in that whole story Because he's the all-american assimilated child who fought in world war two and went to an ivy league school Do you think they were deliberate? Like do you think francis for coppola knew that or was he tapping into something in his own mind? I think both. I mean, I think everyone every artist works both consciously and unconsciously I mean, I think it's also a testament to how Great of a creative process it can be when everyone Is involved You know just trying to get in and out as fast as they can, you know, mario poos. I was like, oh, I guess give me my money

And francis for coppola is like, I guess give me my money But they're both also, you know, they're telling a story that they care about but they're doing it fast and loose And that means that some stuff gets into the creative process that I'm sure that some of the stuff that mario poos are wrote in the book was just like rogue ideas But then there's also great stuff that makes it in he's tapping into like a deep vein of his id like whatever dark stuff is down He's just like typing and like all this weird stuff comes out. Yeah. I mean the best shitty writing and like

Crappy bestsellers are the ones that involve some degree of like automatic writing like people Do it seances where you just let the unconscious pour out crappy sanitized writing is the worst writing at all Right crappy writing with a lot of character though. That can be great. I just think the 70s were messed up, man This has been our theme for the last While this is what I learned in the last month is that the 70s were just like when it all started to go off the rails man once um Once the greatest generation wasn't in charge anymore Should have listened when our grandparents said that Elvis shouldn't be shaking his hips on tv. That's when uh

It all went wrong. The 70s were bad. Don't let anyone tell you different