Several vinyl hijackers known as the Popcorn Snobs are running this blog for the next 20 days with ‘The Taking of April A-Z’ as their theme. *For those who have yet to watch The Godfather films but plan to do so, please bear in mind that today’s post may contain spoilers*
Ladies and gentleman, It’s Zoe…your social cinema ally and the time has come to highlight some of America’s most iconic gangster movies! If you’ve visited before, then you probably know Nicole is a member of The Large Association of Movie Blogs (The Lamb).
This month, the LAMB community will be discussing The Godfather film series, which was crowned their “Movie of the Month: Franchise Special” for April 2016. Championed by Nick Rehak of French Toast Sunday, The Godfather, The Godfather Part II and The Godfather Part III beat out 10 other franchises including The Dark Knight trilogy, Star Trek: (The Original Series), the Toy Story trilogy, Harry Potter and the Bourne series.
While reports of screen legend Marlon Brando stuffing his cheeks with cotton when he auditioned for the role of Don Corleone -- to give him the “face of a bulldog: mean looking, but warm underneath” – are likely familiar to true film fanatics, I’d like to share some movie trivia I bet you didn’t know about The Godfather trilogy.
- Actor Alex Rocco, who plays casino mobster Moe Greene in The Godfather, is noted saying that if you look closely, you can see his right eye twitch a little before he is shot.* Rocco was nervous while filming that scene, as special effects crew rigged his glasses with two tubes hidden in the frames and taped them to his body under the table. One tube had fake blood while the other contained a BB pellet connected to an air pump. The BB was fired away from the eye, using compressed air, shattering his glasses from the inside and causing the fake blood to flow.
The British Film Institute published rare production photos from The Godfather Trilogy, including this one where crew members film a street assassination stunt, with actor John Cazale as Fredo Corleone.
- In 1975, The Godfather: Part II became the first sequel ever in the history of film to win an Oscar for Best Picture. It remained the only sequel to ever do so until The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King won an Oscar for Best Picture in 2004.
- The scene in The Godfather: Part III where Calo, one of Michaels bodyguards, kills Don Lucchesi was originally filmed to show Calo snapping Lucchesi’s neck. Director Francis Ford Coppola wanted the murder to be bloodier, so he changed it to the shocking and violent death scene that exists in the film now – Calo stabbing Lucchesi in the neck with his own glasses. The gory nature of this movie prompted the MPAA to give The Godfather: Part III an NC-17 rating, so Coppola ended up re-editing this scene to give the film a better chance at scoring an R-rating for its theatrical release.
There you have it! Three bits of trivia from The Godfather trilogy. Make sure to check out the next blog post where Kesha teaches you how to survive a horror movie.
Which film in The Godfather trilogy do YOU like best?
*Further reading: The Annotated Godfather: The Complete Screenplay by Jenny M. Jones