Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli

May 1, 2021

In 2009, Vanity Fair writer Seal drew attention with a big retrospective chronicling the making of the 1972 classic The Godfather, a work he expands on here for the film's 50th anniversary. Freshly minted interviews with the cast and crew; a 100,000-copy first printing.

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Starred review from August 23, 2021
Journalist Seal (The Devil and Harper Lee) expands his 2009 Vanity Fair article “The Godfather Wars” into a revealing and entertaining look at the behind-the-scenes machinations of Francis Ford Coppola’s epic film. Fifty years after its premiere, The Godfather still preoccupies the minds of film critics and historians, but Seal states that “some things remain overlooked, or misrepresented” about the film. With this he “untangle the competing narratives and self-aggrandizing contentions that continue to enshroud .” Through extensive research and interviews with key actors and production staff, Seal weaves his tale with enthralling portraits of The Godfather’s main architects: author Mario Puzo, whose original 1969 novel saved him from an “insatiable” gambling habit; Paramount Pictures executive Robert Evans, who was struggling to save his tanking studio; Coppola, a Hollywood newcomer in need of a hit to establish his reputation; and, most importantly, a number of real New York Mafia kingpins who nearly derailed the film entirely. Along the way, Seal dishes up fascinating morsels for fans to savor—including how actor Richard Castellano came to improvise his famous line, “Take the cannoli,” and a detailed look at the way Marlon Brando transformed himself into the aging Godfather, Vito Corleone. Masterpiece yields masterpiece with this exuberant page-turner. Agent: Jan Miller, Dupree Miller & Assoc.

September 1, 2021
Seal, the author of the splendid The Man in the Rockefeller Suit (2011), makes us an offer we can't refuse with this detailed, fascinating, and frequently surprising look at the origins and filming of The Godfather. It begins with Mario Puzo, an unsuccessful writer of literary fiction, shoulders-deep in debt, who wrote a commercial book purely to make money; Robert Evans, a fledgling studio exec who bought film rights to the unfinished novel as a favor to its author; and Francis Ford Coppola, an ambitious, driven filmmaker who absolutely did not want to make this Mafia movie. Readers learn about under-the-table deals with real organized-crime elements; the laborious casting process (the studio did not want Al Pacino or Marlon Brando); Coppola's careful, almost obsessive preparations; and the behind-the-scenes attempted coup that would have seen Coppola fired from the movie. Few movies have had such tumultuous origins and turned out to be undisputed classics, and Seal does a superb job of telling us exactly how this happened. For fans of books about moviemaking, this is a definite must-read.

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September 15, 2021
The latest book about one of cinema's groundbreaking achievements. How did an author of pulp fiction, an "abject failure" who had never met a gangster, write a bestselling novel about the mob that would inspire one of the most celebrated films in movie history? How did a garment industry executive finagle his way into the job of head of production at Paramount? How did a shoe salesman who admitted, "I don't know what the hell I'm talking about," become the film's producer? Seal answers these questions in this book, an expansion on his 2009 Vanity Fair interview with Robert Evans, the former Paramount head, about the 1972 classic. The author bookends this work with that interview, in which Evans invites him to climb into his fur-covered bed to rewatch the film. The material in between recounts the story of the film's driving forces, including the actors; Mario Puzo, the food- and gambling-obsessed author of the novel; and Francis Ford Coppola, the broke writer/director who "wasn't interested in directing some cockamamie gangster picture" yet grew so passionate about it that he wanted to "smell the garlic coming off the screen." Much of this material appears elsewhere, and Seal is sometimes too intellectual about the film. The moment in which Richard Castellano, as Clemenza, tells the associate who carried out an execution in a car, "Leave the gun," then goes off-script to add, "Take the cannoli," may very well have been a commentary "about the country that had turned its back on these men and their community," or maybe it was just an inspired ad-lib. But Godfather fans will enjoy the behind-the-scenes squabbles that threatened the picture, the dealings with real-life mobsters, and other details, such as Marlon Brando's needing to have his lines on cue cards and James Caan's building his character by purchasing used shoes "so tight that they hurt, which gave Sonny his strutting, cocky, lady-killer gait." A lively film biography that amply shows how great films aren't necessarily born great, but they can grow great.

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Starred review from September 1, 2021

Expanding his 2009 Vanity Fair feature on The Godfather, Seal has crafted a comprehensive history of both the novel and the film. He describes how, as a struggling writer, Mario Puzo was captivated by the 1963 U.S. Senate hearings on organized crime; in 1969 Puzo published The Godfather, and Paramount quickly obtained film rights. Seal presents detailed portraits of the major players, including producer Albert Ruddy, studio head Robert Evans, and writer/director Francis Ford Coppola. Coppola was initially uninterested in the project, but his directorial vision and insistence on casting Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, and Marlon Brando prove he was the driving force behind the film. Coppola was dogged by a battle with the Italian American Civil Rights League and its founder, mobster Joe Colombo, who initially believed the film would stereotype Italian Americans, but once the studio refused not to use the term mafia in the film, Colombo relented. The book is so detailed that Seal doesn't discuss filming until 200 pages in. The key elements of the narrative, unsurprisingly, are Puzo and Coppola, and based on Seal's depiction, a strong case could be made for a biopic about Puzo's Godfather journey.VERDICT Combining extensive research with insightful new interviews, this chronicle of The Godfather could be the definitive look at the making of an American classic.--Peter Thornell, Hingham P.L., MA

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