Francis Ford Coppola once predicted ‘The Godfather’ would fail
Francis Ford Coppola once refused to direct “The Godfather” because he did not like the original novel by Mario Puzo.Coppola interviewed with Variety on the occasion of receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on March 21 and celebrating the 50th anniversary of the release of The Godfather: “I thought it would be a special failure. When you produce a movie on the contrary trend, those works are very challenging. You don’t do what people expect to see.”
The American director said that Hollywood had not had a movie like The Godfather in the 1970s. He was worried that the project would fail miserably at the box office when it debuted. However, Coppola said he would still love his work whether it was successful or not. He was determined to make The Godfather according to his own wishes, far from Hollywood’s filmmaking formula at that time.
“You’re always stressed when a movie comes out because you want it to sell well, but that’s not under your control. The best thing is the test of time. When the audience is still interested in your work after 50 years year, that is a reward for me,” the director added.
In the interview, Coppola also revealed that he was initially less excited about the project because he did not like novelist Mario Puzo’s original work. “He wrote many wonderful works. However, Puzo wrote The Godfather with the intention of making money. He loved his family and wanted to take good care of them. So, Puzo released the novel that he I think it will sell well. However, it is quite a marketable work.”
Coppola said Mario Puzo did not develop many good details in the story but focused on writing in a classic direction, similar to the style of Shakespeare’s works. However, the director said he respects the writer very much. “One of the best things about working on The Godfather was getting to know Puzo. He’s a great guy. That’s why I put the writer’s name above the title. It’s Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, not The Godfather by Francis Ford Coppola,” the director said.
Francis Ford Coppola, born in 1939, is one of the most famous filmmakers in the world. He has won five Oscars, six Golden Globes, two Palme d’Or and a BAFTA. The director soon attracted attention with his first works in the 1960s. However, the success of The Godfather (1972) helped Coppola’s name become a legend in the cinema industry. In 2015, he announced his retirement after the Distant Vision project. However, the director recently decided to return and is working on a new movie titled Megalopolis, scheduled to shoot later this year.
Mario Puzo (1920-1999) was an Italian-American novelist, successful with works that explored crime themes. He has many best-selling book titles such as The Godfather, The Fourth K, Fools Die…