Al Pacino wasn't sure how to approach his role as Michael Corleone in "The Godfather." His solution? Turn to a real life mobster for some assistance.
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00:00By his own admission, Al Pacino wasn't sure how to approach his role as Michael Corleone
00:04in The Godfather, so he decided to turn to a real-life mobster for some assistance. Co-star
00:09Alfredo Lettieri, who plays violent drug dealer Virgil Salazzo in the film, set up a meeting
00:14for him and Pacino to have dinner at the home of a real mafioso. Pacino has left it unsaid
00:19which crime family his and Lettieri's mob contact was from, but reflecting in his memoir
00:23Sonny Boy, that meeting let Pacino see a respectable front. The mafioso was allegedly very welcoming
00:29and, quote, looked like a normal businessman, had a wife and two grown children, and their
00:33household appeared to be a normal, loving American home. As Pacino wrote,
00:37"...I was being given a taste of how this thing looked and operated in reality, not
00:40how it was shown in the movies."
00:42He wasn't given any details into how the mafia operated, but he did absorb the atmosphere,
00:46and got a look at a real gun, brandished by Lettieri in the midst of the men drinking
00:50and playing games. Pacino wrote,
00:52"...many moons later, photos from that night surfaced, showing me in a sweatshirt, laughing
00:56away with a drink in my hand while little Al showed me a gun. A boy's night out."
01:00Mario Puzo, writer of the crime novel The Godfather, has admitted that he himself never
01:04had any contact with the real American mafia. His model for Don Corleone, the gangster patriarch
01:09of the work, was his own mother.
01:11When production of the film adaptation of his book got underway, Puzo's advice to director
01:15Francis Ford Coppola was to never associate with anyone from organized crime. Coppola
01:19didn't need to be told twice. He told Conde Nast Traveler in 2014,
01:24"...it's romantic and stuff, but they're horrible murderers, and who wants to know a horrible
01:27murderer? I don't."
01:28What do you think this is, the army, where you shoot them a mile away? You gotta get
01:32up close like this, and ba-da-bing, you blow their brains all over your nice cyber-league
01:35suit."
01:36But like Pacino, not everyone involved in The Godfather had the same hesitancy when
01:40it came to the mafia. Producer Al Ruddy's efforts to win over initially hostile mobsters
01:44resulted in a script change, and inspired a Paramount Plus show decades later. But where
01:49Ruddy had to work with the criminal organization to get the film made safely, some of the cast
01:53sought out underworld figures to help them shape their characters. James Caan was friends
01:57with the eventual boss of the Colombo mafia family and hung out with other Colombo figures
02:01during filming. Gianni Russo claimed to have lifelong ties to figures in three different
02:05mafia clans. And Luca Brasi's actor, Lenny Montana, was a one-time enforcer for the Colombos.
02:11The relatively heavy presence of the Colombos in the production of The Godfather was partially
02:15coincidence and partially due to Joe Colombo. The reigning head of the family at the time
02:20the movie was made raised the biggest stink about the film's production, and it was the
02:23mob boss producer Al Ruddy had to pacify. Once they were placated, Mafiosi began turning
02:28up on the set, either to watch quietly or to offer unsolicited critiques of the actors'
02:32clothes and mannerisms. Once the movie was out, however, life began imitating art.
02:37Besides being a hit nationwide, The Godfather was a treasured gem of cinema by many mafioso,
02:42who looked to it as affirmation and inspiration. As reporter Selwyn Robb wrote in his book
02:47The Five Families,
02:48"...federal and local investigators on surveillance duty saw and heard made men and wannabes imitating
02:52the mannerisms and language of the screen gangsters. The film validated their lifestyles
02:56and decisions to join the mob and accept its credo."
02:59That Pacino was cast at all in The Godfather was a minor miracle. Coppola had to fight
03:04the studio to cast him, a fight he briefly lost, then had to fight again to keep him.
03:08Pacino himself was well aware that he wasn't wanted, which didn't help his anxieties over
03:12how to play Michael Corleone. All the mental anguish over the role more than likely played
03:16a factor in his deciding to get an up-close-and-personal look at a small portion of the mafia world.