It happened in 1972...

[Grand Torino]

Fun Facts...

FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA WAS AT RISK OF BEING FIRED DURING PRODUCTION.

Francis Ford Coppola (who got the job because of his previous movie, The Rain People) wasn’t the first director Paramount Pictures had in mind for The Godfather. Elia Kazan, Arthur Penn, Richard Brooks, and Costa-Gavras all turned the job down. And after filming began, executives didn’t like the brooding, talky drama that Coppola was shooting.

The studio wanted a more salacious gangster movie, so it constantly threatened to fire Coppola (even going so far as to have stand-in directors waiting on set). Coppola was reportedly getting the ax until he shot the scene where Michael kills Sollozzo and McCluskey, which the executives saw and loved.

PARAMOUNT DIDN’T WANT MARLON BRANDO FOR THE ROLE.

When Coppola initially mentioned Brando as a possibility for Vito Corleone, the head of Paramount, Charles Bluhdorn, told Coppola the actor would “never appear in a Paramount picture.”

The studio pushed the director to cast Laurence Olivier as Vito, before eventually agreeing to pursue Brando under three stringent conditions: 1) Brando had to do a screen test; 2) if cast, Brando would have to do the movie for free; and 3) Brando would have to personally put up a bond to make up for potential losses caused by his infamously bad on-set behavior.

Coppola surreptitiously lured the famously cagey Brando into what he called a “makeup test,” which in reality was the screen test the studio demanded. When Coppola showed the studio the test they liked it so much they dropped the second and third stipulations and agreed to let Brando be in the movie.

PACINO WASN’T THE FIRST CHOICE TO PLAY MICHAEL, EITHER.

The studio wanted Robert Redford or Ryan O’Neal to play Michael Corleone, but Coppola always wanted Al Pacino. Other actors, like Martin Sheen and James Caan (who would go on to play Sonny), screen tested for Michael.

THE GODFATHER’S CAT WAS A STRAY.

During his daily walks to the set, Coppola would often see a stray cat, and on the day of shooting the scenes in Vito’s study, Coppola took the cat and told Brando to improvise with it. The cat loved Brando so much that it sat in his lap during takes for the whole day.

 THE INFAMOUS HORSE’S HEAD WAS REAL.

The horse head in the movie producer’s bed wasn’t a prop. The production got a real horse’s head from a local dog food company.

ROBERT DE NIRO AUDITIONED FOR SONNY.

Robert De Niro auditioned for the role of Sonny, but Coppola thought his personality was too violent for the role. De Niro would later appear as the young Vito Corleone in The Godfather: Part II, and win a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his work.

[No_0ne]

A fellow insomniac, I see ...

[Jamie Jackson]

1 minute ago, No_0ne said:

A fellow insomniac, I see ...

Sleep is highly overrated...apparently. 

I suffer the same malady so I'm glad to have company.

I enjoy these posts GT. Thank you!

[Grand Torino]

19 minutes ago, No_0ne said:

A fellow insomniac, I see ...

 

16 minutes ago, prag said:

Sleep is highly overrated...apparently. 

I suffer the same malady so I'm glad to have company.

I enjoy these posts GT. Thank you!

I have my good nights and bad ones. This one wasn't in the top ten.

[bersaguy]

I have all 3 parts of the movie on DVD and I did enjoy the movies the first couple times I watched them. Have not got them out and watched them now in over about 5 years.

[bersaguy]

I am not an insomniac per say but for about 3 months now I have began laying awake at night and after getting relaxed after the days activities I wil begin to lay and think about things in my childhood that was part of my life growing up. At first it was jst short thoughts bouncing all over the place.

Then I began learning to focus on events going as far back as I could remember and trying to put them in some kind of order according to time in my life. I try to put them in the order and year in which the memory took place. I know it sounds crazy but I have been able to remember things in my life that were more or less not important things but they would fit into place like a jigsaw puzzle. In the beginning it was just things like my first dog when I was either 6 or 7 years old and he was a dog someone had dropped off which  a lot of people would come out of the city and do. My dad told me I could keep him and he went everywhere with me except school. He was a terrier mix I gave him the name Bearcat and he was very fast and could keep up with me on my bike. He lived a long life as we brought him to Tennessee and he lived about 2 more years down here.

It is amazing what you can remember when you just lay down and clear your mind from that days activities and then begin to think back. You can remember the most trivial items that you would never think of otherwise. I think last night I reached age 10.

[OLDNEWBIE]

I've got a technique I use for insomnia.

I have an old mp3 player I load up with semi interesting documentaries or even better, lectures I swipe from youtube.

Biographies, history, war, book discussions etc.

The more boring the narrator or lecturer the better.

Impossible to stress over problems while listening to a guy lecture about submarine warfare in WWII.

On the Godfather.....

Like broccoli or brustle sprouts,

Never liked them as a young person but have since acquired a taste for them.

Those movies are darn entertaining to me now.