It’s the movie that changed the course of his life — and American cinema — but Al Pacino had not seen The Godfather in its entirety in decades. So when he invited me to watch Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 gangster epic with him and some of his friends at a small screening room in Hollywood last year, I jumped at the chance. I was at work hosting a podcast, The Godfather: A Film We Can’t Refuse, which Paramount produced and which Audible will release Aug. 22. The 10-episode series, including conversations with castmembers, filmmakers and critics, grapples with The Godfather‘s legacy on topics like masculinity, power, the American dream — even meatballs, in an episode that features chef Tom Colicchio.
I was trying to understand how Pacino had created one of the most captivating characters in film history, Michael Corleone, a fresh-faced college boy turned ruthless Mafia don, with a quiet, ominous performance that took him from little-known New York theater actor to global movie star. But Pacino himself had always seemed to hold The Godfather at a bit of a distance, and I wanted to know why. When we met the next day in a recording studio, I asked Pacino some of my burning questions about the movie — Did Michael have a choice about entering “the life”? How did it feel to know the studio didn’t want him? What was going through Pacino’s mind when he filmed Michael’s first murder scene?
We also got into Pacino’s relationship to the film. Watching The Godfather from start to finish after all these years was “humbling,” he said. It was emotional to see friends onscreen who had died, like James Caan and John Cazale. But it was also poignant to see his younger self about to take a dramatic life turn, one that, like Michael Corleone’s, almost seemed predestined. Pacino told me his ambition as a young actor had been to perform in regional theater, “make a living, marry a seamstress and have 10 kids.” Shortly after The Godfather came out and became an immediate cultural sensation, he was standing on a street corner in New York when he realized everything was about to change. “A beautiful woman was standing next to me,” Pacino said. “She turned and said, ‘Hi, Michael.’ My heart dropped. I thought, ‘Oh, no. The life I knew is now over.’ “
This story first appeared in the August 7 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
