The Godfather: Part IV

SteveJ

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After the success of Godfathers I and II, the failure of the third film to conclude the saga led to a two-decade search for a final chapter. Here, GQ.com editor Andy Morris speaks to Francis Ford Coppola about where it all went wrong and asks industry figures and famous aficionados alike how they are gearing up for one final mob hit: The Godfather IV.
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The Godfather Part IV - GQ Film - GQ.COM
 
Maybe it could be a buddy movie featuring Al's hair & Andy's. :D
 
That would be amazing!

They could call it ....... no I haven't got anything. I'll get back to you.
 
Garcia to play an aging patriarch who befriends a stray dog (voiced by John Turturro) who he then appoints as his succesor after only a few days. The dog later becomes pope and everyone dies when a helicopter shoots everyone through a ceiling.
 
I'd prefer it was an animation with Garcia voicing the wisecracking dog and Pacino to play a gruff widower who learns to love again - not that sort of love - with a dog. Oh, and a rat who's also a chef.
 
Its actually such a pity that they didn't turn Robert De Niro's portrayal as Vito into a movie on its own instead of mixing it together with the continuation of the first movie. Both stories were strong enough in their own part that they could have had 3 really solid movies instead of 2.5 and a shit 3rd. I'd love to see a more in depth look of Vito's rise to power.
 
Bobby's portrayal of Vito is overrated IMO. He's very good, but there isn't much character progression in it. It's basically a mix of classic De Niro brooding and Brando impression. It won't work without Al. Garcia is a lightweight comparison, whose character never had an ounce of the pathos of Michael.

Anyway, always worth a post..

 
Also some of the suggestions from famous Directors/Writers on how they'd do it are interesting/laughable...

Oliver Stone
"Godfather IV? You mean Scarface 2, right [laughs]? It would be the most difficult film to pull off. I would do a film about international money laundering, because to me it's so ruthless, so shocking and so inordinately brutal. It is like Wall Street - it's gone to another level. Those international cartels are so big. It's like nuclear weaponry, weapons of mass destruction. They don't play for shipments of money - they play for countries and control of governments and narco governments. The brutality is just disgusting. To go back into that world would depress me - I don't know whether I would survive it. It's just beyond dirty. It became that way because our 'morality' declared war on drugs. We accelerated the pace and everything escalated because we made such a big deal instead of dealing with it on a basic level of what's legal, what's illegal, let's work this out. It became stupid, like the war on terror."
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David Pearce (Crime Novelist)
"My Godfather IV would be directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, hopefully in the spirit of his unmade script of Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest, or, failing that, by Matteo Garrone (director of Gomorrah). In homage to The Godfather: Part II, the film cuts between a past and present, between Sicily and New York. The flashbacks to late 19th-century Sicily tell the full story of the feud between Antonio Andolini ( Vincent Gallo), the father of Vito Corleone, and Don Ciccio's local Mafia, which led to the deaths of Antonio and his son, Paolo (Salvatore Abruzzese). References would be the 1863 play I Mafiusi Della Vicaria and the Sicilian novels of Leonardo Sciascia. The contemporary scenes would chart the fall of the fully legitimate Corleone business empire, now run by Vincent Mancini (still Andy Garcia), in the financial crisis of 2008. Out of these shadows steps Anthony Corleone (again Franc D'Ambrosio). The film ends with a desperate Vincent stealing an orange from a supermarket and being shot in the back by a Korean clerk."
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Len Deighton
"I would like to see Coppola take The Godfather series into its political roots and show that it is pertinent to our lives. Organised crime has always been deeply embedded in politics and too often in bed with the labour unions. Its vast financial resources make the bribery of police and courts difficult to counter. Only public opinion can change things. Let's show how mob interference with the election process betrays democracy and opens the economy to plundering. A new Godfather film might explore the way criminal organisations form links with terrorists, human traffickers and the drug trade. Violence holds it all together. Let's see a well-researched movie depicting organised crime as the enemy of all public good."
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Kevin Smith
"I wasn't one of the people who hated The Godfather: Part III. It was good, I enjoyed it - it wasn't like the first two, but what can be after so many years? I bought Al Pacino's performance, I dug where he went with it, and [ Sofia Coppola] was not as bad as people said. When that film came out I felt so sorry for that family because every critic teed off on her - from her performance to her nose. No.1, I believed it, and No.2, I would totally f*** that chick. If I was going to do Godfather IV I think you would have to go prequel. I think at this point it would be tough to go next generation, as they did with Star Trek. For me, you'd probably have to go back and tell the inter-story from Godfather II with the young Robert De Niro. You'd have to go early, because you couldn't continue where they left off - Mary's dead and the son was a singer who wasn't interested in the family business. Andy Garcia was looking like he was going to take over, but we got to see him be a mob boss in the Ocean's movies. To go back and fill in the origin stuff would make much more sense than, 'There's a new Corleone in town, and his name's Vin Diesel!'"
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Jeffrey Archer - No seriously
"In The Godfather: Part IV we discover that Alberto Corleone ( Anthony Hopkins), the new boss of the Mafia clan, has an illegitimate grandson. Tom Brubaker ( Matt Damon) is unaware of his Mafia ancestry, as only his God-fearing Catholic mother (Sandra Bullock) knows the truth, and she's been sworn to secrecy. After leaving school, Brubaker graduates from the University Of Chicago before moving to Washington, where he joins the FBI. He rises quickly through the ranks and when he becomes a field officer, is put in charge of a team whose sole purpose is to eradicate the Mafia, and put the Godfather, Alberto Corleone, behind bars. Many years later, an investigative journalist with the Washington Post discovers the relationship between Brubaker, the newly appointed deputy director of the FBI (Ed Harris) and his father, who is now on death row awaiting execution. But there is a final twist. The governor of the state of Maryland grants Alberto Corleone a reprieve, when he discovers..."
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Franc Lucas - O.G
"I've never spoken to anybody who didn't like The Godfather: it's one of the greatest films ever made. I'd like to see Denzel Washington take the lead. You can't get better than Mr Washington. I don't think you could find a better actor in the world - if you do, I don't know nothing about it. I fought like hell to get him to do American Gangster. I called him 50 times and eventually he said, 'Let me get this guy off my butt and I'll do it.' He's a good character, he's very kind and he does what he says he's going to do. He said he'd buy me a Rolls-Royce if he did the movie. He did it and he bought me the Rolls. [Pause] He gave me the money for it anyway."
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Michael twatting Winner
"Marlon Brando was working for me in Cambridgeshire when I spotted a large, bearded man behind the barrier. 'Isn't that Francis Ford Coppola?' I asked Marlon. 'Yes,' he said. 'Shall we let him through?' I suggested. 'No,' said Marlon. Coppola was working with Marlon on the script for The Godfather in a cottage I'd hired for Marlon. For The Godfather: Part IV I'd do the story of John Gotti, who ended the Mafia as we knew it. I'd have Daniel Day-Lewis play Gotti, Robert Duvall as Paul Castellano, who Gotti allegedly had murdered so he could take over. I'd have Sandra Bullock as Gotti's wife, Victoria, Leonardo DiCaprio as Roy DeMeo, a killer Castellano asked Gotti to murder, but he declined. Tom Hanks would play Sammy 'The Bull' Gravano, Gotti's underboss who turned state's evidence. The movie would complete the circle of Brando in the original as a quiet, secretive 'gentleman' to what it all became - a fashion-show exhibitionist bringing the walls tumbling down."
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Irvine Welsh
"The Godfather: Part IV would centre around a new generation of Corleones who have gone straight and migrated to England, where they run an Italian restaurant in Milton Keynes. Rip Torn would be the patriarchal proprietor who remembers the old days, while Jason Statham and Danny Dyer would be the waiter sons, with Rachel Weisz and Kate Beckinsale the waitress daughters, all of whom would have their own dramas of love and loss to resolve. Things would come to a head when an uncle, ageing don Michael Douglas, shows up and asks to be given shelter, having ratted out some fellow elderly gangsters back in the Big Apple. However, he is tracked down by two college-graduate Corleone hit men, played by Steve Buscemi and Crispin Glover, who lament that they shouldn't really be in this game, one having studied philosophy at some Ivy League school. There is a love affair between one of the hit men and a waitress, before they discover the shared bloodline issue and face a violent showdown with the waiters. Torn and Douglas also have a dramatic stand-off where they question the nature of violence, family and letting go of old ties and old ways. Nick Love would direct, or if he couldn't be bothered, I'd do it myself, with a dark, dub-heavy, urban blues soundtrack scored by Larry Love of Alabama 3."
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Rio Ferdinand
"If I made The Godfather: Part IV, I'd put Dimitar Berbatov in there as a Mafia boss. He looks exactly like Andy Garcia... and he actually thinks he is in The Godfather movies half the time. Obviously, the first thing you need is a good plot. Then you need a believable gangster. Oh, and a fit bird."
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I like how Michael cocking Winner even manages to slip in his customary name dropping into his "and so i said to Marlon"...what a colossal cnut.

David Pearce's sounds relatively sensible and intriguing. Irvine Welsh seems to have forgotten that Garcia spends the whole third one trying to rags his cousin.
 
Kevin Smith's. :lol:
 
Coppola should of just made the third one in the 70's somehow......the second he he left the 70's...he just lost his spirit, everything about Apocalypse Now, before and after releasing it crushed him. But still that 70's run of his, nothing comes remotely close, all 4 of the films are basically perfect, you could rank them whatever way you want, theres nothing between them really.
 
I & II are the only films I keep saved on my computer at all times. Along with the season finales of the West Wing Season 2 & Breaking Bad Season 4.

So anyway, I watched them both again (probably about 6th time now) last night, for no apparent reason. The more I do this, the more I concrete my opinion that this..

R.Nilsson7 said:
Can we all agree that first film is actually the best?
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Is definitely, definitely true. The problem for me, in II, is the much admired De Niro Vito backstory. It's not that it's bad, cos it's not even close, but it doesn't really need to be in there, or do anything. Whereas the whole story of the "Godfather" is about the rise (power) and fall (soul) of Michael, and how and why. The attempt to show this is Vito doesn't really come close to doing the same thing.

He starts off as a weak mute boy, and then flashes forwards to a fully formed, honourable Don like figure at 25 pretty much the next time we see him. How and why he forms this personality would be more interesting, but we don't get that, Bobby just swaggers around looking very cool and doing a vague Marlon Brando impression. He kills people, sure, but all very honourably and without much thought, and there's never a hint of the drama of the Michael - Sollozo scene.

It's really interesting. But not narratively. More because you're going "Oh shit, look, that's where Michael went in part I..Oh shit, look, that's supposed to be Clemenza & Tessio."

Part I has by far the more interesting shit too. Brando, Sonny, much more Hagen, Sollozo, The Carlo sub plot, the horse head, the christening scene/massacre, the ending shot.

Yeah, it's definitely, definitely I.
 
Randall Flagg said:
I prefer 2
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So do I. And I think Vito's backstory about his ascension to crime (the de Niro part) has great relevance to what's happening with Michael. The downward spiral of Michael is amazing to watch, the acting is amazing and I find the script stronger than in the first. Some very powerful moments (Freddie's death, the scene where Michael slaps his wife, you can see the rage building up during those moments, it's impressive) also.

However I've never really understood the necessity to try and rank them. They're both brilliant films, real masterpieces. Can't find much wrong with either of them.
 
The 1st one is the best if only for this piece of dialogue

Woltz: Now listen to me, you smooth-talking SOB! Let me lay it on the line for you and your boss, whoever he is. Johnny Fontane will never get that movie! I don't care how many - dago, guinea, WOP, greaseball, goombahs come outta the woodwork!
Hagen: I'm German-Irish...
Woltz: Well, let me tell you something, my kraut mick friend....
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cracks me up every time.
 
Rooney in Paris said:
So do I. And I think Vito's backstory about his ascension to crime (the de Niro part) has great relevance to what's happening with Michael.
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Does it? There's a mild ascension to crime bit, but he stays basically the same person throughout. Never gets angry, never gets sad. Both of which Brando does. He's just really, really cool. Which is, you know, cool, but not that necessary. It probably would've been more relevant if they'd kept in the young Hyman Roth scenes though.

The downward spiral of Michael is amazing to watch, the acting is amazing and I find the script stronger than in the first. Some very powerful moments (Freddie's death, the scene where Michael slaps his wife, you can see the rage building up during those moments, it's impressive) also.
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For me, the diner scene, the christening scene & the "don't ask me about my business" scene are all just as good, if not better. Fredo is the standout in II though. I think Cazale is underrated & DeNiro overrated in it.

However I've never really understood the necessity to try and rank them. They're both brilliant films, real masterpieces. Can't find much wrong with either of them.
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There isn't really, they're better viewed as one 6 hour film ending on the flashback*. But as separate entities, the 1st works better. The Michael that begins I is not the Michael that ends I, but the Michael that begins II is pretty much the Michael that ends II, give or take a layer of inhibition and a cravat.

*Incidentally they did do that, for TV in the late 70s, but they made it linear.
 
The first one had much more going for it whilst second was pretty much carried by Pacino. I don't know why it's so memorable but the scene when Sterling Hayden enters the film, the lighting and the sound of thunder is just perfect in it...and the sound of a train when Michael kills Sollozzo...the serenity when Don Corleone passes away.

The small things...
 
The scene with Sterling Hayden, just before he arrives, when Michael convinces the baker to pose as a thug to protect the hospital, and then sees the guy's shaking, but realises he isn't, is pivotal, and brilliant. Virtually nothing's said in that scene too. So many of the best bits in both are non dialogue moments.

My favorite bit in II isn't any of the famous bits or quotes, but the bit where Michael hugs Fredo at their mother's funeral, and Fredo's gripping him really tightly, and he just looks up at Al Neri with dead eyes as if to say "you can kill him now" and Neri bows his head, almost disappointed.
 
A central point regarding 'the rise of Don Corleone' scenes is, I think, perfectly connected to his uniquely subtle approach to life as a big-time gangster: it's all about how one is perceived by others, not so much about what one actually does.
 
The first one is just film perfection. I have to admit that I only got round to watching the trilogy for the first time this year, and I was just astonished by how good a movie it was. Impossible to match.
 
I quite fancy Sofia even though she was rubbish in 3. The other women in each film have all been pretty ropey....why is that?
 
Diane Keaton is a goddess compared to these other so-called women! A goddess, I tell you! :D
 
I've never really been able to fancy Keaton as she reminds me too much of my aunt.

Sofia Coppola is quite fit in general but fancying her in Godfather III is like fancying a retarded person.
 
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