Francis Ford Coppola Discusses "Very Big Fight" Over Setting Of 'The Godfather,' Casting Marlon Brando, More In 45-Minute Talk

There are few films as iconic as “The Godfather,” Francis Ford Coppola‘s saga depicting a criminal Italian American family that changed the shape of the gangster genre forever. But making the film didn’t come easy. The director fought with Paramount every step of the way, and the experience was so exhausting that despite the resulting accolades and Oscars, Coppola initially turned down helming “The Godfather Part II.” However, as the director’s extensive notes make clear, he had a clear vision for how the story needed to be told, and the insight into his process is exhaustively detailed in the recently released tome “The Godfather Notebook.”

READ MORE: Retrospective: The Films Of Francis Ford Coppola

Running nearly 800 pages long, the book collects Coppola’s extensive binders of notes he made during the making of “The Godfather,” tracking everything from each story beat to the casting of the movie. But as he tells NPR, all that preparation only made his battles with executives harder to bear.

“It was just the most frightening and depressing experience I think I’ve ever had,” he said. “I had no power, and yet I had real opinions in how it should be done.”

Indeed, one of the sources of conflict between Coppola and the studio revolved around the setting of the movie, with Paramount pushing for the story to take place in the 1970s —which would’ve been much cheaper— while the director wanted the explore the Corleones in the 1940s.

“[It was a] very big fight. The studio had this young director [Coppola] who was hired mainly because he was Italian-American and that would possibly be good in terms of saying, ‘Well, an Italian made the film.’ And also, I had some acclaim as a screenwriter, and they knew the script needed to be worked on, so they figured they’d get a free rewrite out of it, which they did. And also I was young and had no power, so they figured they could just boss me around, which they proceeded to begin to do,” Coppola reflects.

Meanwhile, Paramount was also very concerned about having Marlon Brando play the title role, given the actor’s reputation for being unpredictable, and the studio made some incredible demands on Coppola in order to allow him to cast the acting legend.

“….they said, all right, we’ll tell you it this way. One, if he will do the movie for free. Two, if he’ll do a screen test. And three, if he’ll put up a million-dollar bond that he will in no way have any misbehavior that causes the overrun of the picture budget. Then you can [cast Brando],” said the the director. “So I said, I accept (laughter), you know? So at least they were saying if I did three things —have a screen test, if I could get him to do the movie for nothing, and if I could have him put up a million dollars, which is absurd— [they would finance the film]. But at least I said I accept, meaning OK, now I can talk about it.”

Next, Coppola had to convince Brando, but that proved to be less difficult.

“I called him up and I said to Marlon, ‘you know, of course this is an Italian-American [character]. You know, wouldn’t it be fun if we could, like, do a little experiment and kind of improv and see what playing an Italian might be like?’ That was my way to talk to an actor essentially asking for a screen test, but I didn’t put it in those ways,” he explained. “And I knew that if I could do something with this little screen test that was convincing, the absurd idea of him doing it for nothing —although they didn’t pay him much more than nothing. I think they paid him scale, which was an insult. And obviously, the putting up a bond to prevent misbehavior was, you know —sometimes, you know, you say you accept terms meaning that you just have a way to continue. So the important thing was to do some sort of a little screen test that I could get on tape and show to all these executives.”

The rest, as they say, is history. It’s fascinating stuff, and Coppola goes into much more detail in the full talk below. Also, check out a couple of excerpts from the audio book version of “The Godfather Notebook.”