Posted on 10/26/2024 7:12:45 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The humble origins of a classic Godfather quote.
"Watch out we don’t exterminate you!" Spoken by Richard Castellano's Corleogne capo Peter Clemenza, this jokey line foreshadowed one of The Godfather's many deaths, but it was a line from earlier in the film that set up the most memorable quote from Paulie Gatto's death scene: "Leave the gun, take the cannoli."
While perhaps not as easily applicable in life as "an offer he can't refuse" or "sleeping with the fishes," it's brilliant all the same, and legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola joined ReelBlend to talk his passion project Megalopolis and shine some light on what inspired that dessert-infused line. As it turns out, it came from Castellano himself, but only because of the ally oop that Coppola added to an earlier scene. As he put it:
You know the great line that Clemenza says, 'Leave the gun, take the cannoli.' He made that line up. I did the part where his wife says, 'Don't forget the cannoli,' so they wouldn't have been a cannoli without me. But he said that line. . . . A lot of great things that happen in your films is not because you did it - [laughs] - unfortunately,
Some of the in the funniest TV shows and movies of all time have been ad-libbed on the spot, but it wouldn't outwardly seem like that would also be the case for one of The Godfather's most quotable moments. I guess it helps that it's a funny one. Had he just improvised the line: "Be sure and grab that there dessert after making haste to dispose of your handgun, my friend," that probably wouldn't have made the final cut.
Even as small of a moment as that probably was on the day there were filming it, Coppola's anecdote is a solid example of how one choice can have such a massive effect for decades to come. I can imagine fans constantly asked Richard Castellano to say that line ahead of his 1988 death.
It's the kind of line that's makes Best Movie Quotes lists regularly, and has also inspired myriad variations and, of course, a Family Guy cutaway gag.
It's not clear at this point whether Megalopolis will spawn any repeatable lines with the longevity of "Leave the gun, take the cannoli," but it will almost definitely live in infamy for various other reasons. Time will make those reasons more obvious
The Godfather will forever be a classic film that deserves rewatching and re-examining for new generations. We happen to think it deserves the top slot amongst all of Francis Ford Coppola's best films, and it's an opinion shared by star Al Pacino, so there's no arguing it, hoo-ahhh.
Megalopolis is currently in theaters around the country, though its box office take is unfortunately nowhere near the reported $160 million spent to make it.
Hey, have you seen this movie? You should check it out, it’s good.
It’s too bad Richard Castellano wasn’t in the second movie.
My next favorite is “Oh, Paulie, you won’t see him no more”.
Thanks.
I needed to get to be early, and now I’m going to stay up and watch The Godfather for the 40 somethingith time.
“If there is trouble, I stay here to help you. For your fazer – for your fazer.”
―Enzo Aguello
The line was pulled from the book. A lot of the script was from the book.
bump
guess he wanted a boat load of money.
“then you trow in all ya sausage and ya meatbawls”...”a little bit of sugar..and thats my trick”.
And don’t forget the wine in the sauce!
He wanted more than anyone else. They tried to make it work but greed on his part won out and he lost out.
Kurosawa put together his list of the 100 films that everyone should see. Godfather part ii is on the list. Part 1 isn’t.
So, Coppola never read the book?
lol...everytime i watch this movie, i just gotta make spaghetti and meat bawls...gets me everytime. Greatest movie ever made..
Part 2 is a very good sequel, very rare when it comes to sequels. But what makes part 2 a masterpiece is the flash back sequences. Greatest recreation of that era ive ever seen.
We were in Vegas, with another couple, going down an escalator in, I think it was Caesar’s Palace. There was someone right behind me on the escalator, a man with the voice of an orator, talking with his wife about something. I just knew I had heard that voice before. My wife and our friends heard him as well.
We stepped off the escalator and waited for the gentleman and his wife to pass by, to see who it was. At the time we didn’t know, and we watched the two of them walk into one of the many stores. We were discussing him, my wife and I - “We have heard that voice before, he has to be an actor!”, so my wife and her friend’s husband decided to follow them into the store and talk to them. I chickened out- I was saying, “leave them alone, he’ll probably take your head off”, or something similar.
So they went into the store, and after a while they came out, and said they had the nicest conversation with him.
His name was Al Ruscio, and in the banquet scene in Pt. 3, he was sitting right next to Al Pacino right before the helicopter gunship came in and blew everybody apart.
His big line, as he was laying on the floor bleeding to death, was “Joey Zaza, you son of a bitch!”
I’m sorry I missed out on meeting him. They talked about their Italian heritage and some of his movies- he was in Showgirls, he told my wife “ you’re too young to see that.” He was a true gentleman.
There was a thread here on FreeRepublic when he passed. My account, for some reason, wouldn’t let me sign in, so I couldn’t tell this story then.
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