Offer No Author Could Refuse [New "Godfather" book]

MARK WINEGARDNER was a professor of creative writing with two well-reviewed novels and a book of short stories to his name when he received an offer he could not refuse.

A respected New York publishing house invited him to enter a competition to write a sequel to Mario Puzo’s classic novel The Godfather.

“When I re-read The Godfather, I was not going to do it if I did not really have a view of where another novel could go. But I was just blown away by how many things were left on the table to investigate,” Winegardner said yesterday.

The author, director of the creative writing department at Florida State University, became a literary “made man” when he was annointed Puzo’s successor on live television.

This week, hundreds of thousands of copies of his new book, The Godfather Returns, hit bookshops in the United States and 13 other countries, including Britain, where the title has been changed inexplicably to The Godfather: The Lost Years.

Hollywood is already abuzz with the possibility of a fourth Godfather film. “There has been enormous early interest and there are a lot of conversations going on, so I’m sure it will come to something,” the author told The Times. “It’s the subject of frenetic conversations in Hollywood.”

The new book is set between the end of Puzo’s original Godfather novel in 1955 and the opening of The Godfather, Part II film, which Puzo co-scripted with the director Francis Ford Coppola, along with the third film in the sequel, The Godfather, Part III.

Michael Corleone, aiming to make his family legitimate after a bloody war among New York’s crime families, confronts his most dangerous rival yet, Fausto Dominick “Nick” Geraci Jr, a former boxer who worked as a Corleone street enforcer.

Winegardner argues that Michael Corleone, played by Al Pacino in the Coppola films, never had a worthy adversary until now. “My character Nick Geraci is that,” he said.

The competition for a sequel was the idea of Jonathan Karp, editorial director of Random House and Puzo’s editor for the last decade of his life. Puzo, a struggling writer who made his fortune with The Godfather at the age of 44, felt he could add no more to the saga before his death in 1999.

“I understood why Mario never wanted to continue the story. It was bound to pale in comparison to the original. How do you improve on a legend?” Mr Karp said. “But one day on the phone, Mario did give me his blessing to revisit the Corleones.”

Mr Karp, who refers to himself jokingly as “Johnny the Pencil”, set out to find a writer at roughly the same stage of his career as Puzo was when he wrote the book in 1969.

Winegardner, 42, admits he is not a “Godfather cultist”. But he had read Puzo’s original when he was 12 “for the dirty parts” and, by chance, received a boxed set of CDs of the Coppola films for Father’s Day, just before the competition was announced. For his two previous novels, he had met some low-level “wise guys” while researching organised crime in Cleveland, Ohio. For the book, he studied old FBI wiretaps and, unlike Puzo, visited Sicily, the Mafia’s original home.

So far, the book has met mixed reviews. The Associated Press suggested that it “should sleep with the fishes” and urged that “the Corleones, the first family of American mob fiction, finally rest in peace”.

Winegardner wants to avoid being pigeonholed as the Godfather writer, but does not rule out another volume.

“There is a lot more story to fill,” he said. “The years from 1962 to 1979 are utterly uncovered by the saga. It would be hard for me to watch another writer fill them.”

This is an old post of mine -- I dragged it out, and dusted it off for this thread. When I worked in New Jersey, I had a long drive to work every day. And I got the idea to copy the audio track of movies onto cassette and listen to the movie while in the car. I began with The Godfather. And while listening to the movie I came across a sequence of events that bothered me.

A Huge Flaw In The Godfather

The Shooting of Don Corleone

Looking at the sequence of events in the movie, this entire section doesn't make sense.. I've seen the movie dozens of times, but maybe I was too busy watching it instead of listening... Here goes...

1. Don Corleone is ready to leave the Genco Pura Olive Oil office. He tells Fredo to tell Paulie (unfortunately and eventually fatally sick) to get the car. Fredo says he doesn't mind and leaves to get the car himself.

2. Luca Brasi walks into a nightclub and meets with Bruno Tattaglia and Sollozo. They give him pre-war scotch, a knife through the hand, and a necktie.

3. Tom Hagen exits a store carrying a sled, finished with Christmas shopping. Sollozo and friends intercept him and kidnap him.

Assuming that the bar that Luca was in was also in Manhattan, that means Sollozo waited for Luca, witnessed his death, waited outside a store in Manhattan for Hagen to exit (and remember, he was Christmas Shopping on Christmas Eve, so there could've been long lines, but that's being too picky!)... But assuming some of that, isn't it reasonable to assume that numbers 2 and 3 above take AT LEAST an hour? OK.. to continue... next scene...

4. Don Corleone exits the Genco Pura Olive Oil building, buys some fruit and then buys some bullets in the street...

Now... Did it take Fredo an hour to find the car?? He's not dumb like people say, he's smart... but an hour to find his car? Don Corleone is a Mob Boss . . .you'd think he'd have a spot in front whenever he wanted!

OK.. next scene...

5. Michael and Kay exit the movie theater and Mike reads the newspaper detailing his father's shooting, and calls home. Nothing happening here, let's move on....

6. Sonny in the house taking phone calls, Sollozo tells Sonny that in about 3 hours Tom will be released AFTER he's heard their proposal...

7. Sollozo talks to Tom and mistakenly tells Tom that the Don is dead... he says they "got him" about an HOUR AFTER they picked Tom up.... Then they let him go and as they do, they find out the Don is still alive...

Conclusions:

If we look at Scenes 2 and 3 above, and assume an hour, and then we add in Sollozo's estimate that they shot Don Vito an hour AFTER they picked up Tom (Scene 3)... does that mean it took Don Vito Corleone TWO HOURS (at least) to get from inside the office to the car?????

BTW -- Not for nothing, but the novel should have been about the War Years, when the Corleones took on the Capones.

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