As a kid, I hated this movie. Growing up in an Italian household, this movie ruined the lives of many moronic men. They’d watch this epic piece of cinema and then automatically enter the mafia…at least in their minds.
They’d start to dress like Don Corleone, talk like him, walk around like Al Pacino, and make people offers they could not refuse.
You youngsters out there have no idea how the Italian American community was derided and sterotyped because of this movie. Since 1972, it planted the seed in America’s mind that if you were of Italian ancestry, you were also in the mafia.
Italians took advantage of this fear. As a result, many faked mafia connections, dressing like wise guys, talking with thick Brooklyn accents, even though they were from Long Island.
This movie is great; but it also was an abomination for Italians.
Thank god everyone is gay now and men can enter the women’s bathroom and urinate standing up with the bathroom stall door open. These days, instead of men faking to be in the mafia, talking tough, and dressing Don Corleone sharp, they make believe they’re women and dress like tarts.
Watch a piece of Americana tonight and don’t forget to bring your fucking burner with you, while dressed to the nines.
>this movie ruined the lives of many moronic men. They’d start to dress like Don Corleone, talk like him, walk around like Al Pacino, and make people offers they could not refuse.
True, I think it also carried over into the lives of young black and Hispanic men, in that their thoughts were, we can be Mafia tough too, and they adopted their own gangsta culture which has brought us many dead, maimed, jailed, and failed black and Hispanic men.
Interesting point, Joyous Ending. Filmmakers say that they are reflecting the world, and that is true, as there certainly are gangs of thugs like the ones portrayed in The Godfather, and they have tremendous influence in numerous countries.
But it is also true that films affect the world and change it. There were good ways in which this film changed the world. It was educational really, about what goes on. However, when young people of any race took these folks as their role models, that was certainly a destructive effect there.
We are at a weird time in history, when humans are having fewer face to face, or even voice to voice connections– and more connections with the TeeVee, the Internet, films, videos, maybe the radio too. So it is becoming even more important that there be more positive role models in films, music, TeeVee, and on the Internet sites.
Unfortunately, constructive role models seem to be few and far between– whether in person or through the media.
>So it is becoming even more important that there be more positive role models in films, music, TeeVee, and on the Internet sites.
Very wise Frog, I would add talk radio and TV late night hosts to the mix.
Scarface did that for minorities
Colors was the go to West Coast one. Obviously Scarface came first. When the weather is nothing to fear like in Los Angeles. It changes the way people think. Tend to become slightly more brutal and less about family or the need of shelter and community.
ironbird- I agree with your comment that weather in LA affects the mindset of people. A place to call home is not physically necessary in LA, and more so than other warm areas because LA is so big and anonymous. With the right vehicle, no warrants and a clean tag, a person could be invisible for years.
Los Angeles has not had the NFL Football team for a reason.
coffee house, a haunt of beatniks and poets and where Francis Ford Coppola famously toiled on “The Godfather” screenplay
http://www.wsj.com/…/SB1000142405274870363040…The Wall Street Journal
From Godfather II. The scene that haunts me to this day b/c I can’t conceive of it being reality and yet I’m sure it’s an eternal theme…..
Puzo, Mario and Coppola, Francis Ford. (1973, September 24). THE GODFATHER Part Two, The Internet Movie Script Database
“PENTANGELI: Did my brother go back?
HAGEN: Yeah, but don’t worry.
PENTANGELI: He’s ten times tougher than me, my brother. He’s old-fashioned.
HAGEN: Yeah. He wouldn’t even go out to dinner. Just wanted to go home.
PENTANGELI: That’s my brother. Nothing could get him away from that two mule town. He coulda been big over here — he coulda had his own Family.”
Jump up ^ Puzo, Mario and Coppola, Francis Ford. (1973, September 24). THE GODFATHER Part Two, The Internet Movie Script Database
“MICHAEL: He said his girlfriend made a spaghetti sauce once and it was so terrible he knew he could never marry her. He set her up in a house in Jersey. She had to be faithful and she had to have kids. And she did. Two, a boy and a girl. He had her checked out and watched so she couldn’t cheat but the girl couldn’t stand that kind of life. She begged him to let her go. He did. He gave her money and made her give up the kids. Then Frankie took them to Italy and had them brought up by his brother Vincenzo. Where he knew they’d be safe.
(Kay begins to realize.)
MICHAEL:: When he saw his brother in the hearing room, he knew what was at stake. (pause) I don’t think Vincenzo would have done it. He loves the kids, too. Omertà, Kay. Honor, silence.”
M. le Fly,
Honest perspective. Bravo.
I was around and one thing that nobody remembers now is that a lot of movie industry people and hangers on expected Coppola to fail, to bring forth an enormous bomb that would bury everyone involved forever. People were laughing when Brando was cast; he had nearly a decade of disappointing films under his belt and nobody saw him as the character from the book (which I read at age 12 and thought was damn funny in a lot of places). Then people were seeing the daily rushes starting talking and by opening day it already had a mythic reputation. It’s an amazing achievement that is so wound into the fabric of pop culture that it’s hard to grasp just what an event it was at the time.