Page "Francis Ford Coppola" Paragraph 17

The release of The Godfather in 1972 was a milestone in cinema.

The near 3-hour-long epic, which chronicled the saga of the Corleone family, received overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics, and fetched Coppola the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, which he shared with Mario Puzo, and two Golden Globe Awards-for Best Director and Best Screenplay.

However, Coppola had to face a lot of difficulties while filming The Godfather.

He was not Paramount's first choice to direct the movie ; Italian director Sergio Leone was initially offered the job, but declined in order to direct his own gangster opus, Once Upon a Time in America.

Peter Bogdanovich was then approached but he also declined the offer and made What's Up, Doc?

instead ; Bogdanovich has often said that he would have cast Edward G. Robinson in the lead had he accepted the film.

According to Robert Evans, head of Paramount Pictures at the time, Coppola also did not initially want to direct the film because he feared it would glorify the Mafia and violence, and thus reflect poorly on his Sicilian and Italian heritage ; on the other hand, Evans specifically wanted an Italian-American to direct the film because his research had shown that previous films about the Mafia that were directed by non-Italians had fared dismally at the box office, and he wanted to, in his own words, " smell the spaghetti ".

When Coppola hit upon the idea of making it a metaphor for American capitalism, however, he eagerly agreed to take the helm.