Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli Quotes

“Still, Luca Brasi has to die. And he would have to die violently, in one of the most chilling scenes of the film. “It means Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes,” Richard Castellano, as Clemenza, says when the late enforcer’s bulletproof vest is delivered to Sonny Corleone. Inside the vest are two large fish, a message from the killers, who ambushed the seemingly unkillable Luca Brasi after the don sent him to see what intel he could glean from Bruno Tattaglia.”
― Mark Seal, Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather

“The crew packed up and departed. Back in the van, no one could put into words what they had just witnessed. The performance had left Narita speechless.”
― Mark Seal, Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather

“Brando told Coppola not to record his voice, because he hadn’t settled on the don’s speech pattern. The director nodded to Narita to begin rolling, and Marlon Brando, supposedly washed up and finished as an actor, began to turn forty-seven years of preparation, experience, and talent into art.”
― Mark Seal, Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather

“Then, into the all-white living room—white carpet, white walls, white drapes—walked the man of the house: dressed in a Japanese kimono, his hair long and blond. He was “soft-spoken and reticent, very different from his screen persona,” said Narita. “I could have mistaken him for another person if I was not there to film Brando.”
― Mark Seal, Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather

“AS COPPOLA MINED Puzo’s novel for themes and characters, he found himself particularly drawn to Amerigo Bonasera. Here was an Italian immigrant who tended to the dead, begging Don Corleone for more death. “Good scene,” he wrote in the margin of his prompt book.”
― Mark Seal, Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather

“From that very first night, over a dinner of every conceivable Chinese dish, they fell in love with each other as collaborators, friends, and fellow food lovers, the first of many dinners to come. “When Mario heard Francis’s vision for the movie, he knew he really got it. And Mario was able to relax.”
― Mark Seal, Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather

“Puzo had worked on the screenplay alone before the arrival of Francis Coppola in late September 1970. The director met the novelist for the first time in Al Ruddy’s Paramount office, said Janet Snow, “two Italian Americans, both incredibly creative, with great and immediate respect for the other’s talent.”
― Mark Seal, Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather

“Puzo was even harder on himself. “Every Italian family has a ‘chooch,’ a donkey. That is, a family idiot everybody agrees will never be able to make a living,” he wrote in his 1972 book, The Godfather Papers and Other Confessions. And debt had made him the chooch in the Puzo family.”
― Mark Seal, Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather

“He had based much of The Godfather on a 1910 Western classic, “a book I read when I was a kid, Zane Grey’s Heritage of the Desert,” he said. His novel would represent a new form of Western with a new style of outlaw justice and at the perfect time.”
― Mark Seal, Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather

“looked”
― Mark Seal, Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather

“… Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” —Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus,” 1883 Engraved in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty I believe in America. —Amerigo Bonasera”
― Mark Seal, Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather

“The Godfather Journal.”
― Mark Seal, Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather

“THX 1138,”
― Mark Seal, Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather

“Zane Grey’s Heritage of the Desert,”
― Mark Seal, Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather

“I realized that there was the core of a profound story,” he said, “one of a classic succession concerning a great king with three sons, each of whom had a single element of what made the king great,” he said, later adding, “The oldest was given his passion and aggressiveness, the second his sweet nature and childlike qualities, and the third his intelligence, cunning, and coldness.”
― Mark Seal, Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather

“There was never a sccene between”
― Mark Seal, Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather

“which he would polish off quickly with a Diet Coke”
― Mark Seal, Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather

“Infamous Players.”
― Mark Seal, Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather

“The Godfather Journal,”
― Mark Seal, Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather

“Because Francis is Italian. He understands plastic on the sofa. He grew up in that whole environment.”
― Mark Seal, Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather