The Godfather and the New Hollywood

These broader trends converged with Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather (1972), which revived the gangster genre (Rafter, 2000: 23) by redefining "generic conventions of the crime film in the direction of the family melodrama and the epic." (Browne, 2000: 2) This "hit a cultural nerve" (Biskind, 1998: 163) with audiences, creating the blueprint for the future blockbusters of Lucas and Spielberg. Its success accelerated Hollywood's acceptance of auteur theory (Lewis, 1995: 2) and created a symbolic struggle between its autonomy-seeking director and the monolithic 'Industry' (Browne, 2000: 10-11), which was fought against the backdrop of studio 'vertical disintegration' (Maltby, 1998: 31). Record box-office figures impacted on Wall Street (Lewis, 2000: 35), fuelling investment and the infiltration of New Hollywood by studio executives posing as counterfeit filmmakers.

In its emphasis on auteur theory, notably Coppola's blending of "American film genres and the tradition of the European art cinema" (Browne, 2000: 2) and his savvy "combination of art and exploitation" (Goodwin and Wise, 1989: 136), Godfather-oriented scholarship has often overlooked how the script collaboration between Coppola and Mario Puzo, and Coppola's subsequent production battles/editing feuds with studio executives, were a microcosm of wider industry changes, preferring to focus on personality and production history (Browne, 2000: 4). Although freed from Classical Hollywood's hierarchical 'command-and-control' structure, Puzo and Coppola would endure a series of psychological gambits with Gulf + Western (the conglomerate that owned Paramount) founder Charles Bludhorn (Bart, 1999: 118), studio president Stanley Jaffe, producer/executives Frank Yablans (New York City) and Peter Bart, and Robert Evans, who was Paramount's Vice President of Production. Evans had produced a string of hits including Rosemary's Baby (1968) and Love Story (1970). (Lewis, 1995: 112). These battles would have after-effects throughout Coppola's subsequent career.

American Zoetrope Woes

Coppola had founded the independent studio American Zoetrope in November 1969, spending $600,000 of Warner Brothers/Seven Arts' production funding on state-of-the-art production facilities (Lewis, 1995: 13-14; Lewis, 2000: 26). He had previously shot Dementia 13 (1963) for Roger Corman, Samuel Arkoff and AIP (Lewis, 1995: 167 n. 23) and helmed You're a Big Boy Now (1966), Finian's Rainbow (1968), and The Rain People (1969), which were all commercial failures (Lewis, 2000: 26). When Warner rejected his production slate, he was forced to freelance on television commercials and industrial films (Lewis, 2000: 26) to repay the debt.

Coppola's trajectory was mirrored by Paramount's disintermediation. The studio was selling its Melrose Place back-lot (Lewis, 1998: 91; Lewis, 2000: 23-24) and Godfather producer Al Ruddy summed the situation up like this: "Paramount had just lost seven billion on four or five movies that went completely out of control." (Goodwin and Wise, 1989: 113).

The studio's financial viability lay in the hands of Robert Evans, who along with Peter Bart, had optioned Mario Puzo's novel. Several conflicting accounts exist: Evans recalled advancing Puzo $12,500 to pay a bookie debt (Lewis, 2000: 25), whereas Coppola biographer Peter Cowie contended that the novel's rights had been purchased from William Targ at G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, in 1968 (Cowie, 1989: 60). Another version has Frank Yablans and Evans giving Puzo a Paramount office, stocked refrigerator, secretary, and $35,000 to finish the book (Goodwin and Wise, 1989: 111-112). The Brotherhood (1968), the studio's previous Mafia picture, had flopped, but Evans felt "a low-budget production seemed like a reasonable risk." (Cowie, 1989: 60).

The Auteur as Dealmaker

The studio considered many directors for the project, including Sidney J. Furie, Constantine Costas-Gravas and Peter Yates (Cowie, 1989: 61; Lewis, 1995: 15; Lewis, 2000: 27), but finally chose Coppola because he could be hired cheaply, he would deflect a looming controversy with the Italian-American community, and Bart felt, despite Coppola's past films, that "he excelled as a screenwriter, and his early directing efforts showed great promise. Most important, Coppola saw the movie as a great family saga, not just another shoot-'em up Mafia flick." (Bart, 1999: 112). Evans claimed he followed Bart's advice only to keep Burt Lancaster's independent company from seizing control of the project and any future profits (Lewis, 2000: 27).

Although hesitant to leave San Francisco (Biskind, 1998: 112), Coppola perceived "in The Godfather a journeyman assignment that might yet transcend the conventions of the gangster genre." (Cowie, 1989, 63) He wanted the freedom to create original scripts as writer-director (Biskind, 1998: 167), and confided that if the project netted him one million dollars to invest, this "could bring around fifty thousand dollars and with that coming in I could spend all my time writing my own stuff without the interruptions of having to deal with the studios." (Cowie, 1989: 77). As a godfather figure to many 1970s auteur-directors, Coppola glimpsed the possibilities "for revolutionary change [better] than anyone else." (Biskind, 1998: 416).

Coppola was also concerned with Evans' low $2 million budget limit and Puzo's profit-driven and sleazy plot (Biskind, 1998: 112), which "is either high-class junk or low-grade literature." (Goodwin and Wise, 1989: 117). He was finally convinced by Carmine Coppola and George Lucas to direct the film, because he "would never have to make another studio genre picture again." (Biskind, 1998: 112). Briefed on Paramounts' financial crises and Evans' mandated budget, Coppola turned the tables during the production meeting, giving a spectacular twenty-five minute speech on his personal vision of filmmaking. "He is a spectacular salesman. He's very funny and flamboyant," Ruddy said (Goodwin and Wise, 1989: 113). Coppola "negotiated for $125,000 and 6 percent of gross rentals." (Cowie, 1989: 61; Biskind, 1998: 154).