MOVIEMAZE

November 2022

ISSUE ONE

MOVIEMAZE INSIDE THE

Mafia Movies Special Edition

MOBBED UP WORLD

Get lost & found in the crazy mafia world, interview with Ford Coppola, Alpacino and even more.

MOVIEMAZE GET

LOST AND GET A TO Z

EDITOR’S NOTE

ISSUE 1, Nov 2022

Get lost & found in the crazy mafia world, interview with Ford Coppola, Alpacino and even more.

IT SEEMS IMPOSSIBLE now, but atthe time The Godfather was a major risk. Its director, Francis Ford Coppola, was coming off a small movie called The Rain People, which had costjust $750,000, a sum Vito Corleone wouldn’t get out of his chair for. Marlon Brando was seen as a washed-up has-been, called box-office poison” by a high-level executive who was agitating forCharles Bronson to play the Don instead. And nobody wanted the intense 31-year-old named Al Pacino to be in it either. The production was fraught, with raging arguments,tension and probably even the odd gun stashed behind a loo.

Flash forward five decades, and nobody is taking sides againstthe family again. Ever. TheGodfather is arguably the mostinfluential drama in cinema history, referenced in everything from The Sopranos to GilmoreGirls. And whatis Succession, but The Godfather with less blood and way more Fredos? Time has somehow only increased the 1972 movie’s power, its rich psychological undercurrents, its sumptuous cinematography, its ability to make anyone watching instantly want a cannoli. And so quoted is its dialogue that I’ve made a promise to myself notto use a hackneyed “offer you can’t refuse” reference on this page.

It was an easy call,then,to startthe New Year by looking backwards, dedicating our issue to a celebration of the Mob masterpiece. Terri White speaks to DonCoppola himself, a fascinating and highly candid conversation aboutthe highs and lows ofthe making ofthe film. And we catch up with many of the cast and crew, for articles packed with new revelations, wild tales and the odd cat cameo. In short, we’re pretty confident we’ve put together an offer you can’t refuse.

ENJOY!

MILA SNYDER Editor-In-Chief @MOVIEMAZE_MILA

It’s always a great pleasure to chat to Francis Ford Coppola, whose passion for cinema is infectious. I had 30 questions to get through - he spoke for 15 minutes on the first!.

MATT MOTTRAM Editor @MOVIEMAZE_MILA

Mafia Movies Special Edition

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WALK THROUGH 1

Introduction to the Mafia Movies 6

NEWS PATH

Martin Scorsese & The Cost of Doing Business with Netflix

FEATURED PATH

A Big & Beautiful 50

SCREEN PATH

ISSUE ONE, NOVEMBER 2022 INSIDE THE MOBBED UP WORLD

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INTRODUCTION TO THE MAFIA MOVIES

By Kuhn Westwell Illustration by Minh Thy Vo

A short definition

Mafia films—a version of gangster films—are a subgenre of crime films dealing with organized crime, often specifically with Mafia organizations. Especially in early mob films, there is considerable overlap with film noir. Popular regional variations of the genre include Italian Poliziotteschi, Chinese Triad films, Japanese Yakuza films, and Indian Mumbai underworld films.

Brief history

The American movie The Black Hand (1906) is thought to be the earliest surviving gangster film.[1] In 1912, D. W. Griffith directed The Musketeers of Pig Alley, a short drama film about crime on the streets of New York City (filmed, however, at Fort Lee, New Jersey) rumored to have included real gangsters as extras. Critics have also cited Regeneration (1915) as an early crime film.

Though mob films had their roots in such silent films, the genre in its most durable form was defined in the early 1930s. It owed its innovations to the social and economic instability occasioned by the Great Depression, which galvanized the organized crime subculture in the United States.[2] The failure of honest hard work and careful investment to ensure financial security led to the circumstances reflected in the explosion of mob films in Hollywood[3] and to their immense popularity in a society disillusioned with the American way of life.

Production code

As the appeal and attraction of gangster movie stars such as Cagney, Robinson, Muni, and Raft grew, so too did the efforts to combat their fascination. During the early years of crime film, Scarface, arguably the most violent of gangster films created during the entire decade, particularly was the subject of criticism. Released in 1932, it ushered in the worst year of the Depression, and as profits slid, Hollywood did what it could to restore its earnings, which resulted in the upping of sex and violence

in the movies.[11] Scarface can be interpreted as a representation of the American dream gone awry, presented when US capitalism had reached its lowest, and Prohibition was being seen as a failed social experiment and would soon be abolished.[12] It faced opposition from regulators of the Production Code, and its release was delayed for over a year while Hawks attempted to tone down the incestuous overtones of the relationship between Paul Muni’s character Tony Camonte and his sister (Ann Dvorak).

The Capone-like Carmote is in many ways the most monstrous gangster portrayed in 1930s films, a man utterly devoid of any positive qualities as he ruthlessly schemes and shoots his way to the top.[9] Through Carmote was closely based on Al Capone, the most notable aspect of his character, namely his “incestuous obsession” with his sister and the way he kills any man who expresses any sort of interest in her as he wants her for himself, was not based on Capone.[13] Besides for Capone, there are many references to The Great Gatsby in Scarface such as the scene where Carmonte lovingly caresses his silk shirts, which like the same scene in The Great Gatsby are a sign of material success for the protagonist.[14] The Great Gatsby was the best-selling novel of 1925, and the references to the novel in the film were meant to symbolize the decay of America from the hopeful days of 1925 to the sense of collapse of 1932.[14] The violence and the barely veiled theme of incestuous passion greatly outraged critics, churches, politicians and civic groups in 1932.[9]

The journalist Jack Alicoate in the Film Daily wrote that watching Scarface induced “nausea” in him and that “There are certain things that simply do not belong on the screen. The subject matter of Scarface is one of them”.[9]

Eventually the Production Code and general moral concerns became sufficiently influential to cause the crime film in its original form to be abandoned, with a shift to the

perspective of the law officers fighting criminals, or criminals seeking redemption. This is illustrated by James Cagney’s role as a law officer in the 1935 movie G Men, and his part as Rocky Sullivan in Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), for which he received an Academy Award nomination. These pictures demonstrate the growing acceptance of crime films during the 1930s as long as criminals were not portrayed in a flattering light. For example, in G-Men, Cagney plays a character similar to that of Tom Powers from The Public Enemy, and although the film was as violent and brutal as its predecessors, it had no trouble getting a seal of approval from the Production Code office.[15] It was now the law officers that the films attempted to glamorize, as opposed to the criminals.

Mafia Westerns

In Italian cinema after the Second World War, the Mafia was depicted in genre that was very close to the Westerns produced by Hollywood at the same time, as people on the mainland of Italy tended to see Sicily as a “frontier”, an island that the Italian state did not entirely control, and as a remote, mysterious and dangerous place.[27] Typical of these films was In nome della legge (1949) directed by Pietro Germi, which told the story of the magistrate Schiavo newly arrived from the mainland in a town in Sicily oppressed by the corrupt Baron Lo Vasto, who employs the Mafia to terrorize the people.[27] Schiavo, who plays a role analogous to the honest Sheriff in American Westerns, proceeds to “clean up” the town by imposing the authority of the Italian state and by persuading the local Mafia boss that the Baron is the enemy of the town.[28] In this and other films like I Mafiosi (1959) by Roberto Mauri, the Mafia was portrayed in romantic terms, with Mafiosi depicted as criminals who lived by a strict code of honor which reflected a peculiarly Sicilian version of machismo.[28]

In late 1940s-1950s, Mafiosi were portrayed as a sort of an Italian version of the “noble savage” as toug.

Oct. 10 2022

LET’S WALK THROUGH THE MOVIE GENRE!

NEWS PATH

MARTIN SCORSESE THE COST OF DOING BUSINESS WITH NETFLIX

Tuesday’s news that the iconic director’s next film— starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino—won’t screen in major theaters underlies the tension every filmmaker faces in the streaming age.

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? What about if it falls in front of many people, but at the same time as a million other trees, in a sort of wooden deluge? Some would say this is what it is like to have a film land on Netflix without ever screening in theaters—many people may be aware of the movie’s availability online, but just as many may lose track of it in a sea of content. In any case, no one will never know just how many people did watch said film, since Netflix doesn’t release viewing numbers. Martin

Scorsese’s The Irishman might just be the next invisible fallen tree in this (admittedly elaborate) metaphor. Which picked up the film after Paramount refused to further finance its very costly de-aging CGI effects, had failed to reach a distribution deal with theater chains such as AMC and Cineplex. Reportedly, the standstill between Netflix and major exhibitors stemmed from money, of course, but also from cinema chains’ traditional requirement of a period of 90 days between a film’s theater opening and its release on home entertainment. Netflix reportedly offered to keep The Irishman in theaters for 30 days before making it available on their platform, which was rejected. Simply, all of this means that the film, starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino (finally reunited), Joe Pesci, and countless other stars.

Despite the groundbreaking de-aging technology that promises to restore De Niro’s Casino good looks, The Irishman

By Manuela Lazic Photography by Netflix & Ringer Illustration Oct. 31 2022

almost looks like an old-fashioned Hollywood production: a period gangster film likely to have a few Rolling Stones.

THE IRISHMAN MAYBE THE FINAL MOVIE OF SCORSESE

Martin Scorsese looks to the future and where his directing career may go now that The Irishman has been nominated for a Golden Globe.

Lately, Martin Scorsese has been more in the news for his status as a legendary filmmaker, and his bone of contention with modern blockbusters, particularly the MCU, than the release of his latest film The Irishman. With the movie starting its awards season run, Scorsese revealed it may very well be his swan song.

Words that are sure to bring a feeling of dread to fans and critics alike. It is difficult to think of any other Hollywood director who enjoys as high a standing as Martin Scorsese, and with good reason. Although his filmography has declined somewhat in present times, Scorsese was one of the vanguards of the new ‘gritty’ cinema movement of the ‘70s and ‘80s, and his films came to embody a new kind of film hero, a morally questionable, flawed protagonist that audiences did not know whether to boo or cheer for. Martin Scorsese’s collaborations with Robert De Niro gave Hollywood some of its greatest films of all time, from Taxi Driver to Raging Bull. With the turn of the century, Scorsese found a new muse in Leonardo Dicaprio, with a fresh spate of successful films from Gangs of New York to Wolf of Wall Street.

The Irishman is Scorsese’s latest film in the gangster genre that he elevated and perfected, and it brings together such screen legends as Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci. Despite rave reviews, the movie was only able to stay in theaters for a brief time before going to streaming on Netflix. It was this difficulty in finding theater distribution for his film because of the influx of big-budget superhero epics that led Scroses to publicly and repeatedly criticize the MCU model of filmmaking, drawing the ire of superhero movie fans.

But now that all is said and done, it seems the filmmaker still feels there is a significant drop in filmmaking freedom for artists such as himself, and as a result, does not want to make any more movies. If that does happen, The Irishman will be a near-perfect send-off for a director who has proven himself creatively to be at the top of his game. But don’t start mourning jus yet. Scorsese had previously revealed that he will start filming for his next movie, an adaptation of David Grann’s best-selling non-fiction Killers of the Flower Moon next year. So what enticed five nonhorror aficionados to partake in a bona fide bloodbath?

As

it turns out, Bodies is more than the sum of its parts

The renowned filmmaker complained that “theatres have been commandeered by superhero films – you know, just people flying around and banging and crashing.” This shift in the cinema landscape seems to have expedited the 77-year-old retirement from directing.

“There’s no room for another kind of picture. I don’t know how many more I can make. Maybe this is it. The last one. So the idea was to at least get it made and maybe show it for one day at the NFT or The Cinematheque in Paris. I’m not kidding.”

Although his comments suggest The Irishman might have been his last directorial exercise, he’s not leaving film altogether. However, it looks like he’ll be taking a more curatorial approach to cinema.“I’m 77 and I’ve got things to do. Time is of the most value, right? I put my name on the line and say: ‘Yes, I think you should see this picture.’”

“I’m cool with a thriller. I love a murder mystery. Give me true crime any day. But a slasher moment? So not my jam at all,” Herrold says over a Zoom call from New York. “Not to say that I can’t appreciate them, but I have a very queasy stomach.” Sennott, on a separate call from LA, also cites a weak constitution: “Honestly, I get squeamish pretty easily, and so I get scared pretty easily too.” Bakalova, phoning from her native Bulgaria, says that she’s regularly spooked into sleeping with the lights on.

By Manuela Lazic

By Neeraj Chand

Photography by Netflix & Ringer Illustration Oct. 31 2022

Photography by Robert Green Oct. 22 2022

FEATURED PATH

ROBERT &

By Zach Baron

Photography by Richard Burbridge

Nov. 5 2022

ROBERT DE NIRO AL PACINO & A BIG & BEAUTIFUL 50 YEARS FRIENDSHIP

Al Pacino and Robert De Niro have spanned generations as acting royalty. And their latest, The Irishman, has the feeling of one final coronation. Here the two legends riff about Scorsese, The Godfather, and five decades of Hollywood fame.

The two men were sitting in a hotel suite in New York, trying to sum up 50 years of friendship and the weird, singular bond that comes from being two of the most heralded actors of their generation. The balcony door was open, to catch the September breeze. Last night Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, in which they both star, had premiered at the New York Film Festival, and they’d spent nearly every hour since being fêted. And so, despite their often formidable reputations, there was a sweetness about them. “New York Film Festival, this is a prestigious film festival!” Pacino said earnestly with all his excitement.

After the first showing of the film, De Niro and Scorsese emerged onto a balcony in Alice Tully Hall, arms around each other, as the crowd stood to applaud. Later that night, I watched De Niro and Pacino become overwhelmed by well-wishers at an after-party at Tavern on the Green, where Joe Pesci and Spike Lee and Bobby Cannavale mixed in with triumphant Netflix executives in an overheated VIP room. The reviews of the film were good. They looked, sitting on a couCh in front of me, like two men who couldn’t believe their luck was in their own hands.

In 1974 they both starred—in separate timelines that never intersect—in The Godfather Part II. It wasn’t until most of the way through 1995’s Heat that they finally appeared in the same frame of the same film, facing off across a diner table, and even then it was for only a few electric minutes.

In the interim, both De Niro and Pacino made innumerable classics, and also 2008’s Righteous Kill, the first film in which they shared multiple scenes. In The Irishman—based on Charles Brandt’s true-crime book I Heard You Paint Houses, about the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa (played in the film by Pacino) and the underworld into which he disappeared (represented by the hit man Frank Sheeran, played by De Niro)—the two men give surprisingly emotional performances, suffused by their history with each other and, in De Niro’s case, with Scorsese. (Somehow this is Pacino’s first role in a Scorsese film, and the first time the three men—along with their costars Pesci and Harvey Keitel—have made something all together.) The movie has the feel of an old and august gang reuniting for one last job and looking back, sometimes ambivalently, on many lifetimes of work about violence and love and loss.

We got together early on. “

On Pacino: Coat $4,540 by Isaia Shirt $445 Pants $6,195 by Giorgio Armani Bracelet his own

On De Niro: Coat $7,495

by Brunello Cucinelli Shirt $395 by Ermenegildo Zegna

By Zach Baron

Photography by Richard Burbridge Nov. 5 2022

In the rare instances when they get to work side by side, Pacino said, “it takes the edge off. And puts the other edge on.” They loom so large in the popular consciousness that they are preceded by caricatures, which aren’t entirely unfounded. Pacino, his long hair tied in a ponytail, is the more rhapsodic, and the clean-cut De Niro is the more reticent of the pair. (Asked how he and Scorsese came to cast Pacino in “The Irishman,” De Niro answered, “I said, ‘Marty, what do you think about Al for Hoffa?’ He said, ‘Yeah, great.’”)

But they also share a decades-old shorthand and when seated together, they draw each other out and enjoy tweaking each other. They both took great delight in the notion that Pacino would have had to try out for “The Irishman.” “Yeah, I asked him if he could read a few lines of it,” De Niro said sarcastically. He put up a hand and abruptly concluded the imaginary audition: “Oh, that’s great, O.K.,” he said. Pacino played along and, in a soft, gravelly voice, described how he would have handled the hypothetical assignment in that way.

Onscreen

They were up-and-comers enjoying early tastes of steady work and visibility, and they knew each other by name and reputation. They compared résumés, sized each other up — Pacino still remembers De Niro as having “an unusual look and a certain energy” — and each walked away wondering what the future held for himself and the man he had just met, and we can all believe in that future.

A half-century later, they ambled into a suite at a luxury hotel on the River Thames to talk about their new film, “The Irishman,” with so many of those uncertainties put to rest long ago. Whatever can be achieved as an actor, De Niro and Pacino have pretty much done it, surpassing even the outsize aspirations they had as young men. They have provided cinema with some of its most transfixing and explosive protagonists, in landmark films like — let’s just get these out of the way — “Taxi Driver,” “Scarface,” “Raging Bull” and the “Godfather” series. In doing so, their trajectories have become unexpectedly intertwined. They are not only peers and occasional collaborators but genuine friends who occasionally find time to check in, contemplate possible projects and push each other’s buttons.

“The Irishman,” which opens theatrically on Nov. 1 and will be released Nov. 27 on Netflix, is directed by Martin Scorsese, and it puts the two actors onscreen together for only the third time. The film, a crime drama of sweeping scope and ambition, is retrospective by design and decidedly conscious of the fact that eventually, everything ends. That is a theme with deep resonance for Pacino, who plays Jimmy Hoffa, the unmanageable president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and for De Niro, who is a producer of the film and plays its title character, Frank Sheeran, a Teamsters official and mobster who claimed credit for Hoffa’s murder. Pacino’s earliest breakthroughs arrived in the stage plays “The Indian Wants the Bronx” and “Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie?,” while De Niro’s came with the films “Bang the Drum Slowly” and “Mean Streets” (his first movie with Scorsese). The actors’ fledgling friendship became more crucial once their careers gained momentum and they turned to each other as colleagues.

And we shared something, which was a big thing at the time.

“

Both actors are mindful of their legacies

De Niro and Pacino Have Always Connected. Just Rarely

THE GODFATHER YEARS OF 50

In 1972, THE GODFATHER was unleashed on audiences. It was an offer they couldn’t refuse: a sweeping gangster epic doubling up as a devastating family drama. We talk to cast and crew about one of the greatest movies ever made.

THE GODFATHER AT 50 FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA MAKING DON CORLEONE

INTRODUCTION INTERVIEW BEHIND THE MAKING

As one of the greatest films of all time hits the half-century, we make its creator and cast an offer they could refuse. Thankfully, they didn’t, or you’d be looking at a whole bunch of empty pages. Our celebration of the gangster epic includes a whole lot of dedication of the team.

We sit down with the man who turned a pulpy bestselling novel into a classic of cinema. FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA has a lot of feelings about The Godfather. As he speaks to MOVIEMAZE via Zoom for a celebration of the film’s 50th anniversary.

How they transformed Brando into The Don. And you thought it was all cotton wool in the cheeks. Paramount didn’t want Brando for the film, but Coppola was hell bent on him, and got what he wanted by shooting a test. “Marlonput cotton in his cheeks and did this transformation.”

FIVE DECADES SINCE FRANCIS F. COPPOLA GAVE US THE MOVIE MASTERPIECE

Five decades. That’s how long it’s been since Francis Ford Coppola first gave cinemagoers an offer they couldn’t refuse: a movie masterpiece that’s at once an operatic gangster flick, and also a sweeping exploration of family ties and America itself, bursting with incredible performances, none-more-iconic sequences, and widely considered to be one of the greatest films of all time. It’s fair to say that The Godfather changed everything – and 50 years later, it’s still the Don. This month’s issue of MOVIEMAZE is a massive brand new celebration of an all-time-classic in honour of its milestone anniversary, taking the ultimate deep dive into a crime-family masterpiece that’s become synonymous with cinema itself. Inside, you’ll find a major new interview with Francis Ford Coppola, revisiting the making of the film, its tumultuous journey to the screen, and exploring what The Godfather means to him all these years later. Plus, we break down the film’s greatest scenes with the people who starred in them – from Talia Shire on the opening wedding, to Robert Duvall on the blood-soaked horse’s head sequence, to James Caan on that bullet-stricken tollbooth massacre. Plus, we revisit the incredible legacy of the late, great John Cazale –aka the actor behind the tragic figure of Fredo – and present rare behind the scenes photos from the shoot, capturing the making of moments that have long burned their way into the cinema history, and forever be remarkable.

Francis F. Coppola holds his Oscar for “The Godfather Part II” in 1975

FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA has a lot of feelings about The Godfather. As he speaks to MOVIEMAZE via Zoom for a celebration ofthe film’s 50th anniversary, it’s like he’s talking about the events of yesterday.

By Terri White

by Mark Mahaney Nov. 5 2022

Photography

FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA AND HIS FEELINGS ABOUT THE GODFATHER

Recounting the frustrations and fights and almost-firings, the shadow of stress dances across the 82-yearold’s face, as fresh, you sense, as when he first experienced it. But, out of a “nightmare” experience — with Coppola signed on to write and direct at just 29 — came not just one of the greatest gangster epics ever, but one ofthe greatest-ever American films. The story of the Corleone family, of its head Don Corleone (Marlon Brando) and his sons, was one of succession, of loyalty, of legacy. Coppola took a largely unsuccessful genre known for stories of greed and crime and made it about family, first and foremost. It remains a fascinating deconstruction of masculinity and of power, of the very futility of violence. After The Godfather dominated the box office on release, it went on to not only inspire countless other filmmakers but also have a resounding cultural impact that reverberates today. Quite simply, no Godfather, no Sopranos. Coppola himself followed it up with a career of diverse, rich films, but none arguably define him, will define his legacy, quite like The Godfather. And as we tug at the knots, it’s clear that while he might not have entirely made peace, he’s still grateful for a life changed completely by saying yes, in the end,to that offer from Paramountjust over five decades ago.Yes, Francis Ford Coppola has a lot of feelings about The Godfather. But frankly, don’t we all?

Fifty years! How does that feel?

Well, it’s odd, of course. To think that 50 years has gone by since the adventure of The Godfather, and when that changed my life so dramatically. Because now the Coppola family is considered synonymous with [the film by] many people, [but] when I came to LA, to UCLA Film School, I just dreamed to get a peek inside a studio.

And the film was a Coppola family affair — your daughter Sofia was in it at just three weeks old, your sons and wife are in the baptism scene, and there’s obviously your sister, Talia [Shire].

Well, I knew nothing about gangsters [but] my family,the family style, whatit was like to have dinner, allthe specifics, the food, the expressions, the songs... I brought a lot of my experience as an Italian family into the making of The Godfather. In a sense, it was a movie about a family made by a family, my family.

Does it now exist as an eternal record of your family?

Yes. No question. Sofia, who is 50 years old today, was a tiny baby, and the only reason she was in the movie was because she was there, and I had to get an infant. Many ofthe people at the wedding were cousins or people who would sing at family occasions. That gave the movie a certain flavour of authenticity which distinguished it.

Does it now exist as an eternal record of your family?

Yes. No question. Sofia, who is 50 years old today, was a tiny baby, and the only reason she was in the movie was because she was there, and I had to get an infant. Many ofthe people at the wedding were cousins or people who would sing at family occasions. That gave the movie a certain flavour of authenticity which distinguished it.

When Paramount first called about directing The Godfather, you said no. Was that partly due to concerns about the representation of Italian American culture?

Not at all. My desire was to be the kind of filmmaker who wrote and directed more personal projects. The Godfather was a big successful book. I thoughtit was a serious work about power, and I was interested. But when I read it, it was more of a potboiler — it’s sort of stupid, it’s about a woman who has sexual problems. [But] later when I looked at it, I saw that underneath all that other stuff designed to make it a bestseller was a story of a king who had three sons. It was about who was going to take over. It was like a Shakespearean play. script they had wasn’t in very good shape. He’s Italian American, so if there’s a backlash about this film — insulting, showing them as gangsters — they figured I would take the insult because I was Italian. So, I fit the bill on three counts.

You’ve said before that just the memory of The Godfather brings you “great unhappiness”. Does 50 years passing so ften the edges of that at all?

It softens. Of course, a lot of people have the theory that you do your best work when you’re under tension. I don’t think so. The Godfather Part II, I had a lot of power.

Did you know that other directors had passed at that point?

Well, I heard about that, [but] the book was becoming more and more acclaimed, and why would someone totally unimportant like myself get the job when there were great filmmakers? The truth was there had been a Mafia-type movie, The Brotherhood [Paramount’s 1968 Kirk Douglas film], and it wasn’t successful. The idea of doing another gangster picture was good if they could do it for $2 million. One of the first things I got in trouble

for was I wanted to make it in the 40s, the same as the book, and in New York, where it was set. That made the movie very difficult to do for $2 million, so immediately, the rumour was I was going to be fired. When I was making The Godfather, the rumour every week was some new reason why they were going to fire me…

It’s been said that one scene saved you, because the studio saw it and loved it — the restaurant scene. Yes, and no. I mean, different things

saved me at different times. I remember watching the Oscars with my friend Marty Scorsese, and when I won the Oscar for the script of Patton, Marty said to me, “Well, I guess they’re not going to be able to fire you right away, because you just won the Oscar for a screenplay.” That saved me, and each week something else saved me. It’s true that the restaurant scene [saved me] but even after that there were still rumours of me getting fired. After Marlon [Brando’s] first day,the big rumour was I was going to get fired

COPPOLA OPENS UP

that week because people watching the film, running it, felt the scene was too dark, you could hardly see him, and that he mumbled. When I said, “Give me a chance, it’s his first day, let me go through a second take,” they said, “No, you can’t.” Then someone said, “The reason they don’t want you to do itis because this weekend they’re going to put a new director in.” I justimmediately fired allthe people who were in my team who were lobbying to get me out. I went up there and shot the scene a second time, and saved myself,

basically, by firing all the people who were working to fire me. It was very much like that: it was touch-and-go the whole production. There was the perception that I had some power. But I really had no power at all.

What was the single biggest challenge with the studio? You had to fight for both Brando and Pacino. Well,they didn’tlike the idea of shooting it in New York, because of costs. They didn’tlike the cast — they didn’t want Al Pacino; they didn’t want Marlon

Brando. It was said very eloquently by the Head [Of Production], he had a Viennese accent, “We tested every actor in Hollywood, they were all terrible. How is it possible they’re all terrible? The actors are not terrible, it’s the director who is terrible.” We knew he had to have some sort of charisma, because everyone rotated around The Godfather. His sons adored him, he was powerful with the other Mafia leaders, so we tried and it’s difficult. You can’t find someone new to play a 65-year-old man.

By Terri White

“I’ve heard The Godfather cited as one of the greatest movies ever made. When you compare me to the great artists of cinema, like G.W. Pabst and FritzLang, and the great Murnau,Hitchcock, then the great Italian and Japanese directors — when you really view the heroes of cinema, I have to say that I should be considered just a second-rate director. But I’mafirst-rate secondrate director. So that’s what I leave you with.”

Photography by Mark Mahaney Nov. 5 2022

CREATING CORLEONE

He mumbled, he mooned,... and he gave one of Hollywood’s most memorable performances. The Godfather’s associate producer and casting director remember how MARLO BRANDO brought the Don to life.

By Alex Godfrey

Photography by Richard Burbridge Nov. 1 2022

THE CAT

For Don Corleone’s introductory sequence, Brando strokes a cat sitting on his lap in his office, bringing a surreal and somewhat sinister air to proceedings. Yet that was never the plan. “This was a lucky happenstance,” says Roos. “In preparing to shoot the ‘I believe in America’ scene, an old cat wandered onto the set. Francis picked it up and put it into Marlon’s lap, no explanation or discussion. Marlon just went with it and used it as a subtle prop.” In other ways, the cat was less helpful. “The first time the studio saw those dailies, they had a hard time understanding Marlon — he was mumbling because of the implants in his mouth, and the cat was purring right into the radio mic,” laughs Frederickson. The purrs were purged in post-production.that Vito had survived and was furious when he discovered this fact not long ago.

THE MAKE UP

Paramount didn’t want Brando for the film, but Coppola was hellbent on him, and got what he wanted by shooting a test. “Marlon put cotton in his cheeks and did this transformation into kind of what we see in the movie,” remembers associate producer Gray Frederickson. “Then Dick Smith, the make-up guy, was commissioned to make him look like he did in that test. They made little implants for him, to push his cheeks out.” They also needed to make Brando — then 47 — look 20 years older. “Marlon was technically too young for the role of the Don, a man well into his sixties, so he had to be aged,” says casting director Fred Roos. “Dick Smith was the best make-up man in the business for this.

THE WEDDING SINGER

Don Corleone has, as Michael (Al Pacino) says, aggressively helped his godson, singer Johnny Fontane (Al Martino), with his career, by giving a band leader an offer he couldn’t refuse. In Corleone’s office during his daughter’s wedding party, a pathetic Fontane asks for some help; an impatient Corleone shouts at him, slaps him in the face and reprimands him for crying “like a woman”. The physical altercation was unscripted. “Marlon was very frustrated with Al Martino, because Al Martino was not an actor,” says Frederickson of the singer playing a singer. “Marlon got so angry — that bit where he shakes him and says, ‘Act like a man!’, Marlon really felt that way. That was him expressing his frustration with Al.

THE ASSASINATION ATTEMPT

In December 1945, Vito was nearly killed in an assassination attempt after he refused the request of Virgil Sollozzo to invest in a heroin operation and use his political contacts for the operation’s protection. The deal would also involve an alliance between the Corleone and Tattaglia families that Vito would rather have avoided.

Don Corleone has, as Michael (Al Pacino) says, aggressively helped his godson, singer Johnny Fontane (Al Martino), with his career, by giving a band leader an offer he couldn’t refuse. In Corleone’s office during his daughter’s wedding party, a pathetic Fontane asks for some help; an impatient Corleone shouts at him, slaps him in the face and reprimands him for crying “like a woman”. The physical altercation was unscripted. “Marlon was very frustrated with Al Martino, because Al Martino was not an actor,” says Frederickson of the singer playing a singer. “Marlon got so angry — that bit where he shakes him and says, ‘Act like a man!’, Marlon really felt that way. That was him expressing his frustration with Al.

Prior to the assassination attempt, Vito Corleone left his office in the Genco Pura Olive Oil warehouse. He was supposed to be driven back to his Long Beach home by his regime man Paulie Gatto along with his son Fredo. When the Don found that Paulie was not there, Fredo let him know that Paulie had bunked his duty of that day due to a cold. The Don was ambushed and shot down by two hitmen as he purchased oranges from a stall. Fredo fumbled with his gun, and failed to defeat the hitmen, falling to the sidewalk and sobbing as his father lay in a pool of blood, unconscious.

The assassination attempt is simultaneous to other multi-directional attacks on the family: Vito’s most trusted and feared enforcer Luca Brasi was sent to infiltrate the Tattaglia family several weeks earlier, but was taken by surprise and murdered in a nightclub by Tattaglia’s son Bruno, Tattaglia associate Sollozzo and an unnamed hitman. Following the assassination, Tom Hagen was kidnapped and told to reason with Santino, who was now the acting head of the family. Sollozzo was unaware that Vito had survived and was furious when he discovered this fact.

By Richard Lawson

In The Irishman, a merry darkness slowly becomes an elegy, ringed with guilt. And what could be more Irish than that?

Photography by Niko Tavernise

THE IRISHMAN REVIEW MARTIN SCORSESE FINDS GRACE IN GANGSTERLAND

The elders are restless. Or at least they are at the New York Film Festival, where two veteran directors are screening new films about the sad plod of aging. Pedro Almodóvar, Spain’s flagship filmmaker, has brought his Cannes award winner Pain & Glory to Lincoln Center, where it will no doubt enjoy more praise on its way to possible Oscar recognition. And the big-ticket world premiere at this festival is its opening night film, The Irishman, a nearly-three-and-a-half-hour gangster epic from New York’s own hero, Martin Scorsese. The Irishman is less literal about its metamoodiness than Pain & Glory is, but it still speaks disarmingly quiet volumes about what the autumn of life might mean for its creator.

So much of The Irishman’s DNA will be familiar to anyone with even a cursory knowledge of Scorsese’s past work. It’s about murder and the Mob; it features voice-over and kicky retro tunes. It stars Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, and spends most of its time in the 1960s and 1970s. We’ve seen this from Scorsese before, in Goodfellas and Casino, two meaty but agile gems. They’re hugely influential movies, ones that paved the way for the Mob drama The Sopranos, which in turn heralded the beginning of our current television boom. The lifelong film buff behind those two movies—and thus, inadvertently, the TV surge—has tried his hand at the small screen too, ever willing to experiment, but he mostly still makes pictures. Ironically—or maybe not at all ironically—his new one will stream on Netflix, a compromise that locates the film in modernity while also affording Scorsese.

Before seeing the film, I thought the amount of resources (a reported $160 million) was ludicrous, especially considering what they were to be used for. A portion of the film’s budget was spent on de-aging graphic technology, meaning the older actors involved could play themselves in the past too. It seemed like a garish idea, one with unnerving potential ramifications for filmed entertainment.

In actual practice, this eerie computer wizardry is not as grotesque as I thought it might be, nor is it as noticeable. De Niro and Pesci’s faces are smoothed to earlyish middle age for much of the movie, and there is some awkwardness there, especially when the movement of their septuagenarian bodies works so incongruously under their more youthful-looking heads. But you forget about it soon enough. All that money spent hasn’t resulted in a perfect, seamless wonderment, but it’s ultimately not much of a distraction.

And as The Irishman wends its way through the years, one begins to realize that there’s something crucial about sitting with the same actors for so long. It communicates the weight and ravages of time more keenly than if the actors had been swapped out halfway through. That the ache of the film’s journey, from nascency to oblivion, is worn-on versions of the same faces helps get at the meaning lying at the heart of it all. It’s a rare example of technology allowing us to feel something more than we otherwise ever might feel.

The film’s huge budget also meant that Scorsese and his creative team—cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, production designer Bob Shaw, art director Laura Ballinger, costume designers Sandy Powell and Christopher Peterson, et al.—could stage the film with period tailoring.

The Irishman is specifically about the self-professed Mob hit man Frank Sheeran, a truck driver turned enforcer turned union bigwig (while still enforcing) who made the disputed claim that he was the guy who killed long-missing, presumed-dead Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa (all detailed in the book I Heard You Paint Houses, used as primary source material here). The movie takes its time getting to its imagining of that sorry event, building an origin myth full of other murder and mayhem that Scorsese shoots with his usual mix of bluntness and glide. There’s lots of funny Mob guy talk, poor mooks get what they had coming, women flit around the edges like angels of redemption and concern. (No woman gets nearly as much to do here as Lorraine Bracco and Sharon Stone got in their Scorsese Mob movies.) It’s all amiably familiar, bloody and gnarly but done with wry humor. Y’know, a very “one for them” Scorsese movie.

In actual practice, this eerie computer wizardry is not as grotesque as I thought it might be, nor is it as noticeable. De Niro and Pesci’s faces are smoothed to earlyish middle age for much of the movie, and there is some awkwardness there, especially when the movement of their septuagenarian bodies works so incongruously under their more youthful-looking heads. But you forget about it soon enough. All that money spent hasn’t resulted in a perfect, seamless wonderment, but it’s ultimately not much of a distraction.

It’s about murder and the Mob De-aging graphic technology

The veteran director’s new Netflix film treads familiar territory before evolving into a rueful meditation on life.

It’s all amiably familiar, bloody and gnarly but done with wry humor.coming

The Irishman is specifically about the self-professed Mob hit man

Frank Sheeran, a truck driver turned enforcer turned union bigwig (while still enforcing) who made the disputed claim that he was the guy who killed long-missing, presumed-dead Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa (all detailed in the book I Heard You Paint Houses, used as primary source material here).

THE IRISHMAN THE MOB GREATEST HIT AFTER £112M SLURGE & 12 YEARS IN THE MAKING

The Irishman is specifically about the self-professed Mob hit man

Frank Sheeran, a truck driver turned enforcer turned union bigwig (while still enforcing) who made the disputed claim that he was the guy who killed long-missing, presumed-dead Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa (all detailed in the book I Heard You Paint Houses, used as primary source material here).

But gradually the film hushes itself into something far more contemplative, Scorsese heading away from the ring-a-ding and toward, well, Silence. What was all this scrambling and annihilation for, really, this violence and grasping for power that so wholly dominated, and in some cases ended, these men’s desperate lives? It’s a softly stated question, but has more resonance than any consideration of the mortality of unrepentant serial murderers maybe needs to. Scorsese, as ever, riskily courts sympathy for these thugs, and while there might be some notes of over-reverence in The Irishman, I think he mostly maintains the proper perspective. These are bad guys who’ve done bad things, but in the movie’s whispery allegory, all that misdeed is a harsh metaphor.

I don’t know that that’s necessarily how Scorsese is considering his own life and career. Steven Zaillian wrote The Irishman’s screenplay, so there’s probably some heavy stuff on his mind, too. But it’s hard not to read a bit of Scorsesian self-reflection into the film. It’s there in the way the director happily revels in his proficiency, gamely telling a rambling old story that we’ve maybe heard before, only to then underscore it—undercut it?—with an unexpectedly mournful pathos. “Here’s how I would have made Goodfellas, had I only known then,” Scorsese seems to say with a weary new wisdom—a ruefulness, too.

That sense of realization certainly feels like an achievement for us in the audience. I like a long movie, but a 209-minute movie is a really long movie. Though some stretches of the film have a repetitive drag, one’s endurance proves rewarding. The luxurious pacing of the film allows for many moments of piercing observation and detail that may otherwise have ended up on the cutting room floor. Its actors are impressively up for the marathon. De Niro finds more shading in Frank than he has in his past gangsters, ditto

Pesci, who mutes his agitated staccato and instead operates with a sad-eyed soulfulness. (Pesci’s is my favorite performance in the film.)

Joining the Scorsese troupe for the first time (yes, really!) is Al Pacino, who bellows and flusters as Jimmy Hoffa. It’s classic, satisfying Big Al stuff, outsize and weirdly accented. He’s a joy to watch, silly and serious in equal measure. That’s fitting, I guess, that Pacino, on his first outing with Scorsese, should get to do most of the fun stuff, while the returning players are tasked with the rooting out, with gently explicating the film’s deeper, more sorrowful idea.

All that melancholy isn’t used to excuse the goons at the center of the story, I don’t think. We are left aware of the lingering echo of the lives they snuffed out. And yet the film does at least extend them the (decidedly Catholic) grace of basic understanding. In that way The Irishman avoids both the bitterness and the cloying sentimentality that can so often govern movies about aging and obsolescence.

By Kat Jackson Photography by Richard Burbridge Nov. 5 2022

SCARFACE THE BEST MAFIA MOVIE EVER MADE

By Duane Byrge Nov. 3 2022

On Dec. 1, 1983, Universal premiered Brian De Palma’s 170-minute, R-rated gangster remake in New York.

The great gangster films of the 1930s were taken directly from the headlines, and this remake of Howard Hawks’ 1932 classic Scarface spills off today’s front pages. The seemingly out-ofcontrol drug trade in Southern Florida, coupled and inflamed by Fidel Castro’s cynical export of some of Cuba’s most hardened criminals to this country in 1981, are the plot coordinates.

The filmmakers have adhered to Hawks’ original notions (putting the Borgias in Chicago) and have patterned their characters after the now archetypal ’32 originals: the amoral, ruthless gangster (Pacino), the feisty, WASP mistress (Michelle Pfeiffer), the cowardly, flabby boss (Robert Loggia), the impetuous fiery sister (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) and the attractive, murderous partner (Steven Bauer). Screenwriter Stone has superimposed these characters upon today’s sordid Miami.

Directed by BRIAN DE PALMA

Ultimately winning an R rating in its controversy with the MPAA, this excruciatingly violent film, punctured by rapid-fire expletives, may rack up initial impressive numbers at the box office in its first weeks of release, attracting those aroused by the ratings controversy as well as the implications of sheer malevolence. But other than an unflinching, intense and extraordinary performance from Al Pacino as the Cuban-born gangster Tony Montana, this gruesome offering has little to recommend. A significant drop-off may be anticipated and, as well, a possible moral backlash against the ratings system for changing its initial X rating.

To make an unredeemably odious gangster fascinating for the entire length of a feature film is a monumental task. A filmmaker must abdicate his cinematic license to give the audience someone to root for, and such a dispensation (though brave) usually results in financial suicide. To their credit, director Brian De Palma and screenwriter Oliver Stone have not copped out by making their bantam, macho hood lovable — his integrity reaches its most beneficent level when, coked out of his mind, he point-blank blows away a hit-man to save the wife and children of an investigator they’re trying to blow up. In line with the consistent brutality of his overall behavior, such charity can only be attributed to “diminished capacity.”

The 1932 Scarface, which Universal owns via a purchase from Howard Hughes Summa Corp. (and has kept largely under wraps ever since), is renowned for the breezy, blunt dialogue of Ben Hecht and the technically assured style of Howard Hawks. Unfortunately, Stone’s dialogue in this remake contains more lead than the film’s considerable expenditure of ammo, and DePalma’s direction brings the film in at a plodding, if noisy, 170 minutes, hardly resembling the 1932 film which was applauded for its economy of movement.

The great gangster films of the 1930s were taken directly from the headlines, and this remake of Howard Hawks’ 1932 classic Scarface spills off today’s front pages. The seemingly out-ofcontrol drug trade in Southern Florida, coupled and inflamed by Fidel Castro’s cynical export of some of Cuba’s most hardened criminals to this country in 1981, are the plot coordinates.

The filmmakers have adhered to Hawks’ original notions (putting the Borgias in Chicago) and have patterned their characters after the now archetypal ’32 originals: the amoral, ruthless gangster (Pacino), the feisty, WASP mistress (Michelle Pfeiffer), the cowardly, flabby boss (Robert Loggia), the impetuous fiery sister (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) and the attractive, murderous partner (Steven Bauer). Screenwriter Stone has superimposed these characters upon today’s sordid Miami.

Scarface is dedicated to Howard Hawks and Ben Hecht. It is a generous and obviously heartfelt dedication.

GOODFELLAS SERVES AS THE BRIDGE BETWEEN ‘THE GODFATHER’ & ‘THE SOPRANOS’

If it’s true that every great work of art ends one genre and founds another, then Goodfellas could be seen as the culmination of the tradition represented by The Godfather and as the vital link between the New Hollywood cinema of the ’70s and what we now think of as the golden age of TV

The world, as Fredo Corleone knew it, has never been an easy place for middle children. Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas opened 30 years ago this week, on September 19, 1990. It came out between The Godfather, which opened in March 1972, and The Sopranos, which premiered in January 1999. And if you imagine Goodfellas as the second installment in the great informal American mob trilogy made up of these works, then it’s clear that Scorsese’s madcap gangster epic is the hardest to talk about on its own, even as it might be the greatest artistic achievement of the three. It’s possible to talk about The Godfather and The Sopranos without mentioning Goodfellas, but any conversation about Goodfellas inevitably involves a lot of discussion of one or both of the other two works. Even if the upshot is to argue that Goodfellas is better than The Godfather, as Roger Ebert thought it was, or that it inspired The Sopranos, as David Chase acknowledges it did, its counterparts seem to keep it under a kind of reverential shadow.

In part, this is because its importance is harder to quantify. The Godfather revolutionized the movies. The Sopranos revolutionized TV. Scorsese’s film, the sprawling story of Henry Hill, a mid-shelf, midcentury mobster played by Ray Liotta, and his cronies in the not-quite-big-time Brooklyn underworld, didn’t revolutionize anything. The movie didn’t launch an array of imitators (at least, not imitators that weren’t already imitating The Godfather) or transform an industry. It contained its share of iconic moments—“Now go

By

home and get your fuckin’ shinebox”; “You think I’m funny?”— but none on the “May the Force Be With You” god-tier rung of half a dozen moments from The Godfather, or on the slowburn cultural-obsession level of the gradually unfolding plots of The Sopranos. (The ending of Goodfellas, for instance, didn’t provoke a national nervous breakdown.) Goodfellas didn’t do any of that stuff. It was only a perfect movie.

The partially eclipsed condition of what might be Scorsese’s best film isn’t really fair. In one sense, though, it’s understandable. Goodfellas is far more than a transitional film, but it does link the past and the future in some important ways. If it’s true that every great work of art ends one genre and founds another, then Goodfellas could be seen as the culmination of the tradition represented by The Godfather and as the vital link between the New Hollywood cinema of the ’70s and what we now think of as the golden age of TV. It took the central tension of the old mob-movie genre—the tension between our emotional identification with the characters and our moral judgment of their actions—to a giddy new place that looked ahead not just to Tony Soprano but to Walter White, Don Draper, and the other prestige antiheroes of 21st-century TV.

Why does a person become a gangster, and how do we, the audience, feel about the choice? This has been a driving question for mob movies since Scarface meant James Cagney, not Al Pacino: How, filmmakers ask, can we be made to invest emotionally in characters who behave in ways (murdering, lying, cheating, stealing) we would find terrifying, even evil, in real life? This is not a new tension in art—Don Giovanni was not exactly a Presbyterian—but in a genre obsessed with the codes and customs of people who reject the usual norms of society, it can be a powerful line of inquiry into the moral status of art itself.

If I can enjoy watching someone doing evil deeds on screen, the gangster movie asks, if I can root for that person despite knowing on another level that what he’s doing is wrong, then what kind of moral judgment falls on me? What kind of moral judgment falls on the artistic medium that coaxed me into this position? (That this is a problem not just for crime movies but for more or less the whole gamut of film genres ranging from war movies to superhero epics— “Why do I like watching someone shoot/stab/rob/lightsaber/ retractable-hand-claw someone?”—is maybe one reason the mob movie, as a major venue for exploring the question, seems to have such lasting importance for film.)

The Godfather approaches this tension by imbuing the world of organized crime with a dark grandeur of feudal morality. In the Corleones’ universe, honor and family tradition are the gateway virtues that lead to a life of crime; power reinforces itself within a complex web of obligation and loyalty. Michael Corleone starts out as someone

Brian Phillips

Photography by Adam Villacin Nov. 12 2022

who, like the viewer, is looking in on the mob from the outside. During the first film, he’s slowly brought inside, but the director, Francis Ford Coppola, works this through a particularly sneaky and brilliant trick. The Godfather gives Michael a series of decisions in which the seemingly “good,” or at least brave and honorable, course prompts him to move deeper and deeper into mob life. Michael’s father is shot; he has to help his family get revenge. He retreats to Sicily, where he sees La Cosa Nostra in a romantic and pastoral form; his young wife is murdered, further pulling him into mafia conflict. His family is betrayed and dragged into a war;

he realizes only he has the brains and ruthlessness to win it. He never asked for this. The mob pulls him in by exploiting his better qualities, and kills his soul by exploiting its very depth. Or at least it does right up until it crosses the invisible line that makes it feel queasy and disturbing. Or it does until you see the psychological toll that this kind of fun has on the deeply (or rather, shallowly) non-introspective guys who enjoy it. But the point is that Scorsese doesn’t hide any of this. The thrill of watching the characters behave badly keeps swerving uneasily into recognition of the damage their bad behavior does to everyone they meet.

WAY OUT

By Zach Baron

Illustration by Minh Thy Vo Nov. 13 2022

ESSENTIAL MAFIA SLANGS YOU NEED TO KNOW

CAPO DEI CAPI

Italian term - [kapo dei kapi]

1

Noun - /bæɡ.mən/ BAGMAN

“Boss of all [the] bosses” is a phrase used mainly by the media, public and the law enforcement community to indicate a supremely powerful crime boss in the Sicilian or American Mafia who holds great influence over the whole organization, 2

In organized crime, a bagman may be involved in protection rackets or the numbers game, collecting or distributing the money involved. When acting as an intermediary in such activities, a bagman may also be called a delivery boy or running man, and may receive a fraction of the money collected. Journalist Jack Shafer defines “bag man” as a slang term “for criminals who perform deliveries and run errands for other criminals.”[9] In criminal operations involving disbursements of cash as illegal payments for some service, a bagman delivers the money, often cash, to the recipient, such as Fred LaRue in the Watergate affair.

Al Pacino in the iconic scence THE GODFATHER as boss Michael Corleone

Bagman holds his MONEY for his goodfellas

LUPARA BIANCA

Verb - [lupara bjaŋka]

3

5

Typical ways to carry out a lupara bianca include burying a victim in the open countryside or in remote places where it would be difficult to find it, or burying the victim in the concrete found in construction sites, or dissolving the body in acid and throwing the remains in the sea: this latter method was widely used by the Corleonesi faction during the Second Mafia War. [3] Other methods included dissolving a body in a wet lye pit, feeding remains to hogs, or pitching the victim (dead or alive) into a steel mill’s molten metal. The lupara bianca prevents the family of the victim from holding a proper funeral, and it also destroys evidence.

GOOMAH FORGET ABOUT IT

Noun - /goom·ah/ often pronounced “fuggedaboutit”

Americanized form of comare, a Mafia mistress. A mafioso’s mistress. Normally a girlfriend of a married mobster. A girlfriend on the side, for a married mafia figure. comare: literally “godmother” in Southern Italian slang, usually pronounced “goomah” or “goomar” in American English: a Mafia mistress. Ex: Big Paulie told his wife he was out with the boys, but really he was bangin’ his goomah at a hotel.

4

“Forget about it” is, like, if you agree with someone, you know, like “Raquel Welch is one great piece of ass. Forget about it!” But then, if you disagree, like “A Lincoln is better than a Cadillac? Forget about it!” You know? But then, it’s also like if something’s the greatest thing in the world, like, “Minchia! Those peppers! Forget about it!” But it’s also like saying “Go to hell!” too. Like, you know, like “Hey Paulie, you got a one-inch pecker?” and Paulie says “Forget about it!” Sometimes it just means “Forget about it.”

Lupara Bianca favorite crime done for Mafia Movies such as The Irishman

Goomah’s typical portrait after Kay Adams in “The Godfather Part II” in 1975

Noun - /knsliəri/ CONSIGLIERE

A position within the leadership structure of the Sicilian, Calabrian, and Italian-American Mafia. The word was popularized in English by the novel The Godfather (1969) and its film adaptation. In the novel, a consigliere is an advisor or counselor to the boss, with the additional responsibility of representing the boss in important meetings both within the boss’s crime family and with other crime families.

The consigliere is a close, trusted friend and confidant, the mob’s version of an elder statesman. They are an advisor to the boss in a Mafia crime family, and sometimes is their “right-hand man”. By the very nature of the job, a consigliere is one of the few in the family who can argue with the boss, and is often tasked with challenging the boss when needed.

Consigliere appears in almost all Mafia Movies such as Tom Hagen The Godfather Triology

WHY WE LOVE THE MAFIA IN THE MOVIES

By Peter Maas Sept. 10 2022

The mafia embodies and reflects our deepest anxieties

Enter now the Mafia to embody and reflect our deepest anxieties, yearnings, wonderment and, most important, our imagination. What better mirrors fierce free enterprise with everyone’s (shiver) life literally on the line, the resourcefulness of a nation ever on the move, constantly plunging into innovative and profitable technologies (like, say, casino gambling)? Who among us, having been wronged, has not fantasized about calling upon brothers in blood to wreak suitable vengeance - an icepicked body, perhaps, trussed like a turkey bobbing up somewere?

Even the late Joe Valachi, who was the first member of the Mafia to reveal its innermost secrets, had a great idea for the opening scene of a movie, which he described during one of my interviews with him.We are in the murky depths of New York’s East River. A scuba diver slowly wends his way downstream along the botton

The western, for example. ‘’Go west, young man,’’ said Horace Greeley to a nation gripped by the fervor of the frontier spirit, but it was Hollywood that engendered and cultivated the myth, imbedding it so deeply in the American psyche.

Mobsters are often portrayed as men who care about their communities and who live by their own codes of honor and conduct, impervious to the political whims of the establishment.

Heroes are flawed, not superhuman projections of good or evil. Its personas are caught in destinies not of their own making.

Its heroes are flawed, not superhuman projections of good over evil. Its personas are caught in destinies not of their own making. Never mind that loyalty and honor play no part in the actual Mafia. Perceived reality is what counts here. The ‘’Godfather’’ saga contains everything that concerns and excites us: family, romance, betrayal, power, lust, greed, legitimacy and, yes, salvation. And it is all played out on a grand stage, with death, inevitable and most often violent, waiting in the wings. Its roots are foreign, yet the battlefield is as American as apple pie. We are, as always, a nation of immigrants.

The dividing line is drugs, our national scourge, the same line that real Mafiosi vainly fall back on to try to differentiate themselves from one another. Once that was established, venality is simply a matter of degree. What’s the difference, after all, between someone out to control private garbage collection with the judicious use of baseball bats on kneecaps and a cabal of ostensibly upright savings and loan bank officials bilking the public out of billions of dollars?

Comes at long last, after a lapse of some 18 years, ‘’Godfather III.’’ We live in volatile times and in the interim there have been any number of Mafia movies. There has even been an echo of ‘’Blazing Saddles.’’ In one recent film, ‘’The Freshman,’’ Marlon Brando marvelously satirized himself as Don Corleone. The running gag in the film is the sudden shock of confused recognition by various characters when they encounter him. But when I saw it, I felt that the audience, in fact, in their suspension of disbelief, shared this very same shock and at heart were truly comforted to see the old don as they would like him to be - all-powerful, naturally, no one to cross, but kind of benign and quirky, kind of, well, grandfatherly.

Unlike the English, who in an identity crisis can always comfort themselves with thoughts of Camelot, the Knights of the Round Table and good old Lancelot, or, say, the Germans with their Nibelungenlied (which, come to think about it, may not be all that comforting, at least to the rest of the world), we are a young country with fashionable myths produced for the most part, suitably enough, in that great American dream factory - i.e., Hollywood.

Goodfellas (1990)

These films not only were marvelously directed and acted, but as befitted their influential place in our collective unconscious, they often invited serious public controversy.