With Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather celebrating its 50th Anniversary this year and Paramount releasing an incredible new 4K box set, I recently got to do something I never thought would happen, I spoke with James Caan about making the movie.
While I’ve done countless interviews since starting Collider, I’ll admit to being a little nervous before getting on the phone with Caan. One of the reasons is because I’ve been watching his work my entire life, and I was getting the rare opportunity to talk with him about The Godfather, one of the greatest and most influential movies ever made.
Thankfully, he couldn’t have been nicer and shared some stories that I’d never heard including why he loved working with Marlon Brando, how he convinced Lenny Montana, who played Luca Brasi, to do a gag while filming, and what it means to be part of a film that people want to talk about fifty years later. In addition, as a big fan of Michael Mann’s Thief, he shared what it was like working with him on the movie and how he ended up directing Hide in Plain Sight.
Finally, if you’re a fan of The Godfather, the new 4K box set is incredible, and the films have never looked better.
Check out what he had to say below.
COLLIDER: First of all, sir, I just want to start with a thank you for giving me your time. I am a big fan, and I think it's great I get to talk to you today.
JAMES CAAN: Well, thank you. I'll let you know about your end when we're through.
I will appreciate that. Please do judge me.
CAAN: Yeah, okay.
If someone has actually never seen anything that you've done before, what is the first thing you'd like them to watch, and why?
CAAN: I think I once made a run for about 68 yards on 25 Power. No, I don't know. I like Thief a lot. Godfather, Thief. I mean, I only have favorites that I worked on pretty much. It's like 130 of them, I think.
I was actually going to get to Thief during this interview, but I'll just ask it now. I'm a huge fan of that movie and I love the opening, and the way it's shot, and the music. Do you have fond memories of that shoot?
CAAN: We worked a lot of hours over there, because it was day and night shooting. I enjoyed the character, but usually the character, although you don't like to take it home with you, I never do, or never tried to, didn't leave itself to having too much fun. You know what I mean? There was nothing funny about him or having fun. This was a guy who had this good part of his young man life taken from him by going to prison for stealing $40 and became the thief, so... Now I forgot the question. Did I have fun?
Yeah. What it was like shooting with Michael Mann and making Thief.
CAAN: Well, you know what, he's a workaholic, first of all. He's tough. But I like anybody... prefer them to somebody who doesn't like what they're doing, or doesn't believe in what they're doing. Michael believed he had an idea, and he stuck to it. You know what I mean? So there was a reason for everything he did. We would work from, let's say, Monday we'd start at six o'clock, work till seven, eight o'clock. Then the next day he'd call us 12 hours after, so we'd come in at 8:00 and go home at 9:00 or 10:00, and come in 10:00, and it would go all the way like that till Friday's we were coming in at... Friday or Saturday we'd come in at four or five o'clock in the afternoon and work all night through. So he squeezed every bit he could out of the week. And it was a pretty tough shoot, but it was so on edge. Everything was edgy. You know what I mean? Everything.
Thankfully that the film turned out great. You directed Hide in Plain Sight in 1980, and it was your only time behind the camera. I've always wondered, did you think about directing more after that?
CAAN: When I decided to direct Hide in Plain Sight, the reason I told them that I wanted to have a special guy, a special director, with a style to direct it first, like Hal Ashby, but he wasn't available. Then they asked me to direct, that's how that happened. I said I would direct it. And I made a few conditions, and they were met.
What I did was I took 149 scenes and thought, if you shot it conventionally, where you shoot a master and then a four shot, then a two shot, then singles, it would look like a ping pong match with 149 scenes, and within those 149 scenes another 400 cuts, it would look like a ping pong match. It's just too many cuts. So, I decided I pretty much wanted to shoot it all in pretty much masters and only have a closeup. That's the second thing I had, I only wanted to see someone's face when they were thinking of something, when it was important that I see their face, not just to show their face. That every closeup had a meaning to it. So, it was really kind of nice. It turned out really nice.
Also, I didn't want the actors leading our emotions. Do you know what I mean? With tears in their eyes or music in the background or whatever it was. I had a close-up of their face. And I wanted them to be thinking, not necessarily what they were talking about, but what we discussed. So for example, the scene that I was trying to discuss with you earlier, I was showing that there was this problem that she had, where she got married, and she says, "I wanted to tell you this." She said, "Tom, I got married." That was in the middle of the park.
And you see me throw up my arms, I say, "Married?" Right? And as I throw up my arms, I start pulling the camera back. That's the last thing you hear is, "Married," but you see them still talking, and this camera is moving back and back. You don't hear a word, you just see all the people going to work, and it's coming back and back and back and back until it comes to the street, it crosses the street, and as it crosses the street, a bus wipes us clean. The bus just cleans it.
They didn't need to know the story, the audience, they just knew that was a problem, but it was a problem to them, and it wasn't a problem to anybody else in the movie. You understand? Not to anybody on the street. It wasn't a problem to anybody but those two people.
I completely get it.
CAAN: So, there was a reason for that. And whatever people thought there was, it was. It didn't matter. It didn't alter the outcome of the movie or the characters. I mean, little things like that. And that's where I got into playing music over a closeup.
I really want to ask you about The Godfather because the 50th anniversary. Since the movie came out, The Godfather has been The Godfather, one of the most iconic movies in movie history. Everybody knows this film. But what was it like actually before the movie came out, when you first were approached to be part of it, did you guys have any idea that you were making something so special?
CAAN: No. I probably did a little more than anyone else, because I did two or three pictures with Francis. I did The Rain People when I was 28 years old with Francis. I knew what he could do. I mean, I liked him a lot, obviously. Then, when you hear Brando, that probably... I used to tell those guys, "If you're not impressed with Brando, you're full of shit." Excuse me for all the ladies listening out there, shit is the word I used. And you would be full of it, because anybody that says they weren't influenced by him is a liar. You know?
And even the money was not really good. That was even more shocking. It was 1945 New York, and that cost a lot of money to dress New York. But the problem, they went through $420,000, I think, just in tests alone. Francis called me one night, he was in New York and I'm in California, and he calls me, he says, "Jimmy, I want you to come in and test." "Test what? You got to Porsche you want me to drive around the block?" He says, "No, they want you to test. They want you to play Michael."
You mentioned Marlon. Obviously, like everyone else, I am a huge fan. Can you share a little bit about what it was like actually working with him and maybe what surprised you?
CAAN: The first meeting was when we had this lunch that Francis made for everybody, the cast. And I got together with him and started laughing, and we wound up laughing all the time. I made him laugh. I don't know why. I mean, every three minutes he started laughing at me. I just loved the guy. I mean, he was just very sensitive, very much a guy, really a good guy, loves music, loves women. Yeah, he was just somebody I looked up to as an actor, for sure, more so than anybody else.
When you were making the film, was there a sequence or a scene that ended up being a real pain in the ass to get right?
CAAN: Yeah. This is one of my favorite things is Lenny Montana, who played Luca Brasi. He comes in at the wedding. This shows you how bright and fast he is too. He knocks on the door and the door opens and it's at the wedding, inside, when all the guys are coming in, the baker and everybody there asking favors. Brando opens the door and it's Luca Brasi, and Luca says, "Don Corleone, I am honored to be here on the day of your daughter's wedding. May your first child be a masculine one." So, he'd do that. I mean, he sounded just like that. So Francis comes out to me, he says, "Jimmy."
"What?"
He says, "Do something with him."
I said, "What? What are you talking about?"
He says, "No, come on, you got to do something with him. Make..."
He was just so stiff. And I said, "Well..."
He says, "Just do it."
So, I thought about it, and I got a piece of tape, regular white tape, I said, "Lenny, I want to put this on your tongue."
He said, "What?"
I said, "I'm going to put it on." And I put F U on it. Right? We wrote it out though, the whole thing.
And he said, "Oh, please, Jimmy, don't make me do this."
I said, "Lenny, you're going to do this. Please do this. I promise you everybody's going to laugh. It'll be good."
"Please, Jimmy, don't make me do this."
He was like a little kid, this 300-pound guy. So anyway, I did it. Finally, he did it, and he opened door and he said, "Don Corleone," and everybody started laughing, because you could see the F U on his tongue. And Brando laughed. Everybody laughed. They thought it was great.
Then Francis said, "Okay, come on, let's go. Let's shoot it now."
So, we go and shoot it. And he comes in and he says, "Don Corleone," and Brandon opens his mouth and says, "Luca." And he had F U too. "Fuck you too," he wrote on his tongue. So I mean, that was a little after. The rest of the time we worked, we worked pretty hard. It was good. But I had a lot of fun. Francis let me go. He was... All the bada bing and all that. He called and yelled at me just a year or so ago, why didn't I ever franchise bada bing? He says, "You would've been a jillionaire."
"Because I'm stupid, that's why. And I needed you, the genius, to tell me like 50 years later."
What is it actually like being part of a film that the entire planet has seen, everybody loves, and people still want to talk about 50 years after you made it?
CAAN: Well, it feels, to me, great. I mean, I'm happy there's something they can remember about me. That, and the great play I made behind second base once in Central Park. Yeah, I'm very proud of it, and I'm very proud of Francis. The cast was great. And that just added to my one big thing about making a good movie. If you get people together that like one another and genuinely like each other and have a good time, invariably the movie is good and better. And I think audiences can tell that they like each other while they're watching the film. Do you know what I mean? And I think it makes it a better film. And we all liked each other and had a great time.
Are you the type of person that can watch your performances? Because I've spoken to so many actors and so many say that they don't want to watch themselves on screen.
CAAN: They're all full of shit. They don't want to watch it if it's bad. I can get that. I mean, I couldn't stand it. I'd have to go out and beat up a wildcat or something. I don't know. No, I don't mind watching it. I like watching it, of course, watching it when it comes out, and that will dictate if I ever watch it again. But yeah, I mean, there's a few that I'm extra proud of. Let's put it that way. Those ones I would watch more than once.
I assume one of them is Thief.
CAAN: Yes. Well, I have to say Hide in Plain Sight. But yeah, The Gambler. And oddly enough, I like little funny things like Funny Lady. There's a few that I like that I had a good time in. And it's always the ones that I had a good time in, because I had more fun watching Alan Arkin, for example, or somebody else, be funny. So, I watch what I like, and if I like it a lot, I'll watch it twice.
Sir, I could ask you another thousand questions, but I'm out of time. I really want to just say sincerely, thank you for talking with me, and I wish you nothing but the best.
CAAN: Thank you so much.