The Godfather just turned 50 years old and with it has come an influx of interviews from the cast and creatives behind the Francis Ford Coppola classic. In a new interview with The Gate, star Robert Duvall, who played Tom Hagen, talked about working with Coppola, the legacy of The Godfather, and the difference the film made for his career.
Hagen was the lawyer for the Corleone family and the adoptive son of Vito and Carmela, Duvall played him beautifully throughout The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II. The movie clearly meant a lot to him because, in the interview, Duvall opened up about Coppola and some of the work that he's done that he's not exactly proud of:
“I’m very happy," Duvall said. "And I’ve done a lot of things that weren’t so great, but I had to pay the rent. You know, I had to pay the rent. So a lot of crap sometimes, but the opposite of crap was The Godfather. Great, great, great working with Coppola; terrific.”
The Godfather is widely believed to be one of the greatest films ever made. It wasn't an easy journey either with the studio wanting big names for the film but Coppola trusted the younger, unknown actors like Al Pacino with the character of Michael Corleone, paired with the pushback from the Italian-American community, and it took a lot for the film to get finished. So when asked if Duvall knew how successful the film would be, he revealed that he could feel it a portion of the way through the movie.
"All I know is about a third of the way through Godfather, and before I knew it, we had something special. And I only felt that twice, but very special and turned out to be true, you know? And I gained a lot of respect for Coppola because he had to work. We thought maybe he was going to be fired because he was working under the pressure of the studio, who maybe saw the outcome of the film in a different way than he did. But he did it the way he wanted to. And he adhered to those concepts of his, and the film turned out to be what he wanted. He was the boss.”
But working with Coppola wasn't just limited to The Godfather movies but rather throughout their careers.
"He was great. We kept the relationship somewhat for years to come. In a couple of films I directed he helped me with the editing; he was very open to that and very good. A good guy to work with; wanted to see what you would do… I call it from ‘ink to behaviour.’ He wanted to see what you brought behaviour-wise to the table.”
And while the praise for Coppola is great, it was also interesting to see how Duvall reacted to co-star Marlon Brando through filming and admitted that he used to talk about Brando with fellow actors Dustin Hoffman and Gene Hackman would mention him and go on to rant about how good Brando is.
"Brando was like the Godfather to young actors," he said. "Yeah. I talked to an English actor who was very, very well respected, and when he came to New York, he watched A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway and he got embarrassed because he thought a stagehand had walked onto the stage by mistake. He was so natural, but it was Brando.”
Duvall gave his honest answers to questions about The Godfather and it was nice to read how much he truly appreciates being a part of Coppola's masterpiece.