I listened to a radio interview of the late Mario Puzo (on NPR), years ago. Puzo had quite a struggle (as a writer)-at the time of his “Godfather”- success, he was $30,000 in debt, had written a ton of stuff (novels and screenplays)-but all rejected by publishers. He was on the verge of giving up, but then, the “Godfather” became a success, and he became a very successful screenwriter in Hollywood.
My question-have his earlier works been published, and are they any good?
I haven’t read it, but I know that Puzo’s own favorite of his novels was The Fortunate Pilgrim which is autobiographical. It was made into a miniseries in 1988 starring Sophia Loren.
Are the Godfather novels themselves even any good?
I was going to ask the same thing, Mahaloth. My impression is that they’re not, but I was talking to one of my best friends a couple weeks ago, and she expressed surprise when I told her that it was my experience that few like the book and almost everyone prefers the movie when she and her circle apparently believe the book to be superior.
Speaking only for myself, I liked the novel. Puzo only wrote one Godfather per se, though he used Michael Corleone and Pete Clemenza as characters in The Sicilian; after Puzo’s death a writer named Mark Winegardner was licensed by the state to write more novels in the series but I discount those as canon.
The first movie and the flashback scenes from Godfather 2 are fairly close to the novel, or at least as close as most movies are to the novels they’re based upon. You get a lot more side plots in the book as usual (including one about a character’s vaginal reduction that you could live without) and a lot more background on the characters (such as why Luca Brazi is so dedicated to Don Corleone- won’t spoil it for you but it’s a grisly reason) and history of the family (my favorite perhaps being Vito’s message to Al Capone when he demanded tribute). The characterizations are a bit different, especially Kay perhaps, and Mama Corleone is a bit more developed than in the movie (not a lot more but she has more dialogue), and there are some minor changes such as the names of Michael’s kids and the like.
Puzo worked on the script for Godfather 2 but never novelized it. He said in interviews that while he freely admitted he wrote The Godfather for money he was very proud of it and considered it a quality work anyway, and I think he was justified.
He made reference to his earlier books in his novel Fools Die (which is a very good book itself). One of the characters is a author who had written two books that he considered works of art which were utter failures commercially, and then a third, a book about disgusting criminals that he hated which became a runaway success and which they made a movie out of.
The thing about Michael’s kids having different names reminds me that one of my friends wrote Coppola after the movie came out complaining about this. He said that as a good Italian, Michael would have named his son after his father. Coppola wrote back saying he wanted to show Michael was more Americanized
and wouldn’t follow traditional Italian ways.
Puzo’s book is a good beach read. Lots of the plot is the same although Puzo has more on the girl Sonny had sex with at the wedding (went to Vegas and found a doctor who repaired her vagina so she didn’t need large penis guys like Sonny) and some truck who Johnny Fontane (the Sinatra character) sets up as a singer only drinks himself to death at a young age. Puzo puts more emphasis on the line “I’ll reason with him” as the Corleone’s catchphrase (like a rattlesnake’s rattle before he strikes) over the “Make him an offer he can’t refuse” that become the famous line.
I was under the impression “The Godfather” wasn’t very good, actually. It pops up often in “Movies that are better than the book” type threads.
When the movie is The Godfather it’s no insult to say the movie’s better than the book. I also think that without the movie (or if they’d gone with some of the original plans like making a low budget mobster flick set in then modern day [early 70s]) the book would be long out-of-print and completely forgotten like most of the Irving Wallace or Sidney Sheldon novels that were bestsellers but are now gone. But, the book was obviously written by a talented novelist (one who for whatever reason had a message about big vaginas he wanted to bring to a major audience).