Robert DeNiro actually moved to Sicily *for three months* to learn the Sicilian dialect. Three months! He speaks a grand total of eight English-language words in the course of "The Godfather II." And he is on-screen for around forty minutes. (Al Pacino was maybe less accommodating than DeNiro. Apparently, frustrated by the one-hundred-day shooting schedule of "Godfather II," Pacino went around screaming, "'Serpico' took only nineteen days!" Pacino also threatened to drop out *before* the start of filming, because he wasn't satisfied with an early draft of the script.)
-In un-filmed versions, Kay simply had a miscarriage. It was Talia Shire's idea to have Kay get a secret abortion. (And this nicely underlines the duplicitousness theme, within this family: Kay had "a miscarriage." Michael "reconciles" with Fredo. Hyman is "a mentor" to Michael. Carlo is "faithful" to Connie.) As a "reward," Coppola "gave" to Shire the scene in which Connie pleads with Michael for a Michael/Fredo reconciliation. If all of this is true, it just underlines the serendipity that blessed this particular movie. Brando doesn't show up for filming? Create a *greater* scene in which the looming specter--the *possibility*--of Brando is far more intimidating than anything Brando himself could produce. Looking to show off Talia Shire's acting ability? Create a Fredo/Michael fake-reconciliation scene that heightens the pre-fratricide ("will he or won't he?") tension *and* displays Connie's new glue-that-binds matriarchal role within the family. There's a story, and a story under the story.
-Michael's willingness to lie becomes more and more prominent. Michael lies to Kay: "I'm not involved in the mob." Within a few "cinema hours" (real-world years), Michael will brutally, wordlessly, shut the door on Kay when she attempts to speak with him. Michael lies to Fredo: "I forgive you." Within a few *cinema minutes* ...just minutes... Michael will have Fredo assassinated. The awkward "Kay situation" gives Talia Shire some meaty material. She knows she is meant to shun Kay, but she can't help but command Kay's child to hug Kay; she takes out her intense frustration on the child himself, who of course hasn't done anything wrong ("Hurry up! HUG YOUR MOTHER!!"). This demand for a hug is a gift to Kay, but it's all Connie can offer; disgusted with herself, and with her family, Connie now takes her impatience out on Kay. "Kay! Kay! You NEED TO GO." Such a complicated sentence--a vehicle for/expression of love, anger, confusion, self-disgust, tension. Shire handles it beautifully.
-The assassination of Hyman Roth: More duplicitousness. Hyman is lying through his teeth to various reporters: "I have only my pension to live on." He is joking along merrily, and among the laughers, there's a wide-grinned Brutus; yukking up a storm, a young man pulls out a gun and murders Hyman, and the smile never disappears. Stunning. Later, Pentangeli will slit his own wrists in a warm bathtub--an image that points toward David's "French Revolution" paintings, and back beyond that, to the days of the Roman emperors. Coppola takes the long view. Here, he wears his learning on his sleeve. Throughout, he knows that our stories are more complicated, more dazzling, than we are, at any given time. Impetuous Connie becomes Docile, Muted Connie. Joking, Charming Michael becomes Cold, Reptilian Michael. Wide-Eyed Kay becomes Scheming, Secretive Kay. Everyone is in constant flux; no one ends anywhere near where he/she begins. The ability to show character growth/decay over time-- This is maybe Coppola's most startling gift. It's foreshadowed at the very start of "Godfather II"; within seconds, helpless mother becomes knife-wielding sorceress becomes corpse. Idols fall; Fanucci and Ciccio start as gods and end as helpless victims. Food! Food for thought!
***
A few observations on two paragraphs by Raymond Carver, from "Cathedral":
This blind man, an old friend of my wife's, he was on his way to spend the night. His wife had died. So he was visiting the dead wife's relatives in Connecticut. He called my wife from his in-laws'. Arrangements were made. He would come by train, a five-hour trip, and my wife would meet him at the station. She hadn't seen him since she worked for him one summer in Seattle ten years ago. But she and the blind man had kept in touch. They made tapes and mailed them back and forth. I wasn't enthusiastic about his visit. He was no one I knew. And his being blind bothered me. My idea of blindness came from the movies. In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed. Sometimes they were led by seeing-eye dogs. A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to.
That summer in Seattle she had needed a job. She didn't have any money. The many she was going to marry at the end of the summer was in officers' training school. He didn't have any money, either. But she was in love with the guy, and he was in love with her, etc. She'd seen something in the paper: HELP WANTED--READING TO BLIND MAN, and a telephone number. She phoned and went over, was hired on the spot. She'd worked with this blind man all summer. She read stuff to him, case studies, reports, that sort of thing. She helped him organize his little office in the county social-service department....On her last day in the office, the blind man asked if he could touch her face. She agreed to this. She told me he touched his fingers to every part of her face, her nose--even her neck! She never forgot it. She even tried to write a poem about it. She was always trying to write a poem. She wrote a poem or two every year, usually after something really important had happened to her.
It's weird to think of Carver's storytellers as unreliable narrators, but that's what they are. Not unreliable in a dramatic Kazuo Ishiguro sense. But they lie to themselves. For example, above, the speaker is clearly upset that this guy his wife sort of loves is coming for a visit. But he can't dig that deep. He can't concede that the "touched her face, even her neck!" story really bothers him. And the business of the poem-writing. So he reverts to Hollywood ideas. "Blind people are unsmiling, and they have clunky dogs." (This story sets up a tension between stale, Hollywood-mediated ideas of the world and a direct experience of the world in all its strangeness--direct experience through touching a face, through guiding a hand around the various angles within a replica of a cathedral.)
Carver works hard to establish a breezy, colloquial tone. That "he" in the first sentence is important. "This blind man, he was on his way to spend the night." The "he" seems unneeded, it actually seems to interrupt the flow of the sentence, but the interruption is important. Carver wants you to feel as if this dude were whispering into your ear. And then the total candor: Like Louis CK, this speaker goes to dark places. It's not just the idea of a guest that is upsetting. "His being blind bothered me." It's as if Carver were daring himself: How "dark" can I go without sacrificing the reader's empathy? But, to me, the real dick-ishness of the narrator makes him, paradoxically, appealing. And the friction between his gloominess and his apparent interest in this new experience is engaging. (Of course a part of him is interested in the visitor. Anxiety is sometimes excitement by another name. If there weren't interest, here, why would the speaker have all these Seattle details committed to memory?)
The last thing I like about this story is its attention to different forms of communication. We can communicate through touch, or through poems. Later, characters will communicate through the act of drawing. The blind man has more wisdom--more of an ability to "see"--than his hosts. The narrator--the actual (though not literally) blind person--will find his bond with his wife tested; he will become a better man, in the course of the story, because he will see his wife's admiration, and will contrast it with the dull disappointment his wife sometimes shows to him himself. Who knows where these ideas came from? The story concerns a spiritual transformation--but it could happen anywhere, and the language is relentlessly plainspoken. Carver sees miracles where others see just another ho-hum day.
***
A few observations on two paragraphs by Raymond Carver, from "Cathedral":
This blind man, an old friend of my wife's, he was on his way to spend the night. His wife had died. So he was visiting the dead wife's relatives in Connecticut. He called my wife from his in-laws'. Arrangements were made. He would come by train, a five-hour trip, and my wife would meet him at the station. She hadn't seen him since she worked for him one summer in Seattle ten years ago. But she and the blind man had kept in touch. They made tapes and mailed them back and forth. I wasn't enthusiastic about his visit. He was no one I knew. And his being blind bothered me. My idea of blindness came from the movies. In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed. Sometimes they were led by seeing-eye dogs. A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to.
That summer in Seattle she had needed a job. She didn't have any money. The many she was going to marry at the end of the summer was in officers' training school. He didn't have any money, either. But she was in love with the guy, and he was in love with her, etc. She'd seen something in the paper: HELP WANTED--READING TO BLIND MAN, and a telephone number. She phoned and went over, was hired on the spot. She'd worked with this blind man all summer. She read stuff to him, case studies, reports, that sort of thing. She helped him organize his little office in the county social-service department....On her last day in the office, the blind man asked if he could touch her face. She agreed to this. She told me he touched his fingers to every part of her face, her nose--even her neck! She never forgot it. She even tried to write a poem about it. She was always trying to write a poem. She wrote a poem or two every year, usually after something really important had happened to her.
It's weird to think of Carver's storytellers as unreliable narrators, but that's what they are. Not unreliable in a dramatic Kazuo Ishiguro sense. But they lie to themselves. For example, above, the speaker is clearly upset that this guy his wife sort of loves is coming for a visit. But he can't dig that deep. He can't concede that the "touched her face, even her neck!" story really bothers him. And the business of the poem-writing. So he reverts to Hollywood ideas. "Blind people are unsmiling, and they have clunky dogs." (This story sets up a tension between stale, Hollywood-mediated ideas of the world and a direct experience of the world in all its strangeness--direct experience through touching a face, through guiding a hand around the various angles within a replica of a cathedral.)
Carver works hard to establish a breezy, colloquial tone. That "he" in the first sentence is important. "This blind man, he was on his way to spend the night." The "he" seems unneeded, it actually seems to interrupt the flow of the sentence, but the interruption is important. Carver wants you to feel as if this dude were whispering into your ear. And then the total candor: Like Louis CK, this speaker goes to dark places. It's not just the idea of a guest that is upsetting. "His being blind bothered me." It's as if Carver were daring himself: How "dark" can I go without sacrificing the reader's empathy? But, to me, the real dick-ishness of the narrator makes him, paradoxically, appealing. And the friction between his gloominess and his apparent interest in this new experience is engaging. (Of course a part of him is interested in the visitor. Anxiety is sometimes excitement by another name. If there weren't interest, here, why would the speaker have all these Seattle details committed to memory?)
The last thing I like about this story is its attention to different forms of communication. We can communicate through touch, or through poems. Later, characters will communicate through the act of drawing. The blind man has more wisdom--more of an ability to "see"--than his hosts. The narrator--the actual (though not literally) blind person--will find his bond with his wife tested; he will become a better man, in the course of the story, because he will see his wife's admiration, and will contrast it with the dull disappointment his wife sometimes shows to him himself. Who knows where these ideas came from? The story concerns a spiritual transformation--but it could happen anywhere, and the language is relentlessly plainspoken. Carver sees miracles where others see just another ho-hum day.
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