THE GODFATHER CODA: THE DEATH OF MICHAEL CORLEONE
Movies On Demand, 3:00 a.m. ET
MOVIE PREMIERE: Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas have something in common besides their lifelong friendship, their huge impact on filmmaking in the 1970s and beyond, and their appetite for telling epic stories that stretch over several films. They also both like to go back and revisit, re-edit, and reframe some of their older works – Lucas by adding new special effects and other elements to old Star Wars entries, and Coppola by fiddling with his Godfather movies. Back in the late 1970s, not long after the releases of The Godfather in 1972 and The Godfather, Part II in 1974, Coppola sold to NBC a re-edited miniseries version, including outtakes from those first two films, as The Godfather Saga. Then, in 1990, he produced and directed a new film, The Godfather Part III, even though he considered it an epilogue to the first two films, rather than part of a trilogy. Paramount disagreed, and rejected Coppola’s working title of The Death of Michael Corleone, which is how the film ended up with the Part III title. Now, on its 30th anniversary, Coppola has reclaimed both the movie and his original title, and, once again, done the Godfather Saga treatment of reassembling and adding footage to present a revised narrative. But yes, Spoiler Alert from 1990, Al Pacino’s Michael Corleone still dies. Robert Duvall doesn’t appear in the third Godfather film, but Diane Keaton and Talia Shire do reprise their roles, and new co-stars include George Hamilton, Andy Garcia, Bridget Fonda, and, most controversially, Coppola’s daughter, Sofia Coppola. But watch, also, for the character of Dominic Abbandando. He’s played by Don Novello, who, before appearing in The Godfather Part III, showed up everwhere from Saturday Night Live and Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre to It’s Garry Shandling’s Show and the revival of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, each time playing the same alter ego character, Father Guido Sarducci.