When Coppola first read Mario Puzo's The Godfather, the filmmaker was disappointed to find that the story was more of a "potboiler" and not the intellectual treatise on power that he envisioned.īut just as he felt Puzo-whose previous books he admired-had churned out some bestseller fodder to make money in this case, he admitted that he needed the paycheck, too, so he took the job. Paramount+ / Getty Images Dan Fogler as Francis Ford Coppola The bill wasn't sent to Paramount, but personally to Robert Evans."Įvans stepped down from his executive role in 1974, but his decades-long run as a producer included titles ranging from Chinatown and Urban Cowboy to How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. He died in October 2019 at the age of 89, just a few months after his production shingle and Paramount parted ways for good. "The day The Godfather passed $50 million," Evans recalled, "Francis bought a Mercedes 600, the most expensive on the market. "It stinks!" He promised the director he'd buy him a Mercedes once he was proved right. "What the f-k do I care what they think!" Evans remembered countering. His critics called him crazy for wanting an even longer film, Coppola insisting that everyone else thought it was his best work. 9 on the list of Hollywood's eight major studios and turned it into the power player it still is today.Īnd The Godfather might not be the classic it is without him: After watching the first cut, Evans told Coppola, per the producer's 1994 memoir The Kid Stays in the Picture, "You shot a saga, and you turned in a trailer. To paraphrase Evans himself, as head of production at Paramount Pictures he took the company from No. Nicole Wilder/Paramount+ Moviestore/Shutterstock Matthew Goode as Robert Evans
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