Diane Keaton says “nobody wanted Al Pacino” in The Godfather
According to the Oscar winner, “It’s just one of those weird, unusual things in life.”
Aux News Unknown
If you’re reading The A.V. Club (or have a pulse), you’re probably already well aware that The Godfather was not only Al Pacino’s breakout role, but was also an all-time defining entry in the film canon. Yet Diane Keaton claims Al Pacino was almost passed over for the role of Michael Corleone, a notion that has surely opened a portal to a very surreal alternate universe in movie history somewhere.
“I auditioned for The Godfather having never read it and I knew nothing about it, and just was there, I was standing there like every other woman. I didn’t know what the hell I was there for. And they cast me in that role!” Keaton tells Entertainment Tonight. As for her on-screen husband, she says, “Nobody wanted Al Pacino. They didn’t want him to play that part, and I had already been cast. I had been cast before Al Pacino in Godfather 1! Is this not weird?”
It is kind of weird to think about, but who knows the thought processes that go into casting. Keaton continues: “So I was standing there and they brought him up when I was standing there and we worked together in front of [the producers], and they gave him the job. Do you believe that? After he had auditioned before and they didn’t want him.”
There’s a butterfly effect for you: without Keaton and their chemistry, there would apparently be no Pacino as Michael. Would he have still gone on to have a successful career? Would the movie have made as much of an impact? Would anyone have bothered to make The Offer? (Actually, we’re still not sure why they bothered in this timeline.)
“What would The Godfather have been without Al Pacino?” Keaton herself wonders. “It’s just one of those weird, unusual things in life.” It sure is!
81 Comments
Next you’re going to tell me that Marlon Brando wasn’t the studio’s first choice for Vito, Coppola wasn’t their first choice to direct, the studio didn’t want it to be a period piece, and the novel had a subplot about vaginoplasty!
The AV Club could just re-decorate decades of old showbiz stories. Even easier than copying stories from Deadline.
…and then Olivier told me “Try acting” or some shit like that!
If I never have to see that anecdote in the comments section of a story regarding method actors again, it still won’t be enough.
Just think of all those classic Hollywood stories that have been told with forced attempts at modern snark!Grace Kelly was totally the kinda gal to block other women on the ‘gram if she thought they looked hotter in yoga pants than her.
Grace Kelly in yoga pants? Hmm….
That vaginoplasty business was extremely disturbing to a teen girl with an early feminist disposition. What better way to dramatize the problem of Sonny’s huge dick?
Didn’t James Caan have a huge dick?
I feel like the source novels of famous 70s movies are a good way to damage teen brains. “If you didn’t find the crucifix masturbation in the movie The Exorcist disturbing enough, just check out the novel!”
The novel/movie Shampoo (1975). Hair dresser has sex with mother and daughter, etc. Ugh
Or Jaws, where Ellen Brody cuckolds the Chief with goddamn Hooper! And a subplot about the Mafia (which is why the Mayor won’t close the beach…’cause if he does, he’ll sleep with the sharks).
I don’t remember Troy McClure being in the book! To be fair, some sharks are really good looking.
Do sharks sleep? Dolphins don’t sleep. Did you know that?
And Hooper has an affair with Brody’s wife in the original novel of Jaws. Oh, and gets eaten by the shark — take that adulterer!
“What better way to dramatize the problem of Sonny’s huge dick?”Have a scene where he uses it to steer a speedboat.
Huge Dick? Oh so that’s why they cast James Caan. Subtle Coppola. Very subtle.
Don’t forget huge schlong and a starlet who had to be beaten by her husband into having PIV sex because she loved oral so much!God that was a weird fucking book. And yes, I’ll stand by that sentence.
Most people who have read that book would probably agree with your sentiment. Especially reading it after seeing the film.
Agree. It was a creepy-ass book. In Puzo’s novel Jack Woltz is a pedophile. I thought he got away pretty light with a dead horse on his pillow. Of course Coppola left that out.
Meanwhile Linda from Io9 and Drew from Defector wrote an actual article about what’s wrong in movie industries.
Wait until the AV Club finds out that the studio wanted Burt Reynolds as Sonny and the only actor that Robert Evans successfully forced Coppola to hire was Coppola’s sister Talia Shire.
I am certain that I read “The Offer” reviews around here… so it would be fair to assume they are aware not only of those trivia bits but also the one on this article…
Then why are they reporting this information as though it’s news?
need to fill with something/anything the site?
The cat was meant to be an iguana.
Nice reference
Shame that fucking hack Coppola cut the scene of Don Vito at the dentist.
Someone should make a TV show about this or something
You need to get the Godfather DVD and listen to the director’s cut version. There are a lot of tidbits in there that, looking back, were really incredible. Things like the constant threat of firing the director, or pulling the budget or casting Robert Redford and, yes, not hiring Brando because he had a bad reputation. So bottom line: yes, I can believe it.
I refuse to believe any A.V. Club writer could sit through The Godfather without picking up their phone within five minutes
Kids these days, always looking at their phones all the time, amirite?
Yes. You are.
I assume all AVClub writers are constantly on their phones during movies and TV. This has shifted to an ADD vibe.
“Do you know how good Diane Keaton’s pussy tastes after it’s been soaking in apple juice?”
“You sure that’s apple juice?”
I think you mean Loretta Swit…no, wait you’re right…but where’s my VCR…?
Gee, and Italian families are usually so welcoming.
Marcia Lucas (George Lucas’ wife at the time) pushed hard for Al Pacino to get the part.
“I had been cast before Al Pacino in Godfather 1! Is this not weird?”Almost as weird as the producers calling it Godfather 1.
Heh, heh, heh… they’ll have to make the sequel now.
Hey, now.Don’t knock that old trick.It worked for George Lucas….Producers : “Hey George! Why is titled ‘Episode IV’?”George Lucas : “No Reason. Don’t pay attention to that.”
“Almost as weird as the producers calling it Godfather 1.”
Diane Keaton is not one of the producers though.
I haven’t seen that kind of hubris from a movie producer since they subtitled Remo Williams “the Adventure Begins”.
A.V. Club was WAY off on their ridiculous D+ grade for The Offer. It was awesome. Just admit when you get it wrong. EVERYONE I know that’s watched it has loved it.
I wouldn’t call it a particularly good show but it was appointment viewing for me every week. Def worthy of a B- at least.
Yeah, I enjoyed it – and didn’t realize it was poorly reviewed here.Miles Teller was definitely the weakest part of it for me – his every line reading seemed to have the same staccato cadence no matter what sort of emotion he was supposed to be portraying. However, Matthew Goode as Robert Evans was just delightful. “Ruddy!”
Yeah, agreed. I really hope Goode wins awards for his perfect Evans.
This is literally the first good word I’ve read about it.
Literally.
Easily one of the best, most fun shows of the year. How wrong the critics were in general.
Gotta love “articles” that amount to a day old retweet.
Of course, this is no revelation. This story has been around for decades. James Caan was originally considered for Michael until the Pacino/Keaton reading. Caan then took the Sonny role when they cast Pacino.
Well, on the plus side, there would have been no Hangman.The Good: Al Pacino. While Karl Urban gives a solid performance considering the dodgy material, Al Pacino, on the other hand, takes it to a whole new level. For starters, Tommy Wiseau has a more believable New Orleans accent than the southern fried nonsense Al is trying to pull off here. What’s more, Pacino seems to change his accent scene by scene. Soon the most entertaining part of the movie is what accent will show up and what word is he going to add extra syllables to this time.https://cinematicdiversions.com/hangman-2017-review/
we would never have gotten “Danny Collins”!
Al Pacino is so smol. I just wanna wrap him in a blanket and feed him soup.
I don’t get it. Much was made in The Offer about how Robert Evans and whomever Colin Hanks portrayed were opposed to Al Pacino — one of the big reasons given was that he was short — while the miniseries went to great lengths to say that Coppola and Ruddy both wanted him and they even did some kind of maneuvering to get him into the role.Maybe Diane Keaton didn’t watch The Offer — if you have Paramount+, I’d recommend — maybe it looked differently from her perspective or maybe like a lot of The Offer, it did not play out in reality as it was done on the show, but especially in the wake of the mini-series, I thought the fact that Pacino almost did not get the role was pretty well known.
The Colin Hanks character didn’t exist, and was created to shove all the bad stuff off of real people. Basically how Paramount got around putting out a show saying “Look how we tried to destroy the greatest movie ever.”
Which automatically makes the rest of the movie suspect.
“Look how we tried to destroy the greatest movie ever.” I thought The Offer was about the making of The Godfather.
Shut up Diane! Nobody asked you Diane!
Diane, you ignorant slut.
Mario Puzzo in an essay once said that he thought Pacino was really bad during rehearsals, but when he saw the final product, he said Pacino was absolutely perfect. He regretted his vocal criticism so much that he said he “went around eating crow” like it was his favourite meal.
This was his audition
Was that from the fucking 90s? Jesus christ.
That is from the 2011 cinematic “masterpiece” Jack and Jill. Never saw the movie but that clip had a long life on the internet because its so weird.
That explains it.
That doesn’t seem like much. I was expecting some George Costanza kind of story where literally no one wanted to hire him, buy he just sort of showed up on the first day and started working and everyone just assumed that he had been given the part.
I heard Pacino left a Russian hat behind at his audition so he could return and get a second audition. PaaaaaaaaaaaaCino.
Who really cares about what Keaton says 40 years later?
Your dumbass who clicked and commented seems to.
Working alongside Marlon Brando probably came in handy when she did this the following year.
I watched Sleeper back in the early 80’s on HBO. I was in my early teens and had never heard of “A Streetcar Named Desire”.I was very confused.
Sleeper is such a classic. I like showing it to people who think of Woody Allen films as only being slow, talky dry humor.
“I never hurt anyone in my life! I mean, occasionally one of my customers would get botulism but that was very rare!”
The Offer was amazingly good.
“Nobody wanted Al Pacino. They didn’t want him to play that part, and I had already been cast. I had been cast before Al Pacino in Godfather 1! Is this not weird?”What exactly makes this weird? Is there something here I’m missing or is it just weird in hindsight?
I love how they wrote an article to tell us something that we’d already know if we saw the series they went out of their way to insult (The Offer).
Well…la-dee-dah!
Hmm, I think I first heard about this hot “scoop” in the special features of my old Godfather trilogy VHS box set…And it was the studio that didn’t want Pacino, who had only starred in The Panic in Needle Park at that time. Coppola fought for him, but he still thought he was going to be fired every day up until they shot the restaurant scene. That was where Pacino felt he finally secured his job.
Years later Keaton wore that same hairstyle to a Battlestar Galactica audition. Though she didn’t get the part, TV history was made nonetheless.
Dear God in heaven. This was old news forty years ago! Honestly. Coppola and Pacino both have addressed it in interviews hundreds of times over the years and there have been multiple books written about the film that go into minute detail about it, including a popular one that came out LAST year. You guys really thought this was worth posting?? I keep leaving the AV Club and coming back again, hoping for better. But no. I don’t care if the writer is twenty years old…or fourteen, years old, for that matter. This is film history, and if you’re going to write for this type of site, you need to at least know the fucking basics. Editors should know them, too, crazy as that may seem. (Spare us the hot story about “Citizen Kane” being based on William Randolph Hearst. And now you can google “William Randolph Hearst,” if not “Citizen Kane.”)