Sonny Corleone

goodness.

I'm out there smashing like cameras, like Sonny Corleone.

That's right.

Yeah.

What movie character, if you were to replace a character in a movie, what movie character and character would you choose? And how would your presence change a famous scene from that movie?

Probably Sonny Corleone in The Godfather.

Yeah,

good.

And at that moment, the pivotal moment in this movie happens, in my opinion.

Sonny Corleone, the hothead son of Vito, played by the late, great James Caan, leans forward and says, whoa, whoa, wait a minute.

You're telling me the Tattaglia family will guarantee our investment? And Vito looks over at him harshly.

And then he looks back to Salazzo and says, as you can see, I spoil my children.

Vito Corleone stands up.

They shake hands and Salazzo leaves.

But that one little blurted comment by James Caan, Sonny Corleone, which may seem innocuous, where he says, whoa, whoa, you're telling me the Tattaglia family is going to guarantee our investment? Salazzo doesn't hear that as an innocuous comment.

What he hears is, oh, Sonny likes my idea.

But the short version is that it was viewed within many Italian-American families that any time an Italian-American person appeared in a film, it was in a crime role.

And there were no non-crime roles, legitimate characters who were Italian-American in films or on television.

Well, Paramount came around to the idea that one of the ways to solve that problem is to have an Italian-American director.

They went to Coppola, they offered the project to him, and he turned it down, too.

And Coppola was right.

And Coppola had to fight for practically every character.

But the key characters he had to fight for was first Marlon Brando and then later Al Pacino.

And we've been listening to author Harlan Lebo tell one heck of a story about the greatest film ever made in American history, that is.

Oh, yeah, he's hot.

He plays, uh, Santino, Sonny.

Mm.

Uh, but he, this is him as an older man.

Caan.

Uh, you know, he was Sonny Corleone in-

Yeah

...

[laughs]

If you look at, if you look at, if you watch the movie The Godfather, then, uh, Talia Shire, uh, who is one of the daughters, like, you know, Michael Corleone and Sonny Corleone, the daughter marries this guy, and that's kind of the, the relationship between my father and the Gottis.

His-

[laughs]