The scripts for the first two Godfather films were a collaboration between its director, Francis Ford Coppola, and Mario Puzo, who wrote the book of the same name with research material such as transcripts of mafia trials.
During the trial this month in Washington of Roger J. Stone Jr., who was found guilty of obstructing investigations into a possible conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, some of the evidence had nothing to do with Russia, the emails emails from Hillary Clinton, WikiLeaks or the Trump Administration.
They were Stone's mentions of a character from “The Godfather: Part II,” who gives false testimony during a Senate hearing on organized crime.
“Do what Frank Pentangeli did,” Stone wrote via text message to an associate who was scheduled to testify about him before a congressional committee in 2017.
The message, according to prosecutors, was an attempt by Stone, a Republican political operative and longtime adviser to President Donald J. Trump, to advise his associate to imitate Pentangeli's clumsiness.
“I don't know anything about that,” says Pentangeli, played by Michael V. Gazzo, when he is questioned in the 1974 film about a character's ties to the mafia.
Stone, 67, called his text message simple chatter. In the end, his associate, Randy Credico, did not testify, invoking his right not to incriminate himself.
Witnesses have been doing what Pentangeli did for years, and the appearance of the term in the Stone case is just one example of where elements of the “Godfather” films have become pervasive in the real world.
Earlier this year, a critic of Chris Cuomo, a CNN host whose brother, Andrew, is governor of New York, referred to him as “Fredo,” the inept brother of the Corleone clan. And when someone threatens to tell us to “sleep with the fishes,” he repeats a phrase popularized largely by movies.
Edward McDonald, who as a federal prosecutor secured convictions against leaders of four of the five New York mafia families, said prosecutors are not immune. After offering a defendant a plea bargain, he said, “You might say, ‘I made him an offer he can't refuse: immunity instead of 10 years in prison.’”
Kenneth Dancyger, a film professor at New York University, attributed the impact of The Godfather series on the American lexicon to the combination of skillfully written scripts, acting and directing, as well as an insight into the American style of power and corruption. “At the heart of it is family and honor and trying to protect family from a corrupt world, which is what Don Corleone is trying to do,” he said.
The scripts for the first two Godfather films were a collaboration between its director, Francis Ford Coppola, and Mario Puzo, who wrote the book of the same name with research material such as transcripts of mafia trials. “He never met a real gangster,” said Tony Puzo, 72, Puzo's son.
“She would be very amused by all this Godfather stuff out there now,” he said. “I didn't understand why people loved references to The Godfather, why they treated it as gospel that a quote from 'The Godfather' had any relevance except as a clever term. He did not believe in the righteousness of gangsters. He simply wrote a story.”
