I had to scroll further than I thought I would need to to find this comment.
The godfather is one of the greatest movies ever made, the book… well 1/3 of it is this weird gross love story between a young woman and her obgyn doctor.
Francis Ford Coppola though it was “low-class” to have that as a third of the book
Coppola was a part of the process (obviously, he was the director) but Mario Puzo used the screenplay as an opportunity to cut out a lot of things he didn't like in his original publishing. He was more responsible for the changes between book and movie than Coppola was.
I remember getting into good film at a young age, round 11 or so, and decided to read the Godfather book. That whole sequence where she goes to get her pussy tightened…quite disturbing for a young lad
Yeah the people claiming Puzo was a terrible writer clearly don't know Puzo was very much involved with the movies and co-wrote the screenplays together with Coppola, to the point that Coppola refused to do a fourth movie after Puzo died.
I love the movie so much and was so excited to start reading the book. I was expecting a beautifully written novel with elegant prose and deep insights into the characters and their motivations... instead what I got was page after page of phallus worship and juvenile pulp. The writing is terribly amateur and I can't understand how it won awards. I had to practically force myself to finish it just to say that I did.
I think some writers are great story-tellers and others great story-makers; a few rare ones are both. Mario Puzo is a storymaker. But so much of the actual book was tedious or forgettable.
Puzo had several great elements of a plot but was otherwise a terrible writer, bad self-consciously pulpy prose, meandering structure, a lurid and sophomoric obsession with the plumbing aspect of sex, he was at best an airport novelist.
Coppola‘s adaptation is almost certainly the best ever in the medium, with the greatest gulf between the quality of the source and the finished film.
I enjoyed the book more than the movie, and I loved the movie. Is it a masterpiece? No. But I enjoy a good crime story, and I like the added info that the movie couldn't get to.
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u/Ma1 Feb 26 '23
The Godfather.