Confession: until I watched it last weekend, the only Marlon Brando movie I’d seen EVER was Superman. I’m dead serious. This is a disgrace for a 32-old, and its something I’m attempting to rectify through my Netflix Adventures that will be chronicled here.
I can’t explain why I had not watched The Godfather prior to college. I can, however, explain why I didn’t see it once I got there, and for many years after.
When I was about 12, a movie starring Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfus came out called “What About Bob?” My brother and I both thought it was hilarious; our mom didn’t agree. Not for the usual generational gap reasons, either; she worked with a relentlessly needy co-worker whose eerie similarity to “Bob” made the movie unwatchable. Totally understandable, right? That’s how The Godfather became for me in college and for many years afterward.
When I was in college, I knew a guy who liked to pretend he was a Godfather. He was Italian and really, truly believed he was some mutant hybrid of all the Corleone men from the movies. He’d lecture people about respect — not Aretha Franklin respect, but kiss the ring respect — and about never taking a stand against the family. I suppose a bunch of college guys all interested in beer and ladies could loosely be called a family, but whatever. When he shared a house with me and three other guys for two years, it got worse because I was around him all the time. I heard him actually tell people when he was drunk that he was a “Don” and that without him, all of his friends would struggle to get by; they needed his protection and advice. It was pathetic and ridiculous then; its even moreso as I write it now, a decade later.
I had never seen The Godfather or its two sequels, but when I was around him I lied and pretended I had whenever the movie came up, then quickly changed the subject. It wasn’t terribly difficult; so many scenes and storylines are pop culture staples that even people like me, who hadn’t seen the movies, were familiar with them. I knew some dude winds up with a horse’s head in his bed, that Brando talks like he has cotton in his mouth, that one of the sons gets blown away at a toll booth, and that Fredo betrays the family. These are things I think everyone knows, whether they’ve watched the movies or not.
My patience for 3-1/2 hour movies is pretty marginal; even less so when the prospect of someone adding “expert” commentary to it is highly probable, explaining the Sicilian culture and the Catholic symbols, etc. He watched the movies frequently, and I never joined in. After college, when I was glad to lose contact with him, I was in no hurry to watch the movies either.