The Godfather Coda

I had certain misgivings, as one always does, but one certainly was the title of the film. When we wrote it, Mario Puzo and I titled it The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone. In musical terms, a coda is like an epilogue, it’s a summing up, and that’s what weintended the movie to be: a coda, an epilogue and summing up of the two preceding films, almost an illumination of what those two filmsmeant. I’ve always regretted that the film couldn’t be called that, and this led me to re-approach the entire project, like pulling on athread poking out of a very complicated sweater that is annoying you, and ultimately finding yourself reweaving a new incarnation of it. So here, as a result of the opportunity that Paramount Pictures has given me to achieve what Mario and I had intended, is Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone, a film that has a different beginning, a different ending that makes the title all the moreclear (and ironic), many scenes repositioned throughout, and in a version that gives the picture, I think, a new life, and provides an entirelynew experience, which does in fact act as a coda to the first two films. I feel comfortable in saying that I have new pride in this third film and its wonderful cast of actors, and am prouder than ever of The Godfather Trilogy. Francis Ford Coppola