Peter Bart: ‘The Offer’ Spins A Mafia Tale About ‘The Godfather’ That’s Really More Fiction Than Fact
deadline.comIt is a story steeped in action and intrigue, but is it true?The Offer, a new 10-part series starting April 28 on Paramount+, delivers an “inside” account of the making of The Godfather.
It is a story about stalwart filmmakers who defied bullets and death threats from Mafia soldiers to deliver their great saga.But not really.
The TV series, written by Michael Tolkin, is loosely based on incidents and anecdotes supplied by Albert S. Ruddy, who produced the movie.
They are vivid anecdotes, but they are at odds with the accounts of principals who made the movie — of which I am one — and who encountered a different reality.The Italian-American activists who took an interest in the project in fact revered Mario Puzo’s bestselling novel and were desperate to find a way of mobilizing the film to raise funds for their own causes and charities. “The principals of the movie were celebrated, not threatened,” recalls Nick Pileggi, who reported on the film for the New York Times and New York magazine, and was the only reporter invited to visit the set and speak with the creatives.Pileggi recalls the presence of important “wiseguys” who were eagerly monitoring the climactic scene in which Marlon Brando is gunned down – an exterior shot filmed on location in Little Italy. “They were applauding,” he recalls. “They loved the movie.” Pileggi later wrote the book Wiseguys and co-wrote the screenplay for Goodfellas.At that moment I was serving as Paramount’s vice president for production under Robert Evans, the studio chief.
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