Overall, Puzo was not only satisfied but delighted with the final product, and at the same time he got himself a quick education in the ways of Hollywood. He was mortified when his icon, Frank Sinatra, screamed abuse at him in a crowded restaurant. Angered by the depiction of Johnny Fontane in Puzo’s book, Sinatra called Puzo a pimp and threatened to impair his health and that of his family. Suddenly, Puzo realized, his fictional cast of characters was coming to life around him.
Puzo was hurt, too, when, upon accepting accolades for the film, Coppola told reporters that the success of
The Godfather
would now permit him to make films he “really wanted to make.” Having said for years that he wrote his novel only to make money, Puzo had to confront a director who basically was singing the same tune.
I visited with Puzo shortly after all this happened, and his attitude was typically crusty. “This thirty-two-year-old kid suddenly realizes what I knew at age forty-five,” Puzo told me. “Namely, that both of us had to get
The Godfather
under our belt in order to win the freedom to do whatever we wanted.” At the same time, even Puzo had to acknowledge that what he had created—indeed what
they
had created—had taken on a life of its own. Not only had the novel become a legend, but many would consider the film to be among the five greatest movies of all time. The two men had achieved, however inadvertently, a sort of immortality through the very work that both still felt compelled to put down, as though refusing to accept the weight of their own achievement.
In fact, neither Puzo nor Coppola would ever top, or even match, this level of work.
The Godfather
and the movie version’s sequel represented the zenith of their careers. In his later years, Puzo took on the gravitas of his invented character, as he dispensed advice and philosophy to young writers and filmmakers, commenting on the ills of society and on life’s ironies. Like most authors, he still felt unappreciated and misunderstood. His early work, he reiterated, was still underestimated on its literary merits, and his high-profile novels were perhaps overpraised. “Writing, like gambling, was always a big part of my life,” he used to say. “Both gave me sanctuary from the world. And you never really had to kill someone to get what you wanted. You just had to beat fate.”
And that indeed is what Mario Puzo managed to achieve.