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As ‘The Godfather’ Turns 45, Film Has Become Staple for Real-Life Mobsters


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As ‘The Godfather’ Turns 45, Film Has Become Staple for Real-Life Mobsters

”Somebody had to be helping him. He had the whole atmosphere, the way we talked. That wedding scene — I mean, that was so real. I mean, my book isn’t a pimple on his book, and I’m in my book.”

 

—Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano on Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, 2000.

 

Forty-five years ago this week, The Godfather first opened in theaters and the film has continued to make moviegoers an offer they can’t refuse.

 

The American Film Institute rates the 1972 Best Picture Oscar winner as the second-greatest film of all-time, behind only Citizen Kane, and the crime drama has been hailed by generations of critics. But more importantly, it’s gotten the seal of approval from real-life gangsters, many of whom have looked to the film adaptation of the Mario Puzo novel’s depiction of the mob as a badge of honor.

 

In 2008, for example, Mafia enforcers left the severed head of a donkey as a warning to a baker who refused to pay protection money in Villafranca Padovana, Italy. The gang was apparently inspired by the infamous scene in The Godfather when a producer wakes up to find the head of his beloved thoroughbred horse in his bed. Scissors-32x32.png

 

http://www.realclearlife.com/books/gangsters-love-godfather/

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