Writing the Scene in The Godfather

Let’s take a look at the shape of the Sollozzo killing scene in The Godfather, (see Chapter 2, Loglines for Our Films) based on the version of the script that was written near the beginning of principal photography.^[8] Before we do that, it would be instructive to examine some of Francis Coppola’s methods in writing and then shooting the film.

^[8] The Godfather, screenplay by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola, Third Draft, March 29, 1971. Copy in the University of Southern California Library.

Like a theatre director, at the beginning of the writing phase of the film Coppola put together a large notebook, with a copy of each page of the original book on its own sheet of notepaper. He then wrote a continuing series of his impressions in the margins of these pages, using arrows to point to the areas of the book that set off those thoughts.