I met with an old friend I hadn’t seen in a while. We’re chewed the fat over a couple of ice cold IPAs. After assessing our local sports teams, we came to movies and TV recommendations. He said I should check out a movie I had never heard of. It was on Netflix.
The next evening, I coaxed Cara to the couch and we prepared to be entertained. Ten minutes in, we got a little restless in our seats. After twenty minutes, we started looking at our iPads. At the half-hour mark I announced, “This is bad. It’s slow and I don’t care about any of these people.”
Cara added, “And the dialogue is all wrong. No one said, “my peeps” in the 80’s!” She loves to call out the incongruities in movies. She’s a living, breathing bullshit detector. More than once, she has exclaimed that before any movie is released, they should give her a private screening so she can edit out everything that doesn’t make sense. She is dead serious.
Because I love my friend, I watched the whole movie. It was two hours long. Two hours I will never get back. While trying to figure how this movie ever got made, it occurred to me that popular actors and directors are given a long leash with projects because the studios assume the movie will be profitable. It has a low budget, so his name guarantees they’ll at least make it all back in the first couple of weekends before everyone realizes it’s a piece of shit. It’s a safe bet in a risky business.
There is no better example of this than The Godfather III. It’s directed by Francis Ford Coppola. It stars Al Pacino. The Godfather and The Godfather II both won Best Picture. So how bad can it be? Oh, let me count the ways.
First, I must report that while living in Los Angeles I was a member of the LA Mad Dogs (lamaddogs.com). The Mad Dogs is a loop group. A loop group is a cadre of actors who improvise the dialogue of the background actors in the film. Looping is also referred to as ADR, Additional Dialogue Replacement.
In scenes like parties, weddings, a busy lobby, a café, the background actors are directed to mime non-existent lines. Once the movie is shot, it is brought into a sound studio. The loop group watches a particular scene. The scene is then replayed, and the actors improvise background dialogue that is recorded and later laid into the soundtrack. If it’s a large crowd, you may loop the same scene over and over again and all the tracks will later be edited on top of each other. It is barely noticeable but without it the scene would sound strange. Imagine Gene Kelly’s iconic dance number in Singing in the Rain without the sound of rain.
The LA Mad Dogs looped Godfather III. Fifteen actors, some of us Italian speakers, showed up at a sound studio in Burbank. Before we started working, we were each handed a non-disclosure agreement or NDA. If we wanted to work on this film, we must first agree to not discuss it with anyone until it is released. It was the first and only time I had to sign an NDA for a looping session. After looping a few scenes, the reason became apparent to everyone. The movie was a slow, badly written, miscast, melodrama. Michael Corleone was now old, cranky, and unlikeable. The producers knew it and wanted to make sure no one else did before it was released.
During lunch we all agreed that Sofia Coppola’s performance alone was enough to sink this movie. The plot was a sloppy, convoluted rehash of the first movie. The characters were broad and stereotyped. There was no John Cazale (Fredo), no Richard Castellano (Clemenza), and no Richard Conte (Barzini). Instead, you had Andy Garcia, Eli Wallach, and George Hamilton – not one spaghetti bender between them! I was deeply offended.
The movie cost $54 million to make. It earned $139.6 million. I still get dinky residual checks, never anymore than $25, but it’s the thought that counts. It is reported that Coppola made it to pay off debt from his 1982 flop, One From The Heart, which cost $26 million to make, but brought in less than $700,000. Ouch.
At the end of my buddy’s movie, a lesser man may have resented him. But I consider it a minor offense. There’s no accounting for taste, as they say. (I don’t know who “they” are, but they probably liked this movie too.) I know the series recommendation I made to him was solid. I expect him to thank me profusely and excitedly admit, “I binged all seven seasons!” Although, there’s a slight chance he might be sitting in front of his TV right now thinking, “Are you kidding me?”
Yeah, I always put a caveat into my film recommendations: Just because I liked it, doesn't mean you have to. If you don't, just turn it off. My tastes may not be yours. (Hey, did you catch "Friends and Romans," which I recommended? Just because I liked it...)