How 'The Godfather' used Italian culture to reinvent the mafia story
The first time I saw The Godfather's Don Corleone, it wasn't in a movie theater. It was on Saturday Night Live.
John Belushi did an amazing impression of Marlon Brando as Corleone, and he was playing the Don in a group therapy session with Elliot Gould as the therapist. Laraine Newman was decked out in a blond wig and Valley Girl accent for the sketch from SNL's first season, dubbed "Godfather Therapy," telling Belushi's Corleone, "please reach out, man!"
(One of my favorite lines from that sketch: "Now the feds are watching me...investigating me. The ASPCA's after me about this horse thing...")
That was a measure of how much The Godfather had already permeated pop culture by 1976. Even an 11-year-old Black kid watching TV in Gary, Indiana knew about the Mob boss who made people offers they couldn't refuse.
A few years later, when I actually saw the film, I was transfixed. showed us a very specific family at a specific time in a very specific culture.
