Game on for the Godfather
Yes, it was an offer they couldn’t refuse.
More than 30 years after Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall and James Caan first starred in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 masterpiece, The Godfather, the trio have reunited for Electronic Arts’ new videogame based on the movie.
Before Brando died last June, the Oscar winner granted EA permission to use his likeness and voice for the game’s cinematic interludes and even revisited his Don Vito Corleone role by recording new parts.
While it’s not known how much Electronic Arts shelled out to secure Brando, who was notorious for his outrageous salary demands, the company forked over enough to convince Caan and Duvall to take another stab in the family business as, respectively, hotheaded heir Santino "Sonny" Corleone and consigliere and adopted son Tom Hagen.
Caan and Duvall turned up for The Godfather videogame’s official unveiling at Little Italy’s Il Cortile restaurant in New York Thursday, where the actors watched for the first time teaser clips of their CG selves and explained why more than three decades later, they got pulled back in.
"It was fun," said an antsy Caan (who looked like he’d rather have been back at work on his NBC series Las Vegas). "Bobby called me…and it was a thrill to be working with him again. Obviously, Marlon did the game and Bobby did it, and it was great. For me, it was like my kids could play with me even if I’m not there."
The Godfather game allows players to invent their own GoodFella and climb the ranks of the criminal underworld controlled by the Corleones and the other families. As they work their way up, players employ tried-and-true mob tactics like intimidation, protection rackets, extortion, pistol-whipping, drive-by shootings and, of course, horse beheading–a Corleone family tradition.
"The game is based heavily on the same thing the film was: respect. Family. Expanding one’s territory. You have the opportunity to live the life of the godfather," said David DeMartini, the game’s executive producer.
Nick Earl, EA’s vice president and general manager, says having Brando, Caan and Duvall aboard reprising their iconic characters adds an element of realism.
"You’re kind of a guy off the street who gets sucked into the family because you helped them out," Earl told Online. "Here are different paths. You can become the godfather of the Corleone family, or the don of every family. You can play everything."
Electronic Arts also acquired the rights to use Godfather composer Nino Rota’s score in the game and hired Oscar-winning composer Bill Conti to write an additional 100 minutes of original music.
Development on The Godfather videogame started 18 months ago, when Paramount and parent company Viacom pitched EA execs the long-shot idea of adapting one of its most famous properties. After Paramount embraced the games EA did based on The Lord of the Rings, the company got the greenlight and set about making the concept work.
"A lot of entertainment executives are afraid of technology, don’t understand interactive, don’t know how big our audience is, how many million people around the world spend more time playing games than they do watching television," said Jeffrey Brown, EA’s vice president of corporate communications. "Paramount gets it. They understood early on what an interactive Godfather could be."
Along with Brando, Caan and Duvall’s characters, gamers will encounter other notables from the movies–including Fredo Corleone, Luca Brasi and the heads of the five families.
There has been no word whether Michael Corleone made the cut, but Al Pacino’s voice is not in the game. Also MIA is the other Corleone sibling, Talia Shire’s Connie Corleone.
Caan was asked how he would play the scene where Sonny pulls up to a tollbooth–and winds up getting ambushed.
"If I knew there was a Godfather II, you bet I would’ve had change," Caan said.
After their brief appearance plugging the game, Caan and Duvall made a swift getaway through Il Cortile’s kitchen.
The Godfather videogame is due out in time for the holiday shopping season and will be available for a variety of platforms, including PlayStation 2, Xbox and Sony’s new PSP.
De Niro Defends Hotel Design
Robert De Niro has a message for New York officials: Analyze this!
The raging bull turned up Tuesday at a hearing for the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission to plead for approval of a luxurious penthouse atop his newly opened $43 million Greenwich Hotel in TriBeCa. The new construction has come under fire because it didn’t match the original design.
Because of its prime location in the historic district, the seven-story, 88-room boutique hotel faced a rigorous vetting process when it was built in 2004 to ensure its handmade brick architecture meshed well with the neighborhood’s cobblestone character.
However, after opening April 1, commission members discovered that the two-bedroom posh rooftop suite was larger by about 1,300 more feet and also had a steeper roof than the 64-year-old actor and his partners proposed.
De Niro told the board the project was a “labor of love.”
“We’ve really worked quite hard on it, and so anything that would be offensive would be offensive to me,” the two-time Oscar winner said.
De Niro apologized for the inconsistencies, and urged the Fockers, um, the folks on the preservation board to retroactively approve the penthouse changes without forcing developers to tear it down and start from scratchan endeavor estimated to cost $1.5 million.
“If there are any minor little mistakes, my apologies for it,” De Niro said, “because in any creation there are those things, and we hope that they’re not in any way misconstrued as being wrong or that we can do it because we want to do it. We want to do what’s right for the neighborhood.”
De Niro’s got street cred. The goodfella helped revitalize Lower Manhattan after 9/11 by founding the Tribeca Film Festival.
He also has his share of defenders in the neighborhood, most notably fellow star Ed Burns, who has a residence across the street from the hotel with a view overlooking the rooftop and who testified on De Niro’s behalf.
“The building is beautiful and, for me as a layperson, architecturally beautiful,” Burns said. “There’s nothing about what I can see, which is the entire penthouse, that’s offensive in any way.”
While De Niro and developers obtained OKs for the penthouse expansion from both the Board of Standards and Appeals and the local community board, they did not get a waiver from Preservation Commission, which oversees all construction in a landmarked area, leading to the current imbroglio.
Preservationists carped that the modifications were hardly miniscule, but were major alterations that changed the fundamental nature of the designs submitted to the board.
“It might be understandable that a few mistakes had been made,” Nadezhda Williams, a member of the Historic Districts Council. “However, simply put, this is not the penthouse that the commission approved.”
No word when the commission will rule on the matter. Its chairman suggested a compromise might be in the offing when he asked architects to consider minor revisions to the penthouse in order to make it more closely match the original design.
De Niro had no further comment on the matter after the hearing.