THE OFFER

The Godfather is so firmly planted in American culture that it’s hard to imagine a time when anyone thought it was a bad idea.

But almost everyone did.

Paramount Pictures didn’t particularly want to make it. The studio didn’t want Marlon Brando. They really didn’t want Al Pacino. Frank Sinatra hated the whole idea. The actual Mafia wanted it stopped. And Francis Ford Coppola was nearly fired before he could finish it.

THE OFFER, a ten-part limited series on Paramount+, tells the story of producer Al Ruddy and his seemingly impossible job of getting The Godfather made without being fired, bankrupted, beaten up or killed.

Miles Teller plays Ruddy as a charming, fast-talking problem solver who understands that producing a movie has very little to do with cameras and almost everything to do with convincing difficult people to temporarily want the same thing. He spends most of the series bouncing between studio executives, temperamental artists, skeptical actors and actual mobsters - often telling each of them a slightly different version of the truth.

In other words, producing.

The cast is terrific. Dan Fogler gives Francis Ford Coppola a wonderful mixture of insecurity, stubbornness and artistic conviction. Juno Temple is sharp and completely believable as Ruddy’s indispensable assistant, Bettye McCartt. Giovanni Ribisi brings surprising warmth and humor to mob boss Joe Colombo.

But Matthew Goode steals nearly every scene he’s in as Paramount chief Robert Evans.

Goode doesn’t simply play Evans. He seems to inhale him. The voice, the swagger, the tinted glasses, the manic confidence - it could easily have become an impersonation, but somehow becomes the most human performance in the series. Evans is vain, brilliant, wounded and frequently ridiculous, yet you understand why people followed him into battle.

The series is based on Ruddy’s recollections, so it’s probably wise to view some of it with a raised eyebrow. Events have clearly been compressed, characters have been combined or embellished, and Ruddy occasionally comes off as the only functioning adult in Hollywood. But this isn’t a documentary. It’s a great story about the making of a great story - and on that level, it works beautifully.

The real fun is watching a collection of now-legendary decisions nearly get killed by people who were absolutely certain they knew better.

Brando was considered washed up and impossible to control. Pacino was too short, too unknown and apparently too unimpressive. Coppola was too inexperienced. Gordon Willis’ cinematography was too dark. The script was too long. The budget was too high. Practically everything that made The Godfather extraordinary was, at one point, treated as a problem that needed to be fixed.

There may be no better lesson in the history of creative work. Certainly not in marketing and advertising.

If you love movies, advertising, storytelling or the strange process by which an idea survives long enough to become something real, watch this series. Beneath the Hollywood glamour and mob theatrics is a surprisingly familiar truth: great work rarely arrives with everyone applauding. More often, it has to be protected from committees, budgets, and authority.

The Godfather became one of the greatest films ever made because a small group of people refused to make the safer version.

That alone makes THE OFFER worth accepting.

- Gene Carlisle / ZanderGrey