To close out the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival, there was a pretty incredible gathering: The cast of The Godfather—Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, Talia Shire, and Robert De Niro—appeared along with Francis Ford Coppola to recall making the 1972 film. Coppola confessed that while he was intrigued about adapting Mario Puzo's bestseller, "I was disappointed in the book when I first read it because it’s very long. Much of the book — about a third — is about Lucy Mancini’s anatomy."

The actors and Coppola spoke during a panel, which followed back-to-back screenings of both The Godfather and its sequel. Director Taylor Hackford moderated, and he noted that legendary producer Robert Evans didn't want Pacino to play Michael Corleone, because he thought Pacino was too short. "That's sorta true," Pacino said.

Coppola really wanted to cast Pacino—"Everywhere we went, all the girls lit up for Al, for some reason"—but Pacino was constantly doing screen tests for the role. The director said, "I remember calling him after he’d tested six times to beg him to do just one more, and his girlfriend got on the phone and said, ‘what are you doing to him? You’re torturing him!''


It turns out that Pacino was dubious about playing Michael and thought he'd be better at playing Sonny Corleone. After he and Diane Keaton filmed the wedding scene, Pacino recalled they "got so loaded... A lot of chaos going on there... We got back, and we started drinking and we were just talking about 'where do we go from here?' 'we're done' 'it's the worst film ever made.'"

You can watch the whole conversation here:

And the wedding scene definitely seemed chaotic—Robert Duvall said, "We all were mooning each other. Some woman turned to me said said, ‘Mr. Duvall, you’re fine.’ She turned to her friend and then said, ‘But did you catch the balls on that Brando?’"