Literary feedback loop: Same ol’ books, same ol’ movies

FROM JASON’S REDUNDANT HOME LIBRARY — Well, it happened again. I grabbed my battered, old copy of The Godfather on the way to the bathroom a couple of days ago, and before I knew it two hours had passed and I was 120 pages in.

It started when I caught a much-edited showing the Coppola’s film on Bravo — it’s one of those films that is a must-watch if I stumble across it while flipping channels. But the Bravo version didn’t end the right way, with Kay (nee Adams) Corleone praying for Michael’s soul.

The more I saw, the more scenes I missed… either those that were edited, or those that never made the script. It’s perhaps my favorite movie of all time (I waffle between The Godfather and Goodfellas, which is strange because I don’t really care so much about mafia as a subject, just the conspiracy of it all).

But there’s none of Vito Corleone’s rise to power in Coppola’s film. You don’t meet Genco Abandando. Almost all of Johnny Fontaine’s story has been excised (which was supposedly all about Frank Sinatra, and Sinatra hated author Mario Puzo for it). Aside from the first scene, there’s nothing more about Lucy Mancini. You don’t get a whole lot about the wooing and turning of ex-cop Albert Neri.

I love those character studies. They are not the focus of the story. They are not the brain of the story. But they are its heart — all the people Vito has pledged to protect and provide for.

My reading binge didn’t stop there. The Godfather was just the ignition point for a terrible habit. I go through re-reads like fire goes through gasoline. I find myself, year after year, returning to the same cache of old hard-bound friends: The Three Musketeers. Breakfast of Champions. The World According to Garp. Dune, The Belgariad, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, 2010, Ender’s Game, Robin Hood.

They are familiar. I worry this habit is just childish, escapist regression. I justify it as stress relief, as returning to familiar works that deserve time and attention on a second or third or forty-third reading.

It’s happening with movies, too. I went through a particular rough patch in my life a few months ago, and ended up watching Fight Club every other night or so for two weeks, just because it was looping on G4 and my emotional malaise turned into apathy.

I rarely hit the video rentals these days (though I just finished watching Oliver Stone’s W.). Instead, I opt to watch the animated 1984 Transformers movie endlessly, or to rehash Lucky Number Slevin for the 20th time, or pop in a random Arrested Development disc.

I’m a little paranoid about the habit, I think, because I’m nearing 30 and starting to wonder whether my choices reflect an overall mental slowdown. I find it less and less appealing to pick up an all-new title with its unknown depths. It’s so much more comfortable to go back to those novels to which you already know the ending as soon as you read page one.

Is this a sign that I’ve reached my mental peak? If I am more and more hesitant to absorb new knowledge, new stories, does that mean my cognitive growth is stagnant? Is that the point where I can consider myself old?

And here I thought the middle age crisis was a psychological myth.

By the way, have you heard of Goodreads.com? It’s a list-keeping service that helps track all the titles you’ve ever read, organizing them into databases that can then be cross-references to find new books you might enjoy. You can share and compare your lists with your friends.

Some of mine include:I had been wanting to sit and draw out just such a list for a few years, trying to see just what scope and breadth of literature I’ve read. I’m sure I’m missing quite a few, and will continue to flesh out my account as I remember and/or visit the library.

Read This: The Godfather (and fantasy cast)

FROM JASON’S LACK OF OMERTA — I’m not Italian. I have no pretenses that the mob is a modern Robin Hood. Yet my three favorite movies of all time, in order, are Goodfellas, The Godfather, and Casino.

For some reason, I’m a complete sucker for the gloss-on-dross lessons of sexy Sicilian gangland flicks.

About four years ago, I finally forced myself to read Mario Puzo’s 1969 novel, which was adapted to the big screen in 1972. I’d been putting off reading it since I picked it up — mostly for the respectable black hardcover — for 25 cents at a library book sale some years before.

It took about six pages to become totally engrossed, and I literally didn’t put the book down for two days straight. I read it while cooking. I read it in the bathroom. I read it at work. I tried to read it while driving, but that didn’t work out too well.

If you’ve never seen the movie (sinner), then we can’t be friends. But here’s a brief summary: New York Mafia boss Vito Corleone is gunned down by a rival Sicilian family because he refused to fund a venture into the narcotics trade. His eldest son, Santino, wants to take revenge. His middle son, Fredo, is too deep in shock to do anything. His youngest son, Michael, wants nothing to do with Vito’s criminal lifestyle.

But Michael is the one who ultimately takes vengeance against his father’s attacker, and he is forced to flee to Italy to seek refuge from the law. When he returns years later, Michael feels he has no choice but to assume his father’s role at the head of the family. His naivety is stripped away and he becomes his father’s more ruthless, vigilant incarnation.

It’s an amazing story, and I tried to sidestep a whole mess of spoilers about who lives, who dies, who betrays The Family, and how Michael comes to grips with his destiny. In some ways, The Godfather is almost a western, showing how some men utterly scoff at the idea of rule by any law other than power.

I only have one problem: I’ve read this book three times now, mostly using the huge stars of the Francis Ford Coppola movie as the characters in my imagination. This last time I read through, though, I’ve found myself supplanting Al Pacino, James Caan, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, and the rest of the Coppola cast for more recent actors.

I feel dirty. But flow with me here and I’ll try to explain who I would envision in a modern recasting of the film:

• Vito Corleone
  1972: Marlon Brando
  2008: Alfred Molina
  .
  Nobody will ever have Brando’s nasal Italian drone, understated power, or screen presence. But Molina has the capacity to be evil and sympathetic, which when reduced to its core components is what The Godfather is all about. He’s about the right age and physique to play the wizened head of the family, and he has a commanding demeanor about him, even when playing ridiculous roles like Doctor Octopus.
  .
• Michael Corleone
  1972: Al Pacino
  2008: Mark Ruffalo
  .
  He’s done some dreadful romantic comedies (13 Going on 30, anyone?), but with a beard and some crow’s feet, Ruffalo could pull off Michael’s reluctant gravitas. He’s proven he’s more than a handsome face with his roles in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Zodiac, and I think he has the capacity for someone cold and brutal as Michael must become.
  .
• Santino Corleone
  1972: James Caan
  2008: Brad Garrett
  .
  Roll with me here. Garrett’s sitcom acting is genuinely bad. But the man is towering, and I think he could be apishly scary as hell with a .45 strapped under his arm and a deathly oath of vengeance against a rival family. Imagine him bearing down on you with a scowl. Give the man a chance to show he’s something other than a hack comedian and I guarantee he’ll scare the crap out of you as a true-blood Sicilian.
  .
• Fredo Corleone
  1972: John Cazale
  2008: Giovanni Ribisi
  .
  Ribisi is always good, even when he’s in bad films (The Mod Squad). He’s edgy enough to be a mobster but boyish enough to be shocked into incompetence when Sollozo has Vito shot. Fredo is taken out of the picture pretty early in The Godfather, but comes back in The Godfather II as a cretinous boot-licker to a Las Vegas hotelier. Craven is something I think Ribisi could pull off well.
  .
• Tom Hagen
  1972: Robert Duvall
  2008: Gabriel Byrne
  .
  The adopted Irish son of Vito Corleone, Hagen is the Don’s consiglieri, his chief adviser. He’s also The Family’s chief legal muscle. Byrne (whom I remember best for The Usual Suspects) might be a little too old to play a contemporary to Vito’s blood sons, like he is in the original, but he has the right intelligence in his eyes and slick bravado for the roll, I think.
  .
• Luca Brasi
  1972: Lenny Montana
  2008: Stanley Tucci
  .
  He’s nowhere old or muscularly bloated as his 1972 counterpart, but I think Tucci has the capacity to be one scary mofo. Brasi is Vito’s loyal assassin, a one-man army working in the shadows and striking enough fear into rival families to keep them in line. Tucci, when he’s not playing a gay guy (The Devil Wears Prada), can be hard. Think his bad-guy-cop in Lucky Number Slevin but silent and apathetic about death.
  .
• Virgil Sollozzo
  1972: Al Lettieri
  2008: Armand Assante
  .
  He’s already been in Gotti and Hoffa, so if you can forget Judge Dredd, then we have a ringer. Assante can come off as indifferently dangerous, cool on the outside but ready to erupt and spew violence at any moment. He also has a somewhat exotic look that could work given Sollozzo’s nickname of “The Turk.”

Rounding out the supporting cast, I would probably give the role of Michael’s all-American wife, Kay Adams, to Jennifer Connelly. She’s just pin-up-girl-pretty enough and has a bit of 1940s glamor without being outright gorgeous.

The part of Hollywood producer Jack Woltz — the one who wakes up with a horse’s head in his bed in the famous scene — would go to J.K. Simmons. That’s right, good ol’ J. Jonah Jamison. He’s just brusque jerk enough.

Carlo Rizzi, the angry wife-beater who marries Michael’s sister, would go to Vincent D’Onofrio. He has just the right mix of crazy and wrathful to really make you hate him. And we could give the role of Corleone mercenary boss Clemenza to Dennis Farina and toadie Paulie Gatto to Joe Pantaliano.

Well, there. I hope that list pissed off a great many film and book buffs. Feel free to post your own ideas.