Francis Ford Coppola's "Godfather Notebook"

"IF FOUND--Please return to Paramount Pictures"

Francis Ford Coppola was terrified when he wrote the script for The Godfather. As a director, he knew he could correct for bad performances. But he couldn’t correct a bad script. He knew,

If I were wrong in the script, that that’d be as wrong as I could be.¹

To alleviate his anxiety, Coppola made a notebook that combines his notes on Mario Puzo’s novel wit…