Joe Mantegna on Landing The Godfather Part III: “The Pizza Guy Heard About It Before My Agent”
It’s 1989 and It’s just been announced that Francis Ford Coppola is going to be doing a third installment in The Godfather franchise. This is a big deal. By then, the first two films were already historic masterpieces, and had rightfully taken their place in the pantheon of the greatest films of all time. Because of this, there were a lot of boxes to check: Coppola would have to create a third installment that managed to move the plot forward, serve as an essential chapter on its own right, and live up to the reputation of the first two. There were so many moving parts that could ultimately go wrong, but if anyone was up to the challenge, it was Coppola. This time around, however, he would need a new antagonist and he found one in Joe Mantegna.
Mantegna, who won all sorts of acclaim and a Tony for his work onstage in Glengarry Glen Ross, would play Joey Zasa. A “bella figura”, as Mantegna saw it, who ultimately finds himself at odds with the Corleone family. It’s a role that easily could have pivoted into stereotypical gangster territory. However, Mantegna opted to rise above that, seeing the films not as a series of gangster movies, but family movies. And while the third installment itself has been dragged through the mud over the years, Mantegna’s portrayal of Zasa still holds its own as a standout performance in the overall trilogy.
In celebration of the film’s 30th anniversary, Coppola has delivered The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone. By reworking certain elements of the film, Coppola allows us to finally see a final product much closer to what he had initially envisioned And while the changes are primarily with regards to the structure of the bookends, the new cut affords fans and viewers the opportunity to reevaluate the film and see it through a new lens. Three decades later, despite its flaws, this new cut manages to do exactly what Coppola set out to do with it — warts and all.
