"GODFATHER" Director Goes To Cuba "Did You Bring The Film?"

"GODFATHER" Director Goes to Cuba

"Did You Bring the Film?"

by Robert Scheer & Susan Lyne

(Editor's Note: Our entire news and feature space for this issue is given over to a long and fascinating interview with Francis Ford Coppola, producer and director The Godfather and The Godfather II, upon his return from a trip to Cuba as a member of an American delegation which enjoyed, among many other highlights, an audience with Fidel Castro himself. Interviewed by Robert Scheer, West Coast Editor of New Times magazine, and Susan Lyne, an Associate Editor at City of SanFrancisco magazine, Coppola registers the responses and reactions of an American intellectual artist of the '70s to Cuba's "new culture" and its institutions, including the nascent Cuban Film-making community and the island nation's dynamic educational system. Francis Ford Coppola is also publisher of City of San Francisco magazine where this interview first appeared, and with whose kind permission the Sun is able to bring you -- in a somewhat condensed version -- this striking first-hand report.

City: You're not known as one of the more political directors in Hollywood. Why did you go on this trip? Why were you interested in Cuba?

Coppola: I think I first became interested in Cuba when I was doing the research for Godfather II. Mario Puzo wrote Godfather I by reading all those government transcripts and basically synthesizing and fictionalizing the events. So, when I was stuck with doing Part II, I just read all the material I could get and that led me inevitably to Cuba, because the Mafia moved in there to escape from Kefauver in the '50s. I even tried to go to Cuba before I made the film, since I was very anxious for that section to be authentic. My request wasn't answered until the movie was done. 

City: You had an image of Cuba that's reflected in Godfather II -- I was wondering if you were shocked by how it looks. 

Coppola: My first impression, being in places like the Havana Libre (the old Havana Hilton), was that I was in this strange time-warp. It took a few days before I really started to understand the new culture, though.

I was shy when we first arrived, but people were very friendly. We only stayed in Havana a few hours, which was sort of frustrating for me because I knew about Havana and I wanted to see it. We were immediately put in an airplane, a Russian-made airplane, and take to this place called the Isle of Pines, which I understood was owned by four Americans at one point.

City: It was also the prison that Castro was held in.

Coppola: Yes, it was the prison where the people who made the raid on Moncado garrison were sent. We were all really exhausted when we arrived, and we were met by a Captain Lindsay, who had been in the Sierra Maestra with Fidel. He started to give us this really stiff talk about the educational system and the experiments on the Isle of Pines. The young people have really developed the island and the agriculture, sort of like a kibbutz in one sense, in fact even citrus and grapefruit are grown there. After his talk we were taken to the Colony Hotel. And that night was really when I started to understand what was going on there.

We all sat around drinking these daquiris. I had done research on Cuban music with my father for Godfather II, and so I knew some old stuff from Cecilia Valdez, which is a famous Cuban opera, really an operetta by Roig. Being somewhat loaded at that point I started to sing Cecilia Valdez and Captain Lindsay, who was also loaded, started to sign too. Through all this really bad singing we started to hug each other and dance. I was dancing with the captain, and there was a lot of toast-making and speechmaking, with him behind the bar, which I reminded him was a position of power over us. He told us in his slightly inebriated state that he had been uneasy about receiving us, that the order had come from the head places and he understand that it was important for this kind of exchange to occur but he didn't know how he felt about it. And he told us, I think it was very sincere, that having met us, he was happy we had come.

The second day we toured the prison, these enormous circular prisons where Fidel, his brother Raul and Almeda and the various people in that early attack were kept. the woman who gave us the tour was 32 years old, the second in command and the real operative around the island. I had a continuing feeling that the people in the highest places were really their smartest and best, which is as it should be. They were smart, they liked the people that they were dealing with, they were relaxed and affectionate. Those things mean a lot to me and it's not stuff you can fake. Just the fact that they touched each other when they talked. So in terms of this new culture, the first thing I started to see is that the people seemed to be wired together in a singularity of purpose which is very comforting. You sense that everyone is connected to some idea and that makes people feel good. When I saw someone talk to a head person, the way they talked implied almost a familiarity. There's tremendous affection between them because they went through hard times in the mid-'60s. And we had a sense that they were showing us their island. 

I am very interested in schools and little children. And for me their crowning achievement is that they have made education their number one priority. The Isle of Pines is filled with schools and they're named things like "Heroic Vietnam," "The Martyrs of Kent," or after the various heroes of the Cuban culture. I knew that Cuba had a history and a culture certainly as old as ours, a culture that was important to them, but I didn't feel it until I was there. And that was one of the things that I began to realize we had robbed from Cuba, as I guess people feel we have robbed from Puerto Rico. They had their great men and their leaders, Jose Marti as well as a whole galaxy of others, and a very rich complicated history that they felt the United States just stole from them or disregarded. 

City: You mentioned the children -- what are the schools like in Cuba?

Coppola: The Cubans feel the best way to insure that their revolution lives properly is to educate generation after generation, to give the kids a sense of living. We went to lots of schools. There'd be rows of little "young pioneer" kids with their berets and red flags and they'd welcome the American delegation. All the stuff that I'm sure also happens in Russia. And we'd be taken to a model class and a little kid would get up and make a sweet speech. We were permitted to wander around and ask them questions. And you'd ask one kid if he liked school and he'd say yes; you'd ask another kid, he'd say no.

In one school a dance band wanted to play us a tune and a kid asked one of us to dance and another kid wanted to dance with Candice Bergen, and then for two and a half hours the entire school was dancing. The teachers are very young, they're all 23 or 24, and the head of the school is about 26, because they've had to do it so fast. The point I'm making is that the kids felt they had, I wouldn't say the right, but that it was totally natural that they should take three hours off from school and dance. If there was some kind of heavy disciplinarian thing, they wouldn't even dream of doing that. They wanted to dance with us for three hours, so we danced for three hours, and then very gently, and very lovingly the teachers would get the routine going again. It was very unselfconscious and it was certainly not planned.

at one school they set up a lunch for us in the cafeteria when it was not being used. The kids were in class and another big group was in the field. It was very nice -- with beer and rum and stuff -- and while we were eating I looked out the window and noticed all these kids coming in from working. They were beautiful kids, 13, 14, with their hats, kidding and laughing, and they saw me and came right up and asked who I was. In my kind of Italian-Spanish I said I was North American and that we were in the cafeteria with all the big shots from the area and I asked if they wanted to come in; and they all said yeah. Now, there were 200 of them! Those kids just followed me right in there and all the officials kind of looked and laughed. It wasn't like maybe they shouldn't go, you know what I mean? They came in and everyone introduced everyone. It was really kind of chaotic, but people seemed to feel that it was permitted, which means that they must feel anything is permitted.

Again, my point is that somehow the system bent to make it possible and the kids felt that they could do it. They were obviously studying hard, they were working hard, but they were not being regimented in a way that we associate with the worst of socialism. They really seemed happy which was very exciting.

City: You said the other day -- well I'll give you the quote that I like so much -- you said that communism in Cuba is fun, and alive, and joyous.

Coppola: Well, look, what is everyone's fear of communism in this country? From the Orwell stuff? It's the idea that we'll become little ciphers, cogs in a great wheel with what they call individual freedoms all gone -- the image of these little Chinese people all wearing the same color. But knowing a little bit about the Cubans, it would be hard to think that could happen to them. It's not in their nature. 

There is a real sense of joy, especially in regard to the children. Even when we went to some grungy grapefruit factory -- not grungy, but I mean that kind of work isn't good no matter how you cut it -- there would be some little guy pushing the grapefruits in a greasy machine. When we asked him what he thought of work, he was very honest. He said this is terrible what I'm doing, but I gotta do it to live. But then he'd start to talk about his children and his face would light up and he'd say, "Have you seen the schools? My kid is doing this, I go to see him every week." And you realize that their big joy is what they're doing for their kids -- certainly this particular worker.

In Cuba, there are all sorts of volunteer workers. People work real hard there, but my sense is that there is a real vitality about what they are doing, about their lives. And it isn't just "Oh, things are gonna be so great in 20 years." With their resources and what they've accomplished in 15 years, they're going to be a pretty affluent little island in 20 more. If anything, one of their worries is how to hold the spirit when affluence arrives. They're not just happy because it'll be nice later; they're happy right now because they're connected with everybody else in that society. 

City: Some of the people on your trip had been to China and they probably felt they found similar things there. People very rarely find it in Russia or Eastern Europe, but the reports are pretty similar about these countries that have made their own revolution and involved large numbers of people, say Vietnam or China or Cuba. The resistance to those reports has a lot to do with the cold war -- we were raised on certain myths. Do you feel we have those kinds of blinders?

Coppola: Absolutely. When I first went to Italy, in 1962, I went to the town where my grandfather had been born and saw communist posters, the hammer and the sickle, all over. That was a shock to me because that had been like the swastika up to that point. I had been decompressioned a little bit by the time of the Cuba trip, but still to see the red flowers and the red flags threw me. Although I must say when I walked into the airport and I saw all the big blow-ups of Che Guevera and what have you, I said, "My God, this looks like Berkeley." There is no advertising there except for one product, the socialism of the country, but it is odd to see the thing that you had drummed into you as an evil and a scourge on the earth be celebrated as a source of joy. They call it "our Marxism" and "our Leninism," like something that's theirs. I told you about this woman, wonderful woman we met, I think her name is Melba, who had been with them in the early days.

City: Hernandez?

Coppola: Yes. You just have to be in a room with her for a minute, and you know that she's fair and honest and she likes people. I mean just a minute. Thirty seconds. Anything she believes in is okay, you can believe in it. She said something to the effect of, "I can't tell you how beautiful our little communism is and what a source of joy it is." I really understood what she meant because I had been there. What she was saying is how good you feel when you're living a good life and you know that every bit of excess energy is going into allowing everyone to live a good life. It was sort of taking care of people, and it was very, very impressive. 

You know, there's a wonderful romantic sense about the country. There's a tremendous mental hospital in havana with about 30,000 patients. If you wanted to send a relative to a comparable place here, it would $100,000 a year. And this is just the mental hospital for the people, even if they're destitute. It's an amazing place with arts and crafts and a museum. And it's not just a little show thing, it's like a city.

When our tour of it was over, we were introduced to the head of this place -- he was a doctor and he had a beard. Very few people have beards, as you know, really only the people who were there in the early days. And he was one of the guys who was with Fidel. Talking to him made me being to realize that all these people won this revolution and one said, "I always wanted to have a great mental institution," and Fidel said, "Go do it." And another guy said, "I think Cuba should have a film industry," and Fidel said, "Go do it." You had a feeling that all these passionate people had fantastic dreams and they took over the country and they were going to make them all come true. We saw the film institute, and the mental institution. That was exciting. 

City: Were you able to see Cuban films down there?

Coppola: Yeah, any films we wanted to see. We would just sit in the screening room and they would run anything we wanted.

City: What did you think of them?

Coppola: I thought they were very good. I have been traveling around and I know well the pain of a country like Australia that's a wealthy, civilized place and yet has no film industry, because it's cheaper for them to buy our old television shows and our old movies. You see them struggling to have a little bit of a film thing. Yet here you have Cuba, which is a small place by comparison, and they have healthy, real, ambitious films. 

City: Are they doing experimental things?

Coppola: A person who considers himself an artist approaches a socialist society worrying about, well, shit, the art has to be really simple and following a certain line and make a certain point, but my impression was that there's a lot of latitude. The Cuban authority acknowledges the complexity of the human experience and their films explore that. My first impression when I saw Memories of Underdevelopment years ago was that it was complex and had different shades and feelings about the revolution. They acknowledged that. They're very eloquent about it. They're not pretending that it's just child's play to put together this new kind of society; it's really hard. And for all their many successes, they've had many failures. But they feel they're right, so it's worth pursuing it.

City: Did you ask questions about the problem of artistic freedom?

Coppola: Yes. No one is permitted to criticize the government, other than through the channels that are provided for them. If you're a worker or if you're a writer, you can do it in your various workers' groups. In a factory they get together a couple of nights a week and discuss problems -- how to make things better, what's unfair and stuff like that. So in other words, there are channels that allow you not to criticize the idea of the society, but to figure out how to make it better. I like the honesty of it. They say no, you cannot criticize the government, that freedom, no, you don't have. 

Here in America you can write or say anything you want -- and many people in Cuba are very impressed when you tell them this. They are surprised when they see something like Godfather II. They wonder: "How could you make a film that says nice things about our revolution?" But the truth is, I believe, that the freedoms we have here are possible because they do not even come close to jeopardizing the real interests that govern our country. If there were someone who really came close to jeopardizing those interests, I believe our freedoms wouldn't vanish, one way or another. If there were a man, a political candidate, who was elected to office and began implementing real programs that were counter to the big interests, there would be a coup or a murder or whatever was necessary.

In Cuba they don't have even the illusion of that kind of political freedom. It's as though they're saying, "Our revolution is too fragile, it has too many enemies, it is too difficult to pull off to allow forces inside and outside to work counter it." I understand the implication of what I am saying, the dangers. But I put it to you: If they are right -- if their society is truly beautiful and honest and worthwhile -- then it is worth protecting, even with this suspension of freedom. In Chile that newborn, elected society was not protected in this way, and so it was destroyed. Ironically, the government that replaced it is not taking any chances and is controlling the press and opposition in a way Allende did not. 

City: It seems that what you're saying is that in Cuba, for instance, people suddenly had the freedom to do something very positive like create a mental institution or a school, which in some sense is a freedom we don't have. Basically our freedom is still limited freedom. 

Coppola: We don't have the freedom to live in a society that is healthy. That is real freedom. We don't have the freedom to live in a society that takes care of people. We don't have a society that is free to give our children an education in proportion to our resources and wealth. That, to me, is one of the biggest sins of this country, that considering our level of resources, wealth, and power, we don't invest any of it in our future, which is to say, our children. The Cubans say, how can a move love his children and not love all the children? Which makes sense.

Our system did not do anything for the people of Latin America and it is clear to me -- I don't care how many atom bombs you have -- that Latin America will be totally socialist within 20 or 25 years. My feeling is that we should admit the truth, because that's a healthy first step. I don't know, General Patton says America loves a winner, and socialism in Latin America is a winner. If they want to be on the winner's side they should get with that, but I don't know how they can because it's so contrary to their interests. That's coming from a person who is a kid in terms of politics, but those are just simple facts that any 12-year-old could observe. 

City: Why do you think the United States has a blockade on Cuba? did the Cubans talk about the effect that's had on their economy?

Coppola: When you think about the US blockading Cuba, you think they're just not letting some products in. It's much more. If you took a person and you blockaded him from oxygen, that would be called murder. Yet to blockade Cuba, this little country, from everything that's based on our technology, to withhold every spark plug, every replacement brush, every generator, even medicine, and moreover, to penalize ships that might bring them some essentials by not letting them into our ports -- the blockade is a much, much, much more violent thing than people in this country realize. Every product they buy has to go through this long, long, route so it's three times as expensive. Plus we force them to spend a big percentage of their resources to defend themselves, really to defend themselves. Not what we call defense, not offense, but defense. We owned half, three-quarters of that country, and when they said that they didn't want us to own any more, that they were taking it back, we said you do that and we'll kill you -- and we tried to. I'm amazed that we didn't. I guess it was just a very ticklish series of events and good luck for them.

You also realize, being down there, how frightened they are of us. You know we laugh at this country a little bit. I mean we know what inept shmucks we can be sometimes, but being in a place like Cuba you realize that we are the most powerful country on this earth. We are overwhelming. And we are the authors and the maintainers of most of the big evil that's going on. We are not accomplices, we are doing it. We are the final guardian of a system which feeds off people.

City: What about violence? One of the things that hit me is how safe I suddenly felt in Cuba.

Coppola: Well, contrary to what people think, you do not see soldiers, you do not see guns. In Santo Domingo, the airfield is ringed with soldiers with their machine guns, and every block there are three or four soldiers. They all have automatic weapons and I don't really know who is going to invade them. Haiti is not going to invade Santo Domingo and I don't think Puerto Rico is. So it must mean that the government is using that army to stay in power. 

Now you go to Cuba -- where you think you're going to see all these guys with machine guns at the airfield and you don't. I was there three days before I saw a policeman. And yet there is a sense of personal safety walking around at night. You don't feel that they would rob anything from you, because the whole idea of money and possessions takes on a slightly different color. Rent, health care, child care are paid for -- the society gives them to you in return for the work that you give them. So you begin to develop a different idea about property. When you put your camera down and walk away, you aren't as worried, since consumption is not the priority in the first place.

In a society like ours, that spends billions of dollars a year telling you that you should acquire things, how can you be surprised that the people who can't buy those things will acquire them anyway? We are telling everyone that you can only be happy, you can only be attractive, you can only be fulfilled if you have stuff, so if you can't buy it, you steal it. But in a society that is not showing that down your throat every day, the whole motivation for stealing becomes less, and maybe that has something to do with why you don't feel you're going to be robbed and hit on the head.

City: Did you feel that was true about sexism too?
 

Coppola: Well, one thing you feel about Cuba after two days is that it is very sexual. People are very attracted to one another.

City: But you don't have that commercial aspect of it?

Coppola: No. No. It's a way of relating. Men and women relate that way all the time and not necessarily within the bonds of marriage. It is a very natural, sensual place, but no, you don't sense that it is being merchandised as it is here. Coming back from the trip I realized that the billions of dollars we spend to convince people to buy things is absolutely wasted, because if people need them, they'll buy them. So all the money and all the artistry that goes into advertising is a wasted resource.

City: What about homosexuality in Cuba? There have been reports that homosexuals are treated very badly.

Coppola: Homosexuality is interesting. There were some high, well-respected Cubans we met that in my opinion were homosexual, and I'm sure that I'm right. Here's my feeling about it. Fidel is the dictator of Cuba. The fact that he's idealistic and he really wants to make a beautiful society is all secondary to that. But he runs that country in such a way that policy ideas come up from the people. They have many mechanisms through which the people feed ideas to him, and he's very sensitive to what they want. For example, Fidel saw a school girl and asked her why she had her dress hiked up so high and she told him. When the kids talk to him, it's not like they're conscious they're talking to the Commander in Chief. Apparently she told him that the girls all like it shorter, so he personally supervised the redesign of the costumes. He had five dresses designed and brought students from all over to finally choose one, so when you meet them they say, "You like this uniform? Fidel got it for us."

You have a feeling that everything that he does generates from the culture. He's a very popular dictator. If there were to be an election, I feel he would get all the votes; no one even says that's not true anymore. And I think that the culture is anti-homosexual. If an ostentatious homosexual is walking down the street, the people feel the government is inadequate or not serving their interests. My impression is that the regime does not have these biases, but is responsive to the culture. Apparently a few years ago they were rough on home homosexuals; they arrested them and put them in work camps until certain people went to Fidel and said, "Hey, you know, some of these people fought with us," and they released them. But I would stress that the government will try to raise social consciousness regarding homosexuality some day soon.

But my understanding is that there are, of course, homosexuals, and that they work and live freely.

City: Let me ask you about Castro. How much time did you spend with him?

Coppla: We met briefly. From the moment I got there the Cubans were asking "Did you bring it?" meaning Godfather II. When I said "No," they were very disappointed. We were told right away that we might meet Castro, but they couldn't guarantee it. Terry Malick finally said, "Look, you want to meet him, get the goddam film here." So I called and Monda got it there somehow. They were very happy and one day they said Fidel had seen it. I said, "Well?" We heard that he liked it and then went to that big, big night.

I would kid the women on the trip all the time -- they would take us for a Jeep ride deep in the mud and for three hours I'd say, "You know who we're going to see?" And the women would say, "Oh, my god, oh, no! I didn't do my hair." They all related to him like that. It was "What am I going to do? I'm going to kill myself." So we went to this big evening in the Jose Marti Square for the celebration of the Committees to Defend the Revolution and he gave a speech. As we went around, we started to get the inkling that this was going to be in, and then he walked right up to us and we talked for about 20 minutes. He was very, very sweet; I was very impressed with the sweetness about him. I know it's a bad word to use for a man like that, I mean he's six foot two or three, but that's what it was. And warmth. I realized many of the characteristics in certain of the leaders; the kindness, consideration... even modesty, as if to say, "I'm just in it with you, companero" -- all spring from him. They're all doing Fidel; or rather, he's the prototype.

City: Is this trip to Cuba going to affect the political content of your movies?

Coppola: In a way. I don't think the Cuba trip changed me so much. I mean I knew what was in Cuba and I had already thought about a lot of things -- that's what Godfather II is all about.

City: One of the illusions connected with this Godfather II business is that somehow it's not the large corporations that run this country or it's not the various bureaucracies associated with the government, but it's the secret underworld...

Coppola: I don't believe that the Mafia exists, certainly not as a secret organization. The Mafia is the big corporations. The hoodlums that make up the real so-called Mafia were the jokers and the pawns of a mentality, a way of thinking, a system or priorities that is true of the whole country and certainly of the corporations. But no, there are not 12 or 30 powerful Italian families that meet together and are really calling the shots.

City: Then we should be alarmed at the way companies work and not be looking for this secret underground society that's supposed to control everything?

Coppola: The secret underground society idea is an easy way to say "Oh, it's over there, that's the problem. If we can get those 30 guys with the machine guns everything's alright." We know that's not true. Mafia to me translates to "Anything's all right if it's good for profit, growth, property." So I feel it's not an invisible government that is running this thing, it's a system that is self-perpetuating.

That was the point Godfather II tried to make when it put the corporation heads around the table together and said here's the President of United Fruit and IT&T. The Mafia always existed. It never really got healthy until it came here. America was the soil that the Mafia could grow in. No one heard about the Mafia until it came to America. If you remember Godfather I, there was another boardroom scene with all the Mafia guys sitting around. The scene in Godfather II was shot the same way, staged the same way, deliberately, except now they were the heads of the companies. 

City: Were there any pressures to cut that scene?

Coppola: No, no, Gulf & Western financed the picture. The head of Gulf & Western loved the film.

City: How come?

Coppola: Because he didn't think that it jeopardized anything, I guess.

City: People look at you and think you really have it made. I mean how could American society have failed you in any way? Yet you find something in Cuba which this society cannot deliver to you. Maybe you could discuss that? 

Coppola: My feeling is that I have everything. I mean capitalism in this country just delivered this wonderful thing to me, but I played by the rules. which is what the whole secret of this place is. The interesting thing about America, which maybe wasn't true about previous societies, is that it doesn't mind someone cutting through to get up to that power class. In fact it likes it. But it doesn't want those people to turn traitor. It's like Cosa Nostra in that way. America really does hold the opportunity for people of low birth and to some extent of all races, to cut through and join. And they celebrate it... what do they like better than a new 21-year-old computer whiz who's just made $3 million in the market. They love that. But, the problem with that is that although you get the goods, you don't get the rewards. I don't know how to express it, but if you're told that the electricity for your air conditioner is powered by 50 guys running on a treadmill in the heat, you don't enjoy the air-conditioned room so much. If you believe, as I do, that we now live in an age where that's not necessary, we could all have an air-conditioned room, then you don't want it as much.

People have said to me, well, give your money away. I'm not going to give it away, because if you're in a society that works on those principles, the vital needs of the society are available through money and that's how people are motivated. Since you need things to protect yourself and feed yourself and keep your health, when someone wants a $10 bill, you do what he wants. If I was in a place where my poverty could not be exploited, then it wouldn't be bad. But you can't be a communist in a capitalist country, because that works on a different principle. that is my protection; that is my children's protection. 

One thing I've learned from this trip -- something that people I thought were asses always said -- is that there is no such thing as a non-political person, that you're either with it or against it. That's really what it comes down town and I believe that now.

City: What do you mean by the statement that there's no such thing as being non-political?

Coppola: Basically, a large part of the earth is dying. In modern times, people are dying: they are not being fed, they are living in misery, and that is a dire situation. I'm not talking about sending a CARE package to the starving children in Bangladesh. I mean that under two systems that are struggling with each other on this earth in 1975, large parts of the population are in misery. So, anyone who is not using his energy in some potent way to undo that situation, in an age when it is possible to change it, is an evil person.