by Aaron Schweitzer, Editor
Look, I am not the biggest fan of The Godfather. Sure, I think it is a great film and in my opinion Part II is better, but it has never felt like it has lived up to its status for me. My first thought was that it was fine, and my second was that it is great, but a bit too long. So, on the 50th Anniversary of the first film’s release, Paramount+, whose network produced the original film, decided to release a miniseries on the making of the film. I went into this show wanting to understand what made The Godfather arguably the greatest film of all time, and at the end, I took a lot away from this show.
I signed up for this review and was excited. I am pretty sure I am one of three people in the world that pays for Paramount+, so it would be a good opportunity to contribute to the website and justify my subscription to the service (we all know Halo is not doing that). But as the show came out, I only heard middling things on it, so my interest went completely to rock bottom. With two weeks left in the show’s run, I finally mustered up the courage to check it out and come to my own conclusions about it.
The Offer opens with a few gangsters, and the first line of the show is “What are you doing? Leave the f**king canoli!” Here we go again… another show that is going to do fan service so poorly and make everything a wink and nod at the original film, which will ultimately leave me uninterested in actually watching it, and instead watching The Godfather. Then comes the intro. This is the least important part of an episode, in my opinion, especially since most services offer a “skip” button during it, and it was indeed truly unremarkable. There is a way you can do this extremely well (see: Game of Thrones and Westworld). I quickly felt like this was going to be a show I dreaded picking up the review for.
Although, I am happy that the show manages to do a 180 degree turn and immediately change how I felt about it. Sure, The Offer still winks and nods at the movie, but it quickly moves away from being fan service in the sense of unrelated sequences and moves, to a more direct interaction that you can just feel were what influenced the script. You can see Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola hear a story, or experience one, and a lightbulb goes off thinking it would be a perfect inclusion in the film. It is no longer a love letter to fans of the film, but a testimony to the making of the film.
But the thing that changes the most is we’re introduced to Al Ruddy (Miles Teller). He’s clearly a smart guy overachieving at a mid-level job, and his ambition drives him forward. Through a complex series of events, he winds up entering the industry by creating Hogan’s Heroes, and decides that’s not enough, so he becomes a producer at Paramount. This is where the show is the most interesting, because the two things The Offer does best are showing the complexity of this film getting made and demonstrating the way Hollywood works behind the scenes.
Throughout the series’ 10 episode run, we see Al deal with the money people at Paramount, the creatives, the demanding filmmakers, the intricacies of screenplay writing, the negotiations of filming properties, and especially the real life conflict this show brought between Italian-Americans and the studio. That last one is the one I most want to focus on. As someone born in 1995, I do not have the privilege of being around for the biggest moments in cinema history: the release of Star Wars, the first film in color, the first animated film. With the age of the internet, it feels like these massive moments happen so often, but the only thing I can think of that had quite the impact of some of these examples was the release of The Avengers. So it is really easy for someone like me to simply be ignorant on the making of the film. Turns out in 1971, when the film was in pre-production and filming, Italian-Americans were fed up with the likes of mafia movies because it boxed their heritage and sullied anyone that wasn’t involved in that lifestyle. So, led by the Italian-American Civil Union, there were massive protests of The Godfather, often very threatening. The Offer does a great job at showing the tension that was going on at the time and making it feel like with everything working against the makers of The Godfather — the film being made, and made so well, is nothing short of a miracle.
The most interesting part of this series is getting to see in a practical way what a producer does in Hollywood. I decided if I was going to have a job in Hollywood, that would be the one I would want. But when I decided that, I thought all the producer does is decides what gets made and helps develop the story in very abstract ways, essentially a confidant that a filmmaker trusts to bounce good ideas and bad ones away. And, sure, that is part of the job; The Offer does a great job showing Ruddy as producer, and what the job actually entails. They are the middleman between the studio and the filmmaker, but also someone that decides on the initial crew then assists them on things that are out of their reach. In this regard, it feels like it would be a perfect companion piece to The Player.
The series is filled with wonderful performances. Juno Temple is great, but kind of the same character she is playing in Ted Lasso. Teller is the lead, and he is fine. His only role is to be motivated and confident, and he is definitely doing that here. Other notable great performances are Dan Fogler as Coppola, Burn Gorman as Charles Bluhdorn (the banking executive that handles Paramount’s financing), Colin Hanks as Barry Lapidus (Charlie’s data-centric executive), and Giovani Ribisi as Joe Colombo (the leader of the Union that is pressuring, but then assisting production of the film). The actors that play the film’s actors are good, but ultimately not given a ton of screen time, and it is for the better. I know what happens on screen, so I want to see everything else happening. The real standout of this show is Matthew Goode as Robert Evans, the head of Paramount. There is a sense of old-time Hollywood swagger that he carries, and when the story calls for him to be the emotional core, he is equally up to the task. I would love to see Goode’s name read during the appropriate awards shows!
My two biggest problems with the series are its length and its inability to deal with prequelitis. The show does not feel like it needs to be 10 episodes, and at the end of episode nine, it really feels like that could have been a natural ending to the series. The 10th episode feels more like a super extended epilogue. But touching on the prequelitis, a lot of this show’s tension is killed by knowing how this film ends up. Obviously it gets released, it’s universally lauded, it is a box office record-setter, Marlon Brando gives one of the best performances of all time, and it is massively successful in every regard. So when there is tension on who is going to play the part of Michael Corleone and they want Pacino, you know they eventually get there. Near the end, there is a big focus on Coppola needing to film Michael’s arc in Sicily, but they run out of budget. Of course they made it work and shoot there, so any tension the show tries to convey just falls flat for me.
If you like The Godfather, you should like The Offer. If you love seeing the industry’s gears and knobs, you should love this show. If you want to see compelling performances, intriguing conflict, and history in the making, this show is going to be right up your alley. I am confident some of the story was dramatized, but I do not know how much. I find it best to know the changes after I see the art the makers are trying to display. If you have Paramount+, you should absolutely check out this show. If you have considered getting it, it would be a great reason to try the service out. But ultimately, there is not anything that is making me shout from the rooftops about The Offer the way I did Under the Banner of Heaven or The Cuphead Show.
Score: 8/10
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