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Did The Godfather Go Too Far? The Controversial Use of Real Horse Heads in the Iconic Scene! (Photo Credit – Facebook)

The scene made jaws drop and earned The Godfather its gritty rep. Jack Woltz wakes up grisly surprised: his prized horse’s head sharing his pillow. Did Coppola use a real horse’s head for that scene? Yep—and the story behind it? Even wilder.

Released in 1972, The Godfather was Coppola’s adaptation of Mario Puzo’s novel. Coppola’s obsession with authenticity pushed every detail, big and small, to the max—right down to cars with WWII-era wooden bumpers. Paramount wasn’t thrilled with Coppola’s intensity, but they let him roll when they saw what he was creating until the horse head scene came up.

The scene plays out like this: Johnny Fontane’s desperate for a role in a big-budget war movie. But the hitch? Producer Jack...

Thanks to the movies, superheroes are a cultural force. That glut hasn't exactly come with critical respect for the genre, though. On one hand, it's because these are innately simple stories for children. The other reason, I feel, is because the people who make these movies are embarrassed by that fact. Sometimes that manifests like in the "X-Men" films, where the movies run as far away from the comics as possible to "elevate" the story. Then there's the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which undercuts all its weirdness with "self-aware" humor about how none of its own world makes sense. Some rare filmmakers take superheroes seriously enough without trying to make them into something they're not (e.g. Sam Raimi) but it's rare.

The latest example of this is "The Penguin" showrunner Lauren LeFranc downplaying the series' Batman roots. No, this is a serious crime drama, hence why Oz (Colin Farrell) can't...

Frank Sinatra did not get a kick out of The Godfather. This was made abundantly clear in the first episode of Paramount+'s The Offer, which debuted April 28 and takes a dramatized look at the making of the iconic film. We're, of course, referring to the scene where Godfather author Mario Puzo (Patrick Gallo) introduced himself to Ol' Blue Eyes (Frank John Hughes) at celebrity hotspot Chasen's, only to be met with hostility over the similarities between himself and Puzo's mob-adjacent character Johnny Fontane. In a surprising turn of events, Puzo did not back down, as he attempted to stab the Hollywood icon with a fork. What's even wilder? This scene is based on a...

The Godfather, which opened 50 years ago on March 24, 1972, is the premiere gangster film of all time, elevating the genre to high art and taking all of filmmaking with it. Francis Ford Coppola adapted Mario Puzo’s best-selling novel to tell the story of an immigrant family crashing the dance of the American dream. The singer is Johnny Fontane, paying homage to his benefactor, Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando). The character may also be something less than a tribute to The Chairman of the Board, Frank Sinatra.

“Frank, I make fun of you, but what could you do to me,” Don Rickles asked Sinatra from the stage at his 80th Birthday Celebration in 1995. Audiences and investigative agencies have been asking the same question for years! Jokes and gossip about Ol Blue Eyes’ ties to organized crime are legendary. But is Frank Sinatra an actual Og?

The Godfather never uses the word...

This article contains The Batman spoilers.

“Some day, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me,” Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) tells the funeral director who seeks revenge on the men who assaulted his daughter in The Godfather. “But until that day, consider this justice a gift on my daughter’s wedding day.”

In a pivotal scene in director Matt Reeves’ The Batman, it appears the godfather of Gotham City has lit up a similar Bat-Signal.

The new film is more noir drama than your typical superhero movie; gangsters run Gotham City, and Carmine Falcone (John Turturro) is the top crime boss. Every fortune begins with a crime, and even the wealthy eccentric Bruce Wayne (Robert Pattinson) accepts (barely) that his murdered father, the surgeon Thomas Wayne (Luke Roberts), knew some colorful characters in his own wild youth, even stitching up a...

I found myself having dinner with Frank Sinatra this week; at least it seemed that way. I was in Palm Springs where a dozen restaurants and clubs claim that Sinatra was once a “regular.” Photos of their idol adorn the walls, all showing Sinatra smiling, even though I never remembered a Sinatra smile during our real-life encounters.

The Sinatra mythology intrigues me because movie stars seem all but invisible these days. They’re absent from their once-favorite Hollywood haunts or even from magazine covers or late-night television. Or from movies, until perhaps next fall when big-budget movies are unveiled.

By contrast, Sinatra’s claim to a certain immortality was reinforced this week with publication of Sinatra and Me, a book augmenting the formidable library of Sinatra books (30 by my count). Its author, Tony Oppedisano, claims to have been a Sinatra intimate, thus joining a list of intimate writers that includes three wives,...