My Top 25 Favorite Films: #5!!

I've written previously that, when I was a kid, my dad was the one taking me to any films revolving around World War II. But, when I got to the age of 10 or 11, I stopped going to the movies with my parents. There were friends, both boys and girls. Cousins. Classmates. I learned how to do the whole cinema thing without parents intruding pretty darn quickly. Eventually, the only way my father was playing into the moviegoing experience was by dropping us off or picking us up at the Loews Mount Vernon or RKO Proctor's.

Until a few years later. When "The Godfather" came out. And became the absolute "must-see" movie across all sexes and age groups. It was a holiday weekend and my dad was off from work. He came into my room.

"Let's go see The Godfather."

In previous years, such a suggestion from my father would have found me quickly putting on my jacket and running to the car like Maury Wills.

But not that day.

"Er, okay," I responded with a lump in my throat.

It was one thing for me to sit alongside my father in a darkened theater and watch "The Longest Day" or Jerry Lewis in "The Nutty Professor." That was a snap and the Milk Duds would easily slide down my gullet with those movies. But, "The Godfather." This was a relatively adult movie. Well-reviewed but certainly much more mature than "Operation Petticoat." And there was one very specific segment of the film that I really dreaded seeing on the big screen with my dad ensconced in the adjacent seat.

Page 23.

Mario Puzo's novel had already made the rounds of my neighborhood buddies. For us, reading that book was a rite of passage. More so than "Silas Marner" or "Last of the Mohicans."

And it was because of Page 23. The very start of the Corleone saga set at Connie's wedding. When Sonny Corleone takes one of the bridesmaids upstairs and violently...well, you know.

We knew all the words by heart. It was like sex education. Right there in front of us. On Page 23. It was raw. It was real. It was relentless. And easy to share with your pals up the street. But, in front of your father? That was one of those planets we didn't orbit ever in our household.

As I sat on the passenger side of our huge Buick LeSabre, I secretly hoped that Francis Ford Coppola had neglected to film that scene for the screen. But, from a friend who had already gone through his cinematic de-flowering, I knew it was there intact for all to see. Maybe the film would break. Perhaps a fire would break out in the smoking section of the theater right at the beginning of the movie. I hastily devised a plan to spend a lot of time in the bathroom for the first ten minutes of the film. Sorry, Dad, lunch didn't agree with me.

No such luck.

As soon as the first strains of Nino Rota's haunting theme, I was glued to the street. There would be no missing reel. No smoke. No imagined diarrhea. My eyes were riveted on the screen.

Page 23 comes very early in the movie. I avoided all side glances to my dad. I focused on the screen like I was reading an eye chart in the optometrist's office.

There was no sound or motion to the right of me. As quickly as James Caan had started the process up on the big screen, it was over. It was never discussed. Either then or later. My dad and I simply proceeded very nicely to the graphic murders, horse decapitations, and all the wonderful other fun that is "The Godfather."

The riches of the film need not be discussed here. The movie is part of our national fabric and film history. Along with the magnificent sequel, Mario Puzo's Corleone saga is truly the greatest depiction of a family's life ever filmed by Hollywood. Hands down. I see it every so often the way someone revisits a novel or a great painting. Two years ago, the Aero Theater in Santa Monica played it on a Saturday night and the line went around the block. Almost 35 years after its' original premiere. And it was as amazing as the first time I saw it.

Which, indeed, became the last time I ever went to the movies with my dad.

Dinner last night: Pork chops at Musso and Frank's prior to "Doctor Zhivago" at the Egyptian.