Italian Subtitles Godfather

[Salomon Thoj]

AISHAHARRIS, HOST: A warning - this episode contains language some may find offensive.LINDA HOLMES, HOST: Welcome to a very special weekend edition of NPR's POP CULTURE HAPPY HOUR. Today, we're kicking off a new documentary series - a trilogy, in fact - brought to you by our host and my dear pal Aisha Harris. Hello, Aisha.HARRIS: Hey, Linda.HOLMES: Yeah. You've been working on this project for quite a while. It has been not a secret to me, but a secret to the PCHH audience. So tell everybody now. There's no more secrets. Break the silence.HARRIS: Yeah, so this is a series that I am calling Screening Ourselves. And, you know, Linda, we've been having a lot of conversations over the last decade or so about representation and misrepresentation in pop culture. And I wanted to sort of look back on how many of these conversations are not new. They've been happening for years, and they've changed in some ways and remained the same in other ways. And so the hope was to dig into some film history, bring us some deep dives into three movies that are now considered cinema classics, or even cult classics, and explore how they weren't exactly universally loved by the communities they represented when they were initially released. In the series, a couple of movies we're going to discuss are "Basic Instinct" and "The Color Purple." And so that's kind of what I wanted to dig into here.HOLMES: Yeah. You know, it's interesting because you are starting off with a movie that I wouldn't necessarily have thought of as an obvious candidate for this series, but as soon as I heard you were doing it, I was like, oh, of course. You are starting with "The Godfather."HARRIS: Yes. And I know - I'm hearing people now, like, really, "The Godfather?" Come on now. But...HOLMES: Yeah.HARRIS: ...It'll make a little bit more sense as you listen to the episode, so yeah.HOLMES: Well, I can't wait to hear more. Take it away, Aisha.HARRIS: Well, first, let me start by nerding out on the movie itself for the maybe two people listening who have not seen it or haven't seen it in a while. It's really hard for me to single out just one great scene from "The Godfather," but if I had to, I'd go with the moment where it becomes clear Al Pacino's Michael Corleone has officially broken bad.(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE GODFATHER")AL PACINO: (As Michael Corleone) They want to have a meeting with me, right? Let's set the meeting.HARRIS: Now, up to this point, Michael, a decorated World War II vet, has made it clear he wants no part in the family business. His father, Vito, played by Marlon Brando, is head of the Corleone crime syndicate. And his hothead older brother Sonny, played by James Caan, is second in command. But now Vito lays in a hospital bed after being shot by a rival, and Michael's been beat up by a corrupt cop on that same rival's payroll. Michael is ready to get even.(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE GODFATHER")PACINO: (As Michael Corleone) They're going to search me when I first meet them, right? So I can't have a weapon on me then. But if Clemenza can figure a way to have a weapon planted there for me, then I'll kill them both.HARRIS: So I love this scene because it's so understated yet so effective. Michael, his face swollen from the beating, sits calmly in an armchair, his eyes laser focused as the camera slowly tracks closer to him. We're drawn in, fully invested in this transformation and the gangster's ethos of doing business. Allow me to borrow from that infamous Martin Scorsese meme when I say, this is cinema.Now, look, I'm hardly the first person to point this out. For 50 years, the legacies of Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather," Parts I and II, have loomed large in movies...(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "SET IT OFF")VIVICA A FOX: (As Frankie) Can you respect our conditions? Can you live with the terms that your dons have set forth?HARRIS: ...Sitcoms...(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "SEINFELD")MICHAEL RICHARDS: (As Cosmo Kramer) Don't ever go against the family, Jerry.HARRIS: ...Hip-hop...(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FAMILY FEUD")JAY-Z: (Rapping) I'll watch "Godfather." I miss that whole sh**. My consciousness was Michael's common sense.HARRIS: ...Even Muppet culture.(SOUNDBITE OF SHORT, "THE FROGFATHER")STEVE WHITMIRE: (As Kermit the Frog) So tell me, old friend, what brings you here to see me?FRANK OZ: (As Fozzie Bear) I have come to ask a favor, frogfather.HARRIS: Film critics and audiences have praised it for being this universal tale of ambition, of familial love, a classic immigrant story about the pursuit of the American dream.UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: "Godfather II" changed my life.UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: "Godfather: Part II" is the best film ever made.HARRIS: This is how I always saw it anyway. As far back as I can remember, it was the movie that existed in that all-too-rare sweet spot of being both a critical darling and mass cultural obsession. And yet the global influence of "The Godfather" and its sequels is complicated. For some Italian Americans, the franchise is a painful burden of representation. It reinforces the worst kinds of stereotypes.UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Well, my awareness of it being a thing was that I refused to watch it. I just didn't want to see "The Godfather." It just annoyed me. The idea of it annoyed me.UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: Are these images legit? And what messages is being sent out about our culture, our people, our history, our culture here in America and in Italy by this movie?UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: It is not a triumph. It is a melodrama - a poorly constructed, stereotypical, soap opera, lurid tale.HARRIS: As a critic, I'm curious about the different ways audiences can respond to the same movie. And in the case of "The Godfather," I find one question both fascinating and challenging to consider. How does a beloved movie about white male machismo, one of Hollywood's absolute favorite subjects, also get held up as a stain on Italian American representation by the very community it was trying to represent? That's the thing about the moving image. It puts us, the audience, in the position of being the viewer and the image in a position of being seen. That dynamic can be potent, and it has the power to make us feel good, bad or something in between. This is definitely true when the image is supposed to represent us or at least some version of us. So what happens when that version of us isn't the one we want to see? And what are the consequences when it seems to eclipse nearly every other facet of our culture? Today on Screening Ourselves, we'll start with "The Godfather" and Italian Americans.(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE GODFATHER")PACINO: (As Michael Corleone) She's hysterical. Hysterical.DIANE KEATON: (As Kay Adams) Michael, is it true?PACINO: (As Michael Corleone) Don't ask me about my business, Kay.KEATON: (As Kay Adams) Is it true?PACINO: (As Michael Corleone) Don't ask me about my business.KEATON: (As Kay Adams) No.PACINO: (As Michael Corleone) Enough.HARRIS: March 1972.(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE GODFATHER")RICHARD CASTELLANO: (As Clemenza) Don Corleone.HARRIS: It's the premiere of "The Godfather" in New York City, and producer Albert Ruddy is laying low in the back of the theater.ALBERT RUDDY: When I saw the movie, I was stunned. I was with Al Pacino in the back of the theater, and it was an amazing thing that occurred. When the lights came on, everyone got up and walked out. Nobody clapped. It was quiet. I looked at Al. I said, oh, Jesus Christ, this - maybe they think it's a disaster.HARRIS: Spoiler alert. Of course, it wasn't a disaster.RUDDY: I didn't realize how stunned people were when they - they were not prepared for that movie. They were shocked. They were shocked beyond description.HARRIS: Shocked but in a good way. From there, the positive reactions continued to flow in.RUDDY: When I was driving - opening day - to my office, I drove by the Paramount Theater Wednesday morning, and it was raining. And there was a line not around the block in front of the Paramount - all the way down around the next block. As far as you could see, people were waiting to see "The Godfather."HARRIS: The movie's budget was around $6 million. And within less than a month it had grossed more than $26 million. That's the equivalent of more than 180 million in today's dollars. And those are huge numbers when you take into account that the average movie ticket price in 1972 was less than $2. Critics loved it. Vincent Canby's New York Times review observed how the movie managed to be both culturally specific and universally appealing. He wrote this. Quote, "Mr. Coppola has not denied the character's Italian heritage, and by emphasizing it, he has made a movie that transcends its immediate milieu and genre." Months later, "The Godfather" was nominated for 10 Oscars and won three, including Best Picture.(SOUNDBITE OF 45TH ACADEMY AWARDS)CLINT EASTWOOD: And the winner is Albert S. Ruddy, "Godfather."(APPLAUSE)HARRIS: And on top of all that, international audiences loved it, too.RUDDY: I took it to China because it wasn't allowed to be screened in China the first time. We ran it in an old theater - 3,000 seats and subtitles on it. Not one person went to the bathroom in two - in almost three hours. They sat there. And they asked me as a special favor to the Chinese government, can you allow us to keep the print for one more day?HARRIS: At the premiere in Sicily, one person was quoted in the press as saying, "Marlon Brando is the envy of all the real godfathers on the island." It may have been an instant global smash, but it wasn't an inevitable one. The movie was based on Mario Puzo's bestselling novel that came out in 1969. But at that same time, gangster movies weren't exactly a winning box-office formula. And Italian American communities had some legitimate concerns about the movie even before anyone had seen it. As production ramped up in New York, Paramount faced opposition from politicians, businesspeople and civic leaders around the country. They were threatening economic boycotts.And in the hopes of quieting criticism and saving the production from further delays, producer Albert Ruddy had to get the movie's loudest opponents on his side. He met with the Italian-American Civil Rights League and its founder, Joe Colombo, in early 1971. Now, it's worth noting here that Colombo was also the boss of the Colombo crime ring, one of the big five syndicates in New York City, and he was a frequent target of the FBI. His thing was to publicly deny the Mafia's very existence. That was utterly disingenuous, of course, but you can see how "The Godfather" might pose a problem for Colombo. It could bring more unwanted attention on him from the government. Here's Albert Ruddy again.RUDDY: I said, "The Godfather" is the story of America, Joe. It's the story of the growth of a family who's striving to fulfill the American dream. I said finally, just tell me what you want, Joe. What do you need to make you happy? He said, I'll tell you what I want. OK, you want to know the truth? I want you to delete the word Mafia from the script.(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)HARRIS: After that meeting, The New York Times ran an article with the headline, "Godfather Film Won't Mention Mafia."(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)HARRIS: And that was pretty much that. Once Colombo reached an agreement with Albert, production was free from interference, and the protests mostly disappeared. Some of Colombo's men even got involved with the movie behind the scenes. They befriended the cast and crew. But just because members of the real-life Mafia ultimately approved of "The Godfather," that doesn't mean every Italian American was on board. As it morphed into an inescapable global phenomenon, it came to define entire generations of Italian Americans to the rest of the world, for better and for worse.(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)HARRIS: So I was digging through NPR's radio archives while researching for this episode, and I came across this news segment from All Things Considered in 1972.(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)ROBERT CONLEY: The movie "The Godfather," currently acclaimed as this year's most controversial film, opened last Wednesday at the Empire Theater in Kansas City, Mo. The performance was sold out, but the theater was empty.DAVE BERG: The Italian-American Unification Council of Greater Kansas City bought all 1,000 tickets for $2,500 so that "The Godfather" would play to an empty house.HARRIS: This is how the head of the council explained the protests to NPR.(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)THOMAS GIALDE: We're showing this empty theater for one reason only. It is a dramatization, really, of what we believe is the best way to eliminate cultural prejudice. We hope that the Kansas City people will think when they see the picture.HARRIS: This was a relatively small protest in comparison to the droves of people who saw "The Godfather" and loved it. But it captured the frustrations of some people within the community. The movie may not have used the word mafia, but it was about the Mafia and about the Mafia's place as the dominant representation of Italian American culture.It's helpful to take a step back from "The Godfather," though, and try to understand the history of this trope. So let's go back to 19th century in Italy. There's a divide between the north and the south. Many people in southern regions, like Sicily, lived in extreme poverty and were exploited by the government. And bands of robbers and vigilantes sprung out of these conditions. In Calabria, for instance, these gangs were made up of the sons of exploited peasants and laborers. And they frequently targeted wealthy officials.(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)RICHARD GAMBINO: There's an attitude toward the state and all of its institutions, which is one which ranges from caution to absolute distrust.HARRIS: That's scholar Richard Gambino, speaking with All Things Considered for its multi-part series on the Italian American image in 1974. That was the same year "The Godfather: Part II" was released.(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)GAMBINO: And again, if you look at the history of southern Italy, you find that there is good reason for this. Since most of the state institutions - whatever state they were or happened to be at the time - were interested in exploiting the people of southern Italy, repressing any native movements, particularly political movements - and the history of southern Italy is just filled with rebellions over and over and over again for centuries against all kinds of rulers. Therefore, the attitude grew up, which was transported to this country, that the state and its institutions are to be regarded with extreme caution.HARRIS: Now, in the late 1800s, Italians began emigrating in large numbers to the U.S., and a majority of them came from the southern regions. They brought that caution and distrust in government with them, and it led Italian Americans to largely keep to themselves, which, in turn, raised the suspicion of other white Americans, as journalist Bill Tuohy explained.(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)BILL TUOHY: But there are other images haunting Italian Americans. Predominantly, the picture of the Italian is criminal - the whole Mafia, Marlon Brando, "Godfather" syndrome. It is deeply resented. But Italian Americans feel almost powerless in trying to stop it.HARRIS: While the exact origins of the term mafia are fuzzy. Scholars have noted that amongst Sicilians, it had a different meaning other than the one that's most popular today. According to historian Richard Gambino, Sicilians use mafia to refer to a characteristic ideal of courage, strength and intelligence. In his 1974 book "Blood Of My Blood: The Dilemma Of The Italian Americans," Gambino notes a couple of different ways Italian Americans use the term. Now, when he was growing up in Brooklyn, he heard the word mafioso used to describe someone as good or admirable. In that case, it had nothing to do with criminals or outlaws.Gambino also points out in the book that immigrants did sometimes use the term to refer to criminal organizations back in Sicily. That's the definition other Americans latched on to. The double usage caused confusion, though. Every time Americans heard mafioso, Gambino wrote, they thought the Sicilians were speaking of a member of a secret society. And because of this mafia association, discrimination against Italian Americans ranged from things like segregation and lower wages to physical violence, including lynchings. Naturally, this anti-Italian sentiment bled into popular culture.(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "SCARFACE")PAUL MUNI: (As Tony) I'm going to write my name all over this town with it, in big letters.OSGOOD PERKINS: (As Lovo) Hey, stop him somebody.MUNI: (As Tony) Get out of my way, Johnny, I'm going to spit.(SOUNDBITE OF GUNSHOTS)HARRIS: For example, the 1932 film "Scarface," starring Paul Muni as Tony Camonte, a ruthless Italian immigrant and gangster who vows to live and die by the gun. Director Howard Hawks framed the movie as a morality tale with an opening title screed that declares organized crime as an increasing menace to our safety and our liberty. In one scene, a newspaper publisher implores concerned citizens to work together to wipe out the mob. The nativism here is not so subtle.(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "SCARFACE")UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Pass the federal law that puts the gun in the same class as drugs and white slavery. Put teeth in the deportation act. These gangsters don't belong in this country. Half of them aren't even citizens.HARRIS: And when the popular TV police drama "The Untouchables" premiered in 1959, a lot of the criminals were presented as Italian American.(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE UNTOUCHABLES (1959)")UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) For Eliot Ness, the Joe Bucco case was ended but the fight against the Mafia only beginning.HARRIS: As you'd expect, plenty of Italian Americans took issue with these kinds of portrayals. In Massachusetts, it was reported that the Order of the Sons of Italy planned to ask the state's mayors to prohibit screenings of "Scarface." And Frank Sinatra and others called out "The Untouchables" until the show's producers eventually agreed to changes. They agreed to include more law-abiding Italian American characters and stop using Italian surnames for fictional characters.So when production of "The Godfather" kicked off in 1970, Francis Ford Coppola and his creative team knew what they were up against. It had been Coppola's vision all along to counter stereotypes and make a different kind of gangster pic. As he told Fresh Air's Terry Gross in 2016, he wanted to strive for authenticity.(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA: My fear was that, you know, Italians were always talk like people - like the Marx brother, Chico Marx. And there were so many cliches related to us as the culture of our family that I certainly - you know, and also, I knew that the Italian American didn't speak with an Italian accent. One of my big arguments with the studio was saying, well, you know, he wouldn't speak - he would speak with a Brooklyn accent.(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE GODFATHER")JAMES CAAN: (As Sonny Corleone) Hey, what are you going to do? Nice college boy, huh? Didn't want to get mixed up in the family business? Now you want to gun down a police captain - what? - 'cause he slapped you in the face a little bit, huh? What do you think, this is the army, where you shoot him a mile away? You got to get up close like this and bada-bing, you blow their brains all over your nice Ivy League suit.PACINO: (As Michael Corleone) Sonny.CAAN: (As Sonny Corleone) Come here. Mwah (ph).HARRIS: That specificity helps explain why "The Godfather" stood out from previous depictions of Italian American life. It's a huge part of the appeal for viewers like Tom Santopietro, the author of the book "The Godfather Effect."TOM SANTOPIETRO: What the films made me do is appreciate all the more what I had with that sense of family.HARRIS: Tom proudly identifies as a second-generation Italian American on his father's side, and he grew up in Waterbury, Conn., in the '60s and '70s. But in the early years of his life, he didn't exactly embrace his Italian heritage. He'd grown up with the images of the smiling, happy-go-lucky Sicilian peasant and Paul Muni as Scarface, neither of which represented his own upbringing.SANTOPIETRO: You are watching unbelievably stereotypical behavior - the heavy accents. Scarface's mother is, you know, from another planet. There is an image - one of his sidekicks is so dumb that he holds the telephone upside down and can't understand why he can't speak to somebody. So you are laughing at it. You are embarrassed by it. You're still kind of caught up in the story because it's a gangster story.HARRIS: "The Godfather Parts I and II" - those were different experiences for him.SANTOPIETRO: Ten minutes into "Godfather II," there's footage of the young Vito Corleone coming to America for the first time, and he's on the ship as it passes in front of the Statue of Liberty. And all of a sudden, I thought to myself, that's my grandfather.(SOUNDBITE OF CARMINE COPPOLA'S "MAIN TITLE/THE IMMIGRANT")SANTOPIETRO: That is Orazio Santopietro, 12 years old, not speaking English, 20 lire in his pocket, not knowing anybody coming to America. And he made my life possible.(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE GODFATHER PART II")UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As Customs official) Come on, son. What is your name?UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As interpreter, speaking Italian). Vito Andolini from Corleone.UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As Customs official) Corleone - Vito Corleone. OK, over there. Next.HARRIS: Those more tender moments were still place in the middle of an Italian American gangster movie, though. And that dichotomy can be uneasy to reckon with.MARIA LAURINO: Well, my awareness of it being a thing was that I refused to watch it. I just didn't want to see "The Godfather." It just annoyed me. The idea of it annoyed me.HARRIS: That's Maria Laurino. She's a journalist and the author of the memoir "Were You Always Italian?" (ph). She was just entering her teenage years when the first "Godfather" movie premiered, but she'd already been subjected to anti-Italian discrimination by then.LAURINO: And in school, there also was this kind of continuing prejudice against Italian Americans that came out in different ways. I had a friend who only referred to me as the smelly Italian girl who stands in line with me in gym class.HARRIS: Maria feels proud to be Italian American now. But unlike Tom Santopietro, she didn't come to that acceptance because of "The Godfather," but in spite of it. She didn't see the movie when it came out. But its influence loomed so large, she couldn't escape it.LAURINO: If you weren't a mafia don, you were a dimwit, you know? So, you know, in high school, I remember shows like "Welcome Back, Kotter" with John Travolta.(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "WELCOME BACK, KOTTER")JOHN TRAVOLTA: (As Vinnie Barbarino) There's a Vinnie Barbarino look. OK? You hair, for instance, very casual. It should look like it's being blown by unseen winds.(LAUGHTER)LAURINO: So those two stereotypes - the mafia don and the really dumb Italian kid - I felt that very strongly in high school.HARRIS: She didn't actually see "The Godfather" until she was in her 30s, at the urging of her husband. Her reaction was mixed.LAURINO: I knew that it was a great movie. I mean, it had many great elements to it. It had such compelling characters and a tragedy and, you know, a lush score, beautiful images. It touched also upon many period details of Italian American life, like the wedding, the sort of sumptuous scene of the food and the plates. But at the same time, it perpetuated and is about the worst stereotype of Italian Americans. So, you know, the first line of "The Godfather"...(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE GODFATHER")MARLON BRANDO: (As Vito Corleone) Why did you go to the police. Why didn't you come to me first?LAURINO: ...It was also tapping into a lot of that, especially when the movie came out, that sort of anti, you know, trust of government. And so there were so many things about him and about the story that were so much larger than the Mafia story, but using that element of the mafia. So that's what makes it so hard. It's the shadow. It's this perpetuation of the stereotype that has plagued us for generations.HARRIS: That shadow is so long that this year the movie was back in theaters for its 50th anniversary, and there was a miniseries about the making of the movie called "The Offer."(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE OFFER")PATRICK GALLO: (As Mario Puzo) It's not about a gang. It's about a gangster's family.VICTORIA KELLEHER: (As Erika Puzo) Oh.HARRIS: But despite the commemorations, for other Italian Americans, there's still no wiggle room and no caveats when it comes to forgiving "The Godfather."ROSARIO IACONIS: It is not a triumph. It is a melodrama, a poorly constructed, stereotypical, soap opera lurid tale. As a filmgoer, it seems so outlandish.HARRIS: That's Rosario Iaconis, an author and adjunct professor at Suffolk Community College. In 2020, he contributed to an article for Italics Magazine co-authored by Bill Dal Cerro, a journalist who covers Italian American culture. It's called "The Godfather Legacy: Assessing The Damage." And it's a 4,000-plus word takedown. Here's Bill Dal Cerro.BILL DAL CERRO: Whenever I tell anyone I'm Italian American, doesn't matter of their educational level - oh, do you know the Mafia? Don't you love "The Godfather?" That's all I get. It's not - I'm not being called names, but my entire culture's being summed up by an image that I consider defamatory.HARRIS: At one point during our conversation, Bill held up a sheet of paper with a picture of a piece of tiramisu.DAL CERRO: You've heard of pie charts? I have a tiramisu chart. People like tiramisu, right? So this represents all of Italian America, right?HARRIS: He drew a tiny sliver of a line on part of the tiramisu to represent a small, unspecified percentage of crimes that have been attributed to Italian Americans.DAL CERRO: This is the part that Hollywood focuses on. They focus on this little sliver, this little crumb in the tiramisu, and they don't look at the bigger picture. What Puzo and Coppola did was a sleight of hand. They took all these positives of Italian culture - you know, the loving image of the Italian nonna, the grandfather, Don Vito Corleone, the family get-togethers, the affection.(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE GODFATHER")AL MARTINO: (As Johnny Fontane, singing) I have but one...PACINO: (As Michael Corleone) Let's listen to the song.KEATON: (As Kay Adams) No, Michael.UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Cheering).DAL CERRO: They took all of that stuff that you identify as legitimately Italian culture, and they welded it to these family of fictional criminals. So criminality and Italian culture are now one in the American mind.(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE GODFATHER")MARTINO: (As Johnny Fontane, singing) I have but one dream that I can cling to.HARRIS: What I heard from these critics is that the world didn't need another Italian American gangster movie, no matter how well made or how involved actual Italian Americans were with its production. This feels true to me. When I look back on all the movies and TV I consumed as a kid and young adult, there was an abundance of broad Italian American stereotypes. From Super Mario...(SOUNDBITE OF KOJI KONDO'S "OVERWORLD THEME")CHARLES MARTINET: (As Mario) It's-a-me, Mario.HARRIS: ...To "Jersey Shore"...(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "JERSEY SHORE")PAUL DELVECCHIO: I got no tan in Italy, so I got a little excited. I went tanning in Jersey, went tanning, went tanning, went tanning, went tanning. I burnt my whole face off.HARRIS: ...To, yes, so many gangsters.(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "GOODFELLAS")JOE PESCI: (As Tommy DeVito) I'm funny how? I mean, funny like I'm a clown? I amuse you? I make you laugh?HARRIS: And there is little else to counter them. These stereotypes on screen may not seem like a big deal, but collectively, they can amass a whole lot of cultural influence. After all, movies like "The Godfather" are made with the masses in mind, not just the audiences they're depicting. So what does it mean when the images you loathe are not only referenced and remixed by others but fully embraced?(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)HARRIS: In Bill Dal Cerro's article against "The Godfather," he and his co-author refer to the movie as the single most regressive cultural and political influence on any American ethnic group since "The Birth Of A Nation."(SOUNDBITE OF JOSEPH CARL BREIL'S "INTRO")HARRIS: Now, in case your memory of that one film studies class you took in college is a little fuzzy, D.W. Griffith's "The Birth Of A Nation" is a revisionist epic from 1915 touting lost cause mythology. It stars white actors in blackface who play Black people freed after the Civil War as lazy, dumb and rapists. Its influence was so pernicious that it's been credited with helping to resurrect the Ku Klux Klan.So let me be clear. In no way do I buy the argument that "The Godfather" comes anywhere close to being comparable to "The Birth Of A Nation." But it did get me thinking about why an Italian American might feel this way and how it butts up against the fact that, historically speaking, Black people - and more specifically, hip-hop culture - love "The Godfather."(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FALLIN'")JAY-Z: (Rapping) "Godfather," "Goodfellas," "Scarface," "Casino." You seen what that last run did to De Niro.(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MAFIOSO")MAC DRE: (Rapping) Sipping martinis, eating scampi and linguini. Making blunts disappear like I'm Houdini.(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MR. BRASI")KEVIN GATES: (Rapping) Luca Brasi story, skid is itching to hear it. Breadwinner...TODD BOYD: And I think I could make a very strong argument - as I have done on numerous occasions - that "The Godfather: Part II" is