The Godfather

Tribeca Talks

Tribeca celebrated the legacy of The Godfather & The Godfather Part II one with a 45th anniversary screening and reunion event at our 2017 festival. The director and cast got together for a conversation after the screening.

Francis Ford Coppola (Director) is one of the most acclaimed filmmakers of our time; a six-time Academy Award®-winning writer, director, and producer of such films as Patton, The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, American Graffiti, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. He produces a short story magazine called Zoetrope: All-Story, winner of three National Magazine Awards for Fiction, and is the best-selling author of The Godfather Notebook and Live Cinema and Its Techniques, about a new form of art which is a combination of theater, film, and television. He has also been producing wine for nearly forty years at his Napa Valley and Sonoma Valley wineries.

Actor and director Al Pacino (Michael Corleone) was born in East Harlem and grew up in New York City’s South Bronx. He attended the School of Performing Arts until he moved on to study acting at the Herbert Berghof Studio with Charles Laughton, and later, at the Actors Studio with Lee Strasberg. His first leading part in a feature film was in the 1971 drama Panic in Needle Park. The following year, Francis Ford Coppola selected him to take on the breakthrough role of Michael Corleone in The Godfather, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award®

One of the most versatile actors in film, James Caan (Sonny Corleone) is best known for his Academy Award® nominated performance as Sonny Corleone in The Godfather and for his Emmy®-nominated portrayal of football star Brian Piccolo in Brian’s Song. Appearing in more than 100 movies, Caan also earned great recognition starring in Rob Reiner’s critically acclaimed film Misery; and For The Boys, co-starring Bette Midler. He was equally praised for his performance as a brain damaged football star in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Rain People. Caan made his directorial debut and starred in the critically acclaimed film Hide In Plain Sight.

A leading man since the 1960s, Robert Duvall (Tom Hagen) has specialized in driven characters of all types. Respected by his peers and adored by audiences worldwide, he has earned numerous Oscar® nominations for his performances in The Judge, The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, The Great Santini and The Apostle. Duvall won the Academy Award® and a Golden Globe® as Best Actor for his role in Tender Mercies. In addition, he has received Golden Globe® Awards for his performances in the title role of HBO’s Stalin as well as for his memorable turns in Apocalypse Now and Lonesome Dove.

Talia Shire (Connie) comes from a family of artists. The Yale drama school alum has appeared in over fifty movies and television shows, received two Academy Award® nominations, and won the NY Film Critics Award for her performance in Rocky (1976). She and her husband Jack Schwartzman independently financed and produced several movies among them Never Say Never Again (1983) and Rad (1986) whose sequel is currently in development. In 1994 she directed One Night Stand. In 1994 Jack Schwartzman died. In 1997 she was one of several producers on the Tony® nominated play Golden Child. Family is at the center of her life. Talia’s children continue on in the same tradition of theatre and film. Her two step children John Schwartzman (Cinematographer) and Stephanie Schwartzman (Artist), her son Matthew Shire (Writer/Producer), Jason Schwartzman (Actor/Musician/Writer/Director/Producer), & Robert Schwartzman (Actor/Musician/Director/Producer).

Diane Keaton (Kay Adams)

Robert De Niro (Vito Corleone - The Godfather: Part II) launched his motion picture career in Brian De Palma's The Wedding Party in 1969. By 1974, he had won the New York Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actor in Bang the Drum Slowly and from the National Society of Film Critics for Mean Streets. In 1974 De Niro won the Academy Award® for Best Supporting Actor for The Godfather: Part II. In 1980 he won his second Oscar®, as Best Actor, for Raging Bull. De Niro has also earned Academy Award® nominations for his work in: Taxi Driver, The Deer Hunter, Awakenings, the remake of Cape Fear and Silver Linings Playbook. He was most recently seen in The Irishman, his ninth collaboration with Martin Scorsese. The Irishman, based on the book I Heard You Paint Houses by Charles Brandt, either won or was nominated for a multitude of awards including being nominated for best picture from the Academy of Motion Pictures and BAFTA. The Irishman, released by Netflix, also won the New York Film Critics and the National Board of Review awards for Best Picture. Prior to The Irishman, De Niro was seen in Warner Bros. The Joker and Tribeca Productions’ and HBO’s Wizard of Lies starring as Bernie Madoff, for which he received both an Emmy Award® nomination for lead actor in a limited series or movie and a Screen Actors Guild nomination for Outstanding performance by a male actor in a Miniseries or Television movie. In 2009, De Niro received the Kennedy Center Honor for his distinguished acting and the Stanley Kubrick Award from the BAFTA Britannia Awards. De Niro was honored with the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 2011 Golden Globe Awards. He served as the jury president of the 64th Cannes Film Festival. In 2020, De Niro received the Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award. De Niro takes pride in his production company, Tribeca Productions, and the Tribeca Film Festival, which he founded with Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff. Through Tribeca Productions, De Niro has developed projects on which he has served as producer, director and actor. Tribeca's A Bronx Tale in 1993 marked De Niro’s directorial debut. De Niro also directed The Good Shepherd in 2006.

Taylor Hackford (Moderator) was the director of the Academy Award® winning films Ray and An Officer and a Gentleman. In addition, he helmed the beloved features Against All Odds, The Devil’s Advocate, Dolores Claiborne, and Blood In, Blood Out. Hackford most recently directed Robert De Niro in The Comedian. His feature documentary work is equally acclaimed, with Chuck Berry: Hail!, Hail! Rock n’ Roll and When We Were Kings, a behind-the-scenes look at the legendary 1974 bout between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, which won for Best Documentary Feature. He has served two terms as president of the Directors Guild of America.