An abortion, Michael! Just like our marriage is an abortion! Something that's unholy and evil!

Mary!

What the actual fuck?

It’s from The Godfather movies, maybe?

R2 is not a cinema fan.

It's from Thirtysomething.

Actually, I'm fairly sure that's the Christmas episode of Arrested Development, when Lucille accidentally freebases and then insists on carving the turkey.

Melania and Dump had this conversation in 2011, Deplorable OP changed his name.

Wasn't this part of the song sung by Michael's ghost wife in Mary Poppins Returns? It got cut but I always thought it was Gwenyth's performance, not the lyrics. Yikes.

I always thought Diane Keaton was a touch drab in that role. (Not that the film takes much time to forward its 2 female characters...)

Her acting’s fine of course, but she’s a bit ho-hum for me.

They also considered Jill Clayburgh, Cybill Shepherd, Jennifer O’Neill, Ali MacGraw and Karen Black (who would have been a HOOT!)

Sounds like daytime soap dialog.

It's from "Anne of Green Gables."

Pacino is so great in the first two Godfather movies. Much of his acting is simply reacting to other people; the way he plays off of Keaton in this scene is fantastic.

::SLAP::

For R2, it’s Kay Adams Corleone to Michael Corleone, in The Godfather.

She’s saying she doesn’t want to have a mob boss’ baby, because he is fucking nuts, and he will raise the child to be a violent, murderous mobster like Dear Old Dad. Fair enough.

He’s freaking out because he’s Catholic and not having the baby is not only a personal insult to him, but she’s going to HELL!

Kay was an ungrateful bitch. Or, maybe she was clairvoyant, foresaw what handsome young Al Pacino would look like in 30 years and thought, "I didn't sign up for that!"

She didn’t really have anything to be grateful about. She was pretty and educated, she could have made a good marriage with somebody normal. She was just naive and believed him when he said he didn’t want to join the family business. Stupid.

and yet Talia Shire somehow got the supporting actress nomination for this Godfather 2 for doing nothing

At the end of the novel, she goes to church and lights a candle in defeat.

Question for other eldergays (I'm 63): Did you see The Godfather when it was originally released? How old were you? I was 15, and I saw it with my parents. Both of them had read the book, so they knew it would be a violent, sexy movie. I guess they figured I was old enough. They were ardent movie fans and no doubt really wanted to see it themselves.

Confession of embarrassing naivete: I didn't fully understand the concept of thrusting during intercourse until I saw the Sonny Corleone-Lucy Mancini scene in the movie. I read the book after seeing the movie and still have my old paperback copy. To this day, it falls open to that passage. "Weeping in grateful ecstasy ..."

Diane Keaton has said the only things she really remembers about the first two Godfather movies were getting to work with Al Pacino (which she loved) and wearing the terrible 10 lb. wigs for the first one.

"I knew there would be no way, Michael, no way you could ever forgive me. Not with this Sicccccilian THING that's been going on for 2,0000..."

Keaton said she always felt out of place in The Godfather films. Like she didn't really fit in.

If she felt out of place, that was intentional. Kay was a woman out of place, a naive interloper who symbolized the audience, as it was introduced to a mysterious world. Even the colors that she was wearing made her stand out ( bright red coat when everyone else was in black or brown). It was only after Michael returns from Sicily and needs her to have his children that her color palate changes to more muted until, during the final scene, her dress, makeup and hair color all match the color of the wallpaper and curtains, signifying that she had become a part of the house instead of a trusted mate. If she felt out of place, it was for that very reason. Actors are often treated as their characters in order to get the best performance out of them.

[quote]Question for other eldergays (I'm 63): Did you see The Godfather when it was originally released? How old were you?

I saw it in Pittsburgh whenever it came out, while I was in college. I loved it, but so many movies came out that year: Cabaret, The Candidate, The Heartbreak Kid, The King of Marvin Gardens, Lady Sings the Blues, Portnoy's Complaint, Deliverance. I didn't really love Godfather I until after Godfather II came out, and theatres ran them together a lot. I think I've seen them ten or fourteen times, though not in a long time.

Here's an interview of the cast at a reunion.

Somewhere in it Keaton talks about how she never felt like she fit in to the picture.

"Actors are often treated as their characters in order to get the best performance out of them."

No shit, Sherlock!

Yes, that is actual hidden camera footage of Gish being called to the set by DW Griffith!

How did Talia Shire get the Oscar nomination over Keaton for Godfather 2? She barely does anything yet Keaton is pretty riveting in this scene.

Godfather 2 had an odd Oscar run. John Cazale as Fredo is probably the most remembered supporting actor yet they found three other guys to nominate.

Well, Talia Shire IS Coppola's sister. Maybe that had something to do with her nomination?

R24, I forgot that Cabaret and The Godfather came out in the same year, 1972; it turns out they were released rather close together - Cabaret in February and TG in March. I don't know when each went into wide release.

I also don't remember whether my crush on Al Pacino gave way to my crush on Helmut Griem or vice versa. I think Pacino came first because the Griem crush lasted quite a while. He was such a gorgeous man ... who belongs on another thread.

How would she have known it was a son? There were no ultrasounds back then.

[quote] How would she have known it was a son? There were no ultrasounds back then.

Perhaps what was flushed out had a wee wee.

R31, they did amniocentesis tests as early as the 'fifties, to check (appropriately enough in this case) for hereditary illnesses. That probably gave the necessary information.

I always thought she should have just done it and kept her yap shut about it. How did she think he'd react?

He forgives her by Godfather 3.

How did that play out? Why'd he forgive her?

R35, perhaps he drifted into the strangest dreams of youthful follies and changing teams and admitted he was wrong.

It’s so sad the unborn fetus was never able to play in the room with his siblings and their tooooooooooys.

Well, R35, he can’t very well stay on his high horse after Kay tells Michael she knows that he killed his own brother.

The weirdest thing about both those movies to me was that Mamma Corleone (Morgana King) gets almost zero lines. They were making the point that Italian Mafia wives of a certain generation were non-entities to their husbands and children, but it still seemed so weird she's hardly in either of the movies at all, even though she gets spoken of frequently.

This film must have been a lot of pressure for Keaton. She'd only done comedy and a few TV episodic shows and then suddenly she's with Brando.

[quote] How did that play out? Why'd he forgive her?

He had to once the children were grown up. They weren't going to stay away from her once they were adults (since they knew she was loving and kind). But I would guess he relented sooner than that--Michael had a very nice side to him before Apollonia was assassinated, which was presumably why he was attracted to Kay in the first place. I am sure he also sentimentalized her as the mother of his children.

How does Godfather II end? Are Michael and Kaye estranged?

[quote]R31 How would she have known it was a son? There were no ultrasounds back then.

You see it in the pail.

[quote] How does Godfather II end? Are Michael and Kaye estranged?

Michael banishes Kay and takes custody of their children once he finds out about the abortion.

Michael then has Hyman Roth killed (and arranges for Frank Pentangeli to commit suicide). Mama dies, and at first Michael seems to have forgiven Fredo, but then he arranges for Al Neri to take Fredo out fishing on Lake Tahoe in order to kill him. The film ends with a shot of Michael sitting alone by the lake at the compound. His parents and all his siblings except Connie (who hates him) have died, and he has thrown Kay out of his life.

I always thought if Joan Allen had been around back then this is the type of role she would have knocked out of the park. I still think Keaton is miscast — drab in the first one, shrill in the second, and whatever in the third. And not because she can’t do drama well, because she most certainly can. But she was never really convincing to me, and she’s just kind of an annoying drag in the movie. I think Keaton’s kind of aware of that, herself (the sense I’ve gotten).

That said, there really isn’t much to the character and I think very few actresses could have made it at all compelling, like you wanted to watch that character.

I never liked Keaton as Kay Corleone. One of my least favorite scenes is the "it was an abortion" one. Pacino was brilliant but Keaton - meh for me.

I've really enjoyed quite a few movies of hers, including a couple of her tries at directing. She's an interesting person, actress, artist, what-have-you but I thought she was a weak link in the Godfather movies.

Mario Puzo couldn't write women to save his life. The most memorable female character in the book orin the screenplays is Connie's maid of honor waxing rhapsodically over Sonny fucking her.

Godfather?

It's Godfather II, they're in New York City for the big "investigation" into the Corleone crime family.

Kay says she's taking the children with her to her parents. Michael - clueless - says no, they were all going to go together. She says she's leaving, he says she's not. They start fighting and Kay knew the only way she could get away was to tell him about the abortion, which worked.

She thought she would get the kids but in those days the moms never got the kids unless the dads didn't want to deal with them.

No, moms got the kids, unless the dad was a Mafia boss.

R50 or Phil Bronstein, apparently.

[quote]No, moms got the kids, unless the dad was a Mafia boss.

R50, and/or a character in a work of fiction where it was convenient for the mother to lose custody to the father.

I'm not sure where R49 gets his information, but in the postwar years it was almost a given that the mother would have custody of the children unless she was deemed an unfit mother. I think it's more common today for fathers to have full or partial custody than it would have been in 1960.

[quote] They start fighting and Kay knew the only way she could get away was to tell him about the abortion, which worked.

But then Michael has the children taken away from Kay.

R53, presumably Kay does not litigate this issue with Michael because he’s Michael; he just takes the children. But in Godfather 3, he ultimately gave custody to Kay.