The Godfather Notebook

I love seeing how things (especially movies) are made. I've listened to all three DVD commentary tracks for Scorsese's Raging Bull and wished there were more, and, to be honest, I'd rather watch Hearts of Darkness, the superb making-of-Apocalypse-Now documentary, than Apocaplyse Now itself. So this book is absolute catnip. It isn't something Coppola nostaligically put together for some anniversary; rather, it's a replica of the actual working notebook he constructed for his adaptation of Mario Puzo's novel into film, filled with pages he cut out of the novel and covered with notes. The movie has, of course, become one of the central American myths, but it's thrilling to see it come together as the thoughts of a young artist paging through a pulp novel in a San Francisco coffee shop.