#1. The Godfather
Francis Ford Coppola (who got the job because of his previous movie, The Rain People) wasn’t the first director Paramount Pictures had in mind for The Godfather. Elia Kazan, Arthur Penn, Richard Brooks, and Costa-Gavras all turned the job down. And after the filming began, executives didn’t like the brooding, talky drama that Coppola was shooting. The studio wanted a more salacious gangster movie, so it constantly threatened to fire Coppola
If you know anything about The Godfather, you probably recognize the line, “Leave the gun. Take the cannoli”, uttered by capo Peter Clemenza after a certain dirty deed. Actor Richard Castellano improvised that line after director Francis Ford Coppola added a line in an earlier scene in which Clemenza’s wife says, “Don’t forget the cannoli!”