The Godfather Homage
The Godfather is my favorite book/movie ever. I bought the hardcover in 1969 when I lived in Manhattan and I still have it – although the jacket’s long gone.
I saw the movie for the first time when it came out in 1972 & bet I watched it more than 100 times since. It’s one of the few movies I own on Amazon Prime.
So it’s no surprise that I pay homage to The Godfather in my new crime novel The Dead Stripper. In Scene 3 of Chapter 25, the main character Steve Piasecki is pulling all-nighters as he tries to meet a deadline.
Steve wakes up on the couch one morning and immediately knows exactly how long he slept. That’s because he put The Godfather movie on when he laid down on the couch and fell asleep to the scene below.
Here’s the way I portrayed that scene in The Dead Stripper.
The next morning … Wednesday.
I slept for around two hours and forty-five minutes last night. I know because I put Amazon Prime on when I hit the couch and keyed up my copy of The Godfather. I don’t remember making it all the way through the opening scene. That’s where Bonasera asks Don Vito Corleone for a favor. He tells him about the two bastards who took his daughter for a drive, made her drink whiskey, and tried to take advantage of her. She resisted and kept her honor. So they beat her, like an animal, and put her in the hospital.
Now he wants revenge. I fell asleep before the end of that scene.
Steve wakes up on the couch when the scene below is playing. He does a quick mental calculation and realizes he slept for two hours and forty-five minutes, and here’s the way I portrayed the scene in The Dead Stripper.
When I next open my eyes, I’m looking at Don Vito’s daughter Connie. She’s running into Michael’s office in a fit of rage and calling him a lousy bastard because he just killed her husband Carlo.
Connie’s played by Talia Shire. It’s her first significant role and the first time she’s not billed as Talia Coppola. That’s supposed to divert our attention away from the fact that she’s the director’s daughter and genetics earned her that part. She hit the Big Time four years later when she landed the role of Rocky’s wife Adrian.
Excerpt from The Dead Stripper by Barry Bowe
But this is one of the closing scenes in The Godfather. Since I watched the movie more than a hundred times, I know the running time’s two hours and fifty-five minutes. That means I slept for around two hours and forty-five minutes.
Coming March 1st
The Dead Stripper is a contemporary murder mystery / love story set in Philadelphia and its suburbs. Like Jessica Fletcher in Murder She Wrote, Steve Piasecki is thrust into the role of amateur detective. To solve the crimes he encounters, he uses moxie, charisma, and dogged determination.
An aspiring author awaiting his first big break, he moonlights as an Uber to pay his bills. One night, he picks up a stripper at the end of her shift, transports her home, then continues working. But his adventure begins the next day when the stripper is found dead of an apparent drug overdose. Since he was the last person seen with her, he must prove he had nothing to do with her death, and also track down who did.
The Dead Stripper takes us into the worlds of opioids, drug cartels, crime and detection, the courtroom, and the New York publishing industry. Inspired by real people and real events, The Dead Stripper rings true from beginning to end.
I’m America’s Best Crime Writer – Barry Bowe – & I approve this message.
My first book – Born to Be Wild – Published in 1992 – Still selling on Amazon & Kindle. A true story about certain members of the Warlocks motorcycle gang.
The story took 21 years to play out – many twists & turns – an amalgam of Sons of Anarchy and Breaking Bad – but these outlaw bikers make the Sons look like Cub Scouts.
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