puff piece interview for a mini-series makes show less attractive, not more, and blog that published it threatens critical commenters with silencing!; but the real meat is in the mini-series’ back story.
By N.S.
Yesterday, I stumbled onto and re-posted a mediocre british documentary on the making of The Godfather, The Godfather and the Mob.
(Actually, it was more a matter of it stumbling across me, since google/youtube’s ai had promoted it to me.)
A mediocre, british man of mystery named Simon George had made the documentary at a cost of about ten pounds, using mostly old stills and video footage, dominated by interviews by Godfather producer Al Ruddy (1930-) and his then-secretary, Bettye McCartt (1932-2013). (In Ruddy’s interviews, he referred to McCartt as “my secretary,” but George ID’d her as Ruddy’s “executive assistant.” That’s because between the early 1970s and the 1990s, feminists inflated secretaries into “executive assistants.”)
I got the impression that the interviews of Ruddy and McCartt were shot during the early 1990s, which would mean that each was roughly 60 years old. McCartt didn’t look anywhere near that age (more like 48-52), but I found a picture of her when she was in her mid-to-late forties, and she was a very sexy lady.
Thus, due to the time lag between when the interviews were most likely done and the documentary shown on british tv (2006), and the lack of any evidence that the project was dear to Simon George’s heart, I doubt that he did any of the interviews, but rather sliced and diced what he found lying about... or what Al Ruddy tossed his way, after Ruddy was unable to find a bigger-name director.
This could very well have been an early 1990s Al Ruddy project, meant to revive a then-faltering career. (At the time, Ruddy was producing pictures, but they were instant bombs, like Ladybugs and Bad Girls. However, during the 2000s, he somehow was able to swing a series of easy-money executive producer gigs and, in 2005, Ruddy won a second Best Picture Oscar as producer for Clint Eastwood and Paul Haggis’ girl boxing picture, Million Dollar Baby.)
Fast forward to the present. Ruddy, who at one point was persona non grata at Paramount, somehow finds a friend there who signs him up to turn his Godfather project—essentially a re-make of Simon George’s The Godfather and the Mob—into a fictionalized mini-series, The Offer.
A blog called awards daily sought to promote The Offer, but in a very unproductive fashion. My comment follows:
“She also talks about finding the character of Bettye McCartt, a real-life person who died before production fully began, and how important it is for [sic] Bettye’s friendship with Godfather producer Al Ruddy (Miles Teller) remained platonic within the series.”
Bettye McCartt died nine years ago, long before production began. As for McCartt’s relationship to Al Ruddy, Juno Temple seems uninterested in how it really was, but only wanted to impose some sort of feminist fairy tale on it. If she were really interested in learning about McCartt’s relationship to Ruddy, she would have contacted people who had known her well who were still very much alive, like Tom Selleck.
And boy, does Temple have an unpleasant voice!
“We do not tolerate abusive comments especially towards our writers….”
Why are there no comments? 1. Your threat alienated and discouraged potential commenters? 2. You blocked or deleted critical comments as “abusive”? 3. Nobody reads your blog?
And you know what? I was holding back, based on your threat, but the hell with it. You’re not going to publish my comment anyway, and your threat was a provocation to anyone with any self-respect.
Your interviewer is a bloody mangina! He completely submitted to the airhead Temple, and her feminist fairy tales. If anything, the intense, dangerous situations that McCartt and Ruddy endured together make it highly unlikely that they maintained a platonic relationship. And while she asserts that McCartt’s relationship to Al Ruddy was based on “equality,” that is the diametric opposite of the truth. He was her boss (which women attracted to industries like Hollywood, business, and politics typically find a turn-on), not her “equal.” Temple likewise asserts that McCartt got her job through being very aggressive, but she made that up, too. Her lack of research left her with a vacuum to fill with ideology.
McCartt and Ruddy were just two years apart, she was at her sexual peak (and a very sexy lady), and they were in dangerous situations (or were they?) that were intensely erotic.
Finally, instead of selling the miniseries, Temple diminished it. I just saw a clip of Ruddy getting Pacino on board that, apparently while not true to the facts, was brilliantly done.
[“Juno Temple on sharing the unsung legacy of Bettye McCartt in the offer [Video], by Clarence Moye, awards daily, april 27, 2022.]
awards daily
“the offer’s Juno Temple sits down with awards daily’s Clarence Moye to discuss her role as Bettye McCartt in the paramount+ limited series.”
N.S.: I left the following comment at youtube: completely dishonest interview that makes the miniseries unattractive. (Note that in over five months, the interview video only had one comment, a rave. Did they delete all other comments, or did people ignore the video?)
The Offer | Meeting Al Pacino (S1, E2) | paramount+
Numerous people have disputed. Ruddy’s account of the making of The Godfather.
Al Ruddy is the ultimate hollywood survivor. I count 546 credits for him… so far, going back at least to 1955. He’s been a creator, producer, scriptwriter, even an art director… mostly of utter trash. Prior to The Godfather, his biggest success was as creator and scriptwriter for Hogan’s Heroes (1965-1971), an inane situation comedy set in a Nazi POW camp for American servicemen, which starred Bob Crane, with the Nazis played by Jews (Werner Klemperer and John Banner).
People (e.g., old Paramount exec Peter Bart) have charged that the new docudrama has nothing in common with the truth of The Godfather shoot. Widows and orphans of people who worked on the picture (idem) have made the same criticism of Ruddy’s docudrama that I made of the tv documentary: Why didn’t he talk to any of the original players? The parallels between the tv documentary and the tv docudrama have confirmed my suspicion that both were Al Ruddy productions. Simon George was surely Al Ruddy’s puppet.
If someone were to tell the Al Ruddy story, it would be a case of Chinese boxes. The shame of it all is that so many of the people who at one point or another were in those boxes, like Bettye McCartt, have died.
I don't have the time, the energy, or the Hollywood connections to tell such a story. It would take a David McClintick, who wrote Indecent Exposure: A True Story of Hollywood and Wall Street (the 2002 edition), about Hollywood fraud and forger, David Begelman. However, I doubt that McClintick, at 82 years of age, would be interested.
The enduring mystery we're left with, is who were Al Ruddy's Hollywood "rabbis," that allowed him to survive and prosper for so long in Hollywood?
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