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"Mafia" and "Cosa Nostra" from the script—a shrewd piece of bargaining, since "Mafia" had never appeared in the script anyway and "Cosa Nostra" had been used only once. Also, he hired some people associated with the league, including a Las Vegas nightclub M.C., Gianni Russo, who got the role of the Godfather's treacherous son-in-law Carlo. Russo, a friend of Colombo's son Anthony, provided the cast with tips on how Mafiosi would act. He cheerfully observes that the Mob is "like the Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts. Everyone should have an organization."
Brando, who had been expected to loom as the biggest of all the movie's problems, turned out to be a model team player. Indeed, Brando's only major fault as an actor was that he would not or could not learn his lines, and had to read them from hidden cue cards. Long known as an actor who lives his roles, Brando in effect adopted the actors who played his screen sons. Just before shooting started, Ruddy threw a cast party at an Italian restaurant in Manhattan. "We were all new to each other," says John Cazale. "We stood there not knowing what to do. It was Brando who broke the ice. He just went over, opened a bottle of wine and started the festivities. I think we all realized then that he was acting with us the way the Don would have acted with his own family."
Brando gave and took advice freely, and encouraged backstage pranks that kept the atmosphere relaxed. A favorite was "mooning," the infantile practice of dropping one's trousers to show bare buttocks. "My best moon was on Second Avenue," remembers James Caan. "Bob Duvall and I were in one car and Brando was in another, so we drove up beside him and I pulled down my pants and stuck my ass out of the window. Brando fell down in the car with laughter."
During shooting, says Coppola, "there was a full flush of intuition that Brando fused with his technique. If a herd of buffalo ran across the set, he'd react in character." For Brando's death scene, the script called for him to cavort with his grandson in a garden, then topple over from a stroke. Brando suggested adding a little game that he played with his own children: he cut a set of jagged fangs from an orange rind and inserted them in his mouth. The result not only drew a spontaneous on-screen reaction from the child playing the grandson, but also captured in a tiny image the essence of the Godfather characterization—a monster, but seemingly benign.