Martin Scorsese Could Have Directed The Godfather Part II, But He's Glad He Didn't

For years, the idea that Martin Scorsese could have directed "The Godfather Part II" has been a part of the filmmaker's sprawling lore, a fact so fun that sharing it with your gangster film buff friends is all but guaranteed to make them temporarily short-circuit when considering the possibilities. What would Scorsese's take on the story of Michael Corleone look like? Would the filmmaker's spin on Mario Puzo's world be a "Goodfellas"-level classic, still considered among the best movies of all time as Francis Ford Coppola's take was? It turns out, Scorsese himself doesn't think so.

The filmmaker recently spoke with Deadline about his upcoming film "Killers of the Flower Moon," a movie about a series of historical Osage Nation murders that's set to be a crime epic in its own right. During the conversation, the topic of Scorsese's potential involvement in "The Godfather Part II" came up, and the filmmaker gave his side of the story. In a 2012 GQ profile, Coppola said that when the idea of a sequel came up, he considered handing over the reins to the up-and-coming filmmaker, whose movie "Mean Streets" would debut around the time filming on the "Godfather" sequel began. "I knew this was a really smart idea," Coppola recalled to GQ. "He was such a natural."

Nearly a half-century after the film's release, Scorsese is modest (or realistic) about what his spin on the series might have looked like. "[Coppola] told me, and, honestly, I don't think I could have made a film on that level at that time in my life, and who I was at that time," he tells Deadline.

"To make a film as elegant and masterful and as historically important as 'Godfather II,' I don't think..." he says, seeming to consider the question further. "I would've made something interesting, but his maturity was already there," Scorsese decides. "I still had this kind of edgy thing, the wild kid running around."

It's true that Scorsese's earliest films, "Mean Streets" included, were much less polished than his later masterpieces. That's not the only difference the filmmaker sees between himself and Coppola, though. Scorsese also notes that his upbringing (he grew up in Manhattan's Little Italy during the mob's heyday) would have changed the way he approached the film. "I didn't find myself that comfortable with depicting higher-level underworld figures. I was more street-level," he notes. "There were higher-level guys in the street. I could do that. I did it in 'Goodfellas' particularly. That's where I grew up."

Scorsese says that he didn't have experience portraying "guys in a boardroom or sitting around a big table talking" at that point, but Coppola was already on that "artistic level." Still, he notes that the pair's differing life experiences led to a movie that has echoes of another enduring classic: "He didn't come from that world, the world that I came from," he tells Deadline. "The story of 'Godfather II' is more like Thomas Malory's 'Le Morte d'Arthur.' It's wonderful art."

Scorsese compares Coppola's final product to Malory's "The Death of Arthur," a centuries-old legend that redefined storytelling forever. It's high praise for a movie that's considered a stone-cold classic, from one master storyteller to another. Still, I can't help but wonder what Scorsese's take on the "I know it was you, Fredo" scene would've looked like.