Who can you learn from when you are already a teacher? Nothing less than Mario Puzoauthor of the legendary novel ‘The Godfather’ and its no less proverbial translations to the big screen under the direction of Francis Ford Coppola, had to face this crossroads after doubt his abilities as a screenwriter film.
Puzo, the impostor
As you can see below, the so-called impostor syndrome it can affect even the most talented people who have inhabited our planet. Ironically, in Puzo’s case, it was the success of the first two ‘Godfather’ installments in their respective award seasons that prompted the New York author to seek training as a film scribe.
As he told in an interview with Terry Gross, collected in the Fresh Air podcast on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the premiere of the first part of the trilogy, he never thought he “knew what he was doing” while writing the script for the feature filmwhich prompted him to seek outside advice.
“It was a piece of cake because it was my first time writing a script, so I didn’t know what I was doing. You know, it turned out well. And the story I tell is that after I won two Academy Awards, you know, for the first two ‘Godfathers,’ I went out to buy a book on screenwriting because I thought it would be better to learn.”
The twist, because all good stories have one, was found in the first pages from the manual.
“The first chapter of the book said, ‘Study The Godfather I.’ It’s the blueprint for a script.”
From this anecdote, in addition to a new curiosity to add to the process of creating the saga, we can extract a vital lesson: we have to trust more in our abilities —although not all of us carry a Mario Puzo inside.