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  • 2016-04-07 (xsd:date)
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  • Was the Horse's Head in 'The Godfather' Real? (en)
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  • Francis Ford Coppola's 1972 crime drama The Godfather remains a hugely influential film decades after its release, and perhaps the one scene from that movie most often referenced in pop culture is one in which producer Jack Woltz, who unwisely refused a request from the Corleone family to cast Johnny Fontane (Don Corleone's godson) in his new film, awoke to find the severed head of his prize thoroughbred in his bed: Even those who haven't actually seen the famous film itself probably recognize The Godfather as the origin of the horse head scene when they encounter references to it in other works of pop culture: The Godfather was shot about a decade before the Screen Actors Guild adopted the American Humane Society's Guidelines for the Safe Use of Animals in Filmed Media [PDF], so it's reasonable to be concerned that at least one horse was sacrificed for the film. It's true that the horse's head in The Godfather was genuine, but untrue that the animal it came from was killed specifically for that scene: The authenticity of the horse's head was addressed by Coppola after the 2001 release of The Godfather DVD Collection, in which the filmmaker recalled that animal rights activists were troubled by the imagery: And so one of the most memorable scenes in movie history was born. Another movie's animals were perhaps not so lucky. Pernicious, but unverified rumors about the 1970 motion picture Patton claim that mules were shot, clubbed to death, or poisoned during its filming — charges that 20th-Century Fox vehemently denied. (en)
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