I have many unanswered questions about GF2 that I would like your help with. I see many great minds on this board (with ALL respect) and I think you can help me get some answers.

From my point of view--I came to this board with 2 points that I was sure of and you ridiculed me and told me my theory was full of holes. I told you I was SURE of those 2 points:

1. Who killed the Tahoe shooters? Rocco.
2. Did Fredo know it was going to be a hit? Yes.

Now, if you will just follow my thinking, I believe I can prove it to you.

Don Cardi...I kiss your hand and tell you that you can get some more usefulness out of me before you send me to visit Luca.

In the aftermath of that horrible attack Michael sat and figured out how that attack was possible after all his careful planning and WHO made the attack happen...
...his 2 beloved brothers...
how much should he burden Tom with...
and the big question...How much did Fredo know about Roth's plan and what was the extent of Fredo's participation in that plan?

I believe Michael devised a plan...a test for Fredo so that Michael could answer those questions. So we have CUBA...Roth, Johnny Ola, Fredo and (strangely enough) Senator Geary.

My first question for the board's consideration is: What was the "something in it for him" that Roth offered Fredo?
Did Fredo want money? I say no. I believe Fredo wanted Michael's power...he wanted Michael's position in the family.

of course he wanted mike's power. he was passed over, that not the way he wanted it. he's smart, not like everybody says, like dumb. he's smart. send fredo out to do this, send fredo out to do that.

OK...so how was he gonna get Mike's power without having Michael dead?

maybe he did not want all of mikes power. maybe he just wanter SOMETHING for himself.

maybe roth promised to give him something for himself if he helped him out. maybe he convinced stupid fredo that mike was being unreasonably tough on negotiations.

maybe he said 'i want you to help mike. and i want you to help me. i hope your not a hothead like your brother mikey. you cant talk business with him...'

... and promised him a little project for himself. something for HIM. he was his younger brother and he was passed over.

i done necessarily think that the 'something for him' necessarily meant the donship.

Fredo: I was passed over.

Michael: That's the way Pop wanted it.

Fredo: That's not the way I wanted it.

i dont doubt that he felt bitter about being passed over by his younger brother, but that does not necessarily probe that roth tempted him with a donship. i'm not even concinced that fredo thought himself capable of such responsibility.

We can certainly try to follow your thinking...you can present your theories, you can analyze the dialogue to your heart's content. But I'm afraid you cannot ever prove either of the above.

For neither point is indicated without a doubt in the movie. Whatever you present here is pure speculation. Nothing more, nothing less.

Furthermore...while the topic of Fredo knowing/not knowing about the hit has been discussed here before, to the best of my recollection no one here on the BB has ever come up with the idea that Rocco was a traitor or had anything to do with the Tahoe hit. So you've taken on quite a task trying to convince very many of theory.

Go for it....!!!

Apple

Don Arvido;


But was Roth in a position to give away a Don position or just merely "property " - a casino ? I believe Roth said something about territory in GF II. Its been a while since I've seen it. As far as the responsibility of Fredo being a Don, you seen the way Vito referred to Fredo when he and Mike were having the discussion in the garden. He just shrugged it off and moved on to his next thought. He knew Fredo could never be Don, that's why he put Mike in that position.

No, Ofcourse Roth was not in a position to give away a donship. I did not say he was.

I do not recall roth mentioning anything about a casino or territory for Fredo either.

I am not sure what point you are making, sorry.

What would Michael do when he found out Fredo accepted ANYTHING from Roth? Fredo would not forget Michael's telling him, "Never take sides with anyone against the family again."

I do think fredo wanted more dignity, more respect, and possibly more power, but my point is that I do not think that Roth tempted him with a donship, and I dont necessarily think he wanted to replace michael. I think he wanted something for himself and that is why he went behind michaels back and betrayed him.

...And Fredo's really chilling words "...that it would be good for the family."

True, he did say that, but that does not prove that Roth tempted him with the donship.

I dont believe Fredo thought it would be a hit, and I do not believe that Fredo necessarily was eyeing the don spot. He just wanted more respect and something for himself.

Fredo in charge - good for the family? C'mon... (no disrespect intended).

One of the subthemes of the GF Trilogy is how people behave irrationally when they are motivated by greed, pride, revenge lust, etc.--and how others take advantage of their stupidity that's motivated by greed, pride, revenge, lust, etc. How else explain the great Senator Geary jeopardizing himself by playing sex games with a whore in a brothel owned by the despised Corleones? How else explain how Carlo thought he could set up Sonny with a ridiculously obvious ploy like beating up Connie twice --and thinking he could get away with it? Or Paulie, thinking he could sell out Vito to Sollozzo by calling in sick--and getting away with it? All of them were completely irrational, and they suffered the consequences.
The same applies to Fredo. The guy was absolutely burning with resentment of his younger brother, for all the reasons he yelled at Michael in the boathouse. I'm guessing that Roth and/or Ola didn't promise him anything specific because they didn't have to--the simple promise that there'd be something in it for him would suffice because Fredo's primary reward would be to get even with, and have the last laugh on, his brother.

We can certainly try to follow your thinking...you can present your theories, you can analyze the dialogue to your heart's content. But I'm afraid you cannot ever prove either of the above.

"We are all reasonable men (and women) here."

No, I believe w've had this theory come up several times before, and it's easy to see why:

Someone like Turnbull, for example - if I understand him correctly - believes that it's enough to know that Fredo was the traitor, and defining his exact role or the exact role or roles of another character or other characters is unimportant.

Others, like you and I for example, believe that it is a flaw in the film to not fully explain Fredo's role or answer a very basic question like "Who killed the assassins?", since it is obvious that someone other than Fredo did (we can infer that from what we know of Fredo), and that that "someone", as Michael says, was "somebody close to us -- inside. Very, very scared they botched it."

But for those who insist that the answer lies somewhere in the film, then Rocco is the most logical choice from among a very small group of possibilities.

If there was a guy in my room holding a a gun to my head, and he said to me "FFC is in the next room, and he's gonna tell us who killed the asassins. It's someone from the film that you know by name and can identify. You have to guess what he's gonna say, plawrence, and if you guess wrong I'm gonna kill you", then I would have to guess "Rocco".

But when FFC then explained to me all the reasons why it was and exactly how the plot was constructed, unless I'm missing an awful lot, I will be able to tell him all of the reasons why the Rocco theory is illogical, given the information in the film that we are given.

This is the same as the argument about whether or not there are supposed to be four or five other families in the original novel besides the Corleones.

The way the book is written is flawed, and it's impossible to state with any degree of certainty what the correct answer is.

We all have our opinions, and we can all back up our opinions with citations and quotes from the book, but in the final analysis there is no "right" answer.

Thanks for the update, plawrence! Now that you mention it, I do vaguely recall briefly following a thread way back when where the possibility of Rocco being involved was thrown around. Since I didn't and don't agree with it...I most likely would've abandoned the thread after not too long a time.

I take from your last paragraph though, that we can agree that Cesaer D's two theories cannot be 'proven' no matter what discussion is generated.

Gosh, plaw...I truly hope you're never held at gunpoint to correctly answer that question while FFC waits in the next room. But if you are, take heart as chances are FFC himself doesn't know...probably didn't think it through and didn't foresee anyone pondering it beyond the actual fact of the shooting itself.

*****
I'd love to have been a fly on the wall during script discussions for this part of GFII. Might've gone something like this:

FFC: So we'll have the shooters found dead, therefore unable to provide information to Michael as to who they were working for. Then Michael has to go visit both Hyman Roth and Frankie and make his own surmizations and proceed from there. Should make a great story.

MP: Well, sure...but who do we have kill the assasins? That would be a major clue to the audience as to who's involved.

FFC: Awww, that part doesn't matter. They have to be found dead though, because once the shooting takes place and the alarms are activated there's no way they'd be able to escape from the compound. Too unrealistic.

MP: Sure...but people are gonna probably wonder who killed the assasins and therefore who was involved besides Fredo.

FFC: Nah, nobody will worry about that once the main story gets fully underway.

Apple

Are you sure about that? Correct.

And I also agree with your FFC-MP scenario.

I've said it many times; I believe it to be a flaw in the film and that FFC and MP didn't really think it through.

Back in those days, someone saw a film once in the theatre, and maybe a second time years later on TV.

Who knew then that there would be VCRs and tapes, followed by DVDs, and that people would actually own their favorite films and have the opportunity to re-watch them dozens of times, not to mention that there would be home computers and an internet on which people from all over the world could analyze, re-analyze, and re-re-analyze them?

Yes...because with you gone, who would there be to scope out the best Italian restaurants?

Apple

Aw, shucks.....

Yes, Apple, you are so right--I love to speculate. So you guys can keep me in line. But as far as PROVING my theory, I hope that you will not hold me to the standard of beyond ANY doubt. In other words, if you can think of an argument that is a "if frogs had wings they could fly" type of argument. At least give me beyond a REASONABLE doubt; in other words, if I can give you a likely scenario that fits the facts we know (even if I speculate a little bit )you will admit that my theory is plausible. There will be holes because I don't know even one-tenth what the Godfather movies are all about. I'm hoping that you and other people here will help me fill in the holes in my theory and tell me your own ideas and theories.

Isn't that what we've been doing?

We can't fill in the holes in your theory, though, because then they wouldn'nt be holes. All we can do is point them out.

And so far, and I believe that everyone who has been involved in these threads you've started, you've failed to provide a theory which fits all of the facts.

My "four hitmen theory", in which two kill the other two and leave them behind as decoys (which will stop the search) while making their own escape is much more plausible, I think, than any theory that involves Fredo and Rocco and Pentangelli all working together.

Does anyone have any ideas on why Senator Geary went to Cuba (I assume at Michael's invitation)?

Are we done with Fredo now?

Well how else would you define PROVING? It was your terminology, not mine.

So I guess we agree...you can present your theories and they can even lead to interesting discussion. But you cannot prove them. Glad we've got that settled.

Senator Geary certainly was in Cuba at Michael's invitation...I assume to lend a degree of legitimacy (can anyone elaborate?). He would have most likely accepted Michael's invitation because since the whorehouse incident...he belonged to Michael Corleone, probably in much the same way Senate Lawyer Questadt belonged to Hyman Roth.

Apple

Within seconds after the shooting, lights come on, Rocco's guards run out, the dogs are released with one dog running right down to the drainage ditch and tunnel. The patrol boat is patrolling the shoreline. Explain to me how your hitmen were garrotted (which takes at least 2-3 minutes) by 2 other men (not Rocco's men!) and got off the property without being detected.

The two dead guys were killed before the shooting started.

All four hitmen were hiding in the woods, two of them killed the other two and carried them to the ditch and left them there.

Then they opened fire, and then escaped through the drainage pipe in the ditch that led to the lake, where a boat was waiting for them.

When Rocco and his men found the dead guys in the ditch, they stopped looking for anyone else.

Now you explain to me how Rocco garrotted two guys without being seen when "Within seconds after the shooting, lights come on, Rocco's guards run out..."

And explain to me how Rocco got recruited into the plot in the first place.

He was known to be loyal to Michael. If Fredo or Roth approached him, they were taking a very big chance.

Suppose he didn't bite, but told Michael instead?

Fredo was known to have "taken sides against the family" before, and possibly had run off his mouth in Vegas about how unhappy he was about being "passed over", and Roth took advantage of that fact.

Why do we now have 2 seperate topics in the same GF Trilogy thread talking about the same subject of Rocco, Fredo and the hit?

CD, I don't see the reason for your starting another topic about Fredo and Rocco and the hit. You already started the Rocco the traitor topic and now you've started a new topic basically discussing your same theories and ideas about Rocco, Fredo, and the hit.

If you wish to continue this discussion, please do so over in the Rocco The Traitor topic that you already started.

This topic is now closed.


Don Cardi