Originally Posted By: Turnbull
Originally Posted By: RedSeal
As I said in my original post, "People with lots of money who are used to getting their way in all things don't intimidate easily."

I believed that then, and I believe that now.

Woltz would have been completely freaked out by the horse head, as anybody would be. After that, it would have galvanized him.

The novel provides more detail. Woltz was intimidated because:

1. The horse killer got past his security, meaning that his security was no good.
2. He boasted to Tom that he was friends with J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI director. But, what could Hoover do for him now? "What was the penalty for killing a horse?" he asked himself. Would the FBI even investigate a horse murder?
3. If that's what Corleone did as a warning, he must have something "infinitely more painful" in store if Woltz still didn't give in. You can infer that Woltz was afraid that, if there was a next time, it'd be his coglioni that were cut off, not a horse's head.


This is a really important point. Some guy on the east coast who you've only heard of obliquely has the power and worse yet, the interest, to reach out to you in Hollywood and buy off or scare off your security workers over something as silly as a part in a movie. He knows about your links to the FBI and is evidently unconcerned. You start to realize, as Hagen hinted, that this person is not entirely rational on the subject of his godson. Could you still fight him? Sure. Could you win? Maybe. But are you willing to take that chance. Nope.

"When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives."
Winter is Coming

Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky; And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die.
As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk, the Law runneth forward and back; For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.