thought this was interesting. I won't be suprised if it was posted already.

AS WE ALL know, sequels at best are tricky. But picking up where Mario Puzo left off — is perhaps even more daunting.
Puzo’s work is so well known, so beloved, that the winner of this contest will be in the hot seat... as the reader will decide how well his ideas stand up to the unforgettable vision of Mario Puzo.
Mario Puzo’s characters and story have become legendary. Who can forget, “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.”
With the help of director Francis Ford Coppola’s epic movies, Marlon Brando immortalized Don Corleone. But it was Mario Puzo who invented the term “mafia godfather” — and the myth that went with it.
A struggling writer, Puzo sat down to write “The Godfather” at the age of 44 with one goal... to write a bestseller.
Twenty million copies later, he was rich and famous and everyone now knew what this meant: “It means Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes.”
But this year, Puzo’s last editor at Random House, 38-year-old Jon Karp, and the Puzo family estate, decided to take a risk and bring back “The Godfather.”
Jonathan Karp: “I love the book, I love the characters. I wanted more. I wanted to re-visit this world.”
Jamie Gangel: “You’re not worried about the dangers of a sequel?”
Karp: “No, not at all. I think that a good story’s a good story. And, if they have their daggers out, well, we know some people.”
Gangel: “What do you think Mario Puzo would have thought of this?”
Karp: “He would have been overjoyed.”
Gangel: “Because?”
Karp: “Because it’s going to be a big best-seller. And Mario loved best-sellers.”
So calls went out to literary agents. There would be a contest.
Best-selling author Mario Puzo is shown in this June 19, 1970 file photo. Puzo, creator of the fictional Corleone mob family and winner of two Oscars for his screen adaptations of his book ``The Godfather,'' died July 2, 1999. He was 78.
Anyone interested had 2 weeks to send in a 10-page outline for “The Godfather Returns”.
In the end there were more than 40 submissions.
Gangel: “What are you looking for?”
Karp: “We’re looking for an original writer, first and foremost, somebody who writes in a darkly comic, omniscient voice with a lot of irony, the way Mario did. I don’t think people realize just how funny he really was.”
Gangel: “For example?”
Karp: “Well, in “The Godfather,” Sonny Corleone is so well-endowed that when he goes to a brothel, they actually make him pay twice the amount. That’s funny!”

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After reading proposals for a few hours, Jon Karp makes the first round of cuts.
And there is nothing politically correct about this.
Karp: “Here’s one that’s not going to work. This guy’s got Michael Corleone going off and falling in love with a spirited strong willed Native American social activist.”
Gangel: “Not happening?”
Karp: “I don’t see it.”
Also on the reject pile —- anything handwritten — and anyone with an accent.
Karp: “This is a little bit bigoted of me, but these two I’m rejecting because they’re British. I don’t think that the Mafia can be done by a Brit! And if I get lots of angry hate mail and a horse’s head in the bed because of this, then I apologize to the United Kingdom, but no Brits are going to be writing the next “Godfather” novel.”
Others were rejected for being too mundane and too pulpy.
Another was rejected because he was a screenwriter who’d never written a novel.
Karp says, “This has nothing to do with the Corleone family at all, I think this guy just had it sitting around in his desk!”
By the end of the week, there are 4 finalists.
Three agreed to talk to NBC News.
In Tucson, Arizona, 55-year old Mexican-born James Carlos Blake is best known for writing violent crime books — the most recent, “A World of Thieves”.
“What I would do if this came my way, is I would concentrate on the brothers Corleone. I think that’s where, uh, a really terrific story is just waiting to be told,” says Blake.
Shy and reclusive, Blake has won 4 book awards but has never had a best-seller.
Blake says, “There’s no question that one of the side benefits to this would be that I would get… the attention that every writer wants to get.”
Forty-year-old Mark Weingardner of Tallahassee, Florida makes his living as a professor and chairman of the creative writing department at Florida State University.
His best-known book, “Crooked River Burning,” also got critical acclaim but a small audience.
For the contest, he re-read “The Godfather” and became obsessed.
Gangel: “Are you going a little crazy?”
Weingardner: “I’m going a lot crazy — writers are freaks. I tell lies about my imaginary friends for a living. There are only really two kinds of people [that] talk about hearing voices in their heads: schizophrenics and writers. And sometimes the line is very fine!”
The best known of the finalists, no question, 67-year-old Vince Patrick... a native of New York’s Lower East Side, and the only finalist who is Italian American.
Vince Patrick: “I think the advantage of having some Italian cultural stuff and background is just the fact that that part flows in naturally. And so you’re very comfortable with the characters.”
Patrick hit it big with his book and movie, “The Pope of Greenwich Village” and has had a successful career writing screenplays.
He’s also realistic about what the winner is up against.
“It’s sort of an invitation to get killed by critics. There’s not much question about that. I mean, people are going to — there’s no way that you’d get well reviewed on this one. But that’s the price you pay for an assignment, you know.”
That said, they would all like that. Final deliberations are made over lunch at, where else, a New York Italian restaurant.
The committee — Jon Karp — literary agent Neil Olson — and Mario Puzo’s son Tony.
Gangel: “What do you think your father would think of all this?”
Tony Puzo: “He would — still be amazed that there’s that much interest in “The Godfather, I would think.”
Gangel: “You think it would be okay with him?”
Puzo: “Definitely.”
Gangel: “That someone else was going to write his characters?”
Puzo: “Definitely, yes.”
Neil Olson: “There was honor in making money.”
Gangel: “There was honor in making money. So if — this is only about making more money, that would have been okay with your father?”
Puzo: “Absolutely.”
Gangel: “The committee weighs the finalists’ pros and cons.”
“He’s a romantic with a capital R,” says Karp about one author.
Puzo says about another, “He seems to have a feel for like the — bad guy.”
And, diplomatically, insists that all the candidates are worthy.
“In many ways, he is the slam dunk because he is the Italian-American,” says Neil Olson about author Vince Patrick.
After just an hour, the decision is made.
Gangel: “So the three of you, you have your pick?”
Puzo: “Yes.”
Karp: “I think we’ve got a .22 caliber big shot in there.”
All that remains is a congratulatory phone call to who will write the next installment of “The Godfather” series — Mark Weingardner.
Karp says, “Welcome to the Mafia! You’re the man!”





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