I can't stop watching - Why?

"Godfather II" always seems to lure me back in

I was in the middle of my Neil Young book last year - which looks like it will come out at the end of 2026 or the start of 2027 - when it occurred to me how many actual hours I’d spent listening to the pride of Omeeme, Ontario over the past year.

A sequential thinker, apparently, that made me think about how many actual hours - if not days in my life - I’d spent listening to Bob Dylan, whom I saw just the other night in Dothan?

I’d written a book about the guy, then did two more updated editions. Counting the index, that’s 322 pages on Bob. And if I compiled all the Dylan pieces I’ve added in Substack over the past couple of years, I’d easily be over 500 pages, maybe twice that. What do you think that translates into? How many years? What if there was a tape reel in our brain to tell us just how much time we’d spent listening to whatever? Wouldn’t that be revealing? Which album or film would win?

Keeping this sequential theme going, Francis Ford Coppola’s “Godfather II” was on the other night, a film I’ve seen more times than I can count. Yet, once again, I had to stop and watch it. Over two days.

"Godfather II" - Is it the greatest sequel of all-time? Why can't I stop watching it?

Why? There are some movies, most movies, I’d say, that you watch once, maybe twice and that’s it. That’s enough, you know. I get it, I’ve seen it. What’s next?

Some movies, it’s a bit of a struggle to get to the end, particularly lately. As I’ve written, I couldn’t bear to watch the kinghell bummer that became the last bit of “Song Sung Blue” - I just left the theater. The recent James L. Brooks film “Ella McCay” - if you want to call it an actual film instead of a bunch of disconnected scenes - was confusing and just a mess. Or so it seemed to me. And Brooks did “Broadcast News,” a great film. What the hell happened to him in the editing process?

Yet for me, it might well be “Godfather II,” probably even more than “The Godfather.” It’s such a compelling tale with such scope, it seems to be a genuine look at an America that we witness forming before our eyes. Maybe it’s not quite the way our history has been taught to us. But certainly, it’s one way to understand things.

There is so much violence in the film, there are those who find it hard to watch. Coppola’s famous baptism scene, which is famously interspersed with the brutal murders of the leaders of the other five families, these harrowing quick cuts from a Catholic church to a series of bloody shootings, is just the kind of movie moment that you can’t ever forget.

The characters are drawn so very well; Lee Strasberg as Hyman Roth, so effortlessly sleazy, yet someone you can tell has always held power, the brilliant Robert DeNiro as the young Vito Corleone, smart and bold because it seemed he had no other choice in life, the portrait Coppola paints for us from the streets of New York City through impoverished Cuba to glittery Las Vegas, gives the film such breadth, you can feel the decades pass.

The political scenes, too, the Congressional hearing with Michael Corleone and the corrupt Senator Geary, all seem to ring true, too. You might wonder why, in the film, the organized crime figures seem so much smarter and more capable than politicians. Is that where art imitates life?

What intrigues me, though, about all this is - I know the plot. I know what in the hell happens and who gets it and when. I could probably quote some of the lines, which was, surprisingly, something I found myself doing in watching the Apple TV version of “Macbeth” with Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand a while ago. I hadn’t taught “Macbeth” in four years, yet those lines came back to me right away.

Why, you wonder, do some things just seem to sink into your brain and light up when you get a chance to see them or hear them one more time? Why do they get through?

In “Godfather II,” as played by Al Pacino, Michael Corleone could not be a more unlikeable person. Treacherous, revengeful, almost zombie-like, he rules with such disdain for everyone and everything around him, it’s chilling.

Surely, you think, watching it for the third, fifth, tenth time, somebody with that much power and wealth and status must find joy somewhere in the world. But he never does. Maybe that’s why I keep watching, hoping someday he will.

What is the film you can’t stop watching? I love “Goodfellas” and “The Departed,” too and I’m not really a shoot-em-up sort of guy. “Wonder Boys” with Michael Douglas, about a writing-blocked literature teacher, might be another film I’ve seen many times. Wouldn’t it be interested in you could get the actual times you’ve spent over a lifetime listening or watching to something? Like “West Wing” or “Seinfeld.”

I know this: “Friends” or “The Big Bang Theory” would definitely NOT make my list. What about you?

My forthcoming book on Neil Young with McFarland is the second in a series of books on musicians. My first, now in its third edition is “Bob Dylan: A Descriptive, Critical Discography and Filmography 1961-2022” and is available on Amazon now. Not sure when Neil will be available but I believe you can order it. I’m currently at work on a third volume on the work of Bruce Springsteen. I think he’s going to be big someday. My other books are on baseball - my son is a former major-leaguer, currently a coach with New York Mets - “Diamond Duels” and “Last Time Out,” a book on my teaching experience with Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” at a minority school and other works, all on Amazon or by order at your local bookstore.