Francis Ford Coppola Instagram – Happy 49th Birthday to The Godfather Part II Shooting it was enjoyable, but six weeks before it was set to open, we had a preview in San Francisco which was a disaster. The film was always a challenge in that it was told in two parallel stories, one of Michael and one of young Vito, back and forth every ten minutes. But the SF audience seemed disoriented, and I realized ten minutes was too short, and the parallel stories needed to be twice as long, back and forth every twenty minutes. So we took this finished movie, and working through two nights, the editors made 120 picture cuts, and just got it done for the next preview, which was in San Diego. That version got a great reaction and was the version that opened three weeks later in New York. Same movie, same actors, same scenes, yet SF was a disaster, and San Diego a winner. Whew, happy 49th birthday to The Godfather Part II !