How Paramount and Iron Mountain Entertainment Services are preserving The Godfather’s historic assets

As The Godfather hits a half-century, it’s hard to believe that 50 years have passed since the world was first entranced by the chronicles of the Corleone family. Adapted from Mario Puzo’s bestselling 1969 novel, Francis Ford Coppola’s mafia mega-movie and its two sequels have won nine Academy Awards between them and universal acclaim from critics and cinemagoers alike.

Coppola’s cinematic tour de force was as well-received when it premiered in 1972 as it is today. Excitement over the film’s release was summed up in a New York Times story which told of “block-long lines” bringing “a million dollars a day” into the 372 cinemas showing The Godfather. A tonne of popcorn was sold in the film’s opening week at the five New York cinemas that showed it. “Hollywood believes in itself again” was the article’s emphatic hat-tip to the film’s success.

Back then, Paramount Pictures obtained the rights to the novel from Puzo for $80,000 and The Godfather has since become one of the studio’s most valuable assets. But how do they carefully conserve the film’s assets for future generations to admire?

Step forward Iron Mountain Entertainment Services (IMES), Paramount’s trusted archival partner. IMES and Paramount have long enjoyed a fruitful partnership, but The Godfather’s cinematic milestone brought their collaboration back into the spotlight.

In the build-up to the 50th anniversary, Paramount has dedicated over five years’ worth of work to restoring all three films in The Godfather trilogy, culminating in their release on 4K Ultra HD Digital and Blu-ray for the first time in March this year. A few weeks prior, a special 50th anniversary celebration attended by the likes of Coppola and Godfather cast member James Caan was held at the Paramount lot. This coincided with a street-naming ceremony which christened one of the lot’s roads after the esteemed director. “Iron Mountain very nicely partly sponsored the street-naming ceremony, and it really, in my opinion, signified how Iron Mountain and Paramount have long had a relationship for making sure we have archival materials stored,” said Andrea Kalas, SVP Asset Management at Paramount.

Kalas has been a key part of Paramount’s archival team since 2009 and caught the bug for conservation as a grad student at UCLA. After studying film history, she got a job in the UCLA’s Film and TV Archive, preserving rare newsreels. “The minute I walked through the vaults for the first time and saw films on the shelves and started realising what amazing treasures were uncovered, that’s when I got the bug and that’s what started my career,” she said.

Iron Mountain were entrusted with building what Andrea describes as a “mini conservation area” off the lot. This is where things like stills, photographs, production photographs, costumes, music scores and other materials are kept. It’s not just storage – there are also other areas that allow Paramount to conserve these materials and photograph costumes for inventory. “In fact, when we were working on the museum exhibit, it was the perfect place for us to pull everything out, display it, so the curators of the museum could come by and see what we had,” Andrea said. “So that’s been really helpful and a successful partnership between Paramount and Iron Mountain.”

“Paramount has always done an amazing job of taking care of all of their assets, and in trusting us in helping to make sure that those things are safe and secure,” added Hillary Howell. “It’s a wonderful partnership with a fantastic studio.”

As Director of Premium Archival Services at IMES, Howell has been responsible for developing the company’s archival offering. After earning a degree in Moving Image Archive Studies at UCLA, she has worked in the industry for 17 years, including the last two at IMES. Services include private and custom vaults, high-resolution 2D and 3D image capture, and media conversion and storage.

So how does Paramount decide which assets get put into IMES’ care? “Our archivist, Randall Thropp, has a very close relationship with the physical production group within Paramount Pictures,” explains Kalas. “They arrange what the costumes will be, who’s going to be hired, sets, locations, and so on. So as a show starts to wrap, there’s a warehouse where a lot of this material will start to come in. Then, there’s a process that Randall follows where he watches the film, he talks to the costume designer, and he talks to other people in the production area, to make sure that he’s selecting out the costumes that are most iconic to the film or associated with the leads, or props that tell the story in some way. We don’t save all the T-shirts that the extras wore, for example, but we do try to save those things, which really represent that film.”

Howell notes how there’s never enough room on the studio lot for everything. “It doesn’t matter which lot it is, there’s never going to be enough room for all the things you need to keep. Where we come in is that we help Paramount make sure they get to keep everything they want to and preserve they want to, knowing there’s always a limited amount of space at home base.”

With such a varied inventory, from scores to costumes, the challenge is knowing the individual conservation requirements of each item. “I think one of the special things about specifically our division within Iron Mountain is that we can handle all of those disparate things and understand their needs,” Howell says, “because you can’t store film and costumes in the same climate, so having the understanding that there are all of these important pieces that make up the collection, and how to take care of all of them is something that we pride ourselves in being able to handle.”

As a year of cinematic celebrations for Coppola’s creation draws to a close, the film’s legacy is in safe hands.