According to Martino, Coppola was eventually outflanked, after the singer used mob connections to pressure the director in a manner that could have come from the film: "Didn't the Don send Tom Hagen to convince Jack Woltz that Johnny Fontane must be in the movie? Isn't it similar to what I did? Woltz didn't want Johnny, and Coppola didn't want me. There was no horse's head, but I had ammunition... I had to step on some toes to get people to realise that I was in the effing movie. I went to my godfather, [Mafia boss] Russ Bufalino."