‘Godfather’ filming location: Famous ‘take the cannoli’ scene spot remains off-limits in N.J.

Versions of this story were originally published in 2022 and 2024.

It is among the truly iconic movie lines filmed in New Jersey.

“Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.”

Even if you haven’t seen “The Godfather,” the epic 1972 crime film chronicling the Corleone family, you likely are familiar with Clemenza’s brutally casual, six-word guidance to Rocco upon killing Paulie inside a parked car.

“The irony of the comment, set against the action, was quite memorable. It spoke about their sense of morality … We just killed a guy, but don’t leave the cannoli,” Steve Gorelick, the former executive director of the New Jersey Motion Picture and Television Commission said in 2022.

Maybe you’d like to stand where Clemenza stood upon exiting the car in what is now Liberty State Park and savor the view of the Statue of Liberty, whose symbolic welcome to immigrants serves as a poignant contrast in the scene. Movie tourism is a popular pastime, and New Jersey is home to dozens of locations defined by their associations with popular films.

However, while many of the film’s New York City locations remain accessible — the Staten Island mansion that served as the Corleone family’s home became available for rent in 2022 on Airbnb — the precise spot of the gun/cannoli scene is off-limits to the public and has been for decades.

Maybe not for much longer, though.

The scene was filmed in 1971 on an unmarked road in Jersey City that became part of Liberty State Park when it opened five years later. Some fans assume the scene was filmed on the road now known as Freedom Way, which passes between the park’s two main access roads and is horizontal to the Hudson River.

An overhead image of Liberty State Park identifies the location shown in “The Godfather.” It is where Clemenza said, “Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.”Courtesy of N.J. Department of Environmental Protection

But that’s not the location, at least not according to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, which oversees Liberty State Park.

The unmarked road where Paulie’s fate was sealed is located within a 210-acre interior section of the park that has been fenced off from the public since the early 1980s due to environmental contamination, according to Department of Environmental Protection spokesperson Larry Hajna.

“This is part of the interior ecological restoration project area and is not currently accessible to the public,” Hajna said in 2022.

Hajna said that was still the case in 2025.

NJ Advance Media was not allowed to visit the site but state officials provided a photo, taken by an employee in 2022, showing the location overgrown by weeds, brush and trees.

The location of the scene in “The Godfather,” filmed in 1971 by an unmarked road in the future Liberty State Park, looked very different as seen on Aug. 19, 2022.Photo courtesy of N.J. Department of Environmental Protection

Work on the Liberty State Park Revitalization Program is ongoing, Hajna said. That includes the clean-up of the fenced off interior section where the scene was filmed.

It is not clear if the unmarked road will be preserved as part of the cleanup, but the DEP has documented the film’s GPS coordinates.

Might a plaque someday mark the spot?

“People love to visit the sites of movies they recognize and scenes they recognize,” former New Jersey Tourism Industry Association executive director Joseph Simonetta told NJ Advance Media before his death in 2023.

In New Jersey movie lore, “The Godfather” scene ranks up there with Terry Malloy’s lament, “I could’ve been a contender,” in “On the Waterfront” — a 1954 movie filmed almost entirely in Hoboken. Malloy was played by Marlon Brando, who starred in “The Godfather” as Vito Corleone.

The location of the “On the Waterfront” scene where the car was parked as Brando conveyed his regrets remains unclear. It was either on a street in Hoboken or in a studio outside of the city, according to the Hoboken Museum, though the movie shows Malloy exiting the car on River Street.

With that uncertainty in mind, we have to ask: Is the state DEP completely sure about the “Godfather” location? We’re talking about a movie scene filmed more than a half-century ago in a fairly nondescript location. The state Motion Picture and Television Commission’s database notes only that it was filmed at Liberty State Park.

Hajna attributed the information on file to a longtime, former park employee who once served as assistant director. The scene was filmed at a bend in the unmarked road, closer to Phillip Street than Freedom Way, he said. The ex-employee was working at a local tug operation in 1973, a year after the movie was released, and recognized the location as being in the film.

“I guess you could call it oral history,” Hajna said.

So, that may stand as the final word of the scene’s location, unless someone else with a competing anecdotal claim emerges or long-lost paperwork is found.

An irony is that it is the only scene in “The Godfather” filmed in New Jersey. The actor who played Clemenza, Richard Castellano, lived in North Bergen and ad-libbed the cannoli reference. Castellano died in 1988 at age 55.

There are so many enduring lines from the movie: “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.” “Don’t ever take sides with anyone against the family again.” “It’s not personal Sonny, it’s strictly business.” Yet the cannoli line is the one that perfectly captures the juxtaposition of crime and family that runs throughout the film.

The scene takes place after Vito Corleone, the family’s leader, is shot several times in a street ambush and hospitalized in critical condition. Paulie, his driver, had called out sick on the morning of the shooting and is blamed by Sonny, the oldest son, for setting it up.

Clemenza and Rocco ask Paulie to take them on a drive, ostensibly to scout out locations for dumping bodies in retaliation. When the car pulls over, Clemenza exits to urinate, his back to the vehicle. Rocco, seated behind Paulie, fires three shots.

Clemenza turns slightly with an expression that can be interpreted many ways, perhaps a hint of regret. He walks back to the car, glances at Paulie slumped over the steering wheel, and mentions the cannoli. This harkens back to the scene’s opening: His wife standing in their driveway as the car pulls out, blowing him a kiss and reminding him not to forget the cannoli.

Gorelick noted the inclusion of the Statue of Liberty in the background, and that many of the gangsters depicted in the movie were first and second-generation immigrants.

That not more is known about the filming of that one scene in New Jersey, such as how long it took to make, is not surprising, he said. While “The Godfather” proved to be an iconic film, and this scene in particular, that outcome is obvious only in retrospect.

“Could anyone have predicted ‘The Godfather’ would have this lasting effect? You never know with these things,” Gorelick said.