Versions of this story were originally published in 2022 and 2024.
This is one of the truly iconic movie lines filmed in New Jersey.
“Leave the gun, take the cannoli.”
If you haven’t seen “The Godfather,” the epic 1972 Corleone family crime film, you’re probably familiar with Clemenza’s brutally casual, six-word direction as Rocco kills Paulie inside a parked car.
“The irony of the comments against the act was very memorable. It spoke to their sense of morality … We just killed a guy, but didn’t leave a cannoli,” Steve Gorelick, former executive director of the New Jersey Motion Picture and Television Commission, said in 2022.
Maybe you want to stand where Clemenza stood when you get out of the car at Liberty State Park right now and savor the view of the Statue of Liberty, which serves as a poignant contrast to the symbolic welcome scene for immigrants. Movie tourism is a popular pastime, and New Jersey is home to dozens of locations defined by their association with popular movies.
However, while many of the film’s New York City locations remain accessible—the Staten Island mansion that served as the Corleone family home became available for rent on Airbnb in 2022—the exact location of the gun/cannoli scene is off limits to the public and has been for decades.
Maybe for too long, though.
The scene was filmed in 1971 on an unmarked street in Jersey City that became part of Liberty State Park when it opened five years later. Some fans believe the scene was filmed on what is now known as Freedom Way, which runs between the park’s two main access roads and parallels the Hudson River.
Liberty State Park / The Godfather
But that’s not the place, at least not to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, which oversees Liberty State Park.
The unmarked road that sealed Pauley’s fate lies within a 210-acre interior of the park that has been fenced off from the public since the early 1980s due to environmental pollution, according to Department of Environmental Protection spokesman Larry Hazna.
“It is part of an internal ecological restoration project area and is currently not accessible to the public,” Hajna said in 2022.
Hajna said the same thing happened in 2025.
NJ Advance Media was not permitted to visit the site, but state officials provided a photo taken by an employee in 2022, showing the area overgrown with weeds, brush and trees.
Godfather/Liberty State Park
Work continues on the Liberty State Park revitalization program, Hajna said. A scene was filmed in it which involved cleaning the inside of a fence.
It’s unclear if the unmarked road will be preserved as part of the cleanup, but the DEP has documented the GPS coordinates of the film.
Could a plaque someday mark that spot?
“People like to see movies they know and scenes they know,” former New Jersey Tourism Industry Association executive director Joseph Simonetta told NJ Advance Media before his death in 2023.
In the New Jersey movie saga, “The Godfather” scene is up there with Terry Malloy’s lament, “I could’ve been a contestant,” in “On the Waterfront” — a 1954 movie shot almost entirely in Hoboken. Malloy was played by Marlon Brando, who played Vito Corleone in “The Godfather.”
The location of the “On the Waterfront” scene where the car was parked as Brando expressed his regret is unclear. It was either on the streets of Hoboken or in a studio outside the city, according to the Hoboken Museum, although the film shows Malloy getting out of the car on a river road.
With that uncertainty in mind, we must ask: Is the state DEP absolutely sure about the “godfather” location? We’re talking about a movie scene filmed in a fairly nondescript location more than half a century ago. The State Motion Picture and Television Commission database notes that it was filmed in Liberty State Park.
Hajna attributed the information in the file to a former longtime park employee, who once served as assistant director. The scene was filmed at a bend in an unmarked road closer to Phillip Street than Freedom Way, he said. A former employee was working at a local tug operation in 1973, a year after the film’s release, and recognized the location in the film.
“I guess you could call it oral history,” Hajna said.
So, that may stand as the final word on the scene’s location, until someone else emerges with a competing narrative claim or long-lost paperwork is found.
via GIPHY
An irony is that this 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 the age of 55.
There’s one of the movie’s most enduring lines: “I’m gonna make her an offer she can’t refuse.” “Don’t take anyone’s side against the family again.” “It’s not a personal Sony, it’s a tough business.” However 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 leader of the family, is shot multiple times in a street ambush and hospitalized in critical condition. Pauly, his driver, had called in sick on the morning of the shooting and blamed his eldest son, Sonny, for the set-up.
Clemenza and Rocco ask Pauly to take them on a drive, apparently as revenge to find places to dump the bodies. When the car pulls up, Clemenza gets out to urinate, behind him in the car. Rocco, sitting behind Paulie, fires three shots.
Clemenza turns slightly with an expression that can be interpreted in many ways, perhaps a sign of regret. He returns to the car, sees Paulie slumped over the steering wheel, and mentions the cannoli. This leads back to the scene’s opening: his wife standing in the driveway as the car pulls out, kissing him and reminding him not to forget the cannoli.
Gorelick noted that the Statue of Liberty was included in the background, and that many of the gangsters portrayed in the film were first- and second-generation immigrants.
Not knowing more about the filming of that one scene in New Jersey, like how long it took to make it, isn’t surprising, he said. While “The Godfather” proved to be an iconic film, and this scene in particular, that outcome is only apparent in retrospect.
Gorelick said, “Could anyone have predicted that ‘The Godfather’ would have this lasting impact?
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