If you are well enough to read this, that means you survived yesterday—the Ides of March. Congratulations!

As a treat for all of us on Change of Venue Friday, I remind you of another portentous event yesterday: the 40th anniversary of the release of the masterpiece The Godfather.

(For the legally cranky and others who expect entirely law-related posts, I would suggest you haven’t seen the movie.)

As I hope we can all agree, The Godfather is the best movie ever made. (Disagree? Feel free to comment below.) And I’ve always enjoyed the fact that the movie was launched on the Ides, because mystery, danger and auguries combine perfectly in the movie.

As you head into your weekend, I share a timely story called “40 Things You Didn’t Know About The Godfather.” Appropriately, it was in Time Magazine.

It opens with an item called “The Cat.” Here’s the surprising description:

“As Don Corleone calmly explains his idea of ‘friendship’ to the undertaker Bonasera, the first nearly full-body shot of the don reveals an unexpected guest: a gray and white cat sitting in Marlon Brando’s lap. ‘The cat in Marlon’s hands was not planned for,’ director Francis Ford Coppola said later. ‘I saw the cat running around the studio, and took it and put it in his hands without a word.’ Brando apparently loved children and animals, and it became part of the scene. But it also nearly ruined the shot. When the sound crew listened to Brando’s dialogue, they couldn’t understand a word he was saying and feared they would have to use subtitles. The problem wasn’t Brando but the cat, whose purring wrecked the sound. You can still hear it on the sound track.”

Keep reading here, and have a great weekend.