Buffalo native Patrick Gallo wasn’t born when the film classic “The Godfather” premiered a half-century ago. But the 49-year-old actor felt like he lived it when he watched it when he was about 12 years old with his father at the family’s Lancaster Avenue home. “It was like watching a home movie,” said Gallo. “My father had a lot of friends who were in similar businesses who weren’t necessarily on paper, legal situations.

So I knew a lot of these guys and they were in my life. I was a child, and they were my dad’s friends and they loved me, and they embraced me. And I spent a lot of dinners sitting at a table with mobsters and detectives at the same table eating the same pasta and (drinking) the same wine. I saw this life and this dynamic and these voices and clothes and their cologne."