Martin Scorsese reflects on his influential body of work
PUSSSYKATT
LA DAILY NEWS/Staff Writer
Years ago, Martin Scorsese came across an item in a newspaper that read: "This
picture will be helmed by veteran director Martin Scorsese." Scorsese put the
paper down and thought, "It seems like only yesterday I was a 'new young
filmmaker.'"
Now, having been given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Friday and a
lifetime achievement award from the Directors Guild of America on Saturday
night, Scorsese has officially crossed the line from "veteran" to "legend." The
title suits him.
The career honors come at a time when Scorsese continues to do some of his
greatest work. "Gangs of New York" arrived in theaters in December, and, for
some, the movie was almost an afterthought following a year of industry gossip
about beefs between Scorsese and Miramax co-chairman Harvey Weinstein over the
film's unsparingly brutal content.
But "Gangs" turned out to be one of Scorsese's best movies, a thrilling,
passionate epic about the mean streets of New York in the mid-19th century.
Flawed? A bit. Overreaching? Sometimes. But the movie grandly succeeds in
forcefully re-creating and illuminating a little-known slice of American
history, deftly showing the birth of modern America in a teeming zoo of
violence and political corruption.
Scorsese, who celebrated his 60th birthday last November, received his sixth
Oscar nomination, for directing "Gangs." He has yet to win an Academy Award,
and there is some sentiment in the industry that this would be a good time to
right past injustices.
Scorsese will have none of it.
"What should have been is gone," Scorsese says. "If people really think the
film is well-directed, then vote for me if they want to do that. But not for
any other reason."
In light of the Directors Guild honor and his continued excellence with
"Gangs," we thought it would be an appropriate time to talk with Scorsese about
his career. For all the accolades, Scorsese continues to see himself as an
outsider and, as has been the case for the past 30 years, continues to worry
about whether he'll be able to make another movie. If his place in Hollywood
seems secure, Scorsese is the last one to acknowledge it.
MEAN STREETS (1973)
Scorsese moved to Los Angeles in 1971 to work as a film editor. Low-budget
movie producer Roger Corman gave him his first directing assignment, a "Bonnie
and Clyde" knockoff called "Boxcar Bertha" that year. Corman wasn't interested
in Scorsese's vision as much as he was in making sure star Barbara Hershey
bared her breasts.
Director John Cassavetes, an early supporter, told Scorsese never to compromise
his vision again. "Why don't you make a movie about something you really care
about?" Cassavetes asked. Scorsese responded with "Mean Streets," an
autobiographical film about small-time mooks hustling in his old neighborhood,
New York's Little Italy.
Scorsese shot most of the film in Los Angeles, but returned to Little Italy for
a week of shooting. He wasn't welcomed with open arms. In fact, after "Mean
Streets" premiered, he didn't return home for a number of years.
"I was a kid from the neighborhood trying to make a movie and people weren't
exactly sympathetic. It wasn't like when 'The Godfather' shot at the old St.
Patrick's Cathedral and Mulberry Street, places I showed them. They had a lot
of money. I didn't. Mostly people weren't happy about the cameras being around.
They wanted to remain private, and usually they had very good reasons for
that." (Laughs)
Finished with the film, Scorsese and producer Jonathan Kaplan brought it to Los
Angeles for a sale. Their first meeting was at Paramount. A few minutes into
the screening, vice president of production Peter Bart told the projectionist
to stop the movie and asked Scorsese to leave.
"It was a good, humbling experience. We were stunned to the reality that maybe
this film can't be bought. It was sobering, which was good in a way because it
was the harsh reality of certain things in Hollywood. Nothing is ever as it
seems. At the time, I was incredibly naive. I thought yes meant yes, and no
meant no and when somebody told you they loved your movie, they actually did."
"Mean Streets" also began Scorsese's long collaboration with actor Robert De
Niro. The two have made eight pictures together, including "Taxi Driver," "New
York, New York," "Raging Bull," "The King of Comedy," "GoodFellas," "Cape Fear"
and "Casino."
Scorsese's friend Steven Spielberg says De Niro is "just wonderful as a sort of
extension of what Marty might have been if he hadn't been a filmmaker."
"Yeah, I might have. There's no doubt. I look at 'Mean Streets' and see aspects
of De Niro's character that are a part of me and also parts of the Keitel
character. It's a Jekyll and Hyde thing, the conflict between the gangster and
the priest. 'Mean Streets' was me putting myself and my friends up on the
screen. It's anthropology as cinema. You hear my voice intercut with Harvey's
(Keitel) through the movie, and that's just me trying to come to terms with
myself through the Keitel character. It's me looking for redemption."
TAXI DRIVER (1976)
To prove he could work in other genres -- and with women -- Scorsese directed
"Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore" in 1974. He then set his sights on the
fevered horror of "Taxi Driver." Studio executives were not pleased and
threatened to take the film from Scorsese if he didn't make the suggested cuts.
"I tried to sneak it off the lot. I put the reels in the trunk of my car. But
that was pure frustration. I had no power at all, no final cut. That was just a
way of acting out. There were demonstrations, demonstrations of passion so to
speak. I don't know. I was younger. It was like a kid having a tantrum. But on
the other hand, I felt very strongly about it. We didn't compromise 'Mean
Streets'; why should we compromise 'Taxi Driver'?
"It was a labor of love. You make a film for that little a budget, under those
circumstances, so risky, why compromise it at that last minute? If the budget
was three times that and if it was shaped for a different marketplace, yeah, I
could understand. You have to adhere to certain demands of the marketplace. But
not a low-budget film like that."
The studio relented, but there was still the matter of the MPAA, which had
slapped "Taxi Driver" with an X rating. Scorsese was contractually obligated to
deliver an R-rated movie. His solution to mute the color in the film's
bloodbath finale pleased both the censors and Scorsese's own aesthetic
sensibilities.
"That was kind of nice. I had been thinking about desaturating the color all
the way through the movie, the way John Huston did with 'Moby Dick.' Originally
it was because of the bright yellow cabs. The yellow didn't seem right. I
didn't have the money to do that all the way through, but I could for the
ending. And by taking down the redness of the blood, it adds contrast and makes
it even more realistic and dark and horrifying.
"Now there's a part of my mind, my own self-doubter, saying, 'Maybe you're
rationalizing it because that's the only way you could have gotten those scenes
past the MPAA.' But I've got to tell you, it reminded me of the tabloids. It
reminded me of those black-and-white pictures you see on the cover of the New
York Daily News. I just saw it for the first time in 25 years and I was quite
surprised by it. It is shocking."
NEW YORK, NEW YORK, THE LAST WALTZ and A BRUSH WITH DEATH (1977-79)
"New York, New York," Scorsese's attempt at an old-fashioned musical, failed
with audiences. Frustrated that he couldn't come up with another idea for a
personal movie, Scorsese turned increasingly to drugs. "The Last Waltz," a
document of the Band's farewell concert, provided some measure of relief. ("The
music was like food for my soul," he says.)
But Scorsese's severe depression and continued cocaine use landed him in the
hospital in September 1978. His weight had dropped to 109 pounds and he was
bleeding internally. Scorsese had always said he wouldn't live past 40 and was
seemingly doing everything he could to make that prediction come true.
"I think every young person who has an artistic inclination and takes himself
too seriously feels like they'll die young. (Laughs) It's really juvenile. I
was a pain in the neck to everybody, please.
"These days I only go out for three reasons: film preservation, supporting the
work of friends and new directors or promoting my new films. That's it. I don't
go out at all. I usually stay home in pajamas with my wife and kid. It's almost
20 or 30 years ago and I think, oh my goodness, I said that or did this. I
don't want to hear it. It's embarrassing."
RAGING BULL (1980)
Scorsese's emotional and spiritual crisis did have one positive outcome. They
gave him some insight into the self-destructiveness of boxer Jake LaMotta. De
Niro had been trying to interest Scorsese in the project for four years.
"De Niro came to me in the hospital and said, 'Marty, what are you doing?' And
then he brought up 'Raging Bull' again and said, 'You're perfect for this.' And
I found myself immediately saying, 'Yes I will.' I don't know why. But I guess
whatever I had to get out of my system, miraculously I survived the whole
thing. I found myself awake and alive and said, 'OK let's go to work.' I don't
know why, but I felt comfortable with the project then. I guess I was able to
finally make a connection with the character."
The repugnant LaMotta was just the latest in a line of unlikable characters
that Scorsese and De Niro had tackled. Not that they found them unlikable. "We
never thought about empathy with the audience. The '70s were different.
Somehow, the empathy was there for Travis Bickle. And that somehow had to do
with the writing of (Paul) Schrader and De Niro himself as a human being. His
innate compassion as a human being came through on the screen.
"And somehow we just figured that would happen with Jake. We didn't say that.
Bob is not articulate that way, and neither am I. All we could do was the doing
of it. LaMotta was unpleasant, but certainly empathetic. But we never
questioned that. Certainly it was questioned by studio people and a number of
other people. But we were surprised when people would say, 'Why make a film
about this man? He's so horrible.' We liked the guy."
THE COLOR OF MONEY (1986) and CAPE FEAR (1991)
Scorsese followed "Raging Bull" with two brilliant black comedies, "The King of
Comedy" (1983) and "After Hours" (1985). Neither did well at the box office,
which led the director to take "The Color of Money" in an attempt to restore
his commercial viability.
"I don't know if I have enough interest in just showing up and doing a film
that is somebody else's vision. I don't know how to do that. The filmmaking
process is so stressful for me and so much a choice between life and death for
me, I think the only way I could just blindly show up every day, push and fight
with the powers that be, is for something that I feel really strongly about
personally.
"It's difficult for me to say, 'I'm going to be a director who's going to go in
and just get the work done and sublimate myself to the genre.' I find it very
difficult to do that. I tried with 'Color of Money' and even 'Cape Fear' later
on. It was extremely hard.
"I did them for commercial reasons. With 'Color of Money,' it was a way of
working back into the industry and trying to come up with something that had a
certain elegance to it. 'Cape Fear' was something De Niro talked me into doing,
and I owed Universal a 'commercial' picture after 'The Last Temptation of
Christ.' That's not the best reason for making a movie."
THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST (1988)
Going to church and going to the movies have been intertwined for Scorsese
since his boyhood. "Both were ways of escape for a young asthmatic kid who
couldn't really fight too well in the streets," he says, laughing. So making a
movie about the life of Jesus was a natural. But Scorsese's attempt to show
Christ's humanity along with his divinity met with howls of protest from
religious conservatives.
"If you go according to Catholic theology, he's fully human and fully divine.
But the church only focuses on his divinity, meaning Jesus is no longer
immediate and accessible to human beings. I wanted to explore fully the
humanity of Jesus. What does that 'fully human' mean?
"I wanted to make a Jesus for the outcasts, for the outsiders. Don't forget,
when you read the New Testament, he was all about the outcasts, not the people
at the beautiful cathedral on the corner that go to Mass on Sunday morning --
only. I say, yes, for them too. But he spent his time usually with prostitutes,
which was pretty bad, and the tax collectors, which was even worse.
"It goes back to 'Mean Streets' and the first line of the movie: 'You don't
make up for your sins in the church. You do it in the streets.'"
GOODFELLAS (1990)
Scorsese returned to the gangster world with "GoodFellas," his most critically
acclaimed work in a decade. The film featured a brilliant, continuous Steadicam
shot that showed the ultimate way to enter the Copacabana nightclub.
"It was taken from experience. Going to the Copa was the height of
sophistication in the world I came from (laughs), so we would get there to see
Bobby Darin or Joe E. Lewis or whoever was there and I'd be there with friends
and our dates, and we'd get there and we'd get seated at a certain table and it
was great, you could actually see the floor show.
"But about 10 minutes before the show started, tables would come floating in
and big guys would sit at these tables. And another would come in and another
-- men and women from different crews, different crime families. And if one had
a table in front, the other would have to be two inches closer. And eventually
there was no dance floor left.
"So that shot of the floating table was something I wanted to do for years. And
it was perfect for the character of Henry Hill, here, at the height of his
life, taking his girl to the Copa and being treated that way. That, in his
mind, was better than going to the White House or the Vatican."
THE AGE OF INNOCENCE (1993)
Edith Wharton's great novel -- with its intense examination of social and
tribal codes -- was a natural for Scorsese. Some audiences, however, couldn't
get past the fact that the Michelle Pfeiffer and Daniel Day-Lewis characters
never consummated their relationship.
"There were many people who were upset because they wanted Archer to at least
go up to see Ellen at the end of the film. But if he did, he wouldn't be who he
was. A lot of people talk about Edith Wharton's male characters as being weak
or Archer being weak. Well, maybe. But he was locked in by that society. Every
piece of crystal, every silver fork, every designed plate, every morsel of food
that was so well put together was part of his cell that he was kept in.
"People were very upset that he didn't leave with her. One or two previews
really rejected it. People were yelling at the screen for him to go with her or
at least have some sort of sexual relationship with her. But they were thinking
of modern terms. For them, it was unthinkable that a man would actually have
feelings about a woman and, because of certain moral reasons, not do something
about it. It's unthinkable in today's society. But I think it is thinkable. You
may fail in the thinking (laughs). But there are people who think about it
before acting or not acting. And that's what I found interesting in the film."
KUNDUN (1997)
In 1995, Scorsese and De Niro went to the mobster well one more time with
"Casino." Likewise, 1999's "Bringing Out the Dead" revisited past themes but
without the same artistic results. In between came "Kundun," a gorgeous
religious storybook about the Dalai Lama.
"There's conflict, but the action in the conflict, the action from the Dalai
Lama, is really inaction. He doesn't act. And that's the action. It's very
difficult. I was trying for another way of storytelling, a more suggestive film
where the drama would be not the way we know in traditional Western narrative
novels, but more dealing with texture, mood and actually a religious experience
in the last half-hour of the picture.
"It's definitely not a mainstream movie in that way. I tried to grow into
another kind of storytelling for myself. How else should I grow as a filmmaker?
Make a summer blockbuster? I don't know if I can. I also don't know if I want
to. If I'm going to grow anywhere, it's going to be more something internal, I
think. So I was trying to come up with suggestive drama, everything is
suggested with the texture. It works for some people, not for others."
GANGS OF NEW YORK (2002)
Scorsese had long talked of making a movie drawn from Herbert Asbury's fanciful
book. The journey to the screen was an arduous one, but Scorsese's patience was
rewarded with 10 Oscar nominations and the biggest audience of his career.
"I'm pretty happy with it. For something that has been in my mind so long --
the first story I heard about 'Gangs of New York' was when I was 7 or 8 years
old and it has existed as a film in my head for about 30 years -- it will
always for me remain a work in progress. That's not my way of deflecting my
responsibility for the finished movie. It's just the truth.
"Only in the past two or three weeks have I been clear of the anxiety
nightmares I've had where my editor, Thelma (Schoonmaker), says she's found
some new footage and we should shoot some other stuff and re-edit the film. And
I say, 'Yes, let's do it.' Then at the end of the dream, I wake up and I say,
'But I have to tell Harvey and have him pull the prints from the theaters.' So
that's my thing and only in the past two or three weeks have I made peace with
the movie in my own mind."
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