As this year's choice for the Directors Guild of America's highest honor — the Lifetime Achievement Award — to be presented at the 55th Annual DGA Awards on March 1, Martin Scorsese is being recognized for a substantial body of work that has influenced a generation of filmmakers. In addition, he has been an outspoken and active advocate of film restoration and preservation, ensuring that future generations will be able to enjoy the works of the past masters.
"Scorsese has always struck me as just a really good storyteller," says Charles Champlin, retired chief film critic for The Los Angeles Times. "You get an almost electrical shock from seeing a guy who consistently puts as much energy onto the screen as he does. He's obviously a close observer of the human condition. He's always interesting, and he often surprises you. Nobody around film right now does any better work than he does. Scorsese's an original talent who has stretched the boundaries of what filmmakers can do. That may prove to be his ultimate legacy."
Roger Ebert, chief film critic for The Chicago Sun-Times and co-host of the syndicated film program Ebert & Roper, agrees. "There is no greater American filmmaker right now than Martin Scorsese, and there hasn't been for some time, perhaps since (Orson) Welles and (Alfred) Hitchcock and (John) Ford died," Ebert says. "And yet to talk to him is like meeting this guy who hangs out all the time at the film society. He's the director that even the other directors would place first — after themselves, perhaps. No one has made more or better movies in the past 30 years, and few people have changed less. Simply to hear the man talk about movies is an education in itself."
Scorsese's career as a director has spanned more than four decades and included some of the most acclaimed theatricals of our time — from Mean Streets (1973) to Taxi Driver (1976) to New York, New York (1977) to Raging Bull (1980) to The King of Comedy (1983) to Goodfellas (1990) to Cape Fear (1991) to Casino (1995).
In fact, all eight of the aforementioned films happened to star or co-star a fellow named Robert De Niro. Scorsese's uncanny career collaboration with De Niro through their eight films is a good place to start an interview.
"It's really been extraordinary working with Bob all of these years," Scorsese says. "Beginning with Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, I felt like he and I are emotionally and even psychologically very similar on many things — on our belief systems, our social outlooks, our friendships, the nature of the movies we wanted to make. Early on, though, it's been hard to articulate our bond. We couldn't even articulate the issue of how we felt about each other. Maybe Bob was an emotional or psychological double. We never really dissected or analyzed it."
That unspoken connection, however, has not prevented the men from bringing out the best in each other though Jodie Foster, who worked with both Scorsese and De Niro on Taxi Driver and with Scorsese prior to that in 1974's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, feels they're virtual polar opposites.
"Marty and Bobby De Niro are the two most different people I've ever met," Foster says during a phone interview. "In combination, they've created such interesting work. But there's nothing in their personalities that would make you think they'd be so perfect together.
"I mean, Marty's talkative and really enthusiastic and interested in the world and knows a lot of stuff and peppers everything with humor. And Bobby's very insulated, or at least was. He doesn't necessarily know what's going on in the world. He's very quiet. If you saw these two people in a room, you'd for sure think there's no way they'll get along well at all. Yet cinematically, they finish each other's sentences."
For his part, De Niro — in a rare interview — doesn't analyze why he and Scorsese should or shouldn't work. All he knows is, they click. He acknowledges that he and Scorsese "are very different in a lot of ways, have different backgrounds, do movies for our own reasons. But we're both very honest when we talk about what we want, what it means, what the parallels in a film are to our own lives."
Meanwhile, on the set, De Niro finds there's nobody quite like Scorsese. "It's not just me, but everybody who works with Marty feels like they'd want to do anything for him," De Niro says. "He's different from most other directors in the way he supports the people he works with and gives them such respect that they want to deliver more. He takes chances that some other guys won't. Whereas another person might think twice about it, he'll go ahead and do it.
"Marty always gives actors the confidence to try things. He brings out the best in his performers, and in everybody else. He gives everybody a lot of room to roam. And he's not afraid of the unusual or the imaginative. He's never rigid. Yet he's very clear as a director if something's not going to work or it's being overdone."
The one thing that Foster most recalls from her pair of films acting for Scorsese in the mid-1970s was the sound of him giggling.
"He was just the biggest giggler," Foster remembers. "That, and the fact he talks a thousand miles a minute. Specifically on Taxi Driver, I can recall sometimes doing 25 or 30 takes for a scene and there's Marty with his hand over his mouth giggling at the same point in the dialogue — every time. I felt like he was right in there with we actors, experiencing it from behind our eyeglasses, inside our skin. I still laugh when I think about it.
"What also comes through when you're working with him is that Martin Scorsese is just a very nice man. Such a sweetheart, a complete contrast with his movies. But that's where he comes from and the kind of material he's made from. He's incredibly true to himself and to his vision. That's one thing you realize while you're working with the man."
Yet from a conversation with him, it's clear that Scorsese very much remains the tortured artist, one who not only doesn't seem content at age 60 to rest on his laurels but who scarcely seems to realize that he has laurels at all. It comes across as both endearing and genuine. He never, for instance, is able to look back at one of his films and think, "God, I really nailed that one!"
"You're never really satisfied," Scorsese admits, "though I've been more satisfied with some films than with others. After each one, you've got to put it down and kind of say, 'Well, I've done my best.' I'm obsessively devoted to each aspect of the picture. And you just have to believe philosophically that you've done your best with that group of collaborators at that time."
It's also telling that Scorsese has never really gone back and watched a Martin Scorsese film all the way through. "It would just be too painful," he acknowledges. "It's hard for me to reconcile the emotion of the moment with the people who were around me at that time in my life."
Scorsese says that he is still trying to figure out new approaches to making movies, "to dealing with narrative cinema, with telling a story visually. As a director, one of the tips I'd give to young filmmakers is never to get stuck in a visual interpretation rut. They always need to be open to new ideas and new styles. I still seem to have boundless energy and infinite passion as well as ceaseless curiosity for my craft. Once you lose those, it's over, I would think."
Scorsese says that he was pleased in hindsight to be able to spend the extra months in the editing room tweaking his latest film, Gangs of New York, despite all of the much-publicized budget battles and delays.
"I only wish I'd had the same kind of time on Last Temptation of Christ," Scorsese admits. "I'd still like to have a few more extras. Not thousands of people. Maybe just 25 at the most, for certain scenes. But we just had no money. Our entire budget was $6 million. I'd also like to be able to figure out a way to cut 15 minutes from it. And three more weeks of shooting."
When Scorsese talks about this, his angst is palpable, as if this were a film released last week rather than 14½ years ago. But he is a perfectionist, this Martin Scorsese, and a passionate one at that. That's certainly the way that it seems to producer Jane Rosenthal, president of New York's TriBeCa Productions in NYC, which she co-founded with De Niro. She worked with Scorsese while a Disney executive during the making of The Color of Money in 1986.
"He's a master who simply loves the process of making movies," believes Rosenthal. "He loves what he does. He fights for what he does. And he's a stickler about getting things to that perfect place. I think Marty is one of only a handful of directors working today who is truly an artist. Yet he's also a pussycat with a really big heart."
Kenneth Lonergan, one of three writers credited on Gangs of New York (along with Jay Cocks and Steven Zaillian), worked with Scorsese for more than two years and found him to be "a very good, natural collaborator who is extremely receptive to other people's ideas. He's great at taking those other ideas and incorporating them into his overall vision."
A man whom Lonergan describes as "flexible, encouraging, supportive and respectful" then becomes something very different when the cameras are rolling.
"I was there for the first half of the Gangs shoot, and I have to say that Marty was crazy and obsessed and very intense," Lonergan recalls. "But at the same time, he was extremely jovial and a bit of a jokester on the set. He's very entertaining to be around. And there's this very friendly atmosphere around him. He'll be sitting there in the video tent watching the shot — and his fingers will be crossed. Then he's very specific about what went wrong and how to fix it. And it's on to the next take.
"I have to say that for the first several months we worked together, I was really too intimidated to say anything. You're thinking, 'My God, this is Martin Scorsese.' But he doesn't put on any airs at all. He makes it very easy for you to say what's on your mind."
That's certainly by design for Scorsese, who is careful to make sure that especially young actors meeting him for the first time aren't intimidated.
"If an actor is nervous, within five minutes of talking to me they forget about it," he believes. "I like to have enjoyment on the set. That's where there should be laughter, excitement. That's not to say that I enjoy the shooting process, and it doesn't mean that I don't have confrontations on occasion. But usually those are off-set. In general, I like the actors to come in and try ideas and give me something more than I thought. Everyone on Gangs did that, especially Leo."
DGA President Martha Coolidge's path has crossed with that of Scorsese numerous times over the past 35 years, beginning with his interviewing her upon Coolidge's entrance to New York University in the mid-1960s. (Scorsese is an NYU alum as well.)
"It may be a funny thing to say, but I've always been very linked to Marty's rawness," Coolidge admits, "to the brutality of the world and the people he makes films about. It's truthfully a part of my soul as well. It's not a Sicilian thing. I've just always felt this link between the two of us."
Coolidge considers Scorsese one of the true masters of the directing craft, a filmmaker who thinks in big broad strokes. "His movies speak in metaphors and allegories and are bursting with symbolism," she believes. "Even the way the character enters the frame has meaning in a Martin Scorsese film. At the same time, there is a tremendous aliveness and spontaneity from the actors, whom he pushes to their best.
"Marty also deeply cares about the director's craft — and a director's vision. He's always worked that way. He's put himself on the line for the DGA and for the preservation of film. He's also a great nurturer of young filmmakers."
Scorsese, meanwhile, is simply pleased to keep getting jobs, remaining determined to never repeat himself, always reaching to top what he's done — and these are not simple tasks. You can practically feel the intensity coursing through his veins hearing him describe his vision for Gangs of New York.
"I tend to approach my craft emotionally, generally with a rigorous framework and camerawork that's very precise," Scorsese explains. "In Gangs, I wanted to feature characters that were like paintings, in relationship to their environment. I was trying to interpret things less visually and more in terms of how their environment was affecting them. It was an extremely difficult, exciting challenge."
Scorsese says only half-jokingly, and maybe not jokingly at all, that for The King of Comedy he tried to go back to the early cinematic days of Edwin S. Porter, figuring, "The less technique I showcase, the better, since these (characters) are stuck in their lives, and with each other in the frame. Jerry (Langford), for instance, couldn't get Rupert (Pupkin) out of his frame. He was hermetically sealed in there."
Though Scorsese is loathe to choose a personal favorite from among his films, the one he will say remains close to his heart is Italianamerican, his 1974 documentary conversation with his parents about their Italian upbringing. In general, however, it's staggering to examine the director's career output, which also includes 1978's The Last Waltz and the 1985 black comedy After Hours.
In being selected for this year's DGA Lifetime Achievement Award, Scorsese becomes the 30th director to be so honored and joins some exclusive company that includes Cecil B. DeMille (who won the inaugural award in 1953), Frank Capra (1959), Alfred Hitchcock (1968), David Lean (1973), John Huston (1983), Orson Welles (1984), Stanley Kubrick (1997) and Francis Ford Coppola (1998).
Everybody who has worked with Scorsese wants to work with him again. And again. And in the case of De Niro, again and again and again and again. Though De Niro hasn't made a picture with Scorsese since 1995's Casino, the actor stresses, "I'd like to do another couple of films with Marty at least. We have to do two more to make it an even 10 together."
Foster, who says she would "do anything for the man," hasn't appeared in a Scorsese film since Taxi Driver in 1976.
"But I've always wanted to work with him again," Foster adds. "I send him a little note every time I hear he's about to do something. What I think now is that the kind of woman I was as a young person was very much in keeping with what he did — very raw and instinctual. I'm not sure he makes movies with the kind of woman I've grown up to become. But I'd sure love to be proven wrong."
In the meantime, having been honored by the DGA, Scorsese now hopes to add that Academy Award to his suddenly growing collection of accolades.
"I think everybody assumed that I've already gotten an Oscar," Scorsese says. "Maybe I offended the film academy in the 1970s. It was like we were a bunch of arrogant kids trying to change the world. Maybe it's a good thing I haven't won one before now. I certainly haven't needed any additional ego or arrogance."
