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By BRUCE KIRKLAND -- Sun Media
February 26, 2007
One of the classic moments at Sunday's Oscars was seeing the self-styled "three amigos" of American cinema gather on stage to present the best director prize -- to their old pal Martin Scorsese.
And he was delighted.
The three are legendary directors Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas. "That was an extraordinary moment when the three of them came out and gave me a look," Scorsese said later. "We go back. Steven and I go back to 1968-69. Francis, 1970. George, 1970. I just went up to San Francisco to see Francis and his new film, which is quite wonderful, at George's new theatre.
"So they have influenced me. Francis has been like a big brother in my life. Spielberg and Lucas and I have -- particularly in that first 10 or 12 years in the 1970s and early '80s -- worked together, really worked together, and helped each other with each other's films. It's almost like a private little film school.
"And to see the three of them walk out and give me a look before they opened the envelope, I was very surprised, very surprised."
The three amigos had not been announced as presenters. It was kept a secret.
And the Academy -- whose members are not supposed to know whose names are actually
inside those envelopes until they are opened -- took a risk trotting the three
out for the best director award. If someone other than their friend Scorsese
had won, it would have been awkward.
As it was, Scorsese got a chance to quip when accepting the trophy: "Could you double-check the envelope, please?"
Even before that, the three amigos themselves clowned around about the fact that Spielberg and Coppola have both won as best director and Lucas has not.
OLE, MORE AMIGOS: Off-stage, three Mexican filmmakers whose films figured into this year's Oscars were also being called "the three Amigos." They are Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Babel), Guillermo del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth) and Alfonso Cuaron (whose Children Of Men is the only one of the three not to win at least one Oscar last night).
Being compared
to the three Americans, Spielberg, Coppola and Lucas, is weird, del Toro quipped.
He said he thought the Mexicans were closer to another trio of Americanos: "I
was thinking more like Larry, Curly and Moe," he said, with an impish grin,
while invoking The Three Stooges.
As for best director winner Scorsese, Cuaron said of their hero: "We need six of us for one Scorsese." That, of course, is not true. Each of the Mexicans is a sublime talent. But it demonstrates shows the enormous upwelling of love, respect and support from all quarters that propelled Scorsese to his first Oscar.
BLOODBATH: Producer Graham King claims he and director Scorsese never seriously thought about the Oscars or any other awards -- except as a joke -- during the filming of The Departed in Boston.
"We never mentioned this picture for the awards," King said backstage after it won as best picture and scooped three other Oscars. "We never thought about it."
The Departed is a genre movie, a cops-and-criminals thriller despite the prestige all-star cast of Leonardo DiCaprio, Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon and Oscar nominee Mark Wahlberg.
"There was a scene where Jack was coming out of the bar and has blood all over his hands and he tells Billy (Leonardo DiCaprio) to go home," King recalled.
"And I turned around to somebody on set and said: 'Can you imagine me showing this to the Golden Globes? They are going to lynch me!' We didn't think about the awards on this."
Scorsese said backstage that he did not allow Warner Bros. to launch a campaign to get him personal honours, including going for an Oscar nomination as best director. He did, however, approve the campaign for the picture itself and others involved, including the cast.
"Not for me -- for the film," he said of the awards campaign which cost millions. "I was really trying to concentrate on the filmmaking and ultimately, if it wasn't meant (to be) in the cards, that's life."
WHEN LOSERS WIN: Scorsese is a fan of the controversial honourary Oscar, which often is given to actors or directors with an outstanding body of work -- men or women who have never won a competitive Oscar. Alfred Hitchcock is on the list. So is Charlie Chaplin as a director (although he did win for music once, bizarrely 20 years after he made the film he won it for). Chaplin ended up with two honourary Oscars, one in 1929, the second in a triumphant 1972 return to Hollywood, which had exiled him for his leftist views.
Peter O'Toole, meanwhile, thought about turning down his 2003 honourary Oscar because he still wanted to win one outright. But he relented that year -- and the eight-time nominated actor lost again this year for Venus to Forest Whitaker for The Last King of Scotland).
"I do admire the career achievement," Scorsese said backstage after finally getting his first personal Oscar as best director. He had lost the directing prize five times before, including for his 1980 masterpiece Raging Bull, and also lost in a screenwriting category twice. "I saw Howard Hawks get a career achievement award (in 1975). So it's a very special award. But it is a different feeling having been chosen."
PRESERVING THE PAST: Scorsese used his backstage pass to support his campaign for film preservation, an on-going battle joined by other Hollywood heavyweights such as his pals Spielberg, Lucas and Coppola.
"It's very important," Scorsese said of saving past films from deterioration or even total obliteration. "Digital also fades. We have to very, very careful."
If the only option is a digital transfer because of a lack of fund to work in film, then preservationists should do that, he said. "You may have to do that, you see, just to hold them out for the new technology. But it's so important to try and restore these films on celluloid."
The much-maligned Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which is ridiculed for the studio-backed hype spectacle of the Golden Globes, actually uses some its profits from the event for a good cause. Each year, Scorsese said, the HFPA gives his film foundation money to restore a classic film.
"This year, they gave us money for The Red Shoes (1948), Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's film, to restore the actual three-strip negative. That's going to be very important. You have to go back to the original."
On a personal note, Scorsese once introduced his long-time film editor Thelma Schoonmaker -- who won an Oscar for editing The Departed last night -- to Powell, the legendary English filmmaker. They married in 1984 and stayed together until his death of cancer in February of 1990.
HIDDEN GEMS: Scorsese gives his directorial idol Howard Hawks a few sly homage-like nods in The Departed. "That's for fun, though," he said. "That's for reference. For those who know, (they) know. That's it." So he won't go into detail for neophytes. Hawks' credits including His Girl Friday, The Big Sleep, To Have And Have Not, Rio Bravo and his final film in 1970, Rio Lobo.
In a more general way, in tone, The Departed also pays tribute to the spirit of William Wellman's 1931 gangster movie, The Public Enemy, starring James Cagney. Scorsese said he will never forget watching it in a re-release when he was a 10-year-old movie freak growing up in New York.
"I mean, the brutal honesty of that film, the street honesty of it, always stayed with me. That's a mark I always aimed towards. And this film has that kind of attitude."