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by Timothy Rhys
from www.moviemaker.com
Even though many moviemakers I know believe he holds the unsanctioned but undisputed title of Greatest Living American Film Director, it's still tempting to think of Martin Scorsese as a man stranded in the wrong era, a misunderstood moviemaking genius stuck in a Sisyphean struggle against all the puny producers and myopic studio suits of his time who will never fully understand or appreciate his cinematic sensibilities.
He himself will tell you that he is "of the past" that he feels a wistful twinge of envy toward the old Hollywood directors who so influenced him—the craftsmen with the discipline and humility to hammer out genre pictures one after another, year after year, and were happy to do it. Sometimes he worries that he'll repeat himself as a moviemaker; that he can never make movies like the younger generation because he is "not of this modern world."
A strange way to put it, maybe, but he's right. Martin Scorsese is not of this modern world because he's always been way ahead of it. Not just because of his technical virtuosity or his much-emulated style, but because a talent like his belongs to a future none of us will live to see—a glorious, utopian age when the notion of director as artist is taken for granted; when the director is always recognized as a movie's author and always has final cut. No questions asked. That's when Martin Scorsese should be making his movies.
Luckily for modern moviegoers this is not a just universe, so Scorsese make his magic as best he can amongst us now. And although it's tempting to think of him as sadly out of place, with his feet cemented in the past and one hand tied behind his back by the present, those fictions only serve to underestimate the man, because none of that has prevented him from sitting quite prettily right now. For all the nods to nostalgia and all the fretting about the future, Scorsese is foremost a pragmatist who has achieved no small degree of satisfaction because he's learned to be successful within a grinding, ball-breaking system. It's a testament to his endurance and survival skills that in the process he's been able to get some of what he wants as an artist and most of what he needs as a man.
To hear him tell it, one thing Martin Scorsese doesn't need is to be called an "artist." God forbid. No red-blooded American director ever claimed to be an artist anyway. "Auteur?" Give him a break. "Auteurs" don't come from Elizabeth Street. His grandfather built scaffolding. He builds movies. He's almost that matter-of-fact about it. But he also believes that a cool, blasé mask is as much a part of the traditional director's gear as a bullhorn and viewfinder. Thankfully, his humility isn't part of the act, which is what makes him such an immensely likeable, regular guy. Yes, he has the requisite enormous ego that all successful directors must have, but he also has a self-deprecating sense of humor and an explosive laugh. None of which means he can't also be serious as a heart attack, too. Like all fascinating human beings, Martin Scorsese is one big coil of contradictions—he's just a tad more tightly spooled, perhaps.
What's changed most for Scorsese over the years is that his budgets have steadily swollen, a logical outgrowth, he says, of his interest in telling stories on "big canvases." The problem is that each step a director takes up Hollywood's budgetary ladder, the eternal dilemma of the artist becomes increasingly apparent: should one worry about satisfying the patron, or satisfying oneself?
The answer in most cases, of course, is that if he's concerned with financial security, the artist had better satisfy the patron first. Or, more accurately, the studio's idea of what it thinks the patron wants. Scorsese has learned to be comfortable with this kind of compromise. He isn't a crusader like his very independent late friend, John Cassavetes. He isn't a brooder, like the equally late and less than prolific Stanley Kubrick. He is a survivor, and he knows that if he wants to paint on a big canvas badly enough, he can do that. He can even choose the brushes and colors. The Greatest Living American Director just has to reconcile himself to the fact that The Hobson's Choice Gallery of Highbrow McPictures will be checking in with him every so often to make sure that the finished painting is something they'll be able to move quickly...
This has to be very frustrating, but a Hollywood director is a uniquely frustrated animal by nature. His job is all about control within limits. It's about the romance of guiding a vision, making personal choices and conjuring words on paper into a magical dream of light and movement. But a large part of it is also about commanding an army without the authority of being commander in chief. On Gangs of New York, Scorsese was Patton to Harvey Weinstein's Truman, but by most accounts the genius general in the trenches won the battles he needed to win. And maybe that's the real reason it doesn't seem to bother Scorsese so much that he is forced to play this game. This is the way it has always been played, and he's a guy who respects tradition. But more to the point, he knows how to play it better than anyone.
For me, Martin Scorsese was the answer to the old fantasy question: "If you could have dinner with one famous person, living or dead, who would it be?" I'd wanted to interview him for years, so it was great news when the call came that he'd meet with MovieMaker shortly before his Gangs of New York release. Great news until we discovered we'd be limited to one hour. What a tease, I thought. How could I possibly make a dent in what I'd like to talk to him about in only an hour...
When I arrive at Scorsese's Park Avenue office I'm warmly greeted by Lois Smith, his longtime publicist. Smith has a vet PR pro's easy, offhand manner, and while chattering about I have no idea what she ushers me into the 7th floor suite, a rambling series of rooms adorned with a mindboggling collection of classic framed movie posters that any fan would kill for. I'm on time, but she informs me that "Marty" will be a few minutes late because he just shaved and "his face needs to cool down." At 74, Smith is a protective, doting, almost motherly figure to her star client. She invites me to pass the time in her small office, which is adjacent to her boss' spacious corner room with a view. A few minutes later the phone rings, and her manner changes completely. She verbally stands at attention, and as she discusses the details of the day's tight agenda, it's plain that Marty is on the line. When today's interviews are over he'll fly to a west coast film festival, and then overseas.
When he arrives a half-hour later, maybe Scorsese's face has cooled down, but not much else has. He storms through the hallway, in and out of rooms, looking harassed and flustered. This, I'll discover later, is what he refers to as his "comfortable state of anxiety." It's almost as if he needs to ratchet up his stress level in order to achieve the peak performance he demands of himself. I meet him briefly and he's polite and quick. Everything about the man is quick. He then adjourns to his screening room for our cover shoot, and when he emerges maybe 15 minutes later, he's a changed man. Whatever our photographer, Robin Holland, said during the shoot, it worked. He seems relaxed now.
Not that his speech has slowed an iota. He still speaks like a guy trying to talk his way out of something. He'll cut you off, he'll step on your lines, he'll talk "ahead of himself," like his mouth is forever losing a footrace with his mind. He talks like he grew up in a neighborhood where people half-listen, where if you pause for a moment, your audience is gone. Maybe that's one reason his power of concentration is so remarkable. He can go off on tangents for paragraphs, but he always comes back to the point.
Scorsese speaks often of the past, but he has a surprisingly youthful outlook. He's always learning, always hungry for knowledge, still openly excited about the process of making movies. He'll even tell you (with a straight face) that he is still "learning to tell stories with pictures." If one ever wonders whether to launch a career in this turbulent business, Martin Scorsese's attitude should provide courage. Despite it all, he seems fulfilled. And very grateful.
But that doesn't mean he's content. Not by a long shot. He knows he's found his place in history, but it's the future he's concerned about, and he's trying to find his place there, too.
Tim Rhys (MM - moviemaker.com): So thanks for meeting with us.
Martin Scorsese (MS): Yes. I’m sorry it’s taken so long.
MM: I have a lot of questions and I’m going to dive right in. I know it’s hard to be introspective this early in the morning.
MS: It’s okay. I’ll try my best.
MM: First, this is for our annual New York issue, so I wanted to start by asking you about New York filmmaking and—
MS: —“New York filmmaking” is already a problem. There’s regional filmmaking in America, but it’s American cinema, you see? This business of creating a cinema of different regions—San Francisco, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles—it separates and puts barriers between filmmakers. It’s a problem. There’s been this talk of “New York filmmaking” mainly from the early ’70s. Prior to that, you had some films made here in the ’60s, but really very few were made in New York until after World War II. There was Neorealism, Jules Dassin’s Naked City, the 20th Century Fox films—Kiss of Death and that sort of thing. But it’s interesting. It expanded as the cameras got lighter and easier to move around, so— .
MM: What I wanted to ask was—
MS:—by the late ’50s, early ’60s you had the American underground movement—John Cassavetes, Shirley Clarke. They happened to be based in New York at that time. Shirley Clarke still is. Cassavetes then moved to LA, where he continued making American independent cinema. Whether you consider Cassavetes a New York filmmaker or not, he came from New York. He made Shadows in New York. I have a problem with everybody who for the past 25 years has been pushing LA further from New York. Granted, there’s two different ways of seeing the world, I guess. But it’s all American cinema. We’re all Americans. I know George Lucas feels good about regional cinema. I just think it’s getting to a dangerous point, because it’s compartmentalizing younger filmmakers for money. They [distributors] will say “Oh, that’s a New York independent feature. We’ll pay two cents for that. If it was LA we’d give you 20 cents.”
MM: Money’s always the issue, isn’t it. I was surprised to find out that at first you couldn’t even get the money to make Taxi Driver in New York, so you were considering San Francisco and—
MS: —We wanted to make the film, the story, so badly. We thought about San Francisco, but the nature of the city isn’t the same, where a person hails a cab and gets in. As Paul Schrader put it, the passenger has control of your life for the next 10 minutes, an hour. In a way, anything can happen. It’s a very strange feeling.
MM: So what do you think about the vibrancy of independent film in New York in this economy, right now? Do you have a feel for that?
MS: Yeah, it’s very exciting. But still I think it’s dangerous for the philosophy of filmmaking to separate the different “movements” of independent film. What are the characteristics of a “New York” film, anyway? It’s shot in the New York streets, that’s all. So I think that mindset keeps some independent film out of the mainstream. I’m worried about that, because that automatically means less money. I came out of a period in the ’70s where directors dealt with themes which independent filmmakers today still deal with. The more dangerous themes. The more personal themes. But we were able to do it within the context of Hollywood cinema and with Hollywood studio money.
But that [financing] is almost gone now. These themes are not “commercial” enough. Yet the same people who say that look back on the ’70s as the “Golden Age” of cinema. It’s certainly debatable. But it’s dangerous if these bigger budgets only go to pictures which have a certain kind of philosophy. Then it becomes a consumer product only, which these days is devoured and absorbed usually on one weekend and maybe on DVD before it’s sent to the rest of the world. It’s one philosophy represented in most of these films—90 percent of them. That may not be the best thing, to give people around the world just one impression of what America is in this day and age. I just think it’s dangerous. And it’s not healthy for American filmmakers. Anyway, that’s my thought about New York filmmaking. [laughs]
MM: You know what, I don’t think I’m going to get through my seven pages of questions…
MS: And another thing! [laughs]
MM: As a follow-up to that, you just made Gangs of New York, a period piece about some violent occurrences in New York City. As we talk today, just a few days after—
MS: —Yeah, but it really wasn’t. It was New York City, but it was still a formation of a city. Which country was it? Was it Confederacy or Union? Who were you aligned with? And basically the gangs of the underworld and the poor people had their own kind of society, which was not fitting in with the power structure.
MM: So with the Sept. 11th anniversary just passing, have you worried that the terrorist attacks desensitized the country and diminished the impact of what you’re trying to say with a movie like Gangs?
MS: Oh, no. The film isn’t about violence. It’s about a number of things—one of which is ‘what is this country?’ And ‘are immigrants Americans?’ And ‘must we, as Americans, accept and embrace each wave of immigrants?’ Look at what’s going on right now. I’m not defending, supporting or trying to bolster up this movie in any way. I’m saying that this film just happens to be dealing with subject matter which is vital to all Americans at this point.
But the other thing about the picture is it has a historical background that shows New York in a sense representing the country. Because it was this seaport, people who were coming to America would usually disembark here. And what did they do when they disembarked? They had to go get jobs, become part of the workforce or somehow assimilate into American society. They were not welcomed. So what we have is a movie about a period of time in which this quintessential American city was trying to define itself through struggle.
MM: I know you had some struggles of your own as you edited the film, especially toward the end, depicting the violence of the draft riots—
MS:—It ends with the backdrop of the draft riots. The foreground is the playing out of the conflict between Bill the Butcher and Amsterdam. Amsterdam is played by Leo DiCaprio and Bill the Butcher by Daniel Day-Lewis. And basically the story in the foreground is Amsterdam having to dispatch, or confront, his own demons in the guise of a man who in a sense has become his father, emotionally. The villain gets dispatched by the hero, because that’s the tradition of the American epic genre. But my villain is a bad bad guy and my hero is a good bad guy. [laughs] So he dispatches him, but in so doing he represents what’s happening to the country. The old wave is going out and the new wave is coming in. After 1865 it’s a different country. It’s a real country. It’s really the end of the Revolution. The Revolution started in 1776, went to 1783 or ’84. The country never really galvanized until after the Civil War.
MM: So in all those well-publicized bouts to trim the end, you don’t feel at all as if your vision was ever compromised?
MS: No, I don’t feel like the vision was compromised. I just basically keep tweaking to make things clearer. Clearer, or just more in line with my way of pacing. Sometimes I look at it again and say this is too fast or this is too slow. I’m still doing that now. And I’m doing sound effects and music now. But the thing about it is a balance between the historical backdrop and the personal story in the foreground. Because what I’d like to try to do is have a climactic sequence in the film that encompasses both—the climax of the conflict that’s going on in the city and the climax of the conflict between hero and villain. In a sense, ultimately, the history overwhelms everything.
The change in the city is represented by Amsterdam. He’s the younger person representing the new society in America. I’m not talking about the movers and the shakers, the George Templeton Strongs who wrote those diaries at the time. Those were the upper classes. I’m talking about what Bono meant when he wrote the song about the hands that built America. My grandfathers came here. One was a ditch digger for Con Edison, the other built scaffolding for construction. So their hands literally “made” the country… the Italians, Jewish, Irish. The Irish were the first major wave—they caught it all. So it’s an interesting backdrop to have this story about fathers and sons worked out. But the father and son story is an ancient one in which the son has to kill the father. Just as we all pretty much have to do in our own lives.