Martin Scorsese interviewed by Edgar Wright | BFI London Film Festival 2023 Screen Talk

good afternoon and welcome to this really special uh screen talk the largest we've ever had by a mile I think a huge thanks to Apple TV Plus for their help in making this dream come true it's really been a dream come true for lots of us my name is Ben Roberts I'm the chief executive of the BFI you don't really want to hear from me so I've only got two cards don't worry I'd like to just briefly explain though why this event is so particularly special to us at the BFI we're all actually indebted to Martin G's passionate championing of Cinema the art form the experience of filmmakers of our Cinema Heritage and the particular significance of our British Cinema Heritage Edgar Wright who's about to come on in a moment spent his lockdown in a Quarantine movie club on WhatsApp with Quentin Tarantino who didn't and uh that was inspired by a voicemail he received from Martin Scorsese listing 50 influential British films and for many years Mr Scorsese has been a really invaluable supporter of our restoration work at the BFI National Archive via his film foundation with huge thanks to the film Foundation we're screening a restoration of sahor s's pressure during this Festival on Wednesday and Thursday next week and our restoration of I know where I'm going will screen as part of the creative worlds of pow and pressburger which is a major season that we're mounting for to celebrate two of the Giants of British Cinema which opens at the BFI immediately after the festival and for uh an exhibition that's accompanying That season Mr scorsi has kindly loaned us moir shar's red shoes yes those red shoes so uh come and come and see them next month so we all have many reasons to thank Mr scorsi but not least for his really extraordinary body of work including killers of the flower Moon which some of us have the joy to watch this afternoon so now it is my my great pleasure to welcome filmmaker and BFI Governor Edgar Wright hello it would have been um it would have been nice to have done this in a bigger room and on a hotter day but um I'm going to keep this short because you haven't come here to see me talk uh and uh we want to have as much time with the man himself so just by way of introduction let's list just some of his credits Mean Streets Alice doesn't live here anymore Taxi Driver New York New York raging ball the king of comedy after hours The Color of Money The Last Temptation Of Christ Good Fellas Cape Fear The Age of Innocence Casino kundan bringing out the dead Gangs of New York The Aviator The Departed Shutter Island Hugo The Wolf of Wall Street silence the Irishman and tonight's girl killers of the flower Moon not not too shabby um please be upstanding not just one of the greatest living film directors one of the greatest film directors full stop Mr Martin scorsi thank you so much wow it's amazing look at this place wow fantastic thank you thank you thank you my goodness wooo wowo that woke me up okay now obviously we only have an hour to chat and as you know I could spend 60 Minutes on we've already done yeah we've I could do 60 minutes just on after hours but we're going to try and cover your entire life and career as best we can um but before we talk about your films I'd like to discuss other people's films because as Ben was saying before I've always been so impressed at what you give back to cinema not just in terms of supporting work by new directors Distributing world Cinema to a wire audience restoring Classics or just discussing your own favorite films that have influenced you what does it mean to spread your love of Cinema to others well I think for me I I um I I naturally had an enthusiasm to want to share an experience with other people and whether that's a performance that you see in theater or for me it was not necessarily theater because I came from a background we couldn't afford to go to theater so it was in cinema or movie theaters at the time in the 40s and 50s uh into the early 60s so I had an enthusiasm really and I wanted somebody to share that and enjoy it with he or she all together you know and um um I also found that at a certain point when I started to make short films and everything would get others interested in the same films I was interested in and there'd be discussions and arguments and something would come out of that but primarily by the time I did mean streets and other films I I I began to get um very very very um excited by sharing as much as possible my experience with younger filmmakers and then when they came back and showed me their films when I saw their films and I know that and I had a kind of almost a little bit of a a feeling of Pride that I influenced a couple of people by not necessarily my films by recommending other films and then from their films I get from what I do I don't care you know uh but I I still have that I have no I always thought of myself more as a teacher than as a filmmaker and you also have a very omnivorous appetite for film I don't think you're elitist in any way and I I love that you will mention Hammer horror movies in the same breath as Po and pressburger or Maria Bara in the same breath as um max oals yes yes well I had no um I had no because of the uh 1945 Contracting asthma I was uh sheltered a great deal and and uh they put me in movie theaters and then later on I was in the Catholic school I went to church and they were the two safest places um and um for me uh I had no Prejudice or not Prejudice the wrong word but I had no expectations in those days too you just went to the movies and um whether it was good or bad you know know it was up to you I mean for example if I saw at the age of 12 Magnificent Obsession by Douglas sir I didn't get it it took me 20 years later you see but on the other hand you know I see uh A Place in the Sun and I see um you know practically the ays um and the The Bad and The Beautiful and uh Sunset Boulevard and uh films of that's all around the same time and I had that experience so uh if you're looking at Sunset Boulevard or Sunset Boulevard's kind of a horror film so I shouldn't say that but um in a good way uh but I mean at the same time you go to a smaller theater that had that had these wooden seats and you know it was dirty and and a lot of gum on the floor and that sort of thing and um you for children that cost 13 cents at the time and you would see you know bomba the jungle boy and a film called Great White Hunter but it turns out that you think you're gonna 10 or 11 years old see another uh Adventure in in darkest Africa and that sort of thing um instead what comes up is the mccomber affair by directed by zton quarter uh and that's based on an Alis hoxley Story the jaka smile and it stars um Gregory p and Robert Preston and Joan Bennett with the score by micholas Roa and it's psychologically disturbing film but it was advertised as great white Hunter because they had to re-release it and so you never knew what you're going to see repeatedly the big Heat by Fritz Lang uh Murder By contract um you know uh uh you know what what I'm getting at is that it seemed that we were able to absorb different kinds of films and we weren't necessarily told not this is a special film this you have to really pay attention sort of like Eat Your Spinach you know you're just going to the just going in the movies I mean later on yes there was a certain thing was saying this is a special picture even like to a certain extent like Shane for example I was 12 years old we knew that was special you know um and it does hold up it's a beautiful film so um that along with the Italian films that I saw when I was growing up I was five or six with the Italian neorealist films on television in New York and sharing that with my my family sharing it I mean it was there they it came on TV and with the subtitles and they were speaking in television the same thing that the same way my grandparents were speaking and I saw my grandparents reacting and I realized we we're them but it's movies but it's a different kind of movie um and similar with the British cinema at that time uh we saw so much of um cter films and U um not not ham not the early Hammer was later but late 40s a great deal of Corder was sold to American television so we just grew up with for example private lives of Henry VII and uh that was restored ultimately by think the film Foundation at some point but what I'm getting at is that I was getting all these other um uh senses of a sense of other cultures coming in uh through through Cinema uh so that it opened me up to all kinds of Cinema um particularly when I saw for example I was maybe 15 when I saw p panchali on on television uh in New York dubbed in English and uh and I realized I always tell the story I realized because I had love RIS film The River and I saw it when I was about 10 or 11 and I realized U uh this was a film made by the people in that film who usually in the background and it was made by them for them and and so doing the whole world and so that in a way U being open to all kinds of Cinema even if it was um uh the American Underground Cinema you know Stan brage and and uh uh early Shirley Clark or um Michael snow wavelength or these just be open to it I would have friends who would get angry I said no just just try to try to go with it um and so not necessarily making films like that um but being around that creativity was quite extraordinary in the New York underground for example especially at the New York Film Festival so it was really a matter of being open to all cultures and all ways of thinking and all ways of telling a story with pictures um and that for me uh uh eliminated um I remember telling some wonderful Italian filmmakers whom I L that I liked Mario Bava they were furious at me they were Furious and no that the color and this and that it's a horrible trash but I didn't understand the Italian culture when I did was the 70s I didn't quite get it you know I'm still I'm still American I didn't grow up with them I didn't grow up their families would have poets in their families and great philosophers I had I hadn't read Manson until only a few months ago because it's a new translation just um to jump back a little bit after your first trip to the cinema it's a long trip there no no sorry about that as you can tell I could just sit here and listen to you for the full hour but could you talk about you know I've been traveling a lot guys I'm getting old all right we're happy just to listen listen I wanted to ask about before like making films your first after your formative cinemat trips your first fory into storytelling by drawing what you'd seen on the big screen and showing it to other people or maybe it was just one person is that correct yes yes I made my own uh U well now they're called storyboards but I made my own frames and I I especially became interested when went to anamorphic 255 not 235 but wider wider and thinner yeah and uh uh but I still had 133 and I made my own stories up and I did shot by shot as much as possible um the earliest ones I I destroyed uh but um this was you got to understand this is at a tenement apartment in Lower East Side which is now a very chic area at Elizabeth Street and M Street but at that time was pretty much um lower lower class working class I don't even know a lot of it was working class but a lot of it was really Street stuff and it was a rough place and so if I was drawing little pictures I had to do that privately you know what I mean and you couldn't show it to everybody you know especially not my parents you know so um uh I I began to uh make these stories and some of them I took from watching television um uh half hour show suspense things like that that I made my own version in color painting watercolors but then I threw all that away and did other ones um and when I finally got into my uh Roman epic which I never finished um I did show it to one one person uh and they didn't know what to make of it but uh but the main thing was that if the camera's booming down on a Roman legion entering the gates of Rome Roman wall uh the first frame is a high angle and you see them way in the distance the second frame is over their backs and you're going towards the gate and the third frame is they entering the gate what they did unst it's all one shot and I explain it's moving they said no no it's still no no it's moving in between in between the pictures it moves you see now when I I do a same similar thing with the DP and the DP looks so in between the pictures we're going to move I still got to light it you know but in my mind the pictures moved you know now is this kid um who saw your Roman epic did he later become aware that he'd seen the first Martin scorey picture uh yes he has but he's not very impressed by it these are tougher guys isn't that now um it's the 50th anniversary of your breakthrough film Mean Streets hold for Applause um thank you I think it's worth mentioning Don't Clap at everyone or where we're going to be here all day um it's worth mentioning to this audience full of young filmmakers that even though it was your breakthrough movie is's a long road to that breakthrough with various ups and downs along the way after your debut feature you went back to NYU where you'd been a student to teach as a professor you worked as an editor you made a film with Roger Corman can you talk about the leadup to this movie and some of the elements that needed to come together to make Mean Streets I think what happened was that U was quite young and and uh I guess you would call provincial I think or you know coming from a a very small uh subculture in New York um and and being at NYU at that time wasn't the NYU that it is now it was much smaller with 32 kids in the class that's it um I uh Came Crashing up against the outside world so to speak and the cinema did a lot for me there um in that um especially the New York Film Festival in ' 63 and 64 I was able to have I was able to go to the Press screenings because they showed one of my student films so what I'm getting at is that I I knew enough style and technique to play with editing and dis to design a picture but what was I really saying did I have anything really to say at that point I did I didn't know how to do it and uh the technique came first uh in these short films and and I think what really set me off was I wanted to make a film ultimately about my life or my friends in the Lower East Side in a certain way delicate issue because um they're all gone now not my friends but but few of my friends but um that was a place that you really couldn't bring cameras and people would be very you can't mention certain names you can't show certain things and it was a delicate situation so I had to be very careful and so became a very personal film like it became this film called Who's That Knocking but that took three years and it was made like a student film and that I would have I would shoot it on the weekends when we had the camera which uh Harvey kitel was his first acting job and he he finally got annoyed he said I'm I have a job I think it was a um um what do they call a court clerk uh and he said you know I'm going to get a haircut I said don't it's not going to match it's not going to it didn't matter it didn't matter he cut the hair so one shot he's got long hair next shot he's got I it doesn't you know but what happened was that I became overly um um not overly I see really ambitious about what I wanted to do I didn't know how to phrase it and I really wanted to be when I saw before the Revolution primma Del Rion by Berto Luchi at the New York Film Festival I wanted that I wanted to be able to express myself that way it had such a joy of not only film making but of life and it had such depth of culture but I don't come from that culture I don't know the politics I don't know I I I you know we go back to go back to Dante go back to Petro and and you really you and then dealing with the Charter House of Parma all of this um but I was I wanted to be there and I tried with who That Knocking right away and I I blew it completely and I had to find a way of expressing myself from my own culture ultimately um but what kept me going was I think the ambition and um the uh determination to reach that level that I had seen him before the Revolution along with but there was also boko's film fist in the pocket the pinasa and then of course the Great aaton aaton by pasolini which was similar to the a lot of the people I knew growing up and so but the poetry and the the background of these people was the antithesis of where I came from so I had to learn it myself and I had to figure way to make a film about kind of myself and a few of my friends without without getting into difficulties and that took from 66 to I'd say 72 with script Ing and trying different ways and one of the things I had to learn especially when I went to California was how to make a film meaning if you're going to be in that situation meaning if you're going to be making films even independent films meaning without a studio you still had to utilize the equipment and the actors a certain way you only have a certain amount of time and and not finite money either and so I had to learn because prior to that I would make a film when we had the camera so I had to learn about scheduling and I had to learn about trying to work within the schedule and but the trick was to get what you want within the schedule which means a certain kind of planning and working and working with people who want to make the same film so you're not arguing with actors in the morning before going on two hours and then you lose two hours during the day so um in a DP for example I think on Main Streets we had two DPS one in New York and one uh I changed him when we got to La um on box Berta the uh um the film I learned on basically through Roger Corman that's why I said he was an extraordinary University at the Corman group um I had to shoot in 24 days um with trains trains a train particularly in those days you know whenever you have a train a boat is worse a train a train at least a train when you back it up it's on the rails a boat can go anywh you know so that's that's why Spielberg on Jaws that went crazy with the boat you know uh you know it was it was a nightmare but in the case of in the case of the trange when it backs when you want another take it has to back up time and the clock is ticking and you got to back it up and something goes wrong so what Corman said to me was do all the train shots in the first four days and I said wow I had it all worked out to I had every shot drawn because I was nervous about about um not knowing where to place the camera on set and I had it in my head and I went to locations I worked it all out that doesn't mean you didn't change it at least I had a plan you know and I had editing patterns worked out and that sort of thing so I said but that's the hardest thing he said that's why so if you get the hardest thing over with you break the back of the shoot right away in four days and that's the end of it and that's what we did and I learned how to make a picture you know a genre a sub genre of a Bonnie and Clyde type film with um uh you know the great Barbara Hershey and David kadine and Barry Primus and Bernie Casey and we had a great time in Arkansas shooting in Arkansas 24 days and so I applied that ultimately to mean streets um after doing boscar Berta I showed the film to John cabetes who's when I mentioned beral Luchi and bokio and um uh Shirley Clark and and um um uh pasolini the one I I neglect neglected to mention the key one for me was cassavetes um and because he proved that was there at the New York Film Festival when they said they're going to show faces they're going to show faces because what happened was that after his films in Hollywood um to late blues and Child Is Waiting he kind of disappeared as a director and no he was shooting a we heard stories about him shooting a film in his house in Mand M Wilson Drive and all the sort of thing and there it was faces I was there the day I was shown at this at the screening and it was a revelation and I realized you could do it cuz I knew I could do it from Shadows you see and then but faces was interesting is that after Shadows um he he he ran into difficulty making films in the Hollywood style and he stopped and I got to Str all over again so there was a there was a long pause and he came back and when I saw that I said that's where to go that's what you do and so um I presented became I I got to know him through J Cox and Verna Bloom my old friends and I presented the film to him and I was tell the story but he looked at me and he said come here and he hugged me and he said you just spent a year of your life making a piece of junk don't ever do that again it's I you know you like the characters are good and all that but don't do you have something you I said well it's called yeah it became main streets was originally called Season of the Witch and um I said I do have the script he said try to get an actor involved and try to get that going this was 1971 and uh by through again J Cox and Verna Bloom I met Jonathan taplan who was the producer became the producer of Mean Streets and somehow we got $650,000 from a man named El Perry to uh back the film and I applied the same style and actually pretty much the same crew Roger corman's people to make mean streets um instead of 24 days we had 25 that was it um and they said to me if you really want to do this for a BD budget we have so little money at that time um you got to shoot most of it in Los Angeles and so I said okay but this is a quintessential New York movie you know at first Roger Corman told me Roger told me uh when I presented the script to him before before this uh before this uh before they said shooting in La Roger said my brother um Jean Corman just had this big hit with a film called Cool Breeze and at that time the black sploitation films are being made and he said if you could take this story and swing a little bit and make it black and I said I'll think about it and I walked down I said no I don't think so I'm sorry I just can't do it you know and so um he was going to give me 150,000 to make it um in New York as African-American and so I said just that doesn't quite it's not the same thing I said all right so we stayed with that' and I had his crew uh work out a system with me and get me the DP and the whole crew and what I did was shot seven or eight days and nights in New York for specific places that we could not double in La you just couldn't I tried I looked everywhere uh even the alleys weren't the alleys were nicer come on really I come on we the cobblestones but the nothing nothing so we found found a few places downtown LA Wall Street Third Street still pretty bad down there um and um just for the night shot a couple of night shots like when the car crashes but primarily a lot of the Interiors were done a lot of them were in Los Angeles the bar and those sort of things the key was bringing in the actors the actors were Quint essentially New York east coast people and so um it's going back and forth with them and we did it in 24 or five days whatever presumably it was fortuitous shooting in La that some of the real life coun part and literally didn't know that you were doing it you bet is this is a perfect time to show a clip from Mean Streets all right okay thanks a lot Lord thanks a lot for opening my eyes we talk about Penance and you send us through the door well we play by your rules don't well don't [Music] we [Music] watch [Music] it I [Music] by I my m is droing rain but it's all [Music] Oho how are you all right how are you I want you to meet two beautiful young ladies here this is my good friend Charlie this is my good friend Tony owns the jint this is what's your name again sarah sarah sarah Klein right Sarah Klein this is Tony and this is what what's your name Heather Heather Heather wine TR right I met them in the village Bohemian yeah the cafe Bazar so where you want to drink tequila you got Tequila No never mind listen listen have a seven or some is good for give uh give yourself a drink give Char me J B will you please what's this what's what this what that what does this look like huh what where'd you get this what where'd you get this what this this yeah in the back come on heyy keep going making me look bad Charlie one of the girls over here oh excuse me yeah mean to be rude girls Mr CH I like your presence in the back room if you got a moment to do what you mean you request my presence for a moment or two in the back room I most certainly do well uh after you no after you no after you hey Mr Cho after you after you in the back Tony give the Mist whatever I want hey girls hey girls excuse me hey Tony keep an eye on these uh nice girls here don't let none of the VES okay what are you doing what do you mean what am I doing what are you doing to me huh what do you mean Michael's been in my back all night he's bothering me why didn't you make your payment last Tuesday what do you mean I made my payment last Tuesday what are you talking about you paid him last week yeah I paid him last week now what did he say he said I didn't pay him it's a [ __ ] liar where is he you paid him yeah I paid him last week yeah last Tuesday yeah Charlie you don't know where he's here where out front he's here yeah so what do I care all right let me go get him we'll straighten this thing out all right hey wait a minute wait a minute Charlie what well you're right I'm right yeah was it last Tuesday yeah that's the Tuesday that was last week that's before the one it's about to come up my mistake I'm sorry forgive me it was last week the week before that I was thinking of yeah oh yeah it was it huh that's right what's the matter with you Johnny you can't go around bullshitting people that way if you're worried about something you got to keep it you don't know what happened to me I'm so depressed about other things I can't worry about payments you know what I mean I come home last Tuesday I have my money to catch you know blah blah bing bing I comeing home I ran to Jimmy Spar know Jimmy Spar 700 like for 4 months I got to pay the guy lives in my building hangs out across the street I got to pay the guy right yeah so what happened I had to give some to my mother and then I was wound up with 25 the end of the week and then what happened today you ain't going to believe cuz it's just incredible I can't believe it myself why I was in a game I was I had like $6 $700 right you got to be kidding yeah in EST the street you know you know Joey clams yeah Joey scy yeah I know him too yeah yeah Jo no Joey scy is Joey clams right right they're the same person yeah hey hey oh my God I gotta say those boys a rare pleasure is to watch a clip from Mean Streets and see how much you're enjoying it well they're wonderful the two of them you know and um uh you know again um uh the uh the scene in the bar and the Jumping Jack Flash and the character the character Johnny Boy based on actually he's still alive he's in not in New York but he's still alive and carrying on I think but uh uh how should I put it there's a a play a place playfulness with words that um comes out of um well just kind of um if we think it in terms of uh entertainment I think in terms of abant Castello or Bing Crosby and Bob Hope in the road movies where Bob Hope was always the one being taken advantage of by Crosby uh and so uh road to Singapore has a wonderful scene a couple of scenes that very serious they didn't think it was going to be a series so they they had different elements in that particular Road movie but those were that inspired a kind of um we called it improvisatory but it really isn't in a sense U because it's then structured uh and written down as best as possible like in the Good Fellas you you talk you you you know you think I'm funny that actually happened to peshi uh and he did exactly what what uh what Ray leoda does he say ah yeah you get the [ __ ] out of here that sort of and he said oh okay he made it and he what what did he have to lose at that point he was dead he could be dead either way so he took a chance with this guy uh and he got out of it but it was terrifying because it changed like that and so that kind of um uh banter so to speak structured joking enjoying themselves puffing up and that sort of thing was um something that we did intentionally um the nature of uh of uh the Johnny Boy character who owes so much money and comes around throwing it around as if oh it's not a problem it's not a problem you're supposed to make your payments and takes them inside that was a scene that was requested by dairo because that was in the original script when they go in the back room um mainly he said I had I think we should show how Johnny gets around Charlie and Charlie trying to be the politician with all these people and these Waring factors um where Saving Face is a big deal it's not about it's about saving face and uh it's very dangerous and uh I said okay what do you want to do and now the thing about it is that dairo knew the people I wrote the film about and he knew when he's mentioning Joey Johnny Sparks and he's me he's changing names Joey clams Joey scalla Joey scalla is a real name but Johnny clams is not it was a whole thing and he's talking about later in there in a pool in the he's there and they're playing cards in the hallway and the kid yelled the cops and they they suddenly grabbed the money and he lost all his money well there's always card games going on in the hallways you know certain hallways and a lot of money was was was going down there and then usually the cops to come around we get in a lot of trouble so not me but I was I would see I would be there you know um and uh he so he used that and he knew a lot of the people he would we knew each other when we were 16 uh but he was hanging around with this other crowd on kenmir street and we were on Prince and M and his crowd was a little more a place called The elto Knights uh which was a restricted club for members only we had a our own club for members only but not like they had this was anyway I always felt that they were a little more um you know attuned to uh uh maybe lining themselves up in life to to I should put it this way becoming part of that lifestyle okay not him but he was with them um and I remembered him later on I met him again at J Cox's apartment with Verna and Brian to because Brian had worked with him in high mom and I remembered him he said he I didn't real I didn't realize it was him at first and then after dinner he sat down he Saidi said I know you you're you used to hang out with ctie I'm a Joe morali and someone so I said yeah and he said I'm Bobby you mean Bobby from yeah and I didn't realize and so um that created a bond I think um that um when he explained I should explain what's going on here you should show me Charming Charlie and that Charlie just loves the guy and U for many different reasons um uh and I said all right and we improvised it in a in a hotel uh wrote down some notes and uh there was the I had to squeeze it in the last day of shooting and we shot the whole thing in an hour and a half part of it I forgot some of the notes at back at the hotel I was like and so he had to remember everything um and he did the problem was um uh that the scene went on very long time and in the edit uh I would show the film to a few friends uh here and there we always they always said cut this cut this scene down cut it down you don't need all this you don't need the Scene goes on too long but I said but it really it really really um it's the foundation of the movie actually it turns out to be and when I showed it to cassavetes he said don't cut it and at the last minute was Jay was with me Jay Cox I said should I put the whole scene back in because we're going to show it to John see what he thinks he said put it all in now let's see what he says cuz if he turns around and said it's going on too long that's something you know and instead he said said don't touch it and um that's how the scene wound up in the picture but it almost didn't although I think it would have eventually been that way but it was a tricky thing at that time with showing your film to a few friends you know um the other thing about that was that uh I decided at that point because Mean Streets was a film made in 72 was shown in 73 and at that point the only way you saw movies was on a big screen you saw them on television but you didn't see movies like this on TV cuz if you did and eventually main streets were shown on CBS Late Night movies it was edited to the point where it was I'm on guard was wild so what the hell is going on in this thing and whoa you know Rocko and his brothers that way too and then taxi driver was the worst it was cut down to 45 minutes I'm not kidding but at least it said edited for TV no kidding my God so you don't make it for that audience you're not going to make it for that or you make it for this screen therefore I was able to having had just seen again Red River on the big screen and the New Yorker a few years earlier I realized again of course all the films I saw in the late 40s and early 50s meant for the big screen so you could take a shot from below the knee up and it'll hold and it's very like Hawks I love the way Hawks did that in Ford but primarily Hawks and so with um this scene everything visually U becomes um very in a in static frame frame in a way very very controlled frame showing as much as possible the full body um as opposed to other scenes in the film which has a lot of camera movement a lot of action that sort of thing but I felt confident um because I knew that that the film would only be shown on a big screen and then within eight or nine years it was the video that um came into play the ancillary markets the Z channel in La that showed a film uncut um but we never planned those shots for a small screen one thing we have to talk about in that clip and if there's anybody in the room who has never seen that clip before a scene where somebody a major character walks into a room in slow motion set to the intro of a song it's worth pointing out that this man did it first thank you thank you so much we have to give you the credit thank you because the whole the whole soundtrack is that way and um I think it was the first film to use the I I don't know where John taplan and Perry how they got the finances to buy two songs by the Stones and Clapton Derek and the dominoes and uh uh uh and it worked within the budget at that time I think it was I think it was a situation where nobody had done it and there was some of that in Easy Rider but that's West Coast they had motorcycles and long hair well had long hair too but not that long but what I mean is that it was a different cultural thing born to be bad and that sort of thing but that came from a whole other world U it's a big country you know there's a big difference in the coasts uh and so this was a kind of urban soundtrack in a way um that I don't think anybody had just except of course in the short film The Great Kenneth anger with the Scorpio Rising you know which was I think only 35 minutes but boy it was a it was a mindblower yeah know um after main streaks you made Alice doesn't live her anymore which is fantastic and your first Hollywood studio production but I'm always interested to read when you say that you never consider yourself a Hollywood guy well I didn't I tried to be you have that great line you have a great line in Curb Your Enthusiasm where you say I used to live in Los Angeles but they asked me to leave yes they asked me to leave they all lined up they were outside the door could you leave now when are you leaving there's a plane outside said no wait till tomorrow okay no really that was like uh you know they asked me to leave around 79 7879 you know uh not just for the film making I mean it was what can I say we were younger and we were like I was uh going through um teenage rebellion at the age of 26 and 27 in a way uh well no I mean Mean Street was don't was 29 so I would think right was 3132 is where I really blew out the uh the gears in a way well speaking of which let's look at a clip from the explosive next collaboration with Robert daero Taxi Driver this is a somewhat famous scene yeah faster than you saw you coming you [ __ ] [ __ ] heel I'm standing here you make the move you make the move you move try it you [ __ ] you talking to me you talking to me you're talking to me then who the hell else are you talking talking to me well I'm the only one here who the [ __ ] do you think you're talk talking to oh yeah huh okay huh listen you [ __ ] you screw heads here is a man who would not take it anymore who would not let listen you [ __ ] you screwheads here is a man who would not take it anymore a man who stood up against the scum the [ __ ] the dogs the filth the [ __ ] here is someone who stood up here is you're dead now wow I haven't seen that in years I haven't seen that so long yeah I'm sure for like everybody here that film is etched in my brain forever and uh I actually picked it for my Sight and Sound top ten list and I said it was so vividly powerful that you start to worry about the mental well-being of everybody making it I mean what it's a serious question what is the process of making a film like that that is so intensely felt well they're all all consuming I should say but um this was uh from Paul's script Paul shus script something I felt very strongly about and again Brian depalmer introduced me to the script and they wouldn't take me seriously until I made Mean Streets the producers and that's what boxar birth and no I was just a Corman film they felt but when they saw dairo and me in Mean Streets they realized they can get the money Michael and Julia Phillips uh and I think Tony Bill too to get Taxi Driver made at at a studio and the reason why I say but I'm not a Hollywood director these it's very very difficult to get Studio financing for these kinds of films Mean Streets was an independent film Alice you can get Alice was a different story um taxi was a major fight and um when I got to UA uh New York New York and Raging Bull were were um and lass Waltz were uh uh easily accepted by them it was a very different uh that's why UA was so important at the time United Artists but in any event the passion for the picture uh maybe it had to do too with my own um uh my own Coming of Age so to speak in life um my own anger and my own um frustration uh I don't know being somebody who couldn't really defend myself in the streets that well physically um uh having to find a way to survive through uh wit songs dances and witty sayings sort of thing uh where I had to use my head to get in and out of situations and uh uh and knowing that there was a world out there besides where I came from where very often the um the one who who who won so to speak who won the argument was by force you know not all the time because I realized too the ones who didn't use Force were more powerful and uh here is a frustrated man he's a man who um uh has come from uh Vietnam um and he uh uh he is overwhelmed with this passion I had some passion I we had the passion for this this character is very disturbing you know what it was I had read years ago when I saw it was Richard Brooks's fault because I saw Brothers Karam mazov at the Radio City Music Hall now it may not be a successful film but it don't introduce me to DVI so I just started reading dovi and I read some of caramazza which I reread again 10 years ago but um uh um and I just reread Crime and Punishment and then and uh you know the idiot is my favorite and Kaza but the one that really hit me was Notes from Underground and that's where I had my connection shreder I think had that in there too but he comes from a different world very different thing and he also had arth the bremma diary and some other things but um I really connected with the underground man I felt that I was him a lot of people did when they read the Notes from Underground and I was maybe looking for a way out and I think if you get through all of dovi you find that in karamazov and the idiot particular kza he finds the way out of being the underground man but here we're stuck in the underground and not only is he the underground man who turns violent you know crosses that line from in from sanity to Insanity he's rewarded for it he's rewarded um and it's it's uh an ambiguous uh sense of um celebrating the violent you know um but we put ourselves into to it and we fought everybody we fought everybody uh down the line during the shoot it was a very hard shoot uh when you hear those tracks of him improvising you're talking to me you hear those drums that's outside uh people in the streets was Colombian neighborhood or something and they were playing music and stuff today they would say because there's a a plane that goes over you're talking to me you have to Loop it I say no don't Loop anything do this looping be careful you know um I mean cavetti Rel looped faces a number times but it's a different process because uh the technology now uh seems to be something everybody just you we can't have that maybe you can you know you're talking to technicians no you got to be an artist you got to go past technology you got to the technology has got to be made to you to use it's things where you you try something crazy you know so the airplane is over there and all that noise but um Bob improvised you talking to me I asked him to talk into the to the Mirror there's a shot of him twirling the gun which kind of comes from Shane um but primarily I was at his feet and I was just saying do it again and he would do it again and then he just got into a rhythm you know um and actually it was one of I think it's the only scene I ever gave to an editor in Russia's form and walked out of the room and came back this this is Hollywood their editor was Tom Ralph and um I said see if you could just pull the best parts for me and he was a real Pro uh it's one of the reasons I he was great but we didn't connect in terms of the Hollywood editors the main thing was to keep the director out of the editing room and I I wanted to be in there too of course and I was part of it and so but this one time I was working with Marshall Lucas on the film but he came in to do a little cutting and I said just try I I got all this footage of him you know circling around the camera circling around in slow motion the things Slide the gun coming out of his sleeve see what you could just wean it down for me and I gave it to him around 9 in the morning 10 in the morning and about 1 in the afternoon he came back and said I'll show you something I looked at it I said don't touch it it was great and that's his cut of that not the last part he said I'm not taking credit for the repetition he didn't like that and um and the idea was to keep me out of the editing room as much as possible but that was the one time that um I looked at it and I said it's it's so beautifully constructed what you did I just leave it just leave it um and uh since since A Raging Bull I've been working with Thelma scoon maker it's different because we started back in documentaries and what's great about thma a lot is that she has no film Theory she didn't bring anything to it she brings it as just just the the the the passion I should say the philosophy of it um and uh really has no preconceived ideas about which filmmakers are more important that sort of thing what kinds of theories whether it's uh or tourism or whether it's uh I don't know the latest theories of any kind of postmodern whatever that is so anything like that she just looks at the footage and so we could work together like we used to work in documentaries back in the 60s um and that's why I did that but um the the film did you know in the editing I got it together got it together and then it was received very very very badly by the studio and they uh said cut it the problem was we got an X rating and at that time an x- rating was deadly um but Midnight Cowboy had been released and they had just won the Academy Award so UA told me uh the guys at UA looked at me and said um Eric pcow and Mike medavoy they said give it to us tell War tell Columbia we'll buy it sight unseen with an X and we release it in the meantime they wouldn't even listen to me they kind of threw me out of the room with a with a statement saying cut it for an r or we cut it I was furious and I had no I had no I I I had no recall recourse to anything basically it was Julia Phillips and Michael Phillips who talked them through um and finally got it I I granted uh I remember Jerry Brown his Governor Jerry Brown his father Pat Brown came in and talked about it to the censor board um they were concerned about Jodie Foster in it um but primarily um was the Columbia Pictures and the the MPAA I had to trim some of the violence at the end not all but I I realized too that one way to get around the bloodbat so to speak and and the blood on the walls in the film I found when I was doing it looked fake to me and so maybe that's rationalization but what I did was I really wanted the film to be in this this um muted color scheme that uh John hon and oswal Mars worked out on Moby Dick back in 56 that was with the three strip Technicolor they did something very special with that and I wanted the whole film to be that way so I used this as an excuse to try it and so I drained some of the color out and made it slightly seier and different each shot was slightly different you had 15% color 20% black and white I mean uh 50 color 50 black and white the next shot I said we'll make that 70 color U 30 black and white and vice versa so each shot so that the blood became more um uh like I did Raging Bull in the same thing in terms of the blood in black and white to be less distracting um uh and um actually uh uh it gave the film the feeling of what I always wanted it to be was a Ouija photograph on the cover of a tabloid The Daily News of the Daily Mirror in New York it's where I grew up and my father only read those papers not the New York Times and so for me that was the reality and a couple of times some of one time one of the persons I knew was on the cover of that uh uh daily uh dead shot by the police so um it just stayed with me and so I used that maybe as a rationalization in a way as compromising with the npaa but the film didn't need the red the red color I felt it was Stronger that way I even kept the I even kept the opening credit I should say the opening um logo of Colombia uh grainy and tough and whenever the film was restored they said we're going to fix that opening shot the opening logo I said No don't touch it that's the way it should be you know but uh with those compromises so to speak we got as far as we could with the release and um that was the end of it but the film stayed with me and I think ultimately led to a a two and a half year I say um uh delving into a or just kind of loss of of of uh where was I going to go next where was I going to go I tried with New York New York I tried many different things but I didn't know where the hell I was going creatively and um it depressed me a great deal and I almost uh lost out completely well it's interesting I seen a lot of recent interviews that you've done like you talk about fighting the good fight for grown-up cinema today but in essence you were doing exactly the same thing in the 80s you know you maybe swimming against the tide of what your contemporaries were doing or perhaps even what some audience wanted to see and like so they're Classics now but raging ball king of comedy Last Temptation Of Christ all all came with a personal sacrifice to make them so there's an element of tenacity you have to have a as a filmmaker to will these into existence I I I I I agree with the tenacity and I think also a lot of it had to do with um uh your behavior at times and you're making films or after film comes out it's successful I think part of it I realized too was uh I still had the desire to utilize film make film tell stories but what story the hell I want to tell is really what was going on and where was I going to go the kind of stuff that was being made in in the studio system it just wasn't working for me and they tried we all tried together it gave me a different ideas and I said no but primarily it was it's the old the old song Nobody Knows you when you're down and out and when you're down and out you get kicked and it happened a lot and I kept coming back is what it was um and I going to throw one more at you this way and then another way and ultimately it's a it's a battle and it was not giving up and maybe the films weren't as good as the ones that that in the 70s but it didn't matter I had to get certain things made the way I wanted to make them um and I was lucky to find people who actually Finance these things you know whether it was um after hours and I was Warner Brothers and David geffin Amy Amy Robinson and Griffin Dunn were um ultimately Last Temptation you know even to a certain extent New York stories which which was kind of enjoyable um at the same time because of certain things that I did I owed the studios certain films I should say films I going say certain films for some reason in the mid 80s after Mike Ovitz took over my uh uh career um and changed everything for me um he uh pointed out you owe a film to Warner Brothers how did that happen the hell is that so anyway somehow I ow her from that became Good Fellas so we twisted and turned it and they all knew I wanted to make L tempation to Christ I was starting on Good Fellas and Terry seml looked at me he said I know you I finally got the financing for Last Temptation and he said said I know you want to make that picture the whole the whole all of Hollywood knows it was a long story go and make it but you come back and finish this one and that's what we did uh we before we talk about Good Fellas which we don't have a clip of because frankly any member of the audience could get up here and recite any scene verbatim which we're not going to do but I do want to show a clip one other Rober Jiro clip of a film that according to your Tik Tok with Franchesca this week is considered slept Tom of the time I think he did very well I don't know what sneaky links either I don't know what sneaky links are either let's watch a clip from The Amazing king of [Applause] [Music] comedy first of all Miss Long thank you very much for your help at the office and for passing this on to Jerry I appreciate it more than you know now Jerry before I begin I just want to thank you for listening to this material and for the opportunity you've given me you know lots of people think that guys like you you know people who have made it lose their feeling for struggling young talents such as myself but now I know from experience that those people are just cynics EMB bidded by their own failure I know Jerry that you are as human as the rest of us if not more so oh well I guess there's no point going on about it you know how I feel so let's get on with the show The Best of Rupert pupkin Jerry I've sketched out this little outline in order to save you a little bit of time time okay it's a little introduction so close your eyes and imagine it's exactly 6:00 you're standing in the wings and we hear Lou Brown and the orchestra strike up your theme [Applause] song and now from New York it's the Jerry Langford show with Jerry's guests Richard prior Ben gazara Elizabeth Ashley Carol Bernett and the comedy find of the year making his television debut rer pupkin the new king of comedy rert are you crazy matter with you m was sleeping lower it what's the matter with you mom take it easy lower it I I'm not going to lower it I have to do this now I don't mind you playing it but lower it now you come on Jerry and you do your monologue and then when the time comes this is how I see you introducing me you could say something like this will you please give your warmest welcome to the newest king of comedy rert pupkin good evening ladies and gentlemen my name is Rupert puppet I was born in Clifton New Jersey which was not thatal is there anyone here but the fact is that no one is allowed to be because once you fall below a certain [Applause] one everyone else can you can you tell everybody who Rupert's mother is that's my mother and that's improvised that's what I when I was listening to watching British films on TV lower that you know late at night people are trying to sleep but don't and Mom he improvised the whole thing that was the only time I ever saw dairo crack up laughing because at one point he said if if uh they come down here and touch my stuff I'm going to get get a killer attacked dog and she goes that's to be another mouth to feed and then he started laughing I wonder what he was doing he was going shoulders are shaking but she didn't care she was upstairs and she just is yelling at him but I'd forgotten that I've forgotten all about that that's pretty interesting and you see what happened when the film came out I got to say I love watching you watch the clips and you turn to me when there's a great shot and go wow interesting no I I forgot about the audience thing I forgot about all that but the thing about it is um the uh uh when the film was made I I I I was having a little trouble shooting the film it took me about a a long time to shoot it and I think I was having trouble Coming to Terms of myself too how much of me is rert how much of me is Jerry how much wants to be Jerry but Jerry is a mess too I mean all this going on and uh it maybe was a little too close to home and it was extremely uncomfortable it was very fine Bob was fine and my uh you know Sandra Bernhard and everybody in Jerry um but I had difficulty uh shooting it because of that and in the editing too um U but finally uh myself thalma and and Michael Powell actually was there too helping out in the way and giving us uh support to finish the film but the key was when the film opened the people expected something from the combination of dairo scorsi that was not this and um it was soundly rejected except by some critics New York Times Time Magazine I think in New York um I remember the LA critic at the Times said when the film came out this is the best American Film so far this year the only thing was was February that's nice surpris but you know uh but by The End by I mean the film was decimated ultimately by uh uh the Entertainment Weekly was new and as I would tell the story in the Tik Tok actually is right I was New Year's Eve 83 to 84 and the film didn't do well and I'm putting my tie on to go to again J Cox's apartment I have New Year's Eve and I said and then the the TV Entertainment Weekly or Entertainment Tonight was on it was a new show too and it was the beginning of like People magazine um celebrity business that was really going to go to the roof as we know um and it said and now the flop of the year and I looked over and a curtain opened there was my poster and I oh wow you know so then I went into um uh and also at that same time my first Venture into making Last Temptation Of Christ had been cancelled and I couldn't even I had to move back to New York I mean really move back to New York and stay there took everything out of the house that I was renting um and uh I was there were no films nothing gone and so after hours came out of that but start all over again in a way to learn how to make a film where you need less money and less crew you follow and less shooting days I mean um I I think you took some of that principle into Good Fellas and what I mean that film was not rejected a huge critical commercial success I mean I would say that it's one of the most influential films of all time some filmmakers have made their entire careers out of ripping it off so two questions one is are you flattered by the homages or outright theft of techniques and Good Fellas and two when you were making it did you have any idea of the Legacy that it would have now no not at all not at all I I wanted to be like a standup I like standup and because standup is the bravest thing you could do I think you know because if they don't like you they don't like you personally it's you there's nobody else with you you know you know well the cameraman did that and the other actor no no no no no it's you get out of here yeah and so like you're up there and you're you're ripping your guts out and it's funny you're making fun of yourself usually and um I wanted it to be like that I wanted it to be as fast and and as as fast meaning and I'm I know I'm speaking too fast right now but we have short amount of time I'm trying to get as much in but the thing about it is um uh I wanted to be as revealing as as The Way It Was Written In the book that Nick pigi put together from Henry Hill and I said why can't it be as off-handed as that and taking off-hand meaning a sense of riffing Freedom where you tend to go off on a tangent and not sure if you're ever going to come back to main theme but somehow you rail it in you bring it in and um it's really a matter of pacing and timing um in very much um uh the same way as uh uh like the first two or three minutes I always say of Jules and Jim which I said' what if the whole movie like that two hours 10 minutes the whole film at that pace because it's not a matter of consuming an image it's being overwhelmed by it being overwhelmed by a frame of mind being overwhelmed by the star of the movie I remember one famous critic said it's Scarface without condemning the film it's Scarface without Scarface I said that's right it's about the whole lifestyle that's the star the star of the movie when the Henry Hill is our you know Virgil taking Dante down through the through the um lower depths he never makes it to the to even Purgatory but he you know he tries to get there so in a way um is it a documentary or kind I'm not quite sure I started that's why I always make documentary or films that I considered documentaries around the same time um I'm trying to to say that well really is ultimately no such thing anymore as a a documentary I think it's a film um it's different from Humphrey Jenning it's different from gron um that's a specific thing they wrote films like that made now for specific reasons and more journalist Cinema I think but why can't it just be a film if it's music let's say the film we just did on David Johansson uh Personality Crisis one night only um was basically him at the cafe carile in New York with some flashbacks but why can't it flow like a piece of music why does it have to have a structure of beginning middle and an end I know Godard said every film should have a beginning middle and an end but not necessarily in that order so but what if you do start at the end and what if you do start in the middle what if you you know so it's interesting playing with the form and I find that trying to make films that are non-fiction are really movies too like um the George Harrison Living in the material world um which opened up uh gave me a sense of pushing narrative if I could uh as far as I could I forget the film I think I was making youo but that's different that was a very clearly cut picture was made uh with a lot of love or my childhood my my daughters and my grandchildren and that sort of thing but um I think uh departed for example was influenced by the doc the non-fiction films I was making the only problem with the part is that I had to keep sticking to the plot which was really hard well to jump into this Century which sounds very strange to say but like you made um at the start of you know you made three comes with leanard of DiCaprio a sort of a new creative collaborator in the same um way as Robert and am I right in thinking that Robert DeNiro was the person who introduced Leo to you yes he did he actually uh he never usually uh uh said you should work with this person or that person but one day he did on a phone call about something else he did say I just did this film called This Boy's Life and that had this kid Leo decaprio you should meet him you should work with him sometime he's really good I think it's always the thing I think it's interesting about the films you did with Leo in this period I say Leo like he's my friend sorry um but I think it's interesting the films you did is that he seemed at that time he's the hottest actor on the planet and he's running away from his Mata Idol status in Titanic and into your arms as somebody like you're a Fearless filmmaker and he's an actor that then is is willing to do whatever you want him to do he's completely Fearless to well as much as possible again it was Mike obitz who put it all together who brought um Rick Yorn as our manager and now he's my manager and uh Leo DiCaprio to me because Leo like really liked the films I had made particularly the stuff with Bob diniro um and ultimately it was Leo who uh his participation in gangs in New York that got that film made and so I think whatever Leo was bringing to it um all I know is that he got the film made you know um in a way and so whether I was ready or not to make the film I'm not quite sure because I was so tied to those stories I don't know if I ever finished it um that's not a uh an apologia it's just something that's always on my mind about that time period um it's kind of extended into Killers the flower moon to a certain extent at least the thinking not not necessarily the behavior but um meaning long meaning use of narrative that way and tying many different threads together um but um I found that Leo by the end of the shoot was really open to trying anything pretty much and um I didn't really understand completely uh the um the image let's say from from which you say he was trying to change uh I only saw Titanic once and you know I brilliantly made film all I know is um he you know he seemed much younger in it to me and he was trying I think in gangs to look a little older but the real key is when when we worked on Aviator um after completing gangs in New York I I felt that something was taken off my shoulders uh whether it was um whether I was completely satisfied with it or not didn't matter it was done it was done under those circumstances that was the best I could do and suddenly they said what do you want to do next I said I want to make a movie next um meaning maybe material that I hadn't worked with before that I hadn't thought about was the next thing for me was silence but I hadn't hadn't worked out the script yet I had something but it wasn't quite right and I needed more thinking more internalizing with silence and so um they sent me a script said don't read the main don't read the title page and it was Aviator uh and I read it the first five pages and I see these guys making a film and then I said oh no it's how it use I don't want to do that I said well because uh Warren batty and Spielberg they always wanted to do how it Ed but then as I read it I was I enjoyed it so much John Logan script and it also dealt with Howard Ed in the early days as an aviator and also as a filmmaker but also Al he was afraid of mixing the peas on his plate with the meat and he was afraid of touching a door knob ah now there's something so now we get into this and also I am not a great flyer so I wanted to learn more about flying seriously I got into it and uh not that I'd have a be a pilot or anything but um you know uh am still not great at it but um uh I wanted to know more about this man gets in a little silver tube and then lands in a beat field or or or tries to land a bigger plane in the Beverly Hills Golf Course and lives through those the accidents that that occurred maybe four times that he had such trauma to his brain um what deep Secret in him was keeping him from touching that door knob you know um what was his psychological makeup uh uh also that John Logan was able to navigate the extraordinary uh U pallet of different women through his life and he was able to Nar to focus it on Katherine heurn and a bit on faith de merg and of course a little bit on um on um Ava Gardner um and so that simplified that area because the same passion I think was there for everything he did in his life um and I was fascinated by that and during that process I think you know looking back at I think as a person he he grew he just grew we were making the film and there was a maturing of him as a person and also in the film too towards the end it really was um I remember him sitting there in that white leather chair which is based on the real um screening room of Howard use and he's naked and he's sitting there a beam of light behind his head and he says bring in the milk bring in the milk bring in the milk 10 times and he's got a beard and long hair and his nails are growing and at one point a lot of the times people were saying I think you have to show the old Howard use in Vegas you have to show I said now if you show the old guy with the beard and and all that that's a whole other film I said this is more interesting to that would be an interesting film if you stay there and if you really build on it but we don't have that here and so there was a lot of talk about it and finally when we shot that scene which took quite a while because uh took a few days because of the uh makeup cuz he had been burned in the plane plane crash um I think we shot it and and by the way the film was shot on schedule it was a 90-day shoot but it was on schedule it was a tough shoot but uh after I looked at the rushes I I told Leo I said take a look at this because it's the old Howard we don't need to shoot anything more on Howard this is what he becomes he's there in the screening room writhing on the floor you know with scenes from Hell's Angels and the outlaw projected on his back you know saving his urine in the bottles it's important because the the the acidity in the urine is important okay he's not going to leave that room you know he's got definite you know all the rituals as to taking one piece of paper out of his pocket and putting in another it's very important otherwise the whole world's going to collapse um before we get on to a talk about killers of the flow Moon i' just like to show a clip from one of your films with l de Caprio we're going to see a clip from Wolf of Wall Street oh okay it's one of my favorite scenes hello John how you doing today you mailed in my company a postcard a few weeks back requesting information on penny stocks that had huge upside potential with very little downside RIS ises that ring a bell yeah okay great well reason for the call today John is something just came across my desk John it is perhaps the best thing I've seen in the the last 6 months if you have 60 seconds I'd like to share the idea with you you got a minute name of the company Aero International it is a Cutting Edge high-tech firm out of the Midwest awaiting imminent patent approval on a next generation of radar detectiv that have both huge military and civilian applications now right now John the stock trades over the- counter at 10 cents a share and by the way John our analysts indicate it could go a heck of a lot higher than that your profit on a a $6,000 investment would be upwards of $60,000 Jesus that's my mortgage man exactly you could pay off your mortgage stock will pay my John one thing I can promise you even in this market is that I never ask my clients to judge me on my winners I ask them to judge me on my losers because I have so few and in the case of atine based on every technical factor out there John we are looking at a grand slam home run okay let's do it I'll 4 grand 4,000 that'd be 40,000 shares John let me lock in that trade right now and get back to you with my secretary with an exact confirmation sound good John sounds great hey John thank you for your vote of confidence and welcome to the investor Center yeah thanks a lot man bye-bye how'd you [ __ ] do that just like that I made two grand the other guys looked at me like I just discovered fire now whoa tell them uh tell them who was the voice on the phone that's me I bought those shares well look he he we made him president so I mean this similar to what you were saying I mean this there's a link actually to killer the flower Moon here in terms of um you know similar to what you saying with Taxi Driver you know some of your films people are punished for their sins and in Wolf of Wall Street they are celebrating no no they become I mean like in a sense you know uh saying that that politically the country they they elected them yes well I mean it's uh why that's not controversial no because it's about kill go get the money lie do anything you want you can't do anything to me I have all the you know when you say listen I don't have to pay taxes to a certain extent because I have Smart lawyers right it's true it's in it's legal doesn't mean it's right but it's legal so I mean that's the thinking right there in that movie I mean the link to the current movie um you know speaking of Wars I mean this is the first starring Leonardo dicapri and Rob daera together in a film of yours is also about Predators killers of the flow moon now a lot of the audience won have seen it but um is about such a ugly chapter in American history and uh and still an open wound but I'm ashamed to say that until the book came out I wasn't really aware of the oil boom in the O Nation in the 20s all the murders that follow so was is this a chapter of history that had essentially been covered up to some extent completely yeah I mean when it was happening there were a lot of um uh articles uh in uh you know something with like Penny dreadfuls I guess or kind of a popular press but there were also articles in Harper's magazine which were actually much th much more thorough and more realistic and uh actually pointed out the uh the difficulties and the the TR they were having but um uh the big thing was that it was well known throughout the country of the rich Native Americans even in musical numbers in movies in the 50s there was always a movie there was always a number with the Native Americans dancing around uh with oil shooting up behind them um uh but the thing about it was the the by the 1958 um nobody remembered it except when they made a film which was ultimately a um a film of support for Hoover and the FBI called the FBI story and mvin looy directed it and it basically is Jimmy Stewart's in it and it basically is a series of the the big the best you know the greatest hits of the FBI um again uh very much the the issue of uh the 1930s um the 20s and 30s um of Hoover working out uh dealing with American Crime which had to do with Barker and her brood Baby Face Nelson Pretty Boy Floyd uh G Men coming in you know Bunny and Clyde and that's what the America the last of the American Outlaws ignoring completely that apparently there was this very big crime syndicate that came from Mediterranean working in America he didn't know about it apparently so he he concentrated primarily on um the local Outlaws the last of the Jesse James or the the AL Jennings or that sort of thing and in so doing this film um he hit these extraordinary actual um vignettes there may be 15 20 minutes each one the film is about over two and a half hours and it has some beautiful things in it the film some beautifully staged scenes uh but one of the one of the sequences is the oage murders and um I think it's 15 minutes in the film one unfortunately um it put it portrays the oage as a um humiliating humiliation for them Reay has portrayed how they're spending money how funny they are they don't realize what you know uh a man has three pianos in his room and it really was was an offensive an offensive work at that time which we all accepted I was 15 or 16 years old that's what we thought New York we didn't know we thought everything had been settled we Native Americans and Indigenous we didn't understand um and and they do uh have uh uh scenes with the house blowing up and that sort of thing in fact um uh although people haven't seen the film I don't want to give it away but I thought of actually recreating the shooting of that film towards the end of my film but instead i' went another way yes yeah but that was the only time and that was always looked upon as those indigenous people who don't understand what money is and don't understand about the Manifest Destiny wait of course not you know and it was really really presented in a um an awful way um but it was almost like a cartoon in a way the film really builds up beautifully for the killing of the the big one John Dillinger at the U Biograph Theater in Chicago that's quite a sequence it's a beautifully made but aside from that the sequence on the o AG was uh unfortunate I I mean in in collaboration with the oage nation you changed the focus of the film from the book somewhat I mean that is what be you know we had to I tried to make it I mean I I grew up watching westerns and I loved westerns because you know I couldn't go anywhere I couldn't go near animals I couldn't run I couldn't so because of the asthma um and for me that's where I saw the outdoors whenever they try to take me to a place a park or whatever I start to get an asthma attack or sneeze or get into an allergic reaction to all the um uh to the nature around me and so for me to see it on the screen where animals are on the screen and beautiful horses palominos and paint pain horses um you know this was a heaven for me to see this um again you know the American Western ended with the Wild Bunch so that was that that ended part of the history of America too in a way and so the Western from that point on I don't know what that is it's something else would I be interested in doing a revisionist western to show that W her really wasn't that good a guy who cares nobody care I mean we could see it for Ford me Ford hits it and even in two Road together you get some of that and like you could see it on television maybe or in a documentary or a journalistic documentary but like who cares really um if you do so then you have to find something deeper in her and deeper in the clantons and deeper in that whole way of thinking um and I think that's what this afforded me the story I tried to push through and have the story in the film um approached the story from the point of view of what David gr did in the book beautifully which was from the Bureau of Investigation they weren't called the FBI at that point they came in from Hoover he sent them in and Hoover wasn't Hoover at that time it was just beginning um and uh he had no choice because the place blew up the house blew up uh and I tried to do it but and Leo was going to play Tom white who was the uh Federal the federal agent but I found that after two and a half years working on the script with Eric Eric Roth and making Irishman during the same time I found that um I I really both Leo and I couldn't find a way to to to to see anything different or new that we could project in Tom white who is the uh the FBI ultimately The Bureau Investigation agent and um if he couldn't find it and I tried my best with Eric who tried the script so many different ways and a lot of people like the script had um at one point he came to me it was right before coid hit and the pandemic really knocked a lot lot of stuffing out of us so to speak and we had to really rethink the picture but I was glad that I had that time to rethink it because he said to me where's the heart of the movie and I immediately said well it's Molly and Ernest because they're in love and I found that out from hanging out with the oage in Oklahoma because they point out you know it isn't as simple as people come in and shooting and poisoning it's people's trust and it's the Betrayal of trust and and I and they said don't forget that you know you have to understand that nnest and Molly despite everything they were in love well not to give away anything in the film um then if I show in that love relationship an incredible kind of um betrayal of trust um then that's the story because that's the essence of what they were doing with the uh uh the oage nation basically you know uh because they would say well they don't understand money was a I I think a European sensibility and um to a certain extent very religious uh Protestant I think idea of um you know uh sewing and reaping you know you work for your for your for your rewards in life and you get them well these natives they just standing on the land the oil came out they didn't work for it you know so they don't deserve it and on top of that they don't even really understand money like I can charge you a dollar for this glass of water they'll pay it then a week later I say it's $2 they'll pay it I you know what I'm working they're not what if we charge $25 they pay it so I get a little bit off the top that makes us all complicit see and it how the Insidious nature of complicity uh it seems to uh um find its way into the next thing you know it's a genocidal and that's what I wanted to get at in the movie and we do it but Ernest Leo turned to me and he said 'w if it's the heart of the picture is if the heart of the picture is uh Molly and and Ernest then I should play Ernest that's oh okay okay if you want to play Earnest and this means we're going to make this picture we have to take the script and rip it inside out which is what we did and we did it to the I must say the last day of shooting they told me you was he was going with Matt Williams for a time you talk too much I don't talk too much just thinking who I got to beat in this horse race that's all I didn't realize this was a race I don't care for watching horses well I'm a different kind of horse what was that that's how you are I don't know what you said but it must have been Indian for handsome devil [ __ ] I feel like so in a lot of kind of um you know recent interviews the sub subject of the current climate of Cinema comes up and you're asked to give a state of the union and I feel it's perhaps a little unfair that you're seen as the last line of defense I I I didn't want to be the last line of defense um because I just I I honestly think it's thrown back now at all you in the sense that um and I and I really mean this that I don't know where Cinema's going to go if it's why does it have to be the same as it was for the past 90 100 years it doesn't um do we prefer the ones from the 90 for the past 90 years I do but I'm old younger people are going to see the world around them you guys are going to see it in a different way you're going to see it fragmented you're going to see it I don't know from you come from another country you see it in one long take what does that take what does a shot mean now what does one shot mean I don't know anymore I don't think it means anything so therefore it's a complete like we took the script of of uh of killers of the flow Moon and turned it inside out and that's what's happened with Cinema now so it's really up to everybody in you're all in the process of a period of Reinventing it you know it's quite extraordinary time and a lot of it has to do with the technology I mean if I was able to shoot if I able to have a digital or even just video a really good video before digital I would have shot mean streets in that way I wouldn't had to pay for the lights in the camera to a certain extent yeah we would have still had to design the lighting but not as difficult I think uh it might give us a sense of Freedom um with the Technologies what happened with cassavetes and Charlie Clark they shot their pictures Shadows for example with the 16 millimeter a clair that gave us the impetus well you don't need the Mitchell BNC you don't need the giant um cranes would be nice for certain shots but you don't need for everything which means we don't need the studio so that's the freedom you have now it's so much freedom that I think you have to rethink what you want to say and how you want to say it and use that technology ideally what I hope is that I I hesitate to use the word but serious film could still be made with this new technology in this new world we're part of this even more dangerous New World um so that it can be enjoyed by an audience of this size on a big screen that's the key I'm afraid that the other films the the um spectaculars or the uh what do they called um franchise films will be taking over the theaters uh and uh I I always ask for the theater owners to maybe you know create a space where younger people would say they want to see this new film which is not a franchise film in a theater sharing it with everybody around them um so that they want to go to the theater that it's something inviting it doesn't get you to the point where you say I could see it at home you follow because that the experience of seeing a film with a lot of people is really still the key I think but I'm not sure that that can that could be easily achieved at this point you still want people to be film directors not content providers no yeah the content means it's you're something you eat and you throw away content is like you know uh it's candy I don't know what content it's Madness to think you're making content but content means when you know I I have the TV on I like having on all the time that's when I was growing up that's the way it was and um now of course I keep TCM on as much as possible um but if not there's some you know every now and then there's a channel that's showing certain uh Halloween is nice they show all the horror films and things so you just have it on I don't have the sound up but that's content it becomes content you see um uh it's something that you have it's almost like in when radio before television the radio was on in America all the time it was a voice going on in the background or from people keep a TV on to hear a voice you know that's all that is um but if you want to uh have an experience which can enrich your life it's different you can't be thought of as content well on behalf of everybody here I'd just like to say thank you for your films thank you for all you've done for Cinema and thank you for all you continue to do for Cinema ladies and gentlemen Mr Martin sces thank you thank you

Channel: BFI

Views: 296,452

Keywords: British Film Institute (Publisher), British, film, institute, films, movie, movies, cinema, BFI, Martin Scorsese, Edgar Wright, culture, interview, Q&A, filmmaking, directing, writing, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, American cinema, classic film, Goodfellas, Raging Bull, The Wolf of Wall Street, Killers of the Flower Moon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tik Tok, Mean Streets, Taxi Driver

Id: l-4ULfDDySU

Length: 94min 54sec (5694 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 11 2023