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The inner Scorsese
Interview, Jan, 1998 by Graham Fuller
GF: What personal challenges remain for you?
MS: I would love to be able to - and this is ego speaking - grow as a filmmaker. Which means I have to assume I had something as a filmmaker to start with, and I'm not sure about that anymore. Some of my films are very strong, I think. I'll sign them any day. But I wonder if there's anyplace left to go - I really do. I wonder if I had anyplace to go to begin with. I know I had it with Mean Streets, I'll tell you that. I honestly don't think I had enough money or time to execute it the way I wanted to, but the force of the actors blasted through it. The other stuff? I don't know. Raging Bull came mostly from Bob [De Niro]; I just found my own way in it. I survived a damaging life experience in order to make that picture. To qualify as what? Part of a hierarchy of filmmakers? Someone who has resonance for filmmakers in the future? Even that, ultimately, is not enough.
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Oliver Stone once asked me - this was about seven years ago - "What do you want to do in movies?" We were teasing each other, and he was provoking me. And I had the audacity to say, "I make pictures that I hope will last." And he laughed at me and said, "You make pictures to last?" What he meant was, "Your ego is out of control." [laughs] But I would like my pictures to speak to people in the future, and to mean something to them. And I'm trying like hell, but it's very hard in this marketplace.
GF: Could you make a Cape Fear again?
MS: I don't think so. The fun there was De Niro, you see. He had this idea of playing this guy a certain way, and I knew if he had fun with that we would enjoy making the picture. Casino was a hybrid between American marketing and my own kind of film, but I don't know if I want to make more hybrids. The project I'm working on now with Nick Pileggi, which is about Dean Martin and American show business, has an element of hybrid about it, as does the George Gershwin project I'm doing with John Guare. But if I wasn't able to incorporate my own interests, I wonder if I could still direct. In a way, I admire hardworking journeymen directors who actually go out there and do a job. I think they have a certain humility that I lack. Because of my asthma, I've been kind of pampered all my life: I've never really had a job. I've never waited on tables. I mean, I'll he working on Kundun till late tonight, but that's something I want to do.
GF: As someone who's always made very personal films, it's surely impossible to keep your personal preoccupations at bay. And as an artist, It's not even desirable.
MS: No, I think that's important. As a filmmaker, you're naturally competitive. But you have to realize that it doesn't matter how your films are going to stack up against other people's. You have to stop whining about it and just get to work. Just do it. Because in the work is your existence. That's what you're here for.
COPYRIGHT 1998 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
