I am grateful to the International Movie Data Base (IMDb) for the abundance of resources it provides about the entertainment industry. For example, about a multiple Academy Award Winner, Martin Scorsese.
Born 1942, he is a legendary American film director, writer, and producer, known for visually dynamic films exploring Italian-American life, Catholicism, guilt, and violence, emerging as a key figure in the New Hollywood era with classics like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Goodfellas, earning an Oscar for The Departed and numerous accolades for his influential career. Born in Queens and raised in Little Italy, his films are deeply rooted in his NYC upbringing and strict Catholic upbringing, influencing his themes of redemption, machismo, and crime.
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o His last name is correctly pronounced “Score-say-zee.”
o Taught both Oliver Stone and Spike Lee at New York University.
o He took a cameo in his film Taxi Driver (1976) (as a man about to kill his wife) only because the actor who was supposed to play the role was sick on the day the scene was to be shot. Says he is generally uncomfortable in front of the camera.
o Admits he made Hugo (2011) so he would have at least one film his daughter could watch.
o Has famously collaborated with Robert De Niro in eight films. Scorsese has said that his creative collaboration with De Niro is very deep and that they can often understand each other without even talking. Their collaboration has had many dry spells (including recently), but Scorsese says he shows almost every script he writes or considers directing to De Niro to see what the actor’s thoughts on them are even when De Niro ultimately has no involvement in the film.
o Says he was happy with the fact that it took so long for him to win Best Director, because if he had won it earlier, it would have affected his directing and films.
o When he won his Best Director Oscar for The Departed (2006), he received the award from legendary directors, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, and Steven Spielberg. The four were part of the “New Hollywood” movement of the 1970s and combined have nine Academy Awards and 38 nominations.
o Of the three films he has been trying to make since the mid-1970s, he has done two: The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) and Gangs of New York (2002). The third film, a biopic of Dean Martin called “Dino”, has been on hiatus at Warner Brothers since the late 1990s. Scorsese has a very specific all A-list cast in mind, probably why this has yet to be produced. He wants Tom Hanks to star as Martin, Jim Carrey to play Jerry Lewis, John Travolta to play Frank Sinatra, Hugh Grant to play Peter Lawford, and Adam Sandler to play Joey Bishop.
o Directed 20 different actors in Oscar nominated performances: Jodie Foster, Robert De Niro (four times), Joe Pesci (three times), Leonardo DiCaprio (twice), Daniel Day-Lewis, Cate Blanchett, Winona Ryder, Ellen Burstyn, Sharon Stone, Diane Ladd, Cathy Moriarty, Juliette Lewis, Lorraine Bracco, Paul Newman, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Alan Alda, Mark Wahlberg, Jonah Hill, Al Pacino, and Lily Gladstone. Burstyn, De Niro, Newman, Pesci and Blanchett won Oscars for their roles in one of Scorsese’s movies.
o He was one of three major directors to have been offered the opportunity to direct Schindler’s List (1993) by producer Steven Spielberg, the other two being Roman Polanski and Billy Wilder.
o Scorsese thought a Jewish filmmaker should direct this; Polanski was not yet ready to deal with the painful subject (having lost his mother in the Holocaust); and Wilder (who was retired and who lost his mother and grandmother in the Holocaust) finally told Spielberg that he should do this himself.
o He directed Michael Jackson’s music video Michael Jackson: Bad (1987). The full length video runs 16 minutes and is in both black and white and color. It is usually shortened down to just the color segment for television.
o Personally spurns the notion of the “director’s cut” feeling that once a film has been completed, this should not be further altered in any way.
o Roger Ebert is a great admirer of Scorsese’s work. 14 of Scorsese’s films were given four stars by Ebert (Mean Streets (1973), Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974), Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), After Hours (1985), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Goodfellas (1990), The Age of Innocence (1993), Casino (1995), Kundun (1997), Bringing Out the Dead (1999), The Aviator (2004), The Departed (2006), Shine a Light (2008)), seven of his films are in Ebert’s Great Movies list (Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, After Hours, The Last Temptation of Christ, Goodfellas and The Age of Innocence), and Ebert has written an entire book of his reviews, interviews and essays on Scorsese’s work simply titled “Scorsese By Ebert”.
o Has mentioned that he thought Robert De Niro’s best performance under his direction was as Rupert Pupkin in The King of Comedy (1982).
o Served as a guest critic on Siskel & Ebert (1986) following the death of Gene Siskel. The episode was “The Best Films of the 90s” in which Roger Ebert cited Scorsese’s Goodfellas (1990) as one of the best films of the 1990s (#3).
o Scorsese’s full list of his favorite films of the 1990s:
10.) Tie: Malcolm X (1992) and Heat (1995)
9.) Fargo (1996)
8.) Crash (1996)
7.) Bottle Rocket (1993)
6.) Breaking the Waves (1996)
5.) Bad Lieutenant (1992)
4.) Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
3.) A Borrowed Life (1994)
2.) The Thin Red Line (1998)
1.) The Horse Thief (1986).
o As a teenager in the Bronx, Scorsese frequently rented Michael Powell’s The Tales of Hoffmann (1951) from a store that only had one copy of the reels. When this was not available the owner told him, “that Romero kid has it”, referring to George A. Romero who was also a huge fan of the film. Today, both directors cite the film as a major influence.
o The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) is the highest-grossing movie of his 47-year career with a worldwide gross of $389,600,694.
o Was voted the fourth greatest director of all time by Entertainment Weekly, making him the only living person in the top 5 and the only working film director in the top 10 (Ingmar Bergman being retired as a filmmaker).
o Says the only thing he regrets in his career is that he was only able to make The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) on a small budget although he imagined it to be a grand version.
Has appeared in an “American Express” ad where he goes to pick up photos of his nephew’s birthday party at a drug store, and then proceeds to nervously pick through what’s wrong with each picture while trying to get the clueless photo-lab clerk’s opinion on them. He proceeds to buy more film with an American Express card and calls the people on the pictures saying they need to reshoot. Scorsese says this funny ad is probably the closest he’s come to accurately “playing” himself.
When asked where audiences would find the next Martin Scorsese, he said to look to Wes Anderson, the young director of Rushmore (1998).
Is a huge fan of Fawlty Towers (1975). He describes the episode, The Germans (1975), as “so tasteless, it’s hilarious”.
He and Robert De Niro were brought up blocks apart in the Greenwich Village area of Manhattan, but never formally met when they were young. When introduced at a party in 1972, the two came to realize that they had seen each other many times but had never spoken.
o Has worked with big names of music business: Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, U2, Michael Jackson and David Bowie.
The first movie he saw at the cinema was Duel in the Sun (1946), he was age 4.
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