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Tuesday, Oct 7, 2008
America's greatest living filmmaker on his 30-year quest to make "Gangs of New York," how he lost an Oscar to Kevin Costner and why he doesn't watch "The Sopranos."
Dec 20, 2002 | Who is the most important American filmmaker of the last 30 years? Strangely, you will encounter very little debate among movie critics and fans on this question. Since seizing the mainstream film world's attention with "Mean Streets" in 1973 (he had actually made several previous movies) and the bloody-minded, nightmarish and hauntingly beautiful "Taxi Driver" three years later, Martin Scorsese has been in a class of his own.
From "Raging Bull" to "The King of Comedy" to "The Last Temptation of Christ" to "Goodfellas," Scorsese's work has seemed to blend the grandest traditions of Hollywood with the rebellious spirit and artistic ambition of the young directors of the 1970s. Scorsese's work is informed both by the big, showboating spectacles he saw in his New York childhood during the 1940s and '50s and by the personal, intimate films of Italian neorealism and the French New Wave. His films are subjective, dynamic and individual, but his social canvas is always large and his appreciation of the social, cultural and political forces that come to bear on individual human life is both generous and sophisticated.
In the 1990s, Scorsese's films became even more diverse in focus and, at least arguably, were underappreciated as a result. In "Casino" (1995) he returned to a now-familiar realm of brash, even vulgar American violence and glamour, of the Mob and its mythologies. Perhaps he was bidding farewell to all that. "Casino" was sandwiched by journeys into unfamiliar territory: to the arcane social rituals of upper-class, turn-of-the-century Manhattan in "The Age of Innocence" (1993) and to Tibet, to tell the story of the Dalai Lama's childhood and the conquest of his nation, in the astonishing "Kundun" (1997). These may be among the best films of his entire career, but perhaps the lack of gunplay and retro-chic sets and costumes kept the multiplex crowds away.
After the commercial disappointment of "Bringing Out the Dead" in 1999 -- its vision of a drug-crazed, decaying 1980s New York perhaps at odds with the squeaky-clean image of the Rudy Giuliani era -- Scorsese turned to a massive project he had been considering for decades. "Gangs of New York," a sprawling, operatic saga of the street clashes between "nativist" Anglo-Americans and Irish immigrants that culminated in the horrific anti-draft riots of 1863, is that project. Since the Manhattan of 140 years ago has for all practical purposes disappeared under subsequent construction, Scorsese built an enormous New York set at the Cinecittà studios outside Rome for what became one of the most ambitious motion pictures of recent decades.
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Day-Lewis as leaders of the rival street factions, "Gangs of New York" opens Dec. 20. Even in a holiday season that features a new installment in the "Lord of the Rings" franchise (opening Dec. 18) and a Steven Spielberg '60s romp ("Catch Me If You Can," also starring DiCaprio, which opens Dec. 25), "Gangs of New York" comes with more artistic mojo attached, and higher stakes, than any other Hollywood movie of the year.
On Nov. 9, at the American Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, N.Y., Scorsese sat down with New York Times critic Janet Maslin for an interview and moderated discussion about "Gangs of New York," how and why he lost a 1990 Academy Award to Kevin Costner, the new generation of American filmmakers, his childhood in Manhattan's Little Italy and "The Sopranos." The event was presented as part of Pinewood Dialogues, the museum's ongoing interview series, in conjunction with the retrospective Martin Scorsese Directs. Here, Salon presents excerpts from the interview, edited slightly for length and clarity. You can find the full text and audio versions, along with many other filmmaker interviews and a wealth of related material, at the AMMI's Pinewood Dialogues Online Web site.
-- Andrew O'Hehir
Janet Maslin: You've been talking about "Gangs of New York" for 30 years.
Thirty years, yeah. Well, some of the things take a long time. "Last Temptation" was 15 years. "Mean Streets" was my whole life up to that point, you know.
Can you explain why it's taken 30 years to do this?
Having read the Herbert Asbury book, "Gangs of New York," back in 1970. It's a nonfiction book, but it also takes in the mythology of New York. And it goes back to a time of extraordinarily flamboyant folk tales of New York that go from the 18th century up to the 1920s. He wrote the book in 1926.
You read it when you were in your 20s, you were staying at somebody's house.
Yeah, a friend of mine was house-sitting for somebody out on Long Island. It was New Year's Eve and then New Year's Day. It was snowing outside, we were just by the fire, and I found these books. So this one said "Gangs of New York," and I took it out and started reading. They were reading "Time and Again," which had just been published. But I was reading "Gangs." When I told that to Harvey Weinstein, he said, "That tells the whole story." He's another one; he had heard me telling the stories for years and ... it's really about old New York. I mean, that's one of the problems. One of the problems [with making the film] was that none of the old New York exists.
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