Martin Scorsese Opens up About Tentpoles, Legacy, and Collaborations

Is there anyone with a deeper understanding of cinema than Martin Scorsese? The guy lives and breathes storytelling, and he's been doing that for over 50 years. Scorsese recently sat down with Deadline to talk about what it's like working in Hollywood today. 

Scorsese is putting the finishing touches on Killers of the Flower Moon, a $200 million mystery drama about a series of killings of the Osage Native American tribe in the early 1900s. 

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Lately, the press has been obsessed with the movie's supposed four-hour run time, but nothing has been confirmed. 

In that Deadline article, Scorsese confronted many things while looking back at his career. Of course, Scorsese made headlines a few years ago when he said Marvel movies were closer to theme park rides than cinema. 

When pressed about whether or not tentpoles are important to growing Hollywood, he had a very calculated answer. 

Scorsese said:

"I do think there has to be a concentrated effort to nurture an appreciation for films that that audience will go see in a theater as they grow. Which means the theaters also have to help us. The theaters say, “Well, we played a smaller indie film.” Everything has become pigeonholed. But what if that screen is in a place that is comfortable? Not a closet with a screen that is smaller than the one you have at home. That means a person will come out and go to that theater with a few friends and respond to that picture. And you never know. That person may come out and write a script or a novel that becomes a script that becomes a tent-pole film that’s going to make more theaters more money in the future. Because maybe, like Spielberg and me, we go see Jules and Jim, and he becomes friends with Truffaut and Fellini. Those films influenced him."

Behind the scenes of 'Shutter Island'Credit: Andrew Cooper

With a career as long as Scorsese, you've pretty much seen it all. He's worked with De Niro ten times and DiCaprio six times.

Now, he has them both in the same feature film for the first time ever. 

So what's the difference between working with the two of them? 

"With Leonardo, there’s no shorthand. It’s longhand. We hang out and talk and get all kinds of research. I give him stuff to read, and music. He’s very good with music. As I say, he prompted me to think about Ernest rather than Tom White for him, even though there was very little written on Ernest, and he is the weakling, a man who was in love with his wife, but he’s poisoning her. He was like, 'Yeah. OK. How are we gonna do that?' He wanted to go into that uncharted territory. That’s the excitement. We did, and it’s hours and hours and days of work. On set. On the weekends. The film was day and night. Same with Bob, to a certain extent."

After spending so much time making films, Scorsese is not slowing down any time soon. He actually says he's just now seeing what cinema can be. 

"I’m old. I read stuff. I see things. I want to tell stories, and there’s no more time," Scorsese said. "Kurosawa, when he got his Oscar, when George [Lucas] and Steven [Spielberg] gave it to him, [Kurosawa] said, 'I’m only now beginning to see the possibility of what cinema could be, and it’s too late.' He was 83. At the time, I said, 'What does he mean?' Now I know what he means."

There's a bittersweet ending here. To be so obsessed with your art but have so little time with it overall. I hope Scorsese stays in great health and makes movies for a very long time. 

Read the rest of his reflection on Deadline.

Source: Deadline