Mr. Scorsese – S01E03 – Saint/Sinner – Transcript

Mr. Scorsese
Season 1 – Episode 3
Episode title: Saint/Sinner
Original air date: October 17, 2025
The series had its world premiere at the 2025 New York Film Festival, followed by its global digital release on Apple TV+ on October 17, 2025.

Plot: After a rebirth with Raging Bull and then a flop with The King of Comedy, Scorsese learns to work small again and pursues a passion project.

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Mr. Scorsese – S01E03 – Saint/Sinner | Transcript

[interviewer] Do you think if you don’t take yourself to the limits physically and mentally, it may have a

some sort of effect on your work?

Because you do push yourself a lot.

Yeah, to a certain extent, I think that’s true. I think it’s true.

[Martin Scorsese] In the ’70s, between New York, New York, the opening of that, and the opening of Last Waltz was ’78, I was not able, ultimately, with, uh, chemicals that I was putting in me, not being able to function, really.

There were these parties… and they were quite something.

For me, the sin is enjoyable.

I enjoyed when I was bad, I enjoyed a lot of it.

Of course, then I collapsed.

I was spending a lot of time with Robbie Robertson from The Band.

[Robbie Robertson] When we were living together and everything, we were very conscious of work.

We weren’t trying to get crazy, but it was really unhealthy.

And Marty got so run down, so run down.

You know, they call it “bottoming out.”

[Jay Cocks] I did see Marty pretty wired up.

It wasn’t like one foot over the precipice.

He was like Wile E. Coyote.

He was in the air, like this.

[Rebecca Miller] At some point, I’m not sure exactly the timing, but maybe you were still living together, when he ended up in the hospital and almost died because he was taking so much cocaine.

Yeah, um, it was in New York.

[Miller] Were you married when he was in the hospital?

[Isabella Rossellini]

No, but we were together.

I think I was 24 or 25 years old when I met Marty.

And I was working for Italian television, and I was doing interviews.

So I interviewed him for The Last Waltz, that just came out.

I knew that I was in the presence of somebody that was exceptional, but Marty did have a problem with drugs.

And then Marty, one morning, uh, woke up, and he was all black and blue as if somebody has beaten him.

I called the parents, he ended up in a hospital, and he was dying.

The doctor came in and he looked at me, he said, “Is this your blood?”

I said, “Yes.”

“You’re coming with me.”

I said, “No, I have work to do.”

“No, you’re not, you’re gonna have a brain hemorrhage any second.”

I was bleeding internally everywhere.

I was going to die, basically.

[Cathy Scorsese] My mother and my stepfather sat me down and they said, “It’s very bad, like he could die, it’s that bad.”

And I said, “I don’t want to go.

I’m scared.”

It was more I was scared.

The strangeness of it was that I did not accept the fact that I was dying.

Yet, it was like a very, very major part of me wanted to.

[Miller] Why?

I didn’t know how to do the work anymore.

I didn’t know how to create anymore. Simple.

[Scorsese] A friend of mine took me to the emergency ward, and, uh, left me there, basically.

And I was in there ten days and nights, pumped me full of cortisone.

And then Bob came to the hospital.

We had been taking a break.

I had said, “Where are we going as a collaboration?

What stories do we want to tell?”

[Miller] Can you remember coming to the hospital?

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, um…

…I was worried about him.

And… I… [sighs] I was starting to work on Raging Bull. [Irwin Winkler] While we’re doing New York, New York, Bob carried around the Raging Bull book with him all the time.

It was about Jake LaMotta, a really tough, tough guy, and, you know, really questionable character. And I’m being kind.

Bob kept pushing him, saying, “Come on, let’s make this movie” and Marty kept saying no.

Driving me crazy with doing this boxing movie.

You know, I don’t do sports.

I couldn’t imagine anybody else doing it.

It had to be him.

[Scorsese] So Bob is there at the hospital.

[De Niro] It was a question that I was thinking that maybe he won’t do it.

I said, “You know, this is…

This is something to do.”

And looked at me and said, “What the hell do you wanna do?

You wanna die like this?” You know.

“You wanna die?”

It was a low point, and I said, “Marty…” [exhales] “You’re right for this picture.

You should do it.”

You know, so I said

I looked at him, and I said, “Okay.”

[“I Think I’m Gonna Kill Myself” by Buddy Knox playing]

♪ I hope I don’t make you blue ♪

♪ But I think I’m gonna kill myself ♪

♪ I think I’m gonna kill myself ♪

[Scorsese] Bob insisted we go to Saint Martin.

And that’s where we created the film.

Paul Schrader had already written the script and then told us, “Now, you guys take it.”

We went over the whole thing and changed the dialogue and came up with, “I thought of this, I could do this here, what about that?”

[Scorsese] We would sometimes improvise our dialogue together on audio tapes.

And then I’d write it all longhand.

Each scene.

We just finished up the script, came back, called Irwin.

[Winkler] I read it and I liked it a lot.

And then we had to get the money, so we had a meeting with the two heads of production at United Artists.

So, Bob is there, and the two guys come up and, uh… they ask these questions.

We sensed something was wrong.

They said to Bob, “Why would you want to play this cockroach?”

De Niro was standing in the doorway of the kitchen and he looked over and he said, “He’s not a cockroach.”

We left and it looked like we weren’t gonna make the picture, but I knew that they wanted to make Rocky II. I produced Rocky, and it had been this phenomenal success, and they wanted to do a sequel.

So we told them the only way we’d do Rocky II is if they agreed to do Raging Bull. Basically said, “You want Rocky II, you’re going to have to do Raging Bull.” [“Asaw Fofor” by The Melody Aces playing] [Scorsese] I had to figure out how to design the boxing scenes.

I’d never seen a real fight.

I mean, I saw on television, but I couldn’t tell what was happening.

The two little figures, I didn’t know.

In any event, in Madison Square Garden, there was a night of five different bouts and we were in, like, the third row.

And that’s the night I saw the blood on the ropes.

And I saw the blood in the sponge.

On the back, they squeeze the sponge.

And also, being close up, thrust of an arm.

You actually feel, it’s like a car going by. [imitates whoosh]

[grunts]

[crunch] I started to get

I said, “All right.”

I just stayed alone in my bedroom, and I played the video they gave me of Bob working out each fight.

And so I just would stop it, design shots by myself.

The sequence in the last Sugar Ray fight where he gets beaten to a pulp, I drew the shots based on the shower sequence in Psycho.

[music from Psycho playing]

[gasps, screams]

[woman yells]

[Scorsese] Translated, reinterpreted, and it kind of kicked off a lot of images.

Often surreal, because a lot of the bloodletting is not realistic.

But I told Bob, “This is gonna be special,” I said, “the fight scenes.

And I’m gonna need your patience.”

And he said, “No, no, okay, okay.”

[Scorsese on set] Everybody quiet and that’s it, ready? Okay.

[Schoonmaker] You cannot imagine how long it took to shoot all the fights.

To get all the blood right and the perspiration.

[laughing] De Niro was unfailingly patient.

Marty had the blood spurting from elaborate devices that are hooked at the back of De Niro’s head.

And he’s not actually being hit here, but he’s moving his head perfectly as if he has been.

A shot like this could take an hour.

[Scorsese] Often, we’d only get maybe one or two shots a day.

Because of the rigs that had to be built, and because when you change the speed of the camera, you also have to change the iris.

So there had to be one assistant here, one here, and then there’s the cameraman.

And if you’re moving, they have to move with you.

[indistinct commentary]

And you’ll have seen in certain scenes where it’s normal speed, then suddenly goes into slow motion, then comes back.

I mean, that was all done with three or four people on one Arriflex.

[laughing] You know, so…

[Miller] With Raging Bull, when you worked with Thelma, was it a very different experience suddenly working with Thelma?

We hadn’t seen each other for nine years.

After Woodstock, we didn’t connect at all.

I was in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, working on this ridiculous movie about the Supreme Court.

I got this call and I couldn’t believe it, really.

I didn’t know whether I could believe it.

She said, “I don’t know how toI never cut a feature before.”

I said, “Just

It’s no different,” I said, “from what we used to do.”

Originally, with Marty, with me, it was trust, he felt that we wouldn’t have to indulge in ego battles over which cut was better.

“Keep the director out of the editing room,” was something that I heard a lot.

Or at least this director.

She seemed to agree to work with me.

[Schoonmaker] We were editing in Marty’s apartment, in a bedroom.

We cut all night. I would start at, like, 9 o’clock at night and work until dawn.

When the birds started to sing, he wanted to stop.

[Rossellini] He would start editing with Thelma at 9:30, 10 and work till 8 o’clock the following morning.

I woke up, had breakfast, he had dinner, he went to sleep, I did my day, and then they started again.

[Scorsese] When Thelma was editing, she would find what she called the value of the shot itself.

Which means just because you shot this image in this way, and it was meant for a certain place in the film, it may work somewhere else that has nothing to do with it.

[announcer] Robinson, apparently tired… [Schoonmaker] Now, this is one of the most brilliant things Marty did.

You’ll see in a moment.

To have the lights go down.

[crowd faintly cheering]

[Schoonmaker] The camera change speed.

During the shot, hardly any sound.

Probably another director might have had a thousand people yelling, “Come on, come on, kill him,” or “Come on, Jake!”

No. You just hear a little bit of an animal breathing.

And then it gets collapsed all into this dramatic cutting.

The one thing that we found was that Vickie, the wife of Jake LaMotta, her reaction to what she’s seeing was something that we decided to build the whole sequence about.

She’s just putting her head in her hands at the horror she’s watching.

[flash bulbs popping]

And those cuts to her are so important.

[announcer] These are clean, whistling shots. [Scorsese] So it all became very visceral, like creating a sculpture.

[announcer] No man can endure this. [Schoonmaker] He works extremely hard to try and come up with something new or something at least visually arresting.

Sometimes he doesn’t want to be visually arresting.

Sometimes he just wants to be, uh, static because he knows that’s what the subject matter requires.

[Vickie] You’re home.

Hi, Vick.

[Vickie] Hi, Joe.

Hi. Where were you?

[Vickie] I went out. What’s the matter?

[Schoonmaker] This is very simply shot.

[Jake] Where’d you go?

[Schoonmaker] No fancy camera moves except the devastating move when Cathy goes upstairs, and it pans back to him.

You have a sense of dread about what’s going to happen.

Jealousy, the lack of trust.

What’s the matter with you, huh?

What’s with this kissin’ on the mouth?

I just said hello, can’t I kiss my sisterinlaw?

Ain’t her cheek good enough for you?

There was a script, but it was all being developed as they shot the scene.

What are you givin’ me dirty looks for?

[De Niro] We’ve always come up with stuff all the time.

He knew where to keep up the guardrails, but he would always be never afraid to try anything.

What are you telling me?

I heard some things.

You heard some things about what?

Me and Salvy? What’d you hear?

I heard some things.

You heard some things.

[Joe Pesci] Robert does this, and Marty knows that he does it. He keeps aggravating, he already said what he was supposed to say and he keeps on going.

I heard some things, Joey.

Well, what did you hear?

What do you mean you heard things?

I heard.

[Pesci] And you as an actor saying, “I answered you already. I said no.” I told you, I heard some things.

[Joey] You heard some things.

[Pesci] To where you really start to get aggravated. It is real. Do you know what I’m saying?

What’d you hear?

I heard some things.

[Scorsese] De Niro and I both liked the Abbott and Costello comedy routines.

What’s the guy’s name on third base?

No, What’s on second.

Who’s on second?

Who’s on first.

I don’t know.

He’s on third.

[Scorsese] It has a lot to do with language, with word play.

[Joey] What do you mean?

That’s not what I heard.

What’d you hear?

I heard some things.

[Scorsese] Play on words, and has more to do with, like, Samuel Beckett than, uh, anything else.

All right, I think we should keep going.

[Scorsese on set] Yeah. Take it from “I heard some things.”

[all laughing]

It’s very tricky, because it doesn’t mean you take the material and twist it so that it twisted out of shape so that you could be amused.

It means something truthful is there and you could pursue it with your key collaborators, which are the actors.

You’re gonna let this girl ruin your life.

Look at you.

She really did some job on you, you know how fuckin’ nuts you are?

Look what she did to you.

You fuck my wife?

What?

You fuck my wife?

How could you ask me a question like that?

How could you ask me? I’m your brother.

You ask me that?

Where he tells Joe, “Did you fuck my wife?”

you know, that became, like, the centerpiece for the whole movie.

Hey! Come here.

[Scorsese] Jake gets the most beautiful woman to marry, to almost make himself miserable because he knows men are going to look at her.

And then, naturally, as a human being, she may look back. God forbid.

What was all that about?

All what?

You know what I’m talking about, what was that all about?

With him?

[interviewer] There’s several scenes of sexual jealousy…

Several?

…in Raging Bull, aren’t there?

Yeah, well. Yeah.

Also it’s very much myself.

Meaning it was very much what I’m fascinated by.

[man] Look at that beauty.

Just as beautiful as ever. Hey…

[young Scorsese] Jealousy is one aspect. It was like a symptom I guess.

Right, you would say? Of what… what the sickness is.

[interviewer] And what is the sickness?

Um… a loss of faith, a loss of your soul.

Loss of your soul. Hmm?

Get away!

[Jake] Open the door.

No.

[Scorsese] Raging Bull? The violence is not in the ring, the violence is at home.

Why’d you do it, huh?

Why’d you do it?

I didn’t do anyth[Scorsese] Certain kinds of stories have to have a hero.

One could take that rule of how a hero should behave, and what if he doesn’t behave that way?

Is he still a hero of the story?

I have to eat like you, like a gavone…? Oh, God! What’s the matter with you?

[Jake] You fucked my wife, huh?

[woman screams]

You fucked my wife…

[screaming] [Father Principe] I think Marty understands internal violence is gonna manifest itself physically, and it is a reality. And internal violence is sin.

Sin means violence as grace means love.

Marty has a strong sense of the reality of sin and it hit me as I watched that. [Scorsese] Growing up, my brother was the one always in trouble.

The bad one. I was the good one, right?

But my feelings of rage, I guess, anger towards my father, let’s say, or my brother, images of violence in my head were such that I was the bad one.

Always have been.

And I just have to live with that and figure out, you know, don’t take it out on other people. [laughs] You know, don’t, you knowRemember, the anger’s there, don’t let the anger consumeAnger’s good.

Anger’s good, but you have to rein it in.

Eventually, he becomes so negative a character that he cuts off everyone around him, including himself from his own soul.

[Miller] How do you feel that Marty identified with Jake LaMotta, you know, enough to make the movie at that particular moment in his life?

I think you have to ask him that.

[Scorsese] Bob and I, working together on the script.

That’s when I really understood.

We got to the scene in the end, where Bob is thrown into jail, and Schrader had it where he was having images of people in his past and he masturbates.

[guard] See it, see it?

Bob didn’t go for that, so he said, “I have an idea,” and he got up and he went to the wall, he put his hands up against the wall, and then he just banged his head.

Banged his head, banged his head.

And then I realized, um, that’s me.

[exhales]

[Scorsese] I understood that.

Dummy, dummy, dummy.

I always say Marty is a saintsinner.

Un santo peccatore. There’s something saintly in him in the sense that he asks the questions, “Why are we here?

Is there life after death?

Is there a morality?

Is there goodness and badness?”

[Jake roaring]

But he’s a human being and a sinner, so he falls a lot of times into bad things.

[Jake yelling]

[Rossellini] He wanted to be a priest, he ended up being married many times, so Marty felt tormented.

[Jake sobs, pants]

[Scorsese] Somebody said to me, “Why make a film of this guy? He’s a cockroach.”

[Jake sobbing]

[chuckles]

Yeah.

[hesitating] The despised, the dispossessed.

A lowlife is not a cockroach.

[sobbing] So fuckin’ stupid.

So stupid.

[sobbing] They call me an animal.

I’m not an animal.

I’m not an animal.

They wanna treat me like this?

I’m not that bad.

I’m not that bad. I’m not that… [sobs] [Cocks] Loving the least of these.

Marty found a way to love this guy that I never could.

That most people, many people couldn’t.

But Marty not only was capable of finding it, but transmitting it.

I was in a fugue state.

You know, at the end of that picture, I was just

I couldn’t talk to anybody.

I didn’t want to see anyone.

I was

I was, you knowI wasn’t me anymore.

And, sorry to say, I was them, on that screen.

I didn’t want to be them.

So Marty has gotten me closer to the edge than just about any other filmmaker I can recollect.

[Schoonmaker] When you think that Marty didn’t want to make it originally, and look what he did with it.

It was his salvation.

And this seems to me like almost giving last rites, this.

[Brian De Palma]

I remember seeing Raging Bull. And I said, “Oh, my God.”

[laughing] He’s done it again.

Because we were a little competitive.

I think, “Oh, my God.

This is a brilliant movie.

There’s Scorsese, he’s done it again.”

Uh…

At the end of the movie, he has this quote from the Bible.

[Schrader] Marty told me it was because of the drug overdose and the quote refers to him.

[Scorsese] I had a famous Native American medicine man look at me when I was doing Raging Bull, and he looked at me and he said, “You died.

In that hospital, before your friend came and said, ‘Come out, let’s make this movie.’ You died, but now you’re alive again.”

And so yeah, you die, people die in life, they come back.

So it was Marty who asked me to marry him.

Nobody had asked me before.

And, I, uh…

I said yes. [laughs] I said yes, because I loved him, but I also knew from the beginning that he was an exceptional person.

He had a powerful mind, but in this very small body.

So he was also very vulnerable.

Of course, my background is in film.

My mom was an actress, Ingrid Bergman, and my father was the director, Roberto Rossellini, so there was a familiarity in the

in the passion, in the eccentricity.

And, uh, I remember one day, I said, “Marty, butWhen you

When you’re in your own thoughts all day long, you really think, ‘How…? Why do we live?

Where do we come from? Where do we go?'” He said, “Yes, all the time.

What do you think, Isabella?”

I said, “I think, ‘What’s for lunch?'” Uh, it’s much simpler.

But I knew that was always in his head, big question, and a torment, kind of.

And always seeking.

[Scorsese] What I wanted to do was Gangs of New York and Last Temptation. We had a script that Jay and I worked on, and I also had a script of Last Temptation of Christ that Paul Schrader had put together.

So my two projects were Gangs and Last Temptation. I tried to get it financed, and we almost did, but we just couldn’t get it financed, it was too expensive.

You know, sort of the infrastructure of the epic author film had died.

[“Live It Up” by Blondie playing]

The ’80s was the worst period for me.

Hollywood had changed.

[woman] Do people in this business want to make movies?

Or do they want to make money?

They want to make money.

[Scorsese] Rocky and other pictures, that became the lifeblood of the industry.

The feelgood, um, and the fantasy.

I actually sensed it the day Jaws opened.

I knew it.

It was really great for Steve and all that, but I realized something’s going to change here.

[Spielberg] Jaws was the beginning, then when Star Wars came out two years later, everything really did shift.

There was much more money available on movies that might attract a blockbuster audience.

Studios were less interested in movies that were going to be personal expressions of individuals.

And it wasn’t the healthiest thing for independent filmmakers when that happened.

The commercial prospect of the film…

…is the primary prerequisite as to whether it’s going to get made.

The studio system today basically is a financial banking apparatus.

[De Palma] We had the control, but those days are over.

Which sort of started to fall apart after Heaven’s Gate. [Scorsese] The studios had had enough of these selfindulgent auteurs.

And here was the proof.

It would open one night and was closed.

We were out of control and we had to be stopped.

And we were.

I was going to go off and make films on the lives of the saints in Rome.

[Miller] But was that because you weren’t gonna get other opportunities, or you just wanted to do lives of the saints more than anything else?

I don’t know, even if there were other opportunities, what was I gonna do?

My next big thing was Gangs of New York, uh, andor Last Temptation. Where was the financing going to come from?

I didn’t think I’d be making films again, no.

But then Bob asked me to make King of Comedy. I really kind of wanted to do that and was pushing him to kind of do it.

What is the new film you’re doing?

It’s called The King of Comedy. We’ll be doing, uh…

It’s about someone who kidnaps a talk show host.

[sighs] Gee, thanks a lot.

I wasn’t enthralled by it, but I said, “Yeah, let’s

Let’s do this.”

[clamoring] [Scorsese] It’s basically about a young guy who wants to be a comedian, and who idolizes the character that Jerry Lewis plays called Jerry Langford.

[indistinct crowd chatter]

[Scorsese] I came to believe Jerry Lewis would be the best because he was part of the great team, Martin and Lewis…

[crowd screaming]

…which was total mayhem.

He also did talk shows, he did Broadway, he did Vegas, and he was a great filmmaker too.

He’s done everything.

[car horn honks]

[laughing] Hey, Jerry, how you doin’?

[Scorsese] The scenes in the street, and people are yelling “Hey, Jerry.” [Conan O’Brien] Yeah.

I said we’ll line up some people.

He said, “You won’t need to.”

“What do you mean?” He said, “Watch.”

We shot him with a hidden camera and people are really yelling.

[O’Brien] That was real?

That’s real, yeah. People yelling, construction workers, “We love you, Jerry,” all that sort of thing.

[indistinct shouting]

[Scorsese] I wasn’t trying to make any major statement about celebrity, it was just this obsession, you needed to possess Jerry.

Jerry Langford had to be possessed.

I had read that script right before we did Taxi Driver, I didn’t care for it very much, but I began to understand it better.

[Miller] Because you became famous?

Well, somewhat.

Between doing Taxi Driver, New York, New York, Last Waltz, going around the world, being around everyone, I began to see what this is like.

Would you please welcome Martin Scorsese.

[cheers and applause]

[young Spielberg] King of Comedy, it’s just his own fear of fan behavior. “Fansanity,” I guess you could call it. Sometimes, we could go to the ice cream shop a block and a half or so away, and get an ice cream and it was okay.

But there have been some moments of, like, being in an elevator with him and someone else, and that person going, you know, “Travis Bickle, man, he’s, like

he’s my guy,” and we’re both, like…

[Miller] Do you remember the time where he stopped being able to just go to the corner store or…

Oh, I remember it very well.

[reporter] John Lennon was shot and killed last night [reporter 2] A lone gunman waited for his hero outside the Dakota apartments. [Cathy] He stopped going out after John Lennon was shot.

Like, for a few months, he didn’t leave the house. He was, like, freaked.

Because people recognized him all the time, and he’d, you know, sign an autograph, but after that, he was like…

Especially because look at who you’re talking about, you’re talking about John Lennon, Mr. “Let’s give peace a chance” and my father and the movies he makes, and John Lennon gets blown away on a New York City street.

[Rossellini] Marty felt very tormented.

But I remember people writing to Marty, and sometimes there were things that were petrifying.

[Scorsese] Years earlier, we’d finished Taxi Driver and I was beginning New York, New York, and I received a letter.

This letter said, “If little Jodie wins the Academy Award for what you made her do in Taxi Driver… you’ll pay for it with your life.

This is no joke.”

And so we called the FBI.

For years, we thought, “What was that letter about?”

[Miller] And it was Hinckley?

I said

Yeah.

So, what, four years later…

You know?

[man] Mr. President

[gunshots] [reporter] Today, shots have been fired at President Reagan. [reporter 2] An assailant took at least three shots, and possibly as many as six. [reporter 3] The bullet is still lodged in his chest. [Scorsese] It happened the day before the Oscars were supposed to happen.

We were up for Raging Bull. The Academy Awards were canceled.

And the next morning, the information, I think, came out about the Hinckley thing.

[reporter 4] John W. Hinckley, the 25yearold drifter apparently was infatuated with Jodie Foster. Hinckley had mentioned Jodie and mentioned the film.

[reporter 4] Hinckley may have been trying to act out the plot of the movie Taxi Driver.

[Jodie Foster] He was inspired by the movie in some ways.

Taxi Driver figured in John Hinckley’s thoughts.

I’m sure that all of you understand why we’ve delayed this program for 24 hours.

[Rossellini] We went the following night, it was enormous tension.

Marty had to wear a bulletproof vest under his tuxedo.

They didn’t understand if it was a conspiracy or if it was one lone wolf.

[Scorsese] We had to have FBI people with us.

There was a whole series of things going on.

I don’t recall anymore.

Um…

But we didn’t

I didn’t know.

I didn’t know.

And it was a terrible thing, and, uh… Yeah.

[no audible dialogue]

[Miller] I feel like Rupert Pupkin and Travis Bickle are weirdly like two completely mirror images of the Underground Man.

It’s the same violence.

It’s the same violence.

[tires screech]

Wait. Okay, Jerry. Get over here.

Get in there. I’m not fooling around.

What the hell are you talking about?

What are you doing?

[De Niro] I remember we were rehearsing the kidnapping of Jerry.

We had, like, a talk for a minute, you know, thinking about what had happened with Hinckley and all that, and this kind of, “I don’t know…”

But, you know, IWe said, “We have to do it.” Period.

[Rupert] She’s going to hold a gun on your head.

Don’t make any false moves, I’d hate to have to do anything drastic.

Now, if everything works out, you should be out of here by the very latest 12, 12:30.

It’s the adulation.

I walked out of that show like I was in a dream, you know.

After that, I started catching all your guest appearances on Sullivan.

Because I think that you are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.

Uh, the danger in that.

And the need for the god or the goddess to be taken down.

Or it’s like a blood sacrifice has to be done.

Like the ancient world. Gotta take them down, then everybody will be okay.

[crowd clamoring]

[reporter] …the afternoon shooting outside the Washington Hilton hotel. [Miller] Does that scare you that sometimes violence can leap

from films to people?

Certainly, yeah, yeah.

But, uh, there are certain pieces of music, uh, rock music or, you know, by some wonderful groups, that have been accused of, um, inspiring madness, you know, uh…

The Sorrows of Young Werther, which is Goethe.

[Miller] A lot of people committed suicide.

[Scorsese] They committed suicide after reading that book.

All the young lovers committed suicide.

[Miller] Mm.

[Scorsese] End of the 18th century, beginning of the 19th, right? Yeah.

They touch on something, you don’t know.

You touch on something.

We were touchingWe thought we were tapping into a truth.

King of Comedy was a hard film to make.

[Miller] Didn’t you say you were late a lot on that film?

Yeah, I was late. Sometimes I wouldn’t show up till the afternoon.

I can’t just make the picture.

I’m not that kind of director, I found out.

See, Bob wanted me to do The King of Comedy, and he may have felt very strongly about the material, but maybe I did not.

We fell into, where could Bob go with me, and where could I go with him as a collaboration?

What were we going to find in each other?

Um, and not just creatively, as people.

…standards and practices, I’m gonna tell you that.

Yeah.

You said that in the rule book, too.

Yeah.

That’s okay, though. It should be, like, a less than 15second scene.

We often would do 35 takes. Maybe more.

[man] Still rolling, guys.

[overlapping chatter] [Miller] Is that common for you to do that many takes?

[Scorsese] No.

[Lewis] Yeah, Marty?

[Scorsese on set] Yeah?

Why don’t you come back and tell me one more thing?

[indistinct chatter]

Should I wait for the

the plane?

The plane is a little…

Jesus. Okay.

It would be valid ten or twelve different ways.

But which way did I want to go?

Do you wantI’m sorry, I just want to go on, but I went over

Should I match the thing where I go over to her and listen to him, then the Langford thing, blah, blah, blah?

[Scorsese on set] Yeah, let’s match this.

The point is that you need to want to be there, and then I felt terrible that I didn’t want them toto understand that I didn’t want to be there.

[De Niro] We have one like this, is that enough for…?

[Scorsese on set] Let’s forget it.

Forget about it, let’s go.

We got it, yeah, that’s a nice one, very nice.

Okay, guys, thanks.

[man] It’s a wrap.

[indistinct chatter]

[Miller] Did you ever feel like you were lost?

[Scorsese] Well, yes, I think so.

I think I really felt lost in the creative work.

Because the creative work was the religious connection.

Because it’s like a gift.

If you had this gift, then you’re…

You were, uh, utilizing the gift.

You were enriching the gift.

This is something you’re given, uh, and that’s a sacred thing, that’s all.

And so I finished the film despite myself.

[interviewer] Can film today be a medium of selfexpression? Yes, but you have to be prepared to lose everything.

And lose it.

And you do, you know. [laughs] But I mean everything, I just don’t mean money.

What are the things you lose?

Your family, your life.

[Rossellini] In King of Comedy, I wasn’t as much around.

I could tell that Marty didn’t want me around.

[man] Are you shooting this?

[Rossellini] Meanwhile, Marty could get really angry.

Not toward me, he never hit me or anything like that, but he could demolish a room.

A friend of his once filmed him and showed it to him.

Marty was shocked, because he didn’t realize the level of violence that this minuscule body, uh, asthmatic couldIt was like a volcano. It was terrifying.

You botherin’ me about a steak, huh?

You botherin’ me about a steak?

[Karen, yelling] They would have found it!

[cries out]

Why did you do that?

Goddamn it! Baby, you know, you got real anger issues!

[fabric ripping]

[grunts] [Rossellini] I don’t even remember why he got so mad.

I think that sometimes it could be a very silly little reason that would make him go over the top.

Okay, I’m gonna show you something now.

I wanna show you something.

And sometimes he will wake up, like, “Fuck it, fuck it, fuck it.”

And I would say, “Marty, the day hasn’t even started.” [chuckles] “What ‘fuck it’? What ‘fuck’?” Um…

Then I understood that partially also this rage was part of the fuel to give him courage.

Because, you know, he was this little boy from Little Italy and now was this big director who had to direct big film and big budget.

And I think rage gave him that stamina to get through the day, to get through, finish the film.

Because it’s not easy.

So it was complex to be with him.

[De Palma] I actually went to Marty’s apartment the day she left.

I just remember it being this big empty apartment.

And there was Marty, downtown, all by himself.

I have a very distinct memory of that.

[Scorsese] I was just basically alone.

Nobody would come around me.

Thelma was editing in a loft that I had.

And my parents would come over and make sure we were okay. That was it.

Everyone else stayed away because I was behaving

I was very, um, erratic.

[Miller] Your behavior was bad?

Well, up to a point, and then it all stopped.

When everybody left, finally, it was almost as ifIt’s almost as if you had betterIt would’ve been better if I said, “Leave.”

[Miller] But…

I didn’t.

They just left on their own.

Yeah.

Yeah, well, drive people out, you know.

That’s what happened.

And then there was nothing except me.

[“Lonely Teardrops” by Ken Boothe playing]

[Schoonmaker] Has he talked to you about King of Comedy?

[Miller] A little bit, yes.

Oh.

[young Scorsese] That should start here.

[song continues]

[Schoonmaker] It was hard for him.

It was very hard.

[young Schoonmaker] He had mood swings.

He was very emotional. Extremely depressed. It’s sort of like living with a volcano. [laughs] On King of Comedy, I was having personal problems so severely that I couldn’t edit the film, and they threatened, said, “Look, we’re gonna have to take it away.”

The movie will be out…?

Uh, I… Some time.

[audience laughs] [Scorsese] Just a breakdown of some kind.

[Miller] You were depressed?

Very much so, yeah, yeah.

But I can’t… I can’t really talk now.

[Scorsese] I never experienced such depression.

Trying to work, not being able to work.

Having problems, complaining, getting crazy, and… you know.

I would try to meet other people, I would try to start to have relationships. Never worked.

If it wasn’t for the doctor, five days a week, phone calls on the weekend, strong, steady work on straightening my head out, I’d be dead.

I was on medication that was very strong, and I was getting through.

You know, it was very lonely, but it was my doing.

[Scorsese] King of Comedy lasted one week.

It was chased out of the theaters.

Because it got good reviews, but nobody went to see it.

At the end of that year, Entertainment Tonight was on.

And it said, “Now, the flop of the year,” and the curtain opened and there was my picture.

The King of Comedy.

[drum roll]

That’s one of my favorites.

Rupert, what’s his last?

Pupkin, PUPKIN.

[Spike Lee] Pumpkin? [laughs]

[Miller] Pupkin. [laughs] People love that film now.

But when it came out… Shit…

[laughing] It got no love.

You

There’s many things, there’s many factors, but the bottom line is it just didn’t hit.

[Scorsese] I was still attending my cocktail parties and little gatherings in LA, but I was kind of ridiculed to my face, you know, by people saying, “Ha, yeah, right,” you know.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

You know, that kind of thing.

Basically, somebody told me, “In Hollywood, they’re saying you’re washed up.”

A writer told me that. I said, “Ah, okay.”

So I was washed up.

I’m going back down. Okay.

[Miller] And did that have something to do with deciding to do After Hours,

which was a tiny film

[Scorsese] Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

It was, uh, back to square one.

On all levels.

No

No hurry.

[Schoonmaker] It was made for very little money.

Incredibly little money, but his career was in a terrible state, and this was his way to reestablish himself as a responsible filmmaker.

[man] What have they done?

[grunts, gasps]

[young Scorsese] It was like a handmade film, like The film where kids would get together and say, “Let’s put a show on in the barn.

You be this and I’ll be that.” Of course, the key to this was the director of photography, Michael Ballhaus. I met Ballhaus and I said, “I’ve lined up all these shots, but I don’t see how we’re gonna get them all.” “Well, I figured it out,” he said.

“It averages to 16 setups a day.” He says, “We can do it.”

I said, “We’ll never do it.” I couldn’t believe he could do it. He did.

[gunshots]

[man] Ah!

I’ll probably get blamed for that.

[Scorsese] I just reacted to the man being put to the test by these different characters.

[Miller] It’s like the book of Job, but as a comedy.

Funny. Yeah.

[Miller] Then there’s that great moment where he finally kneels down…

“Do I have to die for it?” Yes.

I said, “Yes, you do.”

[laughs] I’m just a word processor, for Christ’s sake!

[Miller] All the bad things that had been happening to you, it’s like, you know…

That’s what it is.

That’s what the movie is.

[Scorsese] The film was successful, and I started to pull myself together.

I’d just got married to Barbara De Fina, who was an incredible producer.

[Barbara De Fina] I met him when he was finishing King of Comedy.

Then I actually went away and did a few movies and, um, then when I came back, actually, we got together.

[Rossellini] Marty was not really interested so much in being married.

He really wanted to make films, but he wanted to take care of that aspect of his life.

Like, “I’m married, I have a wife.”

Also maybe to help him with temptations. [laughs] [Scorsese] I found that I enjoyed being alone, but I was so afraid of being alone.

And I would have… Relationships very often, were almost like, uh, familial, brother and sister kind of thing, um, uh, to have companions to be with.

[Miller] Do you feel that he has a complex relationship with women?

Um…

Mm…

He’s

He works with a tremendous number of women.

And I know that the relationship with Barbara De Fina was very important for Marty’s career.

Good. That was good. Cut.

[man] Cut!

[Schoonmaker] In fact, it was De Fina who suggested he make After Hours. And she said, “You have to just reestablish your reputation,” and he did.

[Scorsese] I remember I had just finished After Hours, and Mike Ovitz met me in Los Angeles.

Ovitz was a big figure in Hollywood, and he said, “Your films over the years have been pretty interesting, etc., etc.”

And I said, “Well, you know, I had some problems in a certain period of my life.”

He goes, “Do you have them now?”

I said, “No.”

He said, “Okay. What movie do you want to make most of all?”

I said, “Last Temptation of Christ.” “All right, I’ll get it made for you.”

In the meantime, he put me together with Newman.

I got a hunch, fat man.

I got a hunch it’s me from here on in.

[Scorsese] And put together a sequel to The Hustler… …with Paul Newman and Tom Cruise.

[“Out of Left Field” by Percy Sledge playing]

Damn!

All yours.

I was trying to prove that I can make a film again, that I could be trusted with a budget, and with people on that level.

[“Werewolves of London” by Warren Zevon playing]

Oh, yeah?

Yeah.

The big problem were the pool scenes.

And I designed these very complex moves.

[“Werewolves of London” playing on stereo]

♪ Ahhooo ♪

[song continues]

[Scorsese] It turns out when we shot it, they were the easiest things to do because Paul actually plays and Tom has played. It’s real.

[song on stereo] ♪ I saw Lon Chaney Jr.

Walkin’ with the queen ♪

Huh!

[song continues]

[Scorsese] They did it, the camera hit the right spot at the right moment.

[scattered applause]

Like, maybe at the most, two takes.

At the most.

And it was suddenly, like, “Okay, we have extra time today.” [laughs]

[cheers and applause]

Huh.

We finished one day under schedule and a million under budget.

It was the closest I came to being a “director.”

[Miller] Yeah.

A professional director.

For me, the main thing is to continue making pictures.

I hope the picture makes money so I can continue making films.

[Scorsese] The film was successful.

Paul won his Oscar.

Mary Elizabeth got nominated for an Oscar.

[Miller] I think you’ve had more women nominated for Academy Awards than any[Scorsese] Yeah, that’s right.

I think there were 10 or 11.

But when the film was released, I felt not quite there with it.

In fact, Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel got mad at me.

They said

They slapped me and, “Don’t do that again.”

Linear, linear, just as we’ve seen it in so many other movies.

You expect with Scorsese more character things, more twists, not just that the point is to tell the story.

[Scorsese] Ebert and a number of others pointed out that you’ve got to push yourself further.

So, I realized, “Yeah, all right.”

But I was just trying to get to Last Temptation. Back in the ’70s, Marty always had the Kazantzakis book, The Last Temptation of Christ. Marty wanted to do it and insisted on doing it.

[Scorsese] I’d been interested my whole life around the concept of Jesus Christ.

Who is it? What is it?

Well, if there’s a sacrifice of the cross, it’s easy because he’s God.

Well, no, he’s equally human.

So, in other words, he suffers the way we do.

Yeah, that’s why the book hit me.

[young Scorsese] When I read the book, I said, “This is someone you can talk to.” A very human, uh, Jesus that, uh, I thought was more accessible.

That I thought would in a sense be more shocking.

[Scorsese] Nobody really wanted to make it.

Barry Diller, head of Paramount at the time, wanted to know why I wanted to make the film and I said, “I want to get to know Jesus better.”

And his face turned red, because they didn’t know what to do with me. Um…

You don’t tell this to a studio executive.

Was I out of my mind?

But Color of Money actually did very well.

So Mike Ovitz said, “I know how much it means to you, I’m gonna make this work.”

And so I finally got a chance to make The Last Temptation. It was an independent picture that would be bought by Universal, made for very, very little money.

We shot in Morocco.

And we were in so much difficulty shooting.

[Scorsese on set] Let’s get ready, please.

Standby for picture, let’s clear.

Well, we ran out of light at 4 o’clock.

Tomorrow we’ll make the entire scene in one day.

[Barbara Hershey] The experience was an emergency because we had no money. We literally couldn’t go beyond one or two takes. [Scorsese on set] “Baptize me,” we’re going from “Baptize me.”

Marty, this isn’t like making a movie, it’s like being in the paratroopers.

Okay, ready.

[Scorsese] Let’s go!

Sorry. Ready.

[Ballhaus] And rolling.

We’re trying to get everything shot for the end of the crucifixion.

Hopefully, we get everything done today.

[Scorsese] We had planned three days to shoot the crucifixion.

[Scorsese on set] Let’s go, let’s go.

Oh, my God. Oh, God.

[Scorsese] They said, “We can’t make it.

We have to do everything in two days.”

Starting at the crack of dawn to the sunset.

Every minute. And it’s a crucifixion.

[yells]

[screams]

[Scorsese] A guy says, “Marty, you’ve only got so much money, but you want ten things.

What do you want to do?”

This shot should take fifteen minutes.

This should take five.

[indistinct chatter]

[Scorsese on set] Hey, Joe, let’s go.

I’m going. I’m trying to hurry.

[man] Get the wind machine up.

[Scorsese on set] Yeah, the wind machineIt’s faced the right way, isn’t it?

[Scorsese on set] Filling up that blood. Yep.

[indistinct chatter]

[Schoonmaker] Meanwhile, Willem Dafoe can only be up on the cross for five minutes at a time because you suffocate, that’s what happens when they crucify you.

You slump and you can’t breathe.

It was insane.

[Scorsese] I had 25 setups each day.

And we did ’em.

[Cocks] The beautiful thing about it is it’s about Jesus being seriously tempted with the one thing he could never have.

Life as a man.

[Scorsese] It’s a temptation from the Devil.

I don’t have to die on the cross for the sacrifice, for sin, so to speak.

I don’t have to be sacrificed?

No. No, you don’t.

I’m not the Messiah?

[girl] No. No, you’re not.

I took it as far as I could, and I told him, “You can live this way.

And it’s wonderful to live this way.

You can have children.” You know?

[panting] We could have a child.

We could have a child.

[Scorsese] The beauty of the temptation, though, is that the life that we’re given is beautiful to God.

That he’s tempted by saying, “You know it would be nice just to stay there.”

But, at the last minute, he realizes he’s got to go through with the sacrifice.

And that’s all there is to it.

And he does.

And the last thing he says, “It is accomplished. I did it. I did it.”

[crowd clamoring]

It is accomplished.

[crowd clamoring]

It is accomplished.

[Scorsese] This is the Jesus I wanted to make. See?

So, um, that’s why I thought a dialogue would happen.

Instead, we got yelled at.

[crowd] Don’t release the film!

[reporter] It has mushroomed into one of the hardest-fought battles in movie history. [reporter 2] A controversial movie many Christians consider to be insulting and blasphemous called The Last Temptation of Christ.

I said, “Marty, we set out to make a film that would upset people.

They are now upset.” [chuckles] He says, “Yes, but I didn’t think they would be this upset.”

The people who have put this thing on, I think we should go after them!

This man is a charlatan.

The most satanic movie that’s ever been filmed.

[“Kool Thing” by Sonic Youth playing]