Mr. Scorsese – S01E04 – Total Cinema – Transcript

Mr. Scorsese
Season 1 – Episode 4
Episode title: Total Cinema
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: Following a turbulent period of international controversy, Scorsese achieves massive success and a new vision of cinema in Goodfellas.

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Mr. Scorsese – S01E04 – Total Cinema | Transcript

[protesters chanting] Boycott MCA!

[reporter] It has mushroomed into one of the hardest-fought battles in movie history.

[reporter 2] The film portrays Jesus as too much flesh and blood for many church critics. What are you going to stand before God with?

Are you gonna stand with the movie?

[reporter 3] What do you think about the movie?

I haven’t seen it yet. I don’t know.

[crowd chanting] Boycott!

Boycott! Boycott!

[“The Feeling Begins” by Peter Gabriel playing]

[young Martin Scorsese] I read The Last Temptation of Christ in 1971. For me, it’s never been just another film.

It was the most important film I’ve ever had to make.

Because of my religious background, the fact I wanted to be a priest, the fact the church has never left me and I have never left it. [Catherine Scorsese] He had that in his system, in his mind, that one day he was going to make the picture.

I personally didn’t want him to make it, because I was afraid.

[reporter] What has caused a furor is a dream sequence in the film in which Christ makes love to Mary Magdalene. [Rev. Lloyd Ogilvie] It is the most serious misuse of film craft in the history of moviemaking.

[man] The film is incredibly insensitive toward people who believe that Jesus is Lord and Savior. It’s just an exploration. Exploration so we can get to know him better.

Get to know him better, get to know his ideas better.

We might begin to live out his ideas.

[Larry King] So you’re telling Catholics not to see it? I

Not only that, sweetheart.

I am telling Catholics out there…

[King laughs]

…that if they go to see this movie, they will have committed a sin against the Holy Spirit.

[protesters chanting]

Boycott! Boycott! Boycott!

[Jay Cocks] It was during the rise of the political power of the religious right in this country.

We want to say to Hollywood, “Don’t ever do this again.”

Hollywood is attempting to titillate.

They’re trying to take everything that relates to God away from us.

On top of that, the Jews got blamed.

[reporter] A Christ figure bloodied by a Hollywood executive was the centerpiece of a Passion Play in the home of MCA Chairman Lew Wasserman. [Scorsese] Lew Wasserman looked out the window and there was a man dressed as Jesus being forced on the ground, and a Jewish businessman with his foot on him, whipping him.

With signs saying, you know, “You Jews have done this.”

[protesters] Bankrolled by Jewish money!

Bankrolled by Jewish money!

[reporter] The director, Mr. Scorsese, is he Jewish?

No, he’s not, but he was hired by these two Jewish men.

We expected some… some opposition.

Uh, the nature of the opposition, the ugly quality of it, is surprising and shocking, and saddening, really. I find it saddening.

[Rebecca Miller] Why do you think people were so upset?

Well, they didn’t see it.

They’d seen an early version of Schrader’s script and they thought it was a movie about Jesus and Mary making out.

Or something. You know.

They willfully misunderstood it.

[reporter] Mr. Penland, have you seen the film?

I do not want to see the film.

I do not want to snort cocaine, either.

[reporter 2] What about waiting until it’s cut and ready to be seen?

Then you can’t stop it from being released.

They haven’t seen the movie.

[Cocks] The very gutsy Head of Production at Universal thought the best way to minimize the controversy was to get the movie out.

[Scorsese] But we had to work day and night to finish the film.

I probably would have edited the film more, there’s no doubt.

But they said, “We have to release the film, just finish it as best you can.”

That’s what we did.

We released it in August.

[Cocks] And then, of course, the movie never got a fair shot.

[Scorsese] There was some real violence.

[Cocks] Somebody set off a bomb in the theater in Paris.

And somebody died.

It never played in many of the major cities in this country.

Blockbuster Video refused to carry it.

They carry chainsaw movies.

But they wouldn’t carry this.

Marty was getting FBI protection for the second time.

Threats in the mail, and people were examining his mail for bombs.

Oh, my… It was awful.

[Scorsese] I went to a restaurant one night, sat at a table and I heard the maître d’ lean over to one of the waiters.

He says, “I see we have the Antichrist with us tonight.”

[Miller gasps]

[Miller laughs]

Yeah.

I did start a dialogue on the nature of Christ, but it became something that was sensational, rather than serious.

Then I realized, there’s no sense in arguing anymore.

Just… just try to answer the questions as best you can, as honestly as you can, and simply, uh… forget it. And move on.

[indistinct dialogue]

Unfortunately, the dialogue… Yeah, okay.

[Scorsese] When I did Color of Money, I remember reading a review of Wiseguy by Nick Pileggi.

[Nicholas Pileggi] The book came out, and it did very well.

New York magazine put it on the cover.

I got a message, said, “Call Martin Scorsese.” And he said, “Would you be interested in doing this?

I wanna write it with you.”

[Scorsese] I liked that book.

It’s about a guy who’s not a boss.

He’s not made.

But yet he had access to almost every level… of that way of life.

Nick understood it. He just knows it.

[Pileggi] Both of us grew up in those neighborhoods.

We never wound up in that life, but I went to school with a lot of the guys I wound up writing about.

They shot me! Help! Help!

Henry, shut the door! Shut the door!

[Scorsese on set] Cut!

Okay, that’s gotta be done much faster.

Take it off as fast as you can.

I only write nonfiction, and I only get it from the people who were really there.

And that’s what Marty wanted.

He always says, “What really happened?”

That’s what he keeps wanting to know.

What really happened.

I mean, Nick being the expert on the Mafia, and Marty having lived in it, so the two of them together, that script is unbelievable.

I mean, every frame of that script is in the movie.

[Henry] As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster. [Scorsese] I just saw it very clearly.

We had it on the page.

I knew where the camera was gonna go.

[Pileggi] I didn’t realize at the time, but he had already seen the movie.

The movie you saw, with all the music, he had already made it up in that mind of his.

[Scorsese] I knew the edits.

I had the freeze frames. It’s all there.

[Henry] That’s when I knew I would never have come back from Florida alive. [Scorsese] On set, it was almost an afterthought, ’cause I did it all on the page with Nick.

[Miller] The way you use voiceover is so freeing, it seems.

Yes. Really, it’s a guy on a street corner telling a story.

That’s what the movie is.

[indistinct chatter]

[Henry] Every day I was learning to score. A dollar here, a dollar there. I was living in a fantasy. [Pileggi] I talked to Henry for four years.

And I talked to his wife and his kids.

So, Marty, in the middle of it, he said, “You know, why not have Karen’s voice?”

Marty had that vision.

Why not have multiple points of view?

[Karen] I know there are women, like my best friends, who would have gotten out of there the minute their boyfriend gave them a gun to hide. But I didn’t. I gotta admit the truth. It turned me on. At the end, in the courtroom, he speaks to the camera.

Forget it.

We ran everything. We paid off cops.

[Scorsese] I broke as many rules as possible.

I said, “We have to take a risk, and push it.”

Everything was for the taking.

And now it’s all over.

[Pileggi] Marty not only saw the movie, but he heard the music.

And I remember typing a scene and he said, “Put in ‘Cream’.”

I don’t know what he’s talking about.

“Just type it in!”

[“Sunshine of Your Love” by Cream playing] It was that scene where Bob De Niro is at the bar looking out and his eyes get squinty, and the guy is thinking about murdering Morrie.

Marty already was listening to the music.

He was always editing like that when we were writing.

[song continues]

I think he came out of the womb an editor. [laughs] Before Marty shot the movie, he knew that when the trunk slams…

[trunk slams]

[slide guitar plays] …that that’s where he wanted that music to hit.

And then, as this accident begins to develop, he wanted to have the Stones.

[“Memo from Turner” by Mick Jagger playing]

♪ I want it, I want it ♪

“I want it, I want it, I want it.”

[tires screech]

[guitar riff, harmonica] And then The Who here.

[“Magic Bus” by The Who playing]

[Ari Aster] And that film also feels like…

pure montage.

[“Jump into the Fire” by Harry Nilsson playing] [Henry] He took mercy on me. He gave me ten milligrams of Valium and sent me home. [Aster] It’s just constant galloping, snowballing montage that is kind of weightless and airless.

And, like, he did create a new language, which felt like… I mean, it feels like something like total cinema.

It was pure cinema.

It’s a film with crazy energy, it’s like a runaway train.

[Henry] I had to start braising the beef, pork butt and veal shanks for the tomato sauce. He deliberately wanted to do tons of jump cuts, make things very jerky.

[Henry] And so I was home for about an hour. And Now, that was considered very unorthodox in those days. [laughs]

[Miller] Right.

Now everybody does it!

[Henry] I kept looking out the window and I saw that the helicopter was gone. [Spielberg] You can’t wait for the next voiceover, ’cause you know the second you hear Ray Liotta’s voice, the story’s gonna accelerate.

The music in Goodfellas is as much of an accelerant of the narrative as Nick Pileggi’s script.

Oh, God, I see it!

[Spielberg] Most movies have four gears.

Marty has 14 gears in Goodfellas. It just keeps shifting higher and higher and higher.

[“Mannish Boy” by Muddy Waters playing]

[indistinct dialogue]

[Pileggi] That’s Henry’s day.

We just wrote what happened.

Got someplace better to go?

[Pileggi] It was all real.

[laughs maniacally]

You lying sonofabitch! I hate you!

[Schoonmaker] Every time we looked at it, we would make it faster and faster and jerkier and jerkier.

[“Jump into the Fire” by Harry Nilsson playing] [Schoonmaker] To the sudden moment when everything comes to a grinding halt when Bo Dietl points a gun at him and arrests him.

[Dietl] Police! Freeze!

Don’t you move, you motherfucker, or I’ll blow your brains out.

Shut the car off slowly.

[Schoonmaker] We were riding that script.

I mean, I felt like I was on a horse.

[Henry] For a second, I thought I was dead.

[siren wails]

But when I heard all the noise, I knew they were cops.

Only cops talk that way. [Dietl] Don’t fucking move.

[Henry] If they had been wise guys, I wouldn’t have heard a thing. [Pileggi] You’ve got the script, and every once in a while there’s a little starburst of improv.

[Scorsese] I asked Joe to be in the movie, Joe Pesci, and he didn’t wanna be in it.

But eventually he said, “I’ll be in it if you do this one scene with me.”

And he acted out this scene.

I said, “That’s terrific.”

‘Cause it actually happened to him.

I said, “I know exactly where to put it.”

So it’s not in the script, but I knew where to put it.

One of the reasons Joe doesn’t do these interviews, nobody would understand his background and how he grew up.

He was marked much more than me in that world, hanging around with those people.

[all laughing]

You’re really funny!

What do you mean I’m funny?

[laughter] It’s funny, you know? It’s a good story, it’s funny. You’re a funny guy.

What do you mean?

You mean the way I talk? What?

[chuckles]

It’s just, you know…

You’re just funny. It’s…

The way you tell the story and everything.

Funny how?

I mean, what’s funny about it?

[Scorsese] And then on set, I decided there’d be no closeups.

Because as the tone of the piece changes, you needed to see the people around them their body language change and their eyes become more… uh… uh, you know, more alarmed.

What do you mean, “funny”?

Funny how? How am I funny?

I don’t know, just… you know, how you tell the story. What?

No, no, I don’t know. You said it.

How do I know? You said I’m funny.

How the fuck am I funny?

What the fuck is so funny about me?

Tell me. Tell me what’s funny.

[silence]

Get the fuck out of here, Tommy.

You motherfucker!

I almost had him! I almost had him.

[Scorsese] We did two or three takes, and that was it.

[Miller] But then you have very long, choreographed shots…

Exactly. I wanted the edge of the frame, like, things, like, falling out of the movie.

[valet] Thank you, sir.

I’ll see you later. Thanks.

[Karen] What are you doing?

[Scorsese] The action can be behind you in the theater. It continues going.

[Miller] It’s almost like this maximalist or Baroque sensibility…

That’s what I embraced.

…is born in you.

And becomes, in a way, I feel like, your style.

[Scorsese] That’s what’s happened.

[Henry] I normally go this way, it’s better than waiting in line.

[Pileggi] The Copa scene, if you read the book, it’s, like, three or four sentences.

But Marty sees it visually. You know, it’s like a sixminute steadicam.

[“Then He Kissed Me” by The Crystals playing] [Scorsese] The hardest thing to do is to think of a design for a picture.

What the scene needs, visually. What’s in the frame, what isn’t in the frame.

Should the camera move?

Should they be moving in the frame?

Should there be movement in the frame and the frame itself?

Should it be a track in or track out?

Should it just be “leave it be”?

Don’t move the camera at all.

Just hold it, you know?

If he or she goes out of frame, do you follow them or let them come back in?

All of this, I like to play with.

I have to get the philosophy of the shot before I go on set.

The philosophy, what the shot means.

The Copa, it was kind of a Valhalla, in a way, of New York nightlife.

It was really this paradise of New York nightlife.

And the reason why that scene had to be done in one take through the underground labyrinth of this world and then to emerge in the spotlight, like a king and queen was because this was the highest he could aspire to.

Excuse me.

[Henry] Hello!

How you doin’?

Henry, nice to see you.

[Scorsese] But that comes from personal experience. We used to go to the Copa with my friend Dominic. His father was the bartender in the lounge.

We’d be allowed to see Sinatra there and see whoever was there, Sammy Davis.

And whenever we went, we’d get what we thought were good tables, so we were able to see the show.

And then right before the show started, the tables would come flying in with the wise guys.

And they’d sit down in front of us and we couldn’t see anything.

[song continues]

Tony, thanks a lot. I appreciate it.

Thanks.

Hey, how you guys doin’?

How are you?

It’s good to see you.

Henry. How are you?

Good, good. How you doin’?

[Pileggi] Marty saw it as almost a love scene. ‘Cause that’s where he seduces her, with all of this glamor and…

I mean, what they thought of as glamor.

[men] Salute.

[Henry] Thank you. Salute. [Pileggi] She’s gone.

She’s just mad for the guy.

What do you do?

What?

What do you do?

I’m in construction.

They don’t feel like you’re in construction.

I… I’m a union delegate.

[drum roll and cymbal flourish]

[M.C.] And now, ladies and gentlemen…

It’s a specific piece of grammar, and Goodfellas just shows the power of the gangster.

[“Look In My Eyes” by The Chantels playing] [Scorsese] The gangster as American hero, in the sense that people vicariously enjoy watching a person do what they want.

[song continues]

[Henry] Air France made me. We walked out with $420,000 without using a gun. And we did the right thing. [Scorsese] The star of the film is the lifestyle itself.

There’s no Scarface. Uh…

There’s no James Cagney in Public Enemy. There isn’t one character.

It’s a whole group of characters.

The real character in the movie is the way people live in that world.

[overlapping chatter]

[Schoonmaker] I think what he is working particularly in Goodfellas is the attraction of the Mafia, how powerful it is.

[Scorsese] That’s what I grew up with.

I saw it all the time.

[Miller] Did you guys know any people who became foot soldiers with a family?

Oh, sure, absolutely.

Absolutely. Many, many guys.

Yeah.

To me, what I saw of it was wonderful.

I mean, guys dressed up, had great cars, you know?

It was like, you know, that’s the life.

That’s what you want.

I had a pocket full of money.

You know, I had a lot of, uh, respect, had all the, uh…

you know, the real hot girls and… [laughs]

[Uricola laughs]

You know, I… I can’t explain it.

I just… I can’t explain it.

Hi, Mom! What do you think?

Look at my shoes. Aren’t they great?

My God, you look like a gangster.

[Scorsese] The way of life in the film is at first extremely romantic and appealing.

But then of course, one begins to see what the lifestyle really is about.

You know, just a dead end.

A moral, spiritual dead end.

In my personal experience, it’s the behavior of the people.

You hear a rumbling. Next thing you know, somebody’s killed or…

That feeling I had.

Where’s my fucking drink?

I asked you for a drink.

You wanted a drink?

I just asked you for a fucking drink.

I thought you said that you were “All right, Spider.”

No, no, no, no, no.

[Scorsese] That poor character, Spider.

Now, it’s based on a real kid.

It’s in the book.

I thought I heard someone say something “Spider…”

Spider, Spider…

I thought it was Henry…

You are a fucking mumbling, stuttering little fuck, you know that?

It’s funny. It’s funny.

But then he gets shot in the foot.

[gunshots]

[overlapping exclamations]

Now he’s moving!

[Scorsese] A week later, he’s back.

That’s the point. That’s the point.

That’s the lifestyle.

[men talking and laughing]

[Scorsese] ‘Cause where’s he gonna go, Paris?

[chatter and laughter continues]

There you go.

Thank you, Spider.

Hey, Spider, that fucking bandage on your foot is bigger than your fucking head.

You gotta be careful.

Every day, you gotta be careful.

[Tommy] Looking for sympathy, is that it, sweetie?

Why don’t you go fuck yourself, Tommy?

[all, mockingly] Oh! Oh! Oh!

Oh!

[laughter] Did I just fuckin’ hear right?

Couldn’t believe what I just heard!

Unless you were somebody’s son or somebody, whatever, you had to… be careful.

It was very easy to fall into.

Yeah.

To get involved with something over there that you don’t wanna get involved in.

You gonna let this fucking punk get away with that?

What’s the matter with you?

What’s the world coming to?

[gunshots]

[glass smashing]

That’s what the fucking world is coming to. How d’you like that?

How’s that, all right?

[Irwin Winkler] We had a preview.

I counted, I stood outside, and we had…

32 walkouts in the first 20 minutes or so.

People hated the movie.

[Scorsese] It shook the confidence of the studio.

There was a lot of pressure to try to cut things out.

Oh, God.

Previews are funny.

They have these preconceived ideas before they come in, that it should go a certain way.

Well, then, go see other pictures.

What the hell they want from me?

What do they want from me?

The meetings after the previews were… savage.

There was a lot of pressure to try to cut things out.

And I had to fight back.

[Winkler] We had a meet in Terry Semel and Bob Daly’s office from Warner Bros.

Too many curse words, it was too long.

We should cut the last 20 minutes, which is the cokedup scene.

They thought if we got rid of the cokedup scene, the movie would really work. [laughs]

[tires screeching]

It’s, uh… You gotta watch out, because things will be sacrificed that shouldn’t, and you have to stand up, as Marty does.

He’s very, uh, tough with all that stuff, because…

I don’t know how he does it.

I directed two movies, and, uh…

But Marty…

[chuckles] …he’s good with a sitdown.

He said to me, “I grew up with men of power.

I know… I know what they’re about.

And I know how to maybe… get in there and, uh, get them to listen.”

In tense situations, you had to be able to, if you felt any danger, either, you know, you had to find a way to extricate yourself without causing, uh, a problem or… get through it somehow and behave as if you’re one of them.

You know?

[Winkler] Interestingly enough, he’s very respectful of other people’s opinions.

Like, when we had that disastrous screening of Goodfellas, Marty was great.

He agreed to everything they said.

Didn’t do any of ’em, but he agreed to ’em! [chuckles] [Pileggi] And then they finally gave in.

But one of the things we lost, we were supposed to open in 1,600 theaters.

They opened in 800 theaters.

Warner Bros. flipped us.

But then the reviews started coming in.

[reporter] Everyone loves a wise guy. [Joel Siegel] Goodfellas? Great film. [reporter 3] Number one in boxoffice sales during its very first week. This is a great film.

[reporter 4] Scorsese is at the peak of his art. There is no director better.

Do you think I’m funny?

[audience laughs]

I do, as a matter…

Do you find me amusing?

[audience laughs]

No, I do, I think you’re funny.

Joe Pesci gets really angry and goes, “Am I a clown to you?

Am I here to make you laugh?

How am I funny?”

[audience laughs]

Yes. No, sure, I remember.

[audience laughing]

That was awesome.

[audience cheering]

Thank you. Thank you. Thanks.

[audience applauding] Not only was that film recognized, but Raging Bull was recognized the same year.

[Scorsese] Best films of the ’80s?

Raging Bull is number one.

[Roger Ebert] The first film on my list?

Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull.

There was no question in my mind. [Scorsese] After Goodfellas, Cape Fear. It was a big hit.

Not my favorite of my films, but there’s some really interesting elements that we tried about fear.

Take off your clothes and get down on your knees!

[screaming] No!

Don’t!

[Miller] Did it end up… I don’t know what the box office was on it.

[Scorsese] It was very good.

All of a sudden everybody turned around and said, “Wait a minute. Oh, yeah!”

The films are raw, violent, and in one way or another, autobiographical.

They killed people other places and came and dumped the bodies here.

Right there?

I remember vividly.

It was a whole different time.

My mother and father were alive, as I said, and they enjoyed it.

What college did he go to?

New York University.

Right, NYU.

And, uh, at the time, the tuition was pretty… pretty cheap.

We played it up. We had some fun.

Now, do you make the dough?

Do you start from scratch?

I start from scratch, that’s right.

Did you make the sauce yourself?

Watch your shirt.

Oh, yeah. Don’t wanna get…

[audience laughing]

Smear it around. Yeah, nice, Not too much.

Don’t make it too much, it gets too heavy.

That’s it.

Robert De Niro comes over and eats this pizza?

Robert De Niro loves it. He says I make the best pizza in the whole world.

Why is this different than other pizza?

Because it’s made by me.

[audience laughing]

[cheering and applause]

She was amazing.

Well, you’ve seen her in the movies.

[Miller] Yeah.

And he didn’t really direct her much.

He would just turn her on.

I mean, he literally would just say, “Okay, Mother, start now.”

[Tommy] I don’t wanna wake her up.

Oh…

Look who’s here! Look who’s here.

Hey, Ma. What you doin’ up?

What are you doing?

What happened?

No, nothin’.

When she sees, for example, the blood on Joe Pesci’s shirt… here, that’s a genuine reaction.

And?

Well, tonight we were out late.

We took a ride… out to the country and we hit one of those deers.

That’s where the blood came from, I told you. Jimmy told you before.

That reminds me, Ma, I need this knife.

Now he starts me always off with the first sentence, that’s all.

That’s all he gives me.

He says, “You have to improvise.”

I say, “What do I say?”

He says, “You’ll know what to say.

As soon as you start, it’ll just come to you.”

Why don’t you get yourself a nice girl?

I get a nice one almost every night, Ma.

Yeah, but get yourself a girl so you can settle down.

I settle down almost every night, but in the morning I’m free.

I love you. I wanna be with you.

[laughs] [Pileggi] It turns out there’s a body in the trunk of the car.

Marty didn’t tell her.

When she found out, she was looking to chase him and hit him in the head.

[chuckling] Because she felt that if she had known there was a body in the trunk of that car, [laughing] she wouldn’t have made them breakfast.

[Miller] You know your mother had been in your short films.

[Scorsese] They had to be.

Any student filmmaker, first persons you go to are your parents.

He made me get up to cook spaghetti at 4:30 in the morning.

[Catherine] I was in the Mean Streets.

He made me do that scene 22 times. And I had to go to work in the morning.

It was 2:00 in the morning!

And I was still doing that scene.

Oh! And I says to him, “I’ve had it, Marty. I gotta go to work in the morning.”

He says, “Go in that corner and don’t come out till I call you!”

From doing Italianamerican, she had such a… composure in front of the camera.

The camera didn’t seem to exist.

Take a spoon

a few spoonfuls of tomato and throw them in here, because your meatballs remain very soft.

Not like some of the meatballs you eat sometime,

if you’re invited somewhere.

[man] Yeah?

You eat a meatball and it’s as hard as can be.

You throw it at the wall, the wall would crack!

[both laughing]

I just relate to it as something that’s convincing.

I don’t like when he puts me in a picture, then he takes me out.

[laughter]

[young Scorsese] Well…

It’s not fair. I work so hard.

She was cut out of Taxi Driver. She was Travis’s first passenger.

[Catherine] That’s right.

With shopping bags.

You know those shopping bags they couldn’t get in the car…

They were so heavy! I says…

Mom, something had to go.

You had to go, that’s it.

[all laughing]

[Scorsese] My parents enjoyed the reassessment, so to speak, of me and my work.

But, you know, they were at the Oscars, and the Oscars meant a great deal to them.

[Miller] Was Marty excited when you were nominated for an Oscar?

I remember sitting at the table… uh, for the honorees.

And an old member of the Academy was at the table.

And he leaned over to me, says, “Try to keep your language clean.”

He actually thought that I spoke…

[Miller laughs] …like the guys in the movie.

We were from New York.

We were that level.

We just didn’t belong, and, uh, we felt it.

[Mark Harris] I think Goodfellas did this strange thing in Scorsese’s career, which is, it allowed people to label him “the Mob moviemaker”.

But I’ve always felt it’s really silly, ’cause he doesn’t have one element.

His element is worlds, particular, enclosed cultures, whether that is organized crime in Goodfellas, or the world of New York society in The Age of Innocence, which is an Edith Wharton novel.

[“Radetzky March” by Strauss Sr. playing] The thing with Age of Innocence was my interest in, not history, but a kind of, um, anthropology, maybe.

[young Schoonmaker] When Archer enters the Beaufort house for the first time for this big ball, there’s a table laid out with gloves. That’s about the tradition in those days.

You would go to a ball, if you were a man, with a stack of gloves, and every time you danced with another woman, you would change your gloves.

That’s not explained in the film, but it’s there as part of the texture. [Daniel DayLewis] I was astonished, ’cause, like most people, it wouldn’t have been a film I’d have imagined from Martin.

Until later on, of course, it made complete sense.

[Miller] What do you mean?

Well, because of the savagery in it.

[female narrator] It was not the custom in New York drawing rooms for a lady to get up and walk away from one gentleman in order to seek the company of another. But the Countess did not observe this rule. We’re in a world where the passion is subjugated, to the, uh, circumstances and the world that he’s in.

And that’s interesting.

Is it wrong to be in love?

No. He’s in love.

She’s in love. But he’s married.

I think we should look at reality, not dreams.

I just want us to be together.

I can’t be your wife, Newland.

Is it your idea I should live with you as your mistress?

I waSomehow I want to get away with you and…

[inhales sharply] …find a world where words like that don’t exist.

[Scorsese] In that world, there were… limits.

Where is that country?

Have you ever been there?

[Scorsese] It’s the old story of “do the right thing”.

What is the right thing under these circumstances?

I’d experienced a few things in my life by that point where I understood the excruciating nature of this love that cannot be consummated.

Ellen…

[Miller] The hands, the way you use hands in Age of Innocence. Ah!

[Miller] Is that something you thought about a lot, or it just happened?

[Scorsese] Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

It… The extremities…

[chuckles] The best I could do was, maybe, you know, barely, you know, feel that electricity…

You know, barely touch, and you can feel the electricity between the fingers

of one person and the other.

[Miller] Yeah.

You know, you just see it light up and imagine the touch.

It’s amazing. That touch really means something. You see?

So, that was very special, that touch.

It’s almost like a… a sustained erotic moment… that has no completion.

But it’s a sustained erotic moment.

That was the idea.

Erotic moment which is stretched forever.

And then, ultimately, in the final moment, when it’s revealed that he is stuck.

I said we’d do it in one shot.

I had found a certain freedom from Goodfellas. And I extended it into Age of Innocence. [Miller] And you use voiceover to free you up.

Yes, exactly. Yeah.

[narrator] There was a hired chef, two borrowed footmen, roses from Henderson’s… [Scorsese] They’re surrounded by fetishistic objects which keep them where they are and sustains that culture.

My mind just went past all those objects and you see they’re all there… to keep him where he was.

And so it was natural to do that.

It was like a prison.

[narrator] Archer saw all the harmlesslooking people at the table as a band of quiet conspirators… [Scorsese] There’s the language there on the page, Edith’s Wharton’s.

[narrator] …with himself and Ellen the center of their conspiracy. [Schoonmaker] This culture that he finds himself trapped in, that he can’t break out of it.

He just can’t do it.

That’s a very Marty subject.

[DayLewis] With Martin, the camera is always at the service of something that’s instinctual in him.

Something in his belly.

That’s why it works.

That’s why it’s not just beautiful… but it’s meaningful.

He’s such an interesting combination of things, ’cause he is, I think, a sensualist, but he works like a coal miner.

And he has the vocation of a man of the cloth.

And in Marty’s case, you understand that that has been his vocation.

[Domenica CameronScorsese] Dad…

I’ve heard him talk about having a vocation.

That also sort of means, like, when he’s in that world…

that’s the world he’s in.

And so my relationship with Dad has been about me coming into the world that he’s in.

So this is one of my happiest memories with Dad.

Um… He loves his actors and, in a way, that was a really incredible experience to walk into it and… feel that.

Oh, I didn’t mean to disturb you.

Are you Miss Blenker? I’m Newland Archer.

Oh, yes, I’ve heard so much about you.

My dad, in between takes, he would come away from the monitor and he would get kinda quiet and be like…

[whispers] “Yes, that was really great.

Okay.”

And encouraging. And then go, “Yeah, you know, that’s interesting.

Let’s do one more little something…”

And you’d feel the love and the care in the intensity and focus to the details.

It was a sense of safety that, um…

It was funny to find it there.

His focus and intensity and brightness, it’s like that incredible beam from a lighthouse.

If he’s working on the film, it’s right there. He’s on the film.

And then, if you’re not in the sphere of that light, it’s… it’s sometimes…

You can feel its absence.

And I know when he finds a collaborator, like a true collaborator, the collaborators are even more like family.

You know?

[Scorsese] When I did Goodfellas, I hadn’t worked with Bob in nine years, from King of Comedy. We’d gone off on totally different paths.

He went off on his own, I went off on my own.

But with Goodfellas, it all came back.

The love is there, the trust is there, it’s still there.

I mean, what better place for drama, right?

[Scorsese] And then on Cape Fear, he was great.

But he made it very clear to me, at a certain point, that he preferred making films with me that had more to do with the American underworld.

Yeah. I said, “All right.”

I had this Vegas story, Casino. I said, “Maybe, you know, that’s something I could… could do.”

[Scorsese] You could generally say that the genre of the underworld, the closest it comes to the overworld is in Vegas.

Casino, I wrote with Marty.

Those characters were real.

Lefty Rosenthal, the Bob De Niro character, I spent years with Lefty, telling me what it was like having Joe Pesci, Tony Spilotro, as his best friend.

Where the fuck do you get off talking to people behind my back,

going over my head?

What people?

Did you think I wasn’t gonna find out?

[Scorsese] I had this idea they were given paradise and were kicked out of paradise, like Adam and Eve.

And you got this paradise of evil.

And even there, they’re so evil they get kicked out of paradise. [laughs] But I took it to the edge on Casino. [Benny Safdie] You watch it and you’re just like, “That’s unlike any movie I’ve ever seen in my life.”

It’s a totally unique structure.

You can see the connection to Goodfellas, but it’s like one step further.

[“Compared To What” by Les McCann & Eddie Harris playing] I call this Marty’s Mount Rushmore shot.

[song continues]

[De Niro as Ace] In Vegas, everybody’s gotta watch everybody else. [Schoonmaker] Marty often uses real people.

So all the people in the gambling scenes were all real dealers, real boxmen.

[Ace] The dealers are watching the players. Six!

[Ace] The boxmen are watching the dealers. All of that had to be so carefully planned.

Which way are you swishpanning?

Are you swishpanning right or left?

I was more interested in the… in the…

I don’t know, the people around the table, people in the game, and the dealers, you know? The dealers.

We have… kind of a story going, but then there are all these tangents.

[Ace] The casino manager is watching the shift bosses. I’m watching the casino manager.

And the eye in the sky is watching us all. [song continues] [Ace] Plus, we had a dozen guys up there, most of them excheats who knew every trick in the house.

[song fades]

[Miller] Probably my favorite female character in a Scorsese film is Ginger, Sharon Stone’s character.

She’s so key to Lefty’s life.

[“Love Is the Drug” by Roxy Music playing]

How you doing tonight?

[cashier] Good. How are you?

Ugh, beat.

[Ace] Ginger had the hustler’s code.

[Ginger] Take one for you.

Thank you.

[Ace] She knew how to take care of people.

And that’s what Vegas is all about. [Pileggi] She’s a street girl. She’s not…

But she’s very sophisticated.

I hate to even use the “street girl” word.

She made money.

[song continues]

Ginger was a hustler.

Do you know what I mean? That was her gig.

My job was to come in and hustle him.

[song continues]

[Aster] When I think of Casino, it’s really, more than anything, the need to possess a woman that you’re kind of attracted to because she’s wild and kind of beyond you. Um…

And that’s a real recurring thing.

You have it in Taxi Driver with Cybill Shepherd.

The idealization of this woman that is not attainable.

Hi.

[Aster] Cathy Moriarty in Raging Bull. Nice to meet you.

[Aster] It shows up again in King of Comedy. I love you. I wanna help change your life, if you just give me a chance.

[Aster] In Casino, it reaches maybe its fullest expression.

[“Unforgettable” by Dinah Washington playing] I wanna settle down. I want a family.

[scoffs] You got the wrong girl, Sam.

[Aster] He asks her to marry him and she says, “I don’t love you.”

You don’t know me. You’ve known me two, three months. What do you know?

But no, he’s gonna make her love him.

I’ll take care of you better than you’d ever imagine.

What are you pitching me?

Just what I said.

You’ll be set up for the rest of your life. That I can promise you.

[song concludes]

Wanna take a chance?

[Aster] It’s shocking, but also, it just feels true.

Like, it just feels like, yeah, this is…

It’s… it’s a portrait of a fool.

Fuck! You fuck! I’m sick of you!

I am fucking Nicky Santoro! I am!

He’s my new sponsor! How about that?

[siren wails] You fuckhead! What are you looking at?

[Miller] Did you ever have disagreements or conflict with Marty?

I came to work, and the first thing we were shooting was a scene in a hotel room.

And… they blocked it without me.

And then just sort of brought me in to shoot.

So she felt, naturally, “What’s going on?”

And I thought, “Uhoh.

The men are just gonna be, like, the key players and they’re just gonna move me around like a potted plant.”

You know, they are a group, they’re a team, they’re a unit.

They’ve known each other all their lives.

And then Marty would get in the trailer with Bob every morning or Joe Pesci, and they’d have these long discussions.

What about this or the blue one?

Little bit of light, little bit of a line to it, you know.

With the maroon.

Got the piping on here, black piping.

All right, then.

What about this full blue one here?

That’s nice.

This kind of French blue is nice.

I gotta say, those characters, Pesci, De Niro, they all took a lot of time.

[Miller laughs] Right.

Okay.

Nothing for me. And I was like, “Uhoh.”

So I just started following Marty around.

Like, “Marty! Marty! Marty! Marty!

Marty! Marty? Marty! Marty!”

And he was just like, “I’m a bit, you know…”

[young Scorsese] The dawn’s coming up in two hours!

And finally he turned around and he was like, [loudly] “What do you want?

Sharon, what do you want?”

She goes, “In the morning, first thing you do is talk to Bob.

And then you go talk to Joe.

But what about me?”

I was like, “I want you to come to my trailer in the morning, like you go and see Bob and Joey.”

She felt like, with all these guys, it’s a boys’ club or something.

And I… “Well, yeah. Uh…

Yeah, but you’re like the key person here.”

“So that’s what you want?”

I’m like, “Yeah, Marty, it’s what I want.”

Then I realize, no, you need… to spend the time.

“I’ll be in your trailer in the morning.”

I’m like, “What do you have for breakfast, Marty?

What do you like for breakfast and how do you take your coffee?”

And he goes, “Well, you know, I eat lowfat, and like this, and this is how I like my coffee.”

I’m like, “You got it, Marty!”

We were doing this scene where I’m really stoned and in bed.

[sobbing] I was just trying to help him!

It’s not like I’m sleeping with the guy!

Yeah, how do I know?

[Stone] We get that scene, and our first AD says to Marty, “I really want to get this other scene in here today.”

Marty said, “I don’t know.

It’s a lot to ask of Sharon.”

Because it’s a really deep dive to get into this place of… druggedout, deep morass.

But I’m like, “I can do it.”

And Marty just sat down with me and took my hand in his.

And put my head on his head, and he’s like, “I’m staying with you till we’re good to go, so you don’t lose your momentum.”

And he just sat there and like, held on to me, held the space for me.

And we got the next scene.

He’s just like that. He’s…

He’s just right there.

Of course, we were so over budget and so over time.

This movie turned into this, you know, epic.

And in those days I had done quite a lot of blockbusters.

So the head of the economic arm of the studio called me and said, “You’re way over.

You’re way over time.”

My part was supposed to be five weeks.

I stayed five months.

“Should we pull the plug?”

And I said, “My director is the king of filmmaking.

We’re making a masterpiece.

And whatever this costs and however long it goes, you shouldn’t pull the plug.”

[“Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” by The Rolling Stones playing] [Joe Pesci as Nicky] So, once they pulled that shit, I started doing my own things in Vegas nobody ever thought of doing. To keep an eye on things, I brought in my kid brother Dominick… [Scorsese] I wanted to give that film a musical structure.

[song continues]

What if you break into the middle of the first act, let’s say, and you fly off and this music comes in and you go off to another place.

[Nicky] It was like old times. And I opened up my own jewelry store, too. The Gold Rush. [Nicky] Sometimes I used to go along on a heist just for the fun of it. Casino, we had probably seven boards up around the editing room with all kinds of music.

I was really a hugeIt was almost as long as this wall.

And it would have, say, “Scene 70”, and there would be five pieces of music.

[interviewer] Some people say that your use of music overwhelms the picture.

I like the music.

I don’t know, I mean, there’s people who say the camera moves too much too. Maybe.

[explosion]

[Ace] Nobody out there was expecting a guy like him.

[song continues]

[Ace] For Nicky, Las Vegas was the fucking Wild West. [Mick Jagger] Yeah, I think it was pretty groundbreaking, using walltowall rock music in this kind of movie, which…

which is not about music or musicians.

It’s about… mostly about gangsters.

And using it in these very key scenes, you know, where there’s either an introduction of a character or a murder.

[“Gimme Shelter” by The Rolling Stones playing] And some of them were very kind of unusual choices of songs, in a way.

[overlapping chatter]

[man] Yeah, I laid nine.

[Nicky] It was eight.

Get the fuck out of here.

It was nine. I laid nine.

[Jagger] There’s a scene where they use a very obscure song called “Long Long While”.

That’s the one where he stabs him in the eye with a pen.

[“Long Long While” by The Rolling Stones playing]

[overlapping chatter]

[woman screams]

[Jagger] Very odd song to use.

Basically, it’s a ballad.

And they just use the end, where I start sort of screaming a bit.

[song continues, Jagger vocalizing]

[Scorsese] The music is a character, in a way.

Growing up, music was playing all the time, and very often it was in counterpoint to what was happening.

[“When My Dreamboat Comes Home” by Fats Domino playing] [Scorsese] I remember my brother had a car. We’d go around the Bowery.

Turn the music up, and there’s “When My Dreamboat Comes Home”, Fats Domino. It was great.

It was great. And I look over to my right and there’s these two derelicts.

One’s holding the other guy’s forehead, and the other guy’s vomiting.

[Miller] Oh!

It was actually one of the most tender things I’ve ever seen.

With that music.

[song continues]

[Scorsese] It was disgusting, but it was human, and it was moving.

It was part of the experience… of my life at any given moment.

[song fades]

Living down there.

[indistinct movie audio]

It’s all right, I think.

I think let’s see the head and tails.

[Spike Lee] I remember Marty was editing Casino. Calls me up, says, “Spike, come over to the office. I wanna show you something.”

It’s the scene where the guy’s head is in the vise.

Listen to me, Anthony.

I got your head in a fucking vise.

I’m gonna squash your fucking head like a grapefruit, if you don’t give me a name.

And the guy’s going like this, and this and this and tighter.

[Nicky] Don’t make me have to do this, please. Come on.

[Anthony pants]

Don’t make me be a bad guy. C’mon.

[Scorsese] He said, “Don’t let me be the bad guy.”

Fuck you!

This motherfucker…

“I don’t wanna do this.” Meaning, if he didn’t get that information… the next head in the vise is his.

Fuck me, you motherfucker? Fuck my mother?

[Scorsese] The Academy didn’t like the film.

It was too violent. It was in the papers.

[young Scorsese] But you understand that these scenes are all true. We didn’t make up. I didn’t say to Nick Pileggi, “Let’s do a scene in which Nicky Santoro puts one poor guy’s head in a vise, squeezes his head in a vise.”

That happened.

This is the kind of man who’s running Las Vegas. And the more gold you see in the movie, the more blood you should see. [Lee] The United States of America is based on violence.

That’s the foundation.

Some people want to shield their faces or turn away.

That’s their choice.

That’s what I love about Marty.

He’s not gonna turn away.

That’s why he’s my guy! [chuckles] I think there’s a very strong moral code to Marty.

He is a, um… He’s soulful.

I think he’s a better person than I am.

[chuckles]

Because I deal with these people all the time. As my wife said, “You’d talk to anyone.

You have dinner with murderers.”

Uh… And I enjoy it.

And he would not.

His search for the spiritual was always there.

And as he got older, it got stronger and stronger.

[Tibetan horn sounds]

[young Scorsese]

My agent called me up and said, “Would you be interested in doing anything on the Dalai Lama?” I said, “Yes, I would.” [interviewer] Why did you say that instantly? [young Scorsese] Because over the years, I’ve become interested in that part of the world. [Scorsese] I’m a Catholic, I’m not a Buddhist. But I’ve been interested in the similarities of religions around the world.

I’m curious about it. I’m curious about how they face life and death.

And this is also in the Christian or Catholic, uh, point of view, which is the understanding of nothing lasting.

In terms of the Buddhist, it’s impermanence.

[Ellen Lewis] There is no tradition of acting within the Tibetan community.

Everybody who is in Kundun, outside of the three Chinese actors had never acted before.

One more time. It’s a little rushed now.

“He’s only a man…”

“Just another human being like myself” is too rushed.

Take your time. Okay, you ready?

And… action.

[Lewis] And it just speaks to his ability to work with people and get performances from people who have never done this.

[boy] I want new plum.

[man] Lhamo, it’ll be fine.

Who said you could sit here?

And then you take out the sweet, open it.

Slower. You know?

‘Cause you’re not gonna give him any.

[Scorsese] The film came out in 1997, during the holidays.

And basically, you know, it didn’t do well.

And then I made a film called Bringing Out the Dead, about EMS workers, saving people at night in the streets.

Am I gonna live?

You’re gonna live.

[Scorsese] They’re like modern saints.

Wild angels of mercy, losing their minds from the suffering around them.

And it’s quite beautiful, I thought.

[Scorsese] But I guess it just didn’t work, in terms of box office.

That really finished me off.

[Miller] Dead again.

Dead again!

Dead again. Yet…

[“Jumpin’ Jack Flash” by The Rolling Stones playing]

[crowd screaming]

[song continues]

[Leonardo DiCaprio] All of a sudden, at a young age, I became somebody that could finance my own projects.

I didn’t know I was gonna get to work with Marty, but I always knew I had to.

[crowd screaming]

[song continues]