Conversations with Scorsese

by Richard Schickel

  A rare tender moment between David Carradine and Barbara Hershey, who plays Boxcar Bertha’s title character. It was on this shoot that the actress gave Scorsese the novel that became the basis for The Last Temptation of Christ.

  RS: Boxcar was more like Tobacco Road, I’d say.

  MS: I really like it. I think it’s an underrated Ford picture.

  RS: It’s one of his best movies. It’s very funny.

  MS: And it’s sad.

  RS: [Imitates accent:] “Get out the way, you dang fool!” [Laughs.]

  MS: Remember that? [Laughs.] Yeah, right. The son with his car he doesn’t know how to drive, and banging on the horn—a lot of that spirit wound up in the picture, there’s no doubt about it. The challenge to me was: Can I create that world convincingly?

  RS: Did it give you a little more security? You know: Okay, I can, if need be, efficiently do a commercial, exploitation movie.

  MS: Yeah, that’s what I mean about having finished it. The security is what it was about. And also the security of how I was doing it—directing scenes, camera movements, designing them, even taking extra angles for cutting later that I wasn’t normally doing before. All sorts of things. Balancing the traditional way of doing as opposed to a newer way. For example, using handheld a certain way when it’s not supposed to be used. At that time they used handheld a great deal for action scenes or fight scenes. But I was using it for scenes that had more emotional turmoil, dialogue scenes.

  RS: Well, sure, that makes sense.

  MS: There was a lot that we put into the movie, thinking back now. Every location was very specifically chosen. The idea of places where parties had been held which they’d missed. Churches that they missed. Everything that they keep missing in life. They’re the outsiders.

  And the huckster, the urban guy played by Barry Primus, I loved a lot because it was sort of like Night and the City—Richard Widmark trying to talk his way out of things or into things. And just getting outsmarted, and getting killed. All this is something that I really liked. And then, of course, the last sequences: I liked when she came back and found David older, and then he gets taken and he gets killed on the train, and she follows him on the train as he’s crucified and the train takes off. Every shot was very, very specifically designed, every one of them. And we got them all, pretty much every one.

  RS: Is it true of Corman, as I’ve heard, that once he decided on a director he’d be hands-off?

  MS: He did come to Camden with Julie. I was in this motel room and was working on these shots. I still have them. And I drew three to four hundred pictures. And he said, “Do you have your preparation? How do you prepare?” And I said, “Well, I’ll show you.” And I started showing him these pictures. And then explaining, “This cuts to this, and this goes this way, and this is just normal coverage, but then there’s a move this way.” He said, “Wait a minute. Do you have this for the whole picture?” I said, “Yes.” He goes, “I don’t have to see any more.” That was it!

  And all he did was push Paul Rapp to make sure we stayed on schedule. These were very long days sometimes. But he had the kind of people who worked on low-budget U.A. [United Artists] films in the fifties, even some who had worked on some Ed Wood films. They’d been put through a lot. But we were in the middle of nowhere. Nobody could check on us. These people were on the fringes. They needed the work. So you know—

  RS: Well, that’s the way Roger operated—he used people so young they had nothing to lose, or people so old they no longer had anything at stake. But everyone I’ve talked to who knew him back then, they all kind of loved Roger.

  MS: Me, too.

  RS: Because he was straight up.

  MS: Yup.

  RS: This is the time you have. This is what you must do. Other than that, you can do kind of anything you want. Was that it?

  MS: Exactly.

  RS: But you had to make your schedule, you had to make your budget.

  MS: Yes. He would come into the cutting room. I thought I had all the time in the world to cut it. The credit isn’t mine because of the editors’ union. [Scorsese was not a member.]

  RS: Right.

  MS: But he had to tell me, “No, you have to finish this now.” “Oh, I see. Okay, I hear you.” He thought I was being willful. I didn’t quite understand that you pay a certain amount for the editing room, for the assistant. So he needed for us to get it done.

  I had cut a ten-minute promo. Then when I showed him the first cut of the picture, which was about two hours, Roger looked at me and he goes, “You know, the energy you had in that promo reel? That’s what this needs.” And that was the only thing he had to say. Within a week and a half or so I had it all cut down to less than ninety minutes.

  And that was it. I worked as an editor on other films for him. He would sit there in rough cuts and say, “Two more frames on that.”

  RS: Really?

  MS: Yeah. “One more frame. Cut that, that’s a little too long. The picture’s too short here, we have to add something.”

  RS: That’s the kind of thing I say when I’m editing.

  MS: Me, too.

  RS: But you don’t expect it from somebody like Corman.

  MS: No. But don’t forget I met him in 1970 or 1971. And he was directing his last picture, I think it was Gas. But the cult around Corman had really culminated by that time. Because the Poe films were really quite beautiful. The Tomb of Ligeia, based on the Edgar Allan Poe story—

  RS: Oh, beautiful.

  MS: —was one of my favorites, a beautiful film. Moving and interesting, and provocative. And atmospheric. The Masque of the Red Death [also based on a Poe story] to a certain extent, too. And The Trip [about a bad LSD experience] I also liked. Because it was like an experimental film. And he was dealing with it in a very serious way. Yes, it was exploitation, but—

  RS: Well, I think for all the kind of weird stuff he’s put out in his life, he’s actually a serious man.

  MS: Yes, I know. I was very surprised when I first met him.

  RS: Would you say working for him kind of took away the sour taste of the pictures you’d gotten fired off?

  MS: Oh, absolutely. But this was a different situation. You only have a certain amount of time, and it’s got to get done. This particular company says you can put your own elements into it as much as you want, but you still have to deliver this package to the marketplace on time. And it has to have these elements. The next was Mean Streets, and it was so different. But, as I said, there’s no way I could have made that without having gone through the school, so to speak, of what Corman taught me.

  RS: It’s funny, people always use that term about Roger: the School of Corman.

  MS: It was like a school. His persona was that way, as if he were a professor in a way. He was very firm, but he also had a kindness about him. So it was a more gentle introduction, rather than having to do a B film, let’s say, or a low-budget film, in the studios, in a much harsher situation. I was lucky in that. I brought Mean Streets to him first, but he suggested doing it all African-American.

  RS: Really?

  MS: Because he said, Gene Corman, his brother, had just released Cool Breeze, I think it was called. It was an African-American remake of The Asphalt Jungle set in Harlem. And he’d made a big hit with it, and Roger said, “My brother’s just had a very good reaction to his film. And I read your script. I can give you a hundred thousand dollars, you could shoot it in New York, if you’re willing to swing a little bit.” I said, “Yes?” “Would you think of doing it all black?” I said, “I’ll think about it.” [Laughs.] Of course, I never said no …

  RS: Well, how could you?

  MS: You couldn’t walk on his psyche.

  RS: It’s about being an Italian guy!

  MS: An Italian American.

  RS: On the Lower East Side!

  MS: So then he offered me I Escaped from Devil’s Island with Jim Brown. And that was going to be done in order to capitalize on Papillon.

 
; Again, it was a very dense script. And, I said, No, I’m not going to do it. There were two people who gave me advice to be realistic, to do it. One was Freddy Weintraub. He said to me after Boxcar, when I was saying, “No, I’ve got to try to raise the money on Mean Streets,” he said, “Take this other picture. You’ve got this picture, it’s real, and the other thing is not real. It may never happen. Go with this. This is a good thing.” And I refused.

  RS: It’s sometimes very, very hard to say no.

  MS: I know.

  RS: Because, you know, you’re kind of running out of dough—

  MS: Exactly. That’s what he was telling me. Be realistic about it.

  RS: You’ve got a check. You can cash the check. And it’s tied in with what we’d now call “family values.” When I was twenty-six, twenty-seven, these older guys would kind of clap me on the shoulder and say something like, Say, young fellow, isn’t it about time you started thinking about family, wife, children? And I’d kind of go, “Oh, yeah, I’m definitely thinking about that.” I mean, they all wanted to get you a house on Revolutionary Road.

  MS: Exactly! They didn’t even know where I came from, man—certainly no house on Revolutionary Road, I can tell you that. I read Richard Yates later; boy, it’s rough, it’s strong—very disturbing.

  RS: Well, there I had the advantage over you, because I’d been brought up in a suburb, which was very pleasant, but also very stifling.

  MS: There was one other man. I don’t remember his name, but he was the head of the CBS News editorial department. It was 1966 or ’67. I had worked six weeks there as an assistant editor. And I liked the job very much, it was wonderful. And I met some very interesting men and women there, editors, news producers. One was a producer who was really tough. People would have to wear helmets when they were screening their rough cuts for him. He’d throw things.

  I mean, it was really quite something. But I was doing the editing, and I did it as best I could. And this older gentleman took me into his office one day, and he said, “We’d like to have you stay on.” And he offered me a job as assistant editor and also, eventually, as an editor. And I said, “Well, you see, I have it in my mind to make features.” And he was very sweet about it. He got up from his desk, he looked at me and he said, “Look, you’re young yet. And many things in life you may want when you’re young, you may not be able to get. And I’m giving you something very tangible here.” He basically said, People have dreams but they don’t come true a lot of the time. “I hope it does in your case,” he said, “but it may not. Know that.”

  Then later, after Boxcar, I took a job editing Elvis on Tour, and I was having too many meetings with actors for Mean Streets and I had to be taken off that, too. The editor of Elvis was Sid Levin, who was working with the producer-writer Robert Abel. He has credit as editor on Mean Streets, but I edited the film. He helped me along. They were friendly, but they were pros; it wasn’t like a family, like the Woodstock situation. And basically they told me, We have a schedule, we need you here on Elvis, and if you can’t be here we’ve got to take you off the picture. And I said okay. So then I started doing Mean Streets. I asked them right away, Can I cut it here? And actually I wound up editing Mean Streets in their room.

  RS: It’s funny: Even though our lives are so different, we’ve both faced the same issues. Lots of people offered me jobs back then, right after I sort of began making a little name for myself reviewing for Life. “Come to The New York Times. You can start as the second-string film critic but, you know—” Harrison Salisbury, the managing editor, said, “Mr. Crowther, there”—he pointed at Bosley, who saw me sitting there in the newsroom—“is our film critic. Not, I hope, for very much longer.” And you kind of go, Geez—

  MS: Was that around the time they hired Renata Adler?

  RS: It was just before that. But Bosley was on the skids a little bit already. And then Bonnie and Clyde came along and he kept attacking it and that was that.

  MS: What this gentleman was offering was basically a job for the rest of your life.

  RS: What he was offering was, at the end of the line, a pension. It was: Fifty years from now you’ll be glad you did this.

  MS: You’ll be glad if you do it because you have a family. I had a wife and kid. People said to me sometimes, “Don’t you realize your responsibility?” I guess I didn’t.

  RS: No, your responsibility was to Mean Streets, which you’d been writing, off and on, for something like six years, I think.

  MEAN STREETS

  MARTIN SCORSESE: Mean Streets was done at the urging of John Cassavetes, because he liked Who’s That Knocking a lot. He said, Don’t do those other movies. He didn’t like Hollywood films. But I loved them. And I figured, well, Boxcar Bertha is like a genre. And gangster films, and musicals, and westerns—I want to do all of it. And he said, No, no, no—Who’s That Knocking, you should do pictures like that. And he forced me. He said, You just spent a year of your life making a piece of shit. He said, The actors are good. I can tell you liked the actors. It’s a lot of fun. But you shouldn’t do that kind of picture. After Who’s That Knocking, you’ve got to do something you really feel. Do you have a script? And I said, Yeah, I have this script I keep working on. He says, Do that. Within a year, I had it done. And so that got me the introduction into the studios, and also a critical reception, which was good.

  RICHARD SCHICKEL: Let’s talk about how the picture got going, practically speaking, I mean.

  MS: Paul Rapp, who was working with Roger at the time, gave me the idea of how to do Mean Streets in the Roger Corman style, in terms of production. He showed me how to do it, if I did most of it in L.A. And so it was really thanks to Roger and his group, but mainly Paul. I did the first six days and nights in New York, and the rest, twenty days, in L.A. We flew people in from New York for no pay. De Niro fired the gun at the Empire State Building in New York and it hit a window in L.A. [Laughs.]

  Marty on the set of Mean Streets, his breakthrough film of 1973.

  RS: Well, that makes sense, albeit it in a crazy sort of way.

  MS: That pool hall scene, where that big fight occurs—it’s a big, epic scene and you’ve got to shoot it in one day. I mean, I laid it out not only in drawings, but with lines and arrows showing where everyone would move. And they just went with it, because we had to get out of there. It took about sixteen hours shooting nonstop.

  I did have to shoot certain things in New York that you could not replicate in L.A. I couldn’t find the hallway where Harvey and Bob had that big fight at the end.

  That was on Mulberry Street. And we just couldn’t find a hallway like that, so we shot that climactic scene the fourth day into shooting. And then when we got to L.A., the first night we shot in this Skid Row area, Wall Street, downtown L.A. And we shot the way Corman had me do Boxcar Bertha, which is about trains.

  RS: Tell me about that.

  MS: Well, a train is one of the hardest things to shoot, because when you do a second take, you’ve got to wait for the train to come back.

  So after Corman saw I had all my drawings worked out, he said, “You did all this? You’ll be fine.” Then he said, “For the first four days, you do all the train scenes.” I said, “The first four days?” He goes, “Yeah. Get the worst over with first.” And he was totally right.

  But on Mean Streets the six days and nights in New York were like a student film. I mean, for example, the scene in the car on 8th Street, with De Niro and Keitel and the gay guys in the car, some of the coverage of De Niro was lost because the kids just forgot to bring it to the lab.

  Anyway, when we got back to L.A. the night of my thirtieth birthday, November 17, 1972, Paul Rapp decided to do the car crash, which comes at the end of the picture, to do the hardest part first. And that’s what we did.

  RS: The music in Mean Streets strikes me as predictive of your use of it in many of your other movies—I’m talking about found music, largely about pop music.

  MS: Pop music, some Italian fol
k songs, and some opera. The music was very important in Mean Streets. And also the cutting with music. It was all designed.

  This was the first time, I think, that music was used this way. I had no choice. I didn’t see it and I didn’t hear it any other way. The person who gave me the validation to do it was, really, Stanley Kubrick, because of his use of music in 2001.

  RS: You’ve mentioned Harvey Keitel’s character in Knocking feeding into his character in Mean Streets. And, of course, there’s De Niro, since this was your first picture with him.

  MS: I met De Niro through Brian De Palma.

  RS: He’d done a picture with Brian.

  MS: Hi, Mom!, yeah. And Jay Cocks. There was a Christmas dinner at Jay’s apartment, a walk-up in Manhattan. And Brian thought that De Niro should meet me, because of Who’s That Knocking. Brian was a big supporter of that film.

  RS: I’ve told you, I like it a lot, too.

  MS: I know. I’m sorry, I’m embarrassed because I know now—I knew after Mean Streets—what I could’ve done better in that film. But in any event, they said I should meet Bob, and Bob should see my film. He was getting some notices at the time. He was in plays. And after dinner, we—

  RS: You know, I really first noticed him in that baseball movie, Bang the Drum Slowly.

  MS: We’re getting to that, yeah. I think this was 1972.

  RS: He was wonderful in that.

  MS: So he was sitting there after dinner, and he looks over at me, and quietly—he was always very quiet—he said, “I know you. I know who you used to be with.” And he mentioned certain names—Joey, and another guy named Curty, and a couple of other guys. I asked, “How do you know that?” And it turns out that when he was sixteen years old, he used to be with a group of young guys from Grand Street, or Hester Street. We didn’t necessarily frequent each other’s bars or hangouts or whatever. In fact, there was always a little bit of frisson with these guys. But he always stood out in our heads. I was sixteen years old, too. He was always the nicest one, the sweetest one. Not that he said much, but he was always with them and he was always a nice kid. He looked different, of course, by the time he did Hi, Mom! So then, after that, he got to see Who’s That Knocking. We had a screening for him at William Morris Agency. Then he called me, and he told me that he really liked it because it was accurate about the people he knew when he was growing up in that area. It wasn’t until the 1970s, or maybe even after doing Raging Bull, that I realized that his father was a fine artist. I had no idea of his background, none.