Made Men

by Glenn Kenny

  “THE SAME THING. That’s it, he’s right. Forgot about that. So what the hell, the whole movie should be that way. And get even faster. Until it stops.”

  We moved on to a couple of the other written questions and Scorsese proceeded to poke little holes in some of my pet theories and interpretations. Of the moment of tenderness when Henry, in voice-over, remembers Tuddy, Scorsese said, “That’s just how it was said. Henry was wistful about a lot of things. These guys were like gods to him.” Of the hollowness of the laughter at the poker game before Morrie’s death, he said, “We just wanted to capture late night, drinking, playing cards, laughing too hard at things that aren’t that funny. We”—I am not entirely clear on just who “we” are—“still do that ‘don’t say it’ bit from Tommy’s story.” I brought up Michael Imperioli’s correct instincts on dealing with De Niro in his scenes and Scorsese nodded vigorously. “Don’t mess with us. Just relate to the world that you’re in. Do not bring yourself.” He then expressed sympathy for what Imperioli had to go through with his hand and all, and laughed when remembering the emergency room story.

  Getting back to the poker game, he said, “I needed them to be laughing at that, and then Bob says, We’re not gonna kill him. And then they kill him, anyway. That’s how arbitrary it was. In part because he was a sociopath, and also because he wasn’t a made guy. All that stuff in the Mafia about honor, it’s a lot of nonsense, there’s no such thing. But. There was a sense of order. And the order was before you do anything like that you have to get permission. And you see what happens. I don’t remember how I heard it but I heard somewhere that John Gotti thought the movie was bullshit because Tommy was tall, not Joe Pesci’s size, and because Tommy was actually killed for killing a guy named Foxy, not Batts.

  “Goodfellas was a great experience but it was also terrible. Joe Reidy and I had laid out a schedule of seventy days. And because I had all these short scenes, it’s very difficult, a quarter of a page is harder to do than five pages of dialogue. Because you’ve got to go to all these different places. And the traffic was terrible. We had to really rush around. And I had it all planned, everything was annotated, all the freeze-frames, they were on the page because I knew I had to do this fast. I wanted to make this film quickly, not hastily. Warners said do it in fifty-five days. And we tried. And we were exhausted. And we kept going over schedule. And one day Mike Ovitz had to come on the set, Bob Daly came down, I think Terry Semel came down, too. We went to the trailer, they observed some of the shooting. My father was there. It was nice. But it was like, Can you cut anything, can you move any faster. And from that meeting on, we tried, but what happened was before we finally finished...at the same time I was supposed to act in Dreams, by Akira Kurosawa. And he had finished his film. And now he was waiting for me. The studio wants me to finish, and Kurosawa is waiting. So I was worried. And I thought I had palpitations. I went to see the doctor and he told me not to have any coffee. So the last two weeks of the shoot I didn’t drink coffee. Which was pretty bad for me in the morning. Also Michael Ballhaus had to go on to another film. And Barry [Sonnenfeld] came in. Also De Niro had to leave. He had to be addressed as to his schedule and the way he had to shoot during the day. And he came first, and that was it. That was it. The pressure was enormous. But then they left me alone. And it turns out it was seventy days. Not that we were right and they were wrong. It’s just the nature of the picture and the circumstances. This also—I don’t want to be petty about it, but I think this tails with my reputation at the time. One they didn’t want to give a wrap party. It was just like, ‘Please finish. Please. Just. End it!’ I think we made some T-shirts for everybody at our own expense. Also I remember making the deal for it. I wanted to get an extra amount, for my salary, and at the last minute they just wouldn’t do it. I forget what it was I asked for. I know it was money, and I know it was an amount, and it wasn’t that much but I just wanted it, out of respect. And no. So basically I was just glad to be making the film.

  “But I still, during these times, had misgivings about making another film about organized crime. I was talking with Marlon Brando during that period, and he said, ‘You don’t wanna do that again.’ So I was going sour on it a little bit. And then Mike Ovitz pulls Last Temptation together. With Tom Pollock, Casey Silver, and other Universal people. I was on my way to Tahiti to talk to Brando, he wanted us to go to the island to talk about a project he had. We’re on the West Coast and Ovitz said, ‘Meet with them, explain how you want to make Last Temptation. No salary.’ And I did, and we then went on to Tahiti, and coming back from Tahiti we stopped in LA again and there was a deal. So then I had to go to Terry Semel and ask him to wait. And they were very kind about that. And also [then Paramount CEO] Frank Mancuso was a big help. Because a lot of money was owed to Paramount. And he called me and said, ‘I’m going to do this because I know how much it means to you. I’ll work it out with Universal.’ They use the word journey, but boy was Temptation a journey. It was the best and it was the worst. And by the time we were editing it... I don’t know. It’s okay.”

  Scorsese made an abrupt gesture with his left hand, as if waving the whole thing away. “I don’t wanna go into it because it’s too layered. And then I was approached about Schindler’s List. So I thought, I don’t know. Do I really wanna do Goodfellas? I know it’s a good script and all that. I don’t know. There was a deal with Universal, too, I owed them another movie, and now I was going to go to Warner Brothers to make Goodfellas. The thing is, I had already planned it out in my head so thoroughly that it was almost like I’d already made it, so the shooting or the prospect of shooting was almost an afterthought!

  “But Thelma had read the script to Michael Powell. And Michael was not a great fan of the gangster genre. And Michael called and told me, ‘You must do this.’ And that clicked. It shifted me back into the original energy and original impulse to make the picture, from when I’d read the book. And in a sense I approached it as unfinished work, unfinished business, just got to get done. And we got it done. We got it shot, we got it edited. Michael Powell died. Thelma stopped working. I, too, took a break...did a short film with Nestor Almendros on Armani. Thelma was away dealing with the sadness of the whole thing.

  “And there was a weekend when Jay Cocks and I went to Washington. I think it was for the premier of the restoration of Lawrence of Arabia. We were at the event, and Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel walked by. Roger said, ‘Did you hear?’ I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘Raging Bull, best of the decade. Two major film magazines. Film Comment and American Film, the AFI magazine.’ And I think Goodfellas was ready to come out. And the advance screenings, aside from a couple of very, very bad previews, were very good. So the combination of the two, the recognition of Raging Bull by those two magazines—and one of them also had King of Comedy in there—and the good reaction to the new film...all of a sudden there was a reassessment. Of everything. And that was it.”

  * * *

  “Since that time,” I said, “there have been a not-quite alternating series of films you’ve made from your own personal impetus and films that come your way that you say you have to find your own way to. When I moderated a Q&A on Wolf of Wall Street you spoke of that in the case of the subject, and of Jordan Belfort, the protagonist...”

  “Well, I had to do that with Raging Bull, too. I didn’t know it was about me. I guess De Niro knew. He just needed to get me to make it. I KNEW Taxi Driver. I understood that. I understood New York, New York. But the problem with the dissatisfaction with the results of New York, New York, although that’s my...inside, my personal relationship to that picture and that experience. It might be better than anything I ever made, and I don’t know. And it’s not for me to know. Just relate to it in a way that says I wanted to do something and it didn’t get there. It went another way. I think I know why. And other people don’t know it, they don’t know anything about it, about the stylization of the sets and the color...mixed with the New Wave, no
t New Wave but improvisatory cinema...”

  “Well, the restoration screened in New York recently and I moderated a Q&A with Irwin Winkler and when I introduced the movie I described it as a hybrid of Cassavetes and Vincente Minnelli.”

  “That’s right. A lot of people say, well, you can’t do that, well, we did it. But you know the names. People see it today, they might not know the names. But does it work for them? For some people it does. Fine. But that’s beyond my care at this point but it’s also out of my hands. People seeing Paisan, do they have to know about the Second World War? I mean, I knew about it, my uncles were in it. People see it now, what’s left? What’s there?”

  “I screen the final section, with the partisans and the US and British troops, on the Po Delta, to my students, and they’re moved by it.”

  “It’s powerful.” He thought back again to New York, New York and its cataclysmic personal aftermath.

  * * *

  “What was happening, the thing that kind of saved me for a while was Last Waltz. That was something that happened where I had the instinct and inspiration. Creative inspiration. All the inspiration I had had for New York, New York seemed to dissipate after I finished. And I didn’t know if maybe I’d achieved what I thought I was after. It was so intuitive...the thinking about it didn’t matter. I didn’t know that at the time. But I did take on a very big production at the time, and the people involved, I feel like I failed them. And so I felt very bad about it. And what saved me creatively was The Last Waltz and even that collapsed. And then there was this hospital situation and De Niro came and said, ‘Let’s do Raging Bull.’ And at that point, we had that script, six weeks’ work that Paul Schrader had done on it, and we took that script and we went to an island, and re-found...how should I put it...found again, a reason to make another film.”

  “Which is why it’s dedicated to Haig Manoogian.”

  “Yes. ‘With resolution.’ That’s it. And I thought that would be my last film. I was involved with friends in Rome, personal life, and I was going to go to Italy and make films on the lives of the saints. So. There you have it. And De Niro grabbed me again for King of Comedy. And I had to find my way through that through the shooting. And then there was another...brick wall, in ’82. It was very bad. And suddenly... Siskel and Ebert booked me in Toronto and gave me an award and that was another turning point. Not about the award, but my whole life had changed, anyway. I had gone through a very difficult period. I saw a lot of doctors and things, psychotherapy, and suddenly there was a freedom, that everything could start again. And that’s when Last Temptation first became a possibility. And then that was crashed. But then, instead of collapsing, the thing to do was to go back to New York and suit up.” He laughed.

  “Suit up and show up,” I said.

  “Yes. Just go. Start working again. Beat them at their own game. And that happened with After Hours and Color of Money. And Temptation when it was made was not received. The only place that recognized the picture was the Directors Branch of the Academy. And that was more for, not the film or its art, but the tenacity to get it made. And freedom of speech. It was wonderful. Just to be there that night. Very enjoyable. But that was it. That was it.”

  “Every time I interview you, you speak as if you’ve made your last film. Bringing Out the Dead...”

  Scorsese threw himself into the back of the sofa and extended his hands as if to shield himself.

  “Oh! Bringing Out the Dead!”

  “Or Kundun...” He did it again.

  “Oh! Kundun!” He sat back up again, hugging one of the sofa’s throw pillows.

  “At the end of New York, New York and Last Waltz, the feeling was could I ever do it again. Could I feel anything strong enough to go through that process again. Not just shooting, which is very strenuous, arduous I should say, but also with the financiers. You have an obligation with the money. You want to make it a certain way. And also the cinema I came out of—the movies that I came out of, because cinema is a word that has strange connotations now—so. The movies I came out of in my period of living in LA were more oriented to a personal style. Raging Bull was one of two or three pictures that finished everything as far as the studios were concerned. But there were distractions. Heaven’s Gate was one of the movies that distracted them from us. As did Apocalypse Now. That was a major effort as you know, and a great film. All UA, by the way. And when all that collapsed. Today, especially with the new fantasy films... The question becomes, where do you belong? It’s not even where do you belong. It’s where they’ll let you work.”

  “So it never gets any easier. Not even with Netflix?”

  “Netflix was the one. That was the one. That was the most support I’ve gotten since Raging Bull. I mean the production of Raging Bull. That doesn’t mean other people didn’t give you support. Like Tom Pollock on Temptation or Mark Canton on The Age of Innocence. But invariably it was knock-down, drag-out fights, from Taxi Driver, to Goodfellas, to, well, I don’t know. Gangs, of course. But that’s part of the deal. That’s part of the challenge. That’s built in. The glove is on the ground. And I’m gonna pick it up. If you pick it up, you’re in. Don’t complain. That’s it.”

  * * *

  “And now he’s in jail,” I said, referring to Gangs of New York producer Harvey Weinstein, whose glove was the one Scorsese picked up. The convicted rapist was incarcerated on Rikers Island as we spoke, awaiting sentencing a couple of days later. He got twenty-three years.

  “Yeah...” Scorsese said, not sounding displeased.

  “And there was a little bit on Aviator. In the last weeks of postproduction they did something to me and my crew that I didn’t like. And he had something to do with it. And he wasn’t the only one. It was all of them. And I said, ‘That’s it, I can’t work with these people anymore.’ Meaning, if this is the only way I can make a film, under these conditions... Let me put it this way: Aviator we finished on schedule, there was pressure, the editing, there was pressure, but it was good. And because I wouldn’t do what certain people wanted me to, they did something in the last two weeks of post, when we went into mixing, that was...disgusting. And you’ve taken it all the way up to there. Then they become...at least on Gangs of New York it was every day.” He laughed. “Here, they were smiley one minute and at the last minute they came down like...what was that famous police force that Nicholas the Second had...”

  We both got stuck on that. It was called the Okhrana.

  “They just come in and they knock on the door in the middle of the night and say, ‘Oh, you’re coming with us.’ And they do that now? It’s a long story but I didn’t even call their bluff. I just said, ‘So just take it. Take it the way it is now.’ And they said, ‘It’s not finished.’ And I said, ‘It’s finished for me, if that’s what you want to do with it.’ They had some thoughts. Because I wouldn’t cut anymore. And I said, ‘It’s good enough. A lot of people are looking at it now and they like it.’ And then it stopped. It stopped not because they’re afraid of me. It stopped because their major star, Leonardo DiCaprio, his reputation, his performance, which was wonderful, was then going to be compromised. When they understood that, that’s when they stopped.”

  “Does DiCaprio bring more clout to these fights?”

  “In that case he was not involved. It was the people around him who realized it. When I said, ‘If you do this... I’m fine. I’ve had a pretty good career. It’s good as it is but it needs to be finished.’ But just think...you want it to be the best. The best it can be. My approach to Aviator was, after Gangs, I wanted to make a movie. Gangs was something that had been after me for so long, like Last Temptation, and I finally got it out of my system and I wanted to make a movie. And I decided that I would do this one, and it’s really a vehicle for him. And he has to be treated right. So if you want to take a chance...and don’t let me finish, the last few weeks...it’s good enough for me, I don’t know if it’s good eno
ugh for him. Meaning, he’s fine in the film. But to have the final voice right, to have the mixing right, to have the ADR right. You know, you want to...you know the phrase ‘penny wise, dollar foolish’? Go ahead. I’m gonna go make a gangster film. I’m gonna shoot it in the streets. And it’s called The Departed. And that turned out, it was the same studio.” He laughed again. “And it was even worse! It was even worse. A worse experience with the studio. But it was a different kind of worse. In that the people involved were not unpleasant or mean-spirited. Just very different philosophies, and never the twain shall meet. We tried! We really tried! And so, anyway. That turned out the way it turned out. And it was another comeback, in a way. I don’t know. Something happened. It’s all about, I guess, bridges that are burned. Gangs of New York and The Aviator, that was it. When I did The Departed, I got the script, and I wanted to do it and Leo wanted to do it, and at the same time I was having health issues with my wife and all this going on...and I decided, That’s it. No more. No more. And I was trying to mix the film. Thelma was in Los Angeles trying to get the answer print”—the first physical version of a finished film, back when they were made on celluloid—“with Michael Ballhaus. And I wouldn’t even go there. I looked at some things they’d send me, but that’s it. I did the mix. They finished the answer print. And I did one or two interviews, that was it. I went away. To shoot the Rolling Stones. That was it. I said, ‘Leave me be now.’ And people were reacting very well to it, and I was just like, ‘That’s great, I’m happy you’re happy, but leave me alone. Maybe this does well, maybe people make some money, good. If not, I’m fine. Leave me alone!’

  “And then things changed after that. And I decided to make different kinds of movies. Shutter Island. Hugo. The next big one I had in mind was Silence. I wanted to make Silence right after Gangs but I couldn’t get Jay [Cocks] to lock in to write the script with me. There were so many legal problems.” These were labyrinthine indeed, too much so to describe concisely here; among them was a dispute with the Italian company Cecchi Gori Pictures, which had the rights to the property and sued Scorsese several times after the project was delayed on multiple occasions. “And having had so many issues with the Italians, and having so many legal problems on Gangs, naturally people began to become shy about working with me. They didn’t want to be included in the summons, if there was gonna be one. Understandable. Understandable. But we’re old friends. You gotta help me out here. And once he was protected, by 2005, we finished the script about Christmastime. And in 2006 it was ready, and then The Departed hit. And Silence was caught up in extraordinary legal issues with the Italians. Extraordinary. The only person who ultimately was able—we all tried, Mike Ovitz, everybody, Rick Yorn, meeting after meeting, threats, talks, people doing things you couldn’t even imagine—the only person who wasn’t aware of the complexity of the Gordian knot was Irwin. So he sat there where you’re sitting and he said, ‘Why don’t we make Silence, you always wanted to make that?’ I said, ‘Well, it’s complicated,’ and I realized he didn’t know how complicated it was. So we open the door and said, ‘Go in. Go into the room!’ And a few months later he came back and said, ‘Boy, is this complicated.’ And [producer] Emma Tillinger, too, helped him out. But the thing about Irwin is he has that quality of an old-time producer. If you tell him ‘no,’ he’ll go somewhere else. And he’ll find something to get it done. His story about the first film he had to make. It’s MGM and it’s O’Brien or somebody. You know the story?”