Profile: Martin Scorcese (Part 4)

Our friend Trevor Hogg has another profile at Flickering Myth, this one on Martin Scorcese.

Noted as one of America’s most distinctive directors, Scorcese also has 14 film writing credits including Mean Streets, Goodfellas, and Age of Innocence. Here is an excerpt from Part 4 of the profile:

“When you’re a director, there are some movies that you want to make,” explained Martin Scorsese. “There are other movies that you have to make. I made Gangs of New York [2002] because I had to. I became fascinated with the world of Manhattan’s Five Points when I first heard the legends as a child. And in 1970, while staying at a friend’s house on Long Island, I came across Herbert Asbury’s book The Gangs of New York. Lured by its title, I picked up the book and read it in one sitting. The stories of the gangs with such wonderful names as Dead Rabbits and Plug Uglies and the way they operated — and gangsters like Bill The Butcher or Monk Eastman — fascinated me. Add to this the Civil War erupting and the ensuing New York Draft Riots of 1863 and I had a great subject for a movie.” The project became a labour of love. “I started to imagine characters, to compose shots and sequences in my head. My friend Jay Cocks started working on the script. And in 1977, with producer Alberto Grimaldi, we took out an ad in Variety announcing the movie. Getting it made proved more difficult. Large sets would have to be built, since nothing of this part of New York of the 1850s and 1860s exists today. It would be a costly venture. Finessing the script was just as daunting. We had to create a personal story and convey the importance of all the different factors — political, economic and ethnic — that together made New York a powder keg ready to explode.”

“I felt that the movie had to be an epic, like the films I’d loved as a child,” revealed Martin Scorsese. “We decided to go with a traditional conflict — revenge — and created the characters as variations of the hero, the villain and the girl.” The director felt that the villain was not complex enough so he had Jay Cocks make Bill “The Butcher” Cutting the surrogate father to the hero, Amsterdam Vallon. In 1999, his former agent Michael Ovitz approached Scorsese about reviving Gangs of New York and suggested his client should play the part of Amsterdam. The filmmaker accepted the casting suggestion which led him to work with a new acting muse — Leonardo DiCaprio (Inception). Performing with DiCaprio in the $100 million production are Daniel Day-Lewis (The Last of the Mohicans), Cameron Diaz (Knight and Day), Liam Neeson (Unknown), Jim Broadbent (Another Year), Henry Thomas (Legends of the Fall), Brendan Gleeson (The Guard), and John C. Reilly (Cedar Rapids). An orphan (DiCaprio) seeks to avenge the murder of his father by secretly becoming the ward of the gang leader (Day-Lewis) who killed him. The massive sets were built at the legendary Italian studio Cinecitta; they consisted of 1 ½ miles of mid-19th century lower Manhattan, which included the port of New York and two life-sized movable ship hulls.

Grossing $194 million worldwide, the 19th century period drama received Academy Award nominations for Best Actor (Daniel Day-Lewis), Best Art Direction & Set Decoration, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Director, Best Editing, Best Original Song, Best Picture, Best Sound and Best Original Screenplay. At the BAFTAs, Gangs of New York won Best Actor (Daniel Day-Lewis) and contended for the Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music, Best Special Visual Effects, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Editing, Best Film, Best Make Up & Hair, Best Production Design, Best Original Screenplay, Best Sound, and the David Lean Award for Direction; the Golden Globes lauded it Best Director and Best Original Song while handing out nominations for Best Picture — Drama, Best Actor — Drama (Daniel Day-Lewis), and Best Supporting Actress (Cameron Diaz). The American Cinema Editors honoured Thelma Schoonmaker with an Eddie Award, whereas Scorsese received a Directors Guild of America Award nomination. Daniel Day-Lewis won Outstanding Performance for a Male Actor in a Leading Role at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, while the Writers Guild of America nominated the screenwriting trio of Jay Cocks, Steven Zaillian, and Kenneth Lonergan for Best Original Screenplay. The film received a Producers Guild of America Award nomination.

For more of Part 4, go here.

For Part 1, go here.

For Part 2, go here.

For Part 3, go here.